Jacksonian Democracy
The New England Federalists, at the Hartford convention, prophesied that
in time the West would dominate the East. "At the adoption of the
Constitution," they said, "a certain balance of power among the original
states was considered to exist, and there was at that time and yet is
among those parties a strong affinity between their great and general
interests. By the admission of these [new] states that balance has been
materially affected and unless the practice be modified must ultimately
be destroyed. The Southern states will first avail themselves of their
new confederates to govern the East, and finally the Western states,
multiplied in number, and augmented in population, will control the
interests of the whole." Strangely enough the fulfillment of this
prophecy was being prepared even in Federalist strongholds by the rise
of a new urban democracy that was to make common cause with the farmers
beyond the mountains.
THE DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT IN THE EAST
The Aristocratic Features of the Old Order
The Revolutionary
fathers, in setting up their first state constitutions, although they
often spoke of government as founded on the consent of the governed, did
not think that consistency required giving the vote to all adult males.
On the contrary they looked upon property owners as the only safe
"depositary" of political power. They went back to the colonial
tradition that related taxation and representation. This, they argued,
was not only just but a safeguard against the "excesses of democracy."
In carrying their theory into execution they placed taxpaying or
property qualifications on the right to vote. Broadly speaking, these
limitations fell into three classes. Three states, Pennsylvania (1776),
New Hampshire (1784), and Georgia (1798), gave the ballot to all who
paid taxes, without reference to the value of their property. Three,
Virginia, Delaware, and Rhode Island, clung firmly to the ancient
principles that only freeholders could be intrusted with electoral
rights. Still other states, while closely restricting the suffrage,
accepted the ownership of other things as well as land in fulfillment of
the requirements. In Massachusetts, for instance, the vote was granted
to all men who held land yielding an annual income of three pounds or
possessed other property worth sixty pounds.
The electors thus enfranchised, numerous as they were, owing to the wide
distribution of land, often suffered from a very onerous disability. In
many states they were able to vote only for persons of wealth because
heavy property qualifications were imposed on public officers. In New
Hampshire, the governor had to be worth five hundred pounds, one-half in
land; in Massachusetts, one thousand pounds, all freehold; in Maryland,
five thousand pounds, one thousand of which was freehold; in North
Carolina, one thousand pounds freehold; and in South Carolina, ten
thousand pounds freehold. A state senator in Massachusetts had to be the
owner of a freehold worth three hundred pounds or personal property
worth six hundred pounds; in New Jersey, one thousand pounds' worth of
property; in North Carolina, three hundred acres of land; in South
Carolina, two thousand pounds freehold. For members of the lower house
of the legislature lower qualifications were required.
In most of the states the suffrage or office holding or both were
further restricted by religious provisions. No single sect was powerful
enough to dominate after the Revolution, but, for the most part,
Catholics and Jews were either disfranchised or excluded from office.
North Carolina and Georgia denied the ballot to any one who was not a
Protestant. Delaware withheld it from all who did not believe in the
Trinity and the inspiration of the Scriptures. Massachusetts and
Maryland limited it to Christians. Virginia and New York, advanced for
their day, made no discrimination in government on account of religious
opinion.
The Defense of the Old Order
It must not be supposed that property
qualifications were thoughtlessly imposed at the outset or considered of
little consequence in practice. In the beginning they were viewed as
fundamental. As towns grew in size and the number of landless citizens
increased, the restrictions were defended with even more vigor. In
Massachusetts, the great Webster upheld the rights of property in
government, saying: "It is entirely just that property should have its
due weight and consideration in political arrangements.... The
disastrous revolutions which the world has witnessed, those political
thunderstorms and earthquakes which have shaken the pillars of society
to their deepest foundations, have been revolutions against property."
In Pennsylvania, a leader in local affairs cried out against a plan to
remove the taxpaying limitation on the suffrage: "What does the delegate
propose? To place the vicious vagrant, the wandering Arabs, the Tartar
hordes of our large cities on the level with the virtuous and good man?"
In Virginia, Jefferson himself had first believed in property
qualifications and had feared with genuine alarm the "mobs of the great
cities." It was near the end of the eighteenth century before he
accepted the idea of manhood suffrage. Even then he was unable to
convince the constitution-makers of his own state. "It is not an idle
chimera of the brain," urged one of them, "that the possession of land
furnishes the strongest evidence of permanent, common interest with, and
attachment to, the community.... It is upon this foundation I wish to
place the right of suffrage. This is the best general standard which can
be resorted to for the purpose of determining whether the persons to be
invested with the right of suffrage are such persons as could be,
consistently with the safety and well-being of the community, intrusted
with the exercise of that right."
Attacks on the Restricted Suffrage
The changing circumstances of
American life, however, soon challenged the rule of those with property.
Prominent among the new forces were the rising mercantile and business
interests. Where the freehold qualification was applied, business men
who did not own land were deprived of the vote and excluded from office.
In New York, for example, the most illiterate farmer who had one hundred
pounds' worth of land could vote for state senator and governor, while
the landless banker or merchant could not. It is not surprising,
therefore, to find business men taking the lead in breaking down
freehold limitations on the suffrage. The professional classes also were
interested in removing the barriers which excluded many of them from
public affairs. It was a schoolmaster, Thomas Dorr, who led the popular
uprising in Rhode Island which brought the exclusive rule by freeholders
to an end.
