Jacksonian democracy

Jacksonian democracy is the political movement toward greater democracy for the common man typified by American politician Andrew Jackson and his supporters. Jackson's policies followed the era of Jeffersonian democracy which dominated the previous political era. The Democratic-Republican Party of the Jeffersonians became factionalized in the 1820s. Jackson's supporters began to form the modern Democratic Party; they fought the rival Adams and Anti-Jacksonian factions, which soon emerged as the Whigs.

More broadly, the term refers to the period of the Second Party System (mid 1830s-1854) when the democratic mood was the spirit of that era. It can be contrasted with the characteristics of Jeffersonian democracy. Jackson's equal political policy became known as "Jacksonian Democracy", subsequent to ending what he termed a "monopoly" of government by elites. Jeffersonians opposed inherited elites but favored educated men, while the Jacksonians gave little weight to education. The Whigs were the inheritors of Jeffersonian Democracy in terms of promoting schools and colleges.[1] During the Jacksonian era, the electorate expanded to include (nearly) all white male adult citizens.

In contrast to the Jeffersonian era, Jacksonian democracy promoted the strength of the presidency and executive branch at the expense of Congress, while also seeking to broaden the public's participation in government. They demanded elected (not appointed) judges and rewrote many state constitutions to reflect the new values. In national terms the Jacksonians favored geographical expansion, justifying it in terms of Manifest Destiny. There was usually a consensus among both Jacksonians and Whigs that battles over slavery should be avoided. The Jacksonian Era lasted roughly from Jackson's 1828 election until the slavery issue became dominant after 1850 and the American Civil War dramatically reshaped American politics as the Third Party System emerged.

Contents

The Philosophy

Jacksonian democracy was built on the following general principles:[2]

Expanded Suffrage
The Jacksonians believed that voting rights should be extended to all white men. By 1820, universal white male suffrage was the norm, and by 1850 nearly all requirements to own property or pay taxes had been dropped.[3]
Manifest Destiny
This was the belief that white Americans had a destiny to settle the American West and to expand control from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific and that the West should be settled by yeoman farmers. However, the Free Soil Jacksonians, notably Martin Van Buren, argued for limitations on slavery in the new areas to enable the poor white man to flourish; they split with the main party briefly in 1848. The Whigs generally opposed Manifest Destiny and expansion, saying the nation should build up its cities.[4]
Patronage
Also known as the spoils system, patronage was the policy of placing political supporters into appointed offices. Many Jacksonians held the view that rotating political appointees in and out of office was not only the right but also the duty of winners in political contests. Patronage was theorized to be good because it would encourage political participation by the common man and because it would make a politician more accountable for poor government service by his appointees. Jacksonians also held that long tenure in the civil service was corrupting, so civil servants should be rotated out of office at regular intervals. However, it did lead to the hiring of incompetent and sometimes corrupt officials in the place of competent ones from the other party.[5]
Strict Constructionism
Like the Jeffersonians who strongly believed in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, Jacksonians initially favored a federal government of limited powers. Jackson said that he would guard against "all encroachments upon the legitimate sphere of State sovereignty". This is not to say that Jackson was a states' rights extremist; indeed, the Nullification Crisis would find Jackson fighting against what he perceived as state encroachments on the proper sphere of federal influence. This position was one basis for the Jacksonians' opposition to the Second Bank of the United States. As the Jacksonians consolidated power, they more often advocated expanding federal power and presidential power in particular.[6]
Laissez-faire Economics
Complementing a strict construction of the Constitution, the Jacksonians generally favored a hands-off approach to the economy, as opposed to the Whig program sponsoring modernization, railroads, banking, and economic growth.[7] The leader was William Leggett of the Locofocos in New York City.
Banking
In particular, the Jacksonians opposed government-granted monopolies to banks, especially the national bank, a central bank known as the Second Bank of the United States. Jackson fought to end the government monopoly to the Bank and was opposed by the Whigs, led by Daniel Webster and Nicholas Biddle, the bank chairman.[8] Jackson himself was opposed to all banks, because he believed they were devices to cheat common people; he and many followers believed that only gold and silver could be money.

