Jackson ran on a platform of populism. Being from the west and making his own success, as opposed to the eastern elites who traditionally won the presidency, he appeared to be the common man’s man. However, as Jackson himself learned, it was impossible to satisfy every common man in a country so large as the United States. Eventually the president has to take sides and, in the process alienate some of the common people he claimed to support. During his second presidency, Jackson seemed to have given up on attempting to appease the majority and instead stood firmly in support of his own ideas whether many people were in support of them or not. This was clearly demonstrated by his determination to experiment in hard money economics, a policy which created a lot of conflict throughout the country.<\/p>\n

I agree with Sylvia’s point that one of the legacies of Jacksonian Democracy was its role in the development of the Whig party and populism at large (http:\/\/sites.davidson.edu\/his141\/a-party-for-the-people\/<\/a>). The contrasting way in which Wilentz presented the Democratic Party and the Whig party during this time period was very interesting. Under Jackson and Van Buren, the Democratic party’s policies were mainly shaped by economic concerns such as the battle over the national bank and the experimentation in hard money policy. There was also some concern over slavery, however Wilentz emphasized the influence of economics during this time more. The Whig party that rose in opposition to Jacksonians, on the other hand, was driven mainly by a very Christian humanitarian way of thinking. The Whigs’ focus on improving the individual through institutions such as schools and insane asylums seems to sharply contrast the way in which the Jacksonians approached politics. Perhaps, Wilentz presented these two parties as being so different in order to emphasize the degree of change American politics went through during this time period as more and more people turned toward the political process as a way to elicit change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jackson ran on a platform of populism. Being from the west and making his own success, as opposed to the eastern elites who traditionally won the presidency, he appeared to be the common man’s man. However, as Jackson himself learned, it was impossible to satisfy every common man in a country so large as the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Political Power and the People”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[171,172,322],"class_list":["post-629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-jackson","tag-jacksonian-democracy","tag-whigs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/112"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}