In addition to the business and professional classes, the mechanics of
the towns showed a growing hostility to a system of government that
generally barred them from voting or holding office. Though not
numerous, they had early begun to exercise an influence on the course of
public affairs. They had led the riots against the Stamp Act, overturned
King George's statue, and "crammed stamps down the throats of
collectors." When the state constitutions were framed they took a lively
interest, particularly in New York City and Philadelphia. In June, 1776,
the "mechanicks in union" in New York protested against putting the new
state constitution into effect without their approval, declaring that
the right to vote on the acceptance or rejection of a fundamental law
"is the birthright of every man to whatever state he may belong." Though
their petition was rejected, their spirit remained. When, a few years
later, the federal Constitution was being framed, the mechanics watched
the process with deep concern; they knew that one of its main objects
was to promote trade and commerce, affecting directly their daily bread.
During the struggle over ratification, they passed resolutions approving
its provisions and they often joined in parades organized to stir up
sentiment for the Constitution, even though they could not vote for
members of the state conventions and so express their will directly.
After the organization of trade unions they collided with the courts of
law and thus became interested in the election of judges and lawmakers.
Those who attacked the old system of class rule found a strong moral
support in the Declaration of Independence. Was it not said that all men
are created equal? Whoever runs may read. Was it not declared that
governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed?
That doctrine was applied with effect to George III and seemed
appropriate for use against the privileged classes of Massachusetts or
Virginia. "How do the principles thus proclaimed," asked the
non-freeholders of Richmond, in petitioning for the ballot, "accord with
the existing regulation of the suffrage? A regulation which, instead of
the equality nature ordains, creates an odious distinction between
members of the same community ... and vests in a favored class, not in
consideration of their public services but of their private possessions,
the highest of all privileges."
Abolition of Property Qualifications
By many minor victories rather
than by any spectacular triumphs did the advocates of manhood suffrage
carry the day. Slight gains were made even during the Revolution or
shortly afterward. In Pennsylvania, the mechanics, by taking an active
part in the contest over the Constitution of 1776, were able to force
the qualification down to the payment of a small tax. Vermont came into
the union in 1792 without any property restrictions. In the same year
Delaware gave the vote to all men who paid taxes. Maryland, reckoned one
of the most conservative of states, embarked on the experiment of
manhood suffrage in 1809; and nine years later, Connecticut, equally
conservative, decided that all taxpayers were worthy of the ballot.
Five states, Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, Rhode Island, and North
Carolina, remained obdurate while these changes were going on around
them; finally they had to yield themselves. The last struggle in
Massachusetts took place in the constitutional convention of 1820. There
Webster, in the prime of his manhood, and John Adams, in the closing
years of his old age, alike protested against such radical innovations
as manhood suffrage. Their protests were futile. The property test was
abolished and a small tax-paying qualification was substituted. New York
surrendered the next year and, after trying some minor restrictions for
five years, went completely over to white manhood suffrage in 1826.
Rhode Island clung to her freehold qualification through thirty years of
agitation. Then Dorr's Rebellion, almost culminating in bloodshed,
brought about a reform in 1843 which introduced a slight tax-paying
qualification as an alternative to the freehold. Virginia and North
Carolina were still unconvinced. The former refused to abandon ownership
of land as the test for political rights until 1850 and the latter until
1856. Although religious discriminations and property qualifications for
office holders were sometimes retained after the establishment of
manhood suffrage, they were usually abolished along with the monopoly of
government enjoyed by property owners and taxpayers.
At the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the white
male industrial workers and the mechanics of the Northern cities, at
least, could lay aside the petition for the ballot and enjoy with the
free farmer a voice in the government of their common country.
"Universal democracy," sighed Carlyle, who was widely read in the United
States, "whatever we may think of it has declared itself the inevitable
fact of the days in which we live; and he who has any chance to instruct
or lead in these days must begin by admitting that ... Where no
government is wanted, save that of the parish constable, as in America
with its boundless soil, every man being able to find work and
recompense for himself, democracy may subsist; not elsewhere." Amid the
grave misgivings of the first generation of statesmen, America was
committed to the great adventure, in the populous towns of the East as
well as in the forests and fields of the West.
THE NEW DEMOCRACY ENTERS THE ARENA
The spirit of the new order soon had a pronounced effect on the
machinery of government and the practice of politics. The enfranchised
electors were not long in demanding for themselves a larger share in
administration.
The Spoils System and Rotation in Office
First of all they wanted
office for themselves, regardless of their fitness. They therefore
extended the system of rewarding party workers with government
positions--a system early established in several states, notably New
York and Pennsylvania. Closely connected with it was the practice of
fixing short terms for officers and making frequent changes in
personnel. "Long continuance in office," explained a champion of this
idea in Pennsylvania in 1837, "unfits a man for the discharge of its
duties, by rendering him arbitrary and aristocratic, and tends to beget,
first life office, and then hereditary office, which leads to the
destruction of free government." The solution offered was the historic
doctrine of "rotation in office." At the same time the principle of
popular election was extended to an increasing number of officials who
had once been appointed either by the governor or the legislature. Even
geologists, veterinarians, surveyors, and other technical officers were
declared elective on the theory that their appointment "smacked of
monarchy."