Election by the "Common Man"

An important movement in the period from 1800 to 1830—before the Jacksonians were organized—was the expansion of the right to vote to include all white men.[9] Those older states that had property restrictions all dropped them; new states never had them. The process was peaceful, and widely supported, except in the state of Rhode Island. In Rhode Island the Dorr Rebellion of the 1840s demonstrated that the demand for equal suffrage was broad and strong. The fact that a man was now legally allowed to vote did not necessarily mean he routinely did vote. He had to be pulled to the polls, which became the single most important role of the local parties. They systematically sought out potential voters, and brought them to the polls. Voter turnout soared during the Second Party System, reaching about 80 percent of the adult white men by 1840.[10]

The Anti-Masonic Party, an opponent of Jackson, introduced the national nominating conventions to select a party's presidential and vice presidential candidates, allowing more voter input.[11]

Factions 1824–32

Main article: Second Party System

The period 1824–32 was politically chaotic. The Federalist Party and the First Party System were dead, and with no effective opposition, the old Democratic-Republican Party withered away. Every state had numerous political factions, but they did not cross state lines. Political coalitions formed and dissolved, and politicians moved in and out of alliances.[12]

Most former Republicans supported Jackson; others, such as Henry Clay, opposed him. Most former Federalists, such as Daniel Webster, opposed Jackson, although some like James Buchanan supported him. In 1828, John Quincy Adams pulled together a network of factions called the National Republicans, but he was defeated by Jackson. By the late 1830s, the Jacksonian Democrats and the Whigs politically battled it out nationally and in every state.[13]

Reforms

Jackson fulfilled his promise of broadening the influence of the citizenry in government, although not without vehement controversy over his methods.[14]

Jacksonian policies included ending the bank of the United States, expanding westward, and removing American Indians from the Southeast. Jackson was denounced as a tyrant by opponents on both ends of the political spectrum such as Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun.

Jackson created a system to clear out elected officials in government of an opposing party and replace them with his supporters as a reward for their electioneering. With Congress controlled by his enemies, Jackson relied heavily on the power of the veto to block their moves.

One of the most important of these was the Maysville Road veto in 1830. A part of Clay's American System, the bill would have allowed for federal funding of a project to construct a road linking Lexington and the Ohio River, the entirety of which would be in the state of Kentucky. His primary objection was based on the local nature of the project. He argued it was not the Federal government's job to fund projects of such a local nature, and or those lacking a connection to the nation as a whole. The debates in Congress reflected two competing visions of federalism. The Jacksonians saw the union strictly as the cooperative aggregation of the individual states, while the Whigs saw the entire nation as a distinct entity.[15]

Jacksonian Presidents

In addition to Jackson, his second vice president and one of the key organizational leaders of the Jacksonian Democratic Party, Martin Van Buren, served as president. Van Buren was defeated in the next election by William H. Harrison. Harrison died just 30 days into his term, and his vice president, John Tyler, quickly reached accommodation with the Jacksonians. Tyler was then succeeded by James Polk, a staunch supporter and protege of Jackson, and the last of the true Jacksonian presidents. James Buchanan served in Jackson's administration as Minister to Russia and as Polk's Secretary of State, but he did not pursue Jacksonian policies.

Notes

  1. ^ Mark Groen, "The Whig Party and the Rise of Common Schools, 1837–1854," American Educational History Journal Spring/Summer 2008, Vol. 35 Issue 1/2, pp 251–260
  2. ^ Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Jackson (1945)
  3. ^ Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (2nd ed. 2009) p 29
  4. ^ David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, Manifest Destiny (Greenwood Press, 2003).
  5. ^ M. Ostrogorski, Democracy and the Party System in the United States (1910)
  6. ^ Forrest McDonald, States' Rights and the Union: Imperium in Imperio, 1776-1876 (2002) pp 97-120
  7. ^ Louis Hartz, Economic Policy and Democratic Thought: Pennsylvania, 1776-1860 (1948)
  8. ^ Bray Hammond, Banks and Politics in America, From the Revolution to the Civil War (1957)
  9. ^ Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (2009) ch 2
  10. ^ William G. Shade, "The Second Party System". in Paul Kleppner, et al. Evolution of American Electoral Systems (1983) pp 77-111
  11. ^ William Preston Vaughn, The Anti-Masonic Party in the United States: 1826-1843 (2009)
  12. ^ Richard P. McCormick, The Second American Party System: Party Formation in the Jacksonian Era (1966).
  13. ^ Michael F. Holt, Political Parties and American Political Development: From the Age of Jackson to the Age of Lincoln (1992)
  14. ^ Donald B. Cole, The Presidency of Andrew Jackson (1993)
  15. ^ Naomi Wulf, "The Greatest General Good": Road Construction, National Interest, and Federal Funding in Jacksonian America," European Contributions to American Studies, June 2001, Vol. 47, pp 53-72

References and bibliography

Primary sources

External links