Popular Election of Presidential Electors
In a short time the spirit
of democracy, while playing havoc with the old order in state
government, made its way upward into the federal system. The framers of
the Constitution, bewildered by many proposals and unable to agree on
any single plan, had committed the choice of presidential electors to
the discretion of the state legislatures. The legislatures, in turn,
greedy of power, early adopted the practice of choosing the electors
themselves; but they did not enjoy it long undisturbed. Democracy,
thundering at their doors, demanded that they surrender the privilege to
the people. Reluctantly they yielded, sometimes granting popular
election and then withdrawing it. The drift was inevitable, and the
climax came with the advent of Jacksonian democracy. In 1824, Vermont,
New York, Delaware, South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana, though some
had experimented with popular election, still left the choice of
electors with the legislature. Eight years later South Carolina alone
held to the old practice. Popular election had become the final word.
The fanciful idea of an electoral college of "good and wise men,"
selected without passion or partisanship by state legislatures acting as
deliberative bodies, was exploded for all time; the election of the
nation's chief magistrate was committed to the tempestuous methods of
democracy.
The Nominating Convention
As the suffrage was widened and the
popular choice of presidential electors extended, there arose a violent
protest against the methods used by the political parties in nominating
candidates. After the retirement of Washington, both the Republicans and
the Federalists found it necessary to agree upon their favorites before
the election, and they adopted a colonial device--the pre-election
caucus. The Federalist members of Congress held a conference and
selected their candidate, and the Republicans followed the example. In
a short time the practice of nominating by a "congressional caucus"
became a recognized institution. The election still remained with the
people; but the power of picking candidates for their approval passed
into the hands of a small body of Senators and Representatives.
A reaction against this was unavoidable. To friends of "the plain
people," like Andrew Jackson, it was intolerable, all the more so
because the caucus never favored him with the nomination. More
conservative men also found grave objections to it. They pointed out
that, whereas the Constitution intended the President to be an
independent officer, he had now fallen under the control of a caucus of
congressmen. The supremacy of the legislative branch had been obtained
by an extra-legal political device. To such objections were added
practical considerations. In 1824, when personal rivalry had taken the
place of party conflicts, the congressional caucus selected as the
candidate, William H. Crawford, of Georgia, a man of distinction but no
great popularity, passing by such an obvious hero as General Jackson.
The followers of the General were enraged and demanded nothing short of
the death of "King Caucus." Their clamor was effective. Under their
attacks, the caucus came to an ignominious end.
In place of it there arose in 1831 a new device, the national nominating
convention, composed of delegates elected by party voters for the sole
purpose of nominating candidates. Senators and Representatives were
still prominent in the party councils, but they were swamped by hundreds
of delegates "fresh from the people," as Jackson was wont to say. In
fact, each convention was made up mainly of office holders and office
seekers, and the new institution was soon denounced as vigorously as
King Caucus had been, particularly by statesmen who failed to obtain a
nomination. Still it grew in strength and by 1840 was firmly
established.
The End of the Old Generation
In the election of 1824, the
representatives of the "aristocracy" made their last successful stand.
Until then the leadership by men of "wealth and talents" had been
undisputed. There had been five Presidents--Washington, John Adams,
Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe--all Eastern men brought up in prosperous
families with the advantages of culture which come from leisure and the
possession of life's refinements. None of them had ever been compelled
to work with his hands for a livelihood. Four of them had been
slaveholders. Jefferson was a philosopher, learned in natural science, a
master of foreign languages, a gentleman of dignity and grace of manner,
notwithstanding his studied simplicity. Madison, it was said, was armed
"with all the culture of his century." Monroe was a graduate of William
and Mary, a gentleman of the old school. Jefferson and his three
successors called themselves Republicans and professed a genuine faith
in the people but they were not "of the people" themselves; they were
not sons of the soil or the workshop. They were all men of "the grand
old order of society" who gave finish and style even to popular
government.
Monroe was the last of the Presidents belonging to the heroic epoch of
the Revolution. He had served in the war for independence, in the
Congress under the Articles of Confederation, and in official capacity
after the adoption of the Constitution. In short, he was of the age that
had wrought American independence and set the government afloat. With
his passing, leadership went to a new generation; but his successor,
John Quincy Adams, formed a bridge between the old and the new in that
he combined a high degree of culture with democratic sympathies.
Washington had died in 1799, preceded but a few months by Patrick Henry
and followed in four years by Samuel Adams. Hamilton had been killed in
a duel with Burr in 1804. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were yet alive
in 1824 but they were soon to pass from the scene, reconciled at last,
full of years and honors. Madison was in dignified retirement, destined
to live long enough to protest against the doctrine of nullification
proclaimed by South Carolina before death carried him away at the ripe
old age of eighty-five.
The Election of John Quincy Adams (1824)
The campaign of 1824 marked
the end of the "era of good feeling" inaugurated by the collapse of the
Federalist party after the election of 1816. There were four leading
candidates, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, and W.H.
Crawford. The result of the election was a division of the electoral
votes into four parts and no one received a majority. Under the
Constitution, therefore, the selection of President passed to the House
of Representatives. Clay, who stood at the bottom of the poll, threw his
weight to Adams and assured his triumph, much to the chagrin of
Jackson's friends. They thought, with a certain justification, that
inasmuch as the hero of New Orleans had received the largest electoral
vote, the House was morally bound to accept the popular judgment and
make him President. Jackson shook hands cordially with Adams on the day
of the inauguration, but never forgave him for being elected.
While Adams called himself a Republican in politics and often spoke of
"the rule of the people," he was regarded by Jackson's followers as "an
aristocrat." He was not a son of the soil. Neither was he acquainted at
first hand with the labor of farmers and mechanics. He had been educated
at Harvard and in Europe. Like his illustrious father, John Adams, he
was a stern and reserved man, little given to seeking popularity.
Moreover, he was from the East and the frontiersmen of the West regarded
him as a man "born with a silver spoon in his mouth." Jackson's
supporters especially disliked him because they thought their hero
entitled to the presidency. Their anger was deepened when Adams
appointed Clay to the office of Secretary of State; and they set up a
cry that there had been a "deal" by which Clay had helped to elect Adams
to get office for himself.
Though Adams conducted his administration with great dignity and in a
fine spirit of public service, he was unable to overcome the opposition
which he encountered on his election to office or to win popularity in
the West and South. On the contrary, by advocating government assistance
in building roads and canals and public grants in aid of education,
arts, and sciences, he ran counter to the current which had set in
against appropriations of federal funds for internal improvements. By
signing the Tariff Bill of 1828, soon known as the "Tariff of
Abominations," he made new enemies without adding to his friends in New
York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio where he sorely needed them. Handicapped by
the false charge that he had been a party to a "corrupt bargain" with
Clay to secure his first election; attacked for his advocacy of a high
protective tariff; charged with favoring an "aristocracy of
office-holders" in Washington on account of his refusal to discharge
government clerks by the wholesale, Adams was retired from the White
House after he had served four years.
The Triumph of Jackson in 1828
Probably no candidate for the
presidency ever had such passionate popular support as Andrew Jackson
had in 1828. He was truly a man of the people. Born of poor parents in
the upland region of South Carolina, schooled in poverty and adversity,
without the advantages of education or the refinements of cultivated
leisure, he seemed the embodiment of the spirit of the new American
democracy. Early in his youth he had gone into the frontier of Tennessee
where he soon won a name as a fearless and intrepid Indian fighter. On
the march and in camp, he endeared himself to his men by sharing their
hardships, sleeping on the ground with them, and eating parched corn
when nothing better could be found for the privates. From local
prominence he sprang into national fame by his exploit at the battle of
New Orleans. His reputation as a military hero was enhanced by the
feeling that he had been a martyr to political treachery in 1824. The
farmers of the West and South claimed him as their own. The mechanics of
the Eastern cities, newly enfranchised, also looked upon him as their
friend. Though his views on the tariff, internal improvements, and other
issues before the country were either vague or unknown, he was readily
elected President.
The returns of the electoral vote in 1828 revealed the sources of
Jackson's power. In New England, he received but one ballot, from
Maine; he had a majority of the electors in New York and all of them in
Pennsylvania; and he carried every state south of Maryland and beyond
the Appalachians. Adams did not get a single electoral vote in the South
and West. The prophecy of the Hartford convention had been fulfilled.
When Jackson took the oath of office on March 4, 1829, the government of
the United States entered into a new era. Until this time the
inauguration of a President--even that of Jefferson, the apostle of
simplicity--had brought no rude shock to the course of affairs at the
capital. Hitherto the installation of a President meant that an
old-fashioned gentleman, accompanied by a few servants, had driven to
the White House in his own coach, taken the oath with quiet dignity,
appointed a few new men to the higher posts, continued in office the
long list of regular civil employees, and begun his administration with
respectable decorum. Jackson changed all this. When he was inaugurated,
men and women journeyed hundreds of miles to witness the ceremony. Great
throngs pressed into the White House, "upset the bowls of punch, broke
the glasses, and stood with their muddy boots on the satin-covered
chairs to see the people's President." If Jefferson's inauguration was,
as he called it, the "great revolution," Jackson's inauguration was a
cataclysm.
THE NEW DEMOCRACY AT WASHINGTON
The Spoils System
The staid and respectable society of Washington
was disturbed by this influx of farmers and frontiersmen. To speak of
politics became "bad form" among fashionable women. The clerks and
civil servants of the government who had enjoyed long and secure tenure
of office became alarmed at the clamor of new men for their positions.
Doubtless the major portion of them had opposed the election of Jackson
and looked with feelings akin to contempt upon him and his followers.
With a hunter's instinct, Jackson scented his prey. Determined to have
none but his friends in office, he made a clean sweep, expelling old
employees to make room for men "fresh from the people." This was a new
custom. Other Presidents had discharged a few officers for engaging in
opposition politics. They had been careful in making appointments not to
choose inveterate enemies; but they discharged relatively few men on
account of their political views and partisan activities.
By wholesale removals and the frank selection of officers on party
grounds--a practice already well intrenched in New York--Jackson
established the "spoils system" at Washington. The famous slogan, "to
the victor belong the spoils of victory," became the avowed principle of
the national government. Statesmen like Calhoun denounced it; poets like
James Russell Lowell ridiculed it; faithful servants of the government
suffered under it; but it held undisturbed sway for half a century
thereafter, each succeeding generation outdoing, if possible, its
predecessor in the use of public office for political purposes. If any
one remarked that training and experience were necessary qualifications
for important public positions, he met Jackson's own profession of
faith: "The duties of any public office are so simple or admit of being
made so simple that any man can in a short time become master of them."
The Tariff and Nullification
Jackson had not been installed in power
very long before he was compelled to choose between states' rights and
nationalism. The immediate occasion of the trouble was the tariff--a
matter on which Jackson did not have any very decided views. His mind
did not run naturally to abstruse economic questions; and owing to the
divided opinion of the country it was "good politics" to be vague and
ambiguous in the controversy. Especially was this true, because the
tariff issue was threatening to split the country into parties again.
The Development of the Policy of "Protection."--The war of 1812 and
the commercial policies of England which followed it had accentuated the
need for American economic independence. During that conflict, the
United States, cut off from English manufactures as during the
Revolution, built up home industries to meet the unusual call for iron,
steel, cloth, and other military and naval supplies as well as the
demands from ordinary markets. Iron foundries and textile mills sprang
up as in the night; hundreds of business men invested fortunes in
industrial enterprises so essential to the military needs of the
government; and the people at large fell into the habit of buying
American-made goods again. As the London Times tersely observed of the
Americans, "their first war with England made them independent; their
second war made them formidable."
In recognition of this state of affairs, the tariff of 1816 was
designed: first, to prevent England from ruining these "infant
industries" by dumping the accumulated stores of years suddenly upon
American markets; and, secondly, to enlarge in the manufacturing
centers the demand for American agricultural produce. It accomplished
the purposes of its framers. It kept in operation the mills and furnaces
so recently built. It multiplied the number of industrial workers and
enhanced the demand for the produce of the soil. It brought about
another very important result. It turned the capital and enterprise of
New England from shipping to manufacturing, and converted her statesmen,
once friends of low tariffs, into ardent advocates of protection.
In the early years of the nineteenth century, the Yankees had bent their
energies toward building and operating ships to carry produce from
America to Europe and manufactures from Europe to America. For this
reason, they had opposed the tariff of 1816 calculated to increase
domestic production and cut down the carrying trade. Defeated in their
efforts, they accepted the inevitable and turned to manufacturing. Soon
they were powerful friends of protection for American enterprise. As the
money invested and the labor employed in the favored industries
increased, the demand for continued and heavier protection grew apace.
Even the farmers who furnished raw materials, like wool, flax, and hemp,
began to see eye to eye with the manufacturers. So the textile interests
of New England, the iron masters of Connecticut, New Jersey, and
Pennsylvania, the wool, hemp, and flax growers of Ohio, Kentucky, and
Tennessee, and the sugar planters of Louisiana developed into a
formidable combination in support of a high protective tariff.
The Planting States Oppose the Tariff.--In the meantime, the cotton
states on the seaboard had forgotten about the havoc wrought during the
Napoleonic wars when their produce rotted because there were no ships to
carry it to Europe. The seas were now open. The area devoted to cotton
had swiftly expanded as Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana were opened
up. Cotton had in fact become "king" and the planters depended for their
prosperity, as they thought, upon the sale of their staple to English
manufacturers whose spinning and weaving mills were the wonder of the
world. Manufacturing nothing and having to buy nearly everything except
farm produce and even much of that for slaves, the planters naturally
wanted to purchase manufactures in the cheapest market, England, where
they sold most of their cotton. The tariff, they contended, raised the
price of the goods they had to buy and was thus in fact a tribute laid
on them for the benefit of the Northern mill owners.
The Tariff of Abominations.--They were overborne, however, in 1824 and
again in 1828 when Northern manufacturers and Western farmers forced
Congress to make an upward revision of the tariff. The Act of 1828 known
as "the Tariff of Abominations," though slightly modified in 1832, was
"the straw which broke the camel's back." Southern leaders turned in
rage against the whole system. The legislatures of Virginia, North
Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama denounced it; a general
convention of delegates held at Augusta issued a protest of defiance
against it; and South Carolina, weary of verbal battles, decided to
prevent its enforcement.
South Carolina Nullifies the Tariff.--The legislature of that state,
on October 26, 1832, passed a bill calling for a state convention which
duly assembled in the following month. In no mood for compromise, it
adopted the famous Ordinance of Nullification after a few days' debate.
Every line of this document was clear and firm. The tariff, it opened,
gives "bounties to classes and individuals ... at the expense and to the
injury and oppression of other classes and individuals"; it is a
violation of the Constitution of the United States and therefore null
and void; its enforcement in South Carolina is unlawful; if the federal
government attempts to coerce the state into obeying the law, "the
people of this state will thenceforth hold themselves absolved from all
further obligations to maintain or preserve their political connection
with the people of the other states and will forthwith proceed to
organize a separate government and do all other acts and things which
sovereign and independent states may of right do."
Southern States Condemn Nullification.--The answer of the country to
this note of defiance, couched in the language used in the Kentucky
resolutions and by the New England Federalists during the war of 1812,
was quick and positive. The legislatures of the Southern states, while
condemning the tariff, repudiated the step which South Carolina had
taken. Georgia responded: "We abhor the doctrine of nullification as
neither a peaceful nor a constitutional remedy." Alabama found it
"unsound in theory and dangerous in practice." North Carolina replied
that it was "revolutionary in character, subversive of the Constitution
of the United States." Mississippi answered: "It is disunion by
force--it is civil war." Virginia spoke more softly, condemning the
tariff and sustaining the principle of the Virginia resolutions but
denying that South Carolina could find in them any sanction for her
proceedings.
Jackson Firmly Upholds the Union.--The eyes of the country were turned
upon Andrew Jackson. It was known that he looked with no friendly
feelings upon nullification, for, at a Jefferson dinner in the spring of
1830 while the subject was in the air, he had with laconic firmness
announced a toast: "Our federal union; it must be preserved." When two
years later the open challenge came from South Carolina, he replied that
he would enforce the law, saying with his frontier directness: "If a
single drop of blood shall be shed there in opposition to the laws of
the United States, I will hang the first man I can lay my hands on
engaged in such conduct upon the first tree that I can reach." He made
ready to keep his word by preparing for the use of military and naval
forces in sustaining the authority of the federal government. Then in a
long and impassioned proclamation to the people of South Carolina he
pointed out the national character of the union, and announced his
solemn resolve to preserve it by all constitutional means. Nullification
he branded as "incompatible with the existence of the union,
contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized
by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was
founded, and destructive of the great objects for which it was formed."
A Compromise.--In his messages to Congress, however, Jackson spoke the
language of conciliation. A few days before issuing his proclamation he
suggested that protection should be limited to the articles of domestic
manufacture indispensable to safety in war time, and shortly afterward
he asked for new legislation to aid him in enforcing the laws. With two
propositions before it, one to remove the chief grounds for South
Carolina's resistance and the other to apply force if it was continued,
Congress bent its efforts to avoid a crisis. On February 12, 1833,
Henry Clay laid before the Senate a compromise tariff bill providing for
the gradual reduction of the duties until by 1842 they would reach the
level of the law which Calhoun had supported in 1816. About the same
time the "force bill," designed to give the President ample authority in
executing the law in South Carolina, was taken up. After a short but
acrimonious debate, both measures were passed and signed by President
Jackson on the same day, March 2. Looking upon the reduction of the
tariff as a complete vindication of her policy and an undoubted victory,
South Carolina rescinded her ordinance and enacted another nullifying
the force bill.
The Webster-Hayne Debate.--Where the actual victory lay in this
quarrel, long the subject of high dispute, need not concern us to-day.
Perhaps the chief result of the whole affair was a clarification of the
issue between the North and the South--a definite statement of the
principles for which men on both sides were years afterward to lay down
their lives. On behalf of nationalism and a perpetual union, the stanch
old Democrat from Tennessee had, in his proclamation on nullification,
spoken a language that admitted of only one meaning. On behalf of
nullification, Senator Hayne, of South Carolina, a skilled lawyer and
courtly orator, had in a great speech delivered in the Senate in
January, 1830, set forth clearly and cogently the doctrine that the
union is a compact among sovereign states from which the parties may
lawfully withdraw. It was this address that called into the arena
Daniel Webster, Senator from Massachusetts, who, spreading the mantle
of oblivion over the Hartford convention, delivered a reply to Hayne
that has been reckoned among the powerful orations of all time--a plea
for the supremacy of the Constitution and the national character of the
union.
The War on the United States Bank
If events forced the issue of
nationalism and nullification upon Jackson, the same could not be said
of his attack on the bank. That institution, once denounced by every
true Jeffersonian, had been reestablished in 1816 under the
administration of Jefferson's disciple, James Madison. It had not been
in operation very long, however, before it aroused bitter opposition,
especially in the South and the West. Its notes drove out of circulation
the paper currency of unsound banks chartered by the states, to the
great anger of local financiers. It was accused of favoritism in making
loans, of conferring special privileges upon politicians in return for
their support at Washington. To all Jackson's followers it was "an
insidious money power." One of them openly denounced it as an
institution designed "to strengthen the arm of wealth and counterpoise
the influence of extended suffrage in the disposition of public
affairs."
This sentiment President Jackson fully shared. In his first message to
Congress he assailed the bank in vigorous language. He declared that its
constitutionality was in doubt and alleged that it had failed to
establish a sound and uniform currency. If such an institution was
necessary, he continued, it should be a public bank, owned and managed
by the government, not a private concern endowed with special privileges
by it. In his second and third messages, Jackson came back to the
subject, leaving the decision, however, to "an enlightened people and
their representatives."
Moved by this frank hostility and anxious for the future, the bank
applied to Congress for a renewal of its charter in 1832, four years
before the expiration of its life. Clay, with his eye upon the
presidency and an issue for the campaign, warmly supported the
application. Congress, deeply impressed by his leadership, passed the
bill granting the new charter, and sent the open defiance to Jackson.
His response was an instant veto. The battle was on and it raged with
fury until the close of his second administration, ending in the
destruction of the bank, a disordered currency, and a national panic.
In his veto message, Jackson attacked the bank as unconstitutional and
even hinted at corruption. He refused to assent to the proposition that
the Supreme Court had settled the question of constitutionality by the
decision in the McCulloch case. "Each public officer," he argued, "who
takes an oath to support the Constitution, swears that he will support
it as he understands it, not as it is understood by others."
Not satisfied with his veto and his declaration against the bank,
Jackson ordered the Secretary of the Treasury to withdraw the government
deposits which formed a large part of the institution's funds. This
action he followed up by an open charge that the bank had used money
shamefully to secure the return of its supporters to Congress. The
Senate, stung by this charge, solemnly resolved that Jackson had
"assumed upon himself authority and power not conferred by the
Constitution and laws, but in derogation of both."
The effects of the destruction of the bank were widespread. When its
charter expired in 1836, banking was once more committed to the control
of the states. The state legislatures, under a decision rendered by the
Supreme Court after the death of Marshall, began to charter banks under
state ownership and control, with full power to issue paper money--this
in spite of the provision in the Constitution that states shall not
issue bills of credit or make anything but gold and silver coin legal
tender in the payment of debts. Once more the country was flooded by
paper currency of uncertain value. To make matters worse, Jackson
adopted the practice of depositing huge amounts of government funds in
these banks, not forgetting to render favors to those institutions which
supported him in politics--"pet banks," as they were styled at the
time. In 1837, partially, though by no means entirely, as a result of
the abolition of the bank, the country was plunged into one of the most
disastrous panics which it ever experienced.
Internal Improvements Checked
The bank had presented to Jackson a
very clear problem--one of destruction. Other questions were not so
simple, particularly the subject of federal appropriations in aid of
roads and other internal improvements. Jefferson had strongly favored
government assistance in such matters, but his administration was
followed by a reaction. Both Madison and Monroe vetoed acts of Congress
appropriating public funds for public roads, advancing as their reason
the argument that the Constitution authorized no such laws. Jackson,
puzzled by the clamor on both sides, followed their example without
making the constitutional bar absolute. Congress, he thought, might
lawfully build highways of a national and military value, but he
strongly deprecated attacks by local interests on the federal treasury.
The Triumph of the Executive Branch
Jackson's reelection in 1832
served to confirm his opinion that he was the chosen leader of the
people, freed and instructed to ride rough shod over Congress and even
the courts. No President before or since ever entertained in times of
peace such lofty notions of executive prerogative. The entire body of
federal employees he transformed into obedient servants of his wishes, a
sign or a nod from him making and undoing the fortunes of the humble and
the mighty. His lawful cabinet of advisers, filling all of the high
posts in the government, he treated with scant courtesy, preferring
rather to secure his counsel and advice from an unofficial body of
friends and dependents who, owing to their secret methods and back
stairs arrangements, became known as "the kitchen cabinet." Under the
leadership of a silent, astute, and resourceful politician, Amos
Kendall, this informal gathering of the faithful both gave and carried
out decrees and orders, communicating the President's lightest wish or
strictest command to the uttermost part of the country. Resolutely and
in the face of bitter opposition Jackson had removed the deposits from
the United States Bank. When the Senate protested against this arbitrary
conduct, he did not rest until it was forced to expunge the resolution
of condemnation; in time one of his lieutenants with his own hands was
able to tear the censure from the records. When Chief Justice Marshall
issued a decree against Georgia which did not suit him, Jackson,
according to tradition, blurted out that Marshall could go ahead and
enforce his own orders. To the end he pursued his willful way, finally
even choosing his own successor.
THE RISE OF THE WHIGS
Jackson's Measures Arouse Opposition
Measures so decided, policies
so radical, and conduct so high-handed could not fail to arouse against
Jackson a deep and exasperated opposition. The truth is the conduct of
his entire administration profoundly disturbed the business and finances
of the country. It was accompanied by conditions similar to those which
existed under the Articles of Confederation. A paper currency, almost as
unstable and irritating as the worthless notes of revolutionary days,
flooded the country, hindering the easy transaction of business. The use
of federal funds for internal improvements, so vital to the exchange of
commodities which is the very life of industry, was blocked by executive
vetoes. The Supreme Court, which, under Marshall, had held refractory
states to their obligations under the Constitution, was flouted; states'
rights judges, deliberately selected by Jackson for the bench, began to
sap and undermine the rulings of Marshall. The protective tariff, under
which the textile industry of New England, the iron mills of
Pennsylvania, and the wool, flax, and hemp farms of the West had
flourished, had received a severe blow in the compromise of 1833 which
promised a steady reduction of duties. To cap the climax, Jackson's
party, casting aside the old and reputable name of Republican, boldly
chose for its title the term "Democrat," throwing down the gauntlet to
every conservative who doubted the omniscience of the people. All these
things worked together to evoke an opposition that was sharp and
determined.
Clay and the National Republicans
In this opposition movement,
leadership fell to Henry Clay, a son of Kentucky, rather than to Daniel
Webster of Massachusetts. Like Jackson, Clay was born in a home haunted
by poverty. Left fatherless early and thrown upon his own resources, he
went from Virginia into Kentucky where by sheer force of intellect he
rose to eminence in the profession of law. Without the martial gifts or
the martial spirit of Jackson, he slipped more easily into the social
habits of the East at the same time that he retained his hold on the
affections of the boisterous West. Farmers of Ohio, Indiana, and
Kentucky loved him; financiers of New York and Philadelphia trusted him.
He was thus a leader well fitted to gather the forces of opposition
into union against Jackson.
Around Clay's standard assembled a motley collection, representing every
species of political opinion, united by one tie only--hatred for "Old
Hickory." Nullifiers and less strenuous advocates of states' rights were
yoked with nationalists of Webster's school; ardent protectionists were
bound together with equally ardent free traders, all fraternizing in one
grand confusion of ideas under the title of "National Republicans." Thus
the ancient and honorable term selected by Jefferson and his party, now
abandoned by Jacksonian Democracy, was adroitly adopted to cover the
supporters of Clay. The platform of the party, however, embraced all the
old Federalist principles: protection for American industry; internal
improvements; respect for the Supreme Court; resistance to executive
tyranny; and denunciation of the spoils system. Though Jackson was
easily victorious in 1832, the popular vote cast for Clay should have
given him some doubts about the faith of "the whole people" in the
wisdom of his "reign."
Van Buren and the Panic of 1837
Nothing could shake the General's
superb confidence. At the end of his second term he insisted on
selecting his own successor; at a national convention, chosen by party
voters, but packed with his office holders and friends, he nominated
Martin Van Buren of New York. Once more he proved his strength by
carrying the country for the Democrats. With a fine flourish, he
attended the inauguration of Van Buren and then retired, amid the
applause and tears of his devotees, to the Hermitage, his home in
Tennessee.
Fortunately for him, Jackson escaped the odium of a disastrous panic
which struck the country with terrible force in the following summer.
Among the contributory causes of this crisis, no doubt, were the
destruction of the bank and the issuance of the "specie circular" of
1836 which required the purchasers of public lands to pay for them in
coin, instead of the paper notes of state banks. Whatever the dominating
cause, the ruin was widespread. Bank after bank went under; boom towns
in the West collapsed; Eastern mills shut down; and working people in
the industrial centers, starving from unemployment, begged for relief.
Van Buren braved the storm, offering no measure of reform or assistance
to the distracted people. He did seek security for government funds by
suggesting the removal of deposits from private banks and the
establishment of an independent treasury system, with government
depositaries for public funds, in several leading cities. This plan was
finally accepted by Congress in 1840.
Had Van Buren been a captivating figure he might have lived down the
discredit of the panic unjustly laid at his door; but he was far from
being a favorite with the populace. Though a man of many talents, he
owed his position to the quiet and adept management of Jackson rather
than to his own personal qualities. The men of the frontier did not care
for him. They suspected that he ate from "gold plate" and they could not
forgive him for being an astute politician from New York. Still the
Democratic party, remembering Jackson's wishes, renominated him
unanimously in 1840 and saw him go down to utter defeat.
The Whigs and General Harrison
By this time, the National
Republicans, now known as Whigs--a title taken from the party of
opposition to the Crown in England, had learned many lessons. Taking a
leaf out of the Democratic book, they nominated, not Clay of Kentucky,
well known for his views on the bank, the tariff, and internal
improvements, but a military hero, General William Henry Harrison, a man
of uncertain political opinions. Harrison, a son of a Virginia signer of
the Declaration of Independence, sprang into public view by winning a
battle more famous than important, "Tippecanoe"--a brush with the
Indians in Indiana. He added to his laurels by rendering praiseworthy
services during the war of 1812. When days of peace returned he was
rewarded by a grateful people with a seat in Congress. Then he retired
to quiet life in a little village near Cincinnati. Like Jackson he was
held to be a son of the South and the West. Like Jackson he was a
military hero, a lesser light, but still a light. Like Old Hickory he
rode into office on a tide of popular feeling against an Eastern man
accused of being something of an aristocrat. His personal popularity was
sufficient. The Whigs who nominated him shrewdly refused to adopt a
platform or declare their belief in anything. When some Democrat
asserted that Harrison was a backwoodsman whose sole wants were a jug of
hard cider and a log cabin, the Whigs treated the remark not as an
insult but as proof positive that Harrison deserved the votes of Jackson
men. The jug and the cabin they proudly transformed into symbols of the
campaign, and won for their chieftain 234 electoral votes, while Van
Buren got only sixty.
Harrison and Tyler
The Hero of Tippecanoe was not long to enjoy the
fruits of his victory. The hungry horde of Whig office seekers descended
upon him like wolves upon the fold. If he went out they waylaid him; if
he stayed indoors, he was besieged; not even his bed chamber was spared.
He was none too strong at best and he took a deep cold on the day of his
inauguration. Between driving out Democrats and appeasing Whigs, he fell
mortally ill. Before the end of a month he lay dead at the capitol.
Harrison's successor, John Tyler, the Vice President, whom the Whigs had
nominated to catch votes in Virginia, was more of a Democrat than
anything else, though he was not partisan enough to please anybody. The
Whigs railed at him because he would not approve the founding of another
United States Bank. The Democrats stormed at him for refusing, until
near the end of his term, to sanction the annexation of Texas, which had
declared its independence of Mexico in 1836. His entire administration,
marked by unseemly wrangling, produced only two measures of importance.
The Whigs, flushed by victory, with the aid of a few protectionist
Democrats, enacted, in 1842, a new tariff law destroying the compromise
which had brought about the truce between the North and the South, in
the days of nullification. The distinguished leader of the Whigs, Daniel
Webster, as Secretary of State, in negotiation with Lord Ashburton
representing Great Britain, settled the long-standing dispute between
the two countries over the Maine boundary. A year after closing this
chapter in American diplomacy, Webster withdrew to private life, leaving
the President to endure alone the buffets of political fortune.
To the end, the Whigs regarded Tyler as a traitor to their cause; but
the judgment of history is that it was a case of the biter bitten. They
had nominated him for the vice presidency as a man of views acceptable
to Southern Democrats in order to catch their votes, little reckoning
with the chances of his becoming President. Tyler had not deceived them
and, thoroughly soured, he left the White House in 1845 not to appear in
public life again until the days of secession, when he espoused the
Southern confederacy. Jacksonian Democracy, with new leadership, serving
a new cause--slavery--was returned to power under James K. Polk, a
friend of the General from Tennessee. A few grains of sand were to run
through the hour glass before the Whig party was to be broken and
scattered as the Federalists had been more than a generation before.
THE INTERACTION OF AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN OPINION
Democracy in England and France
During the period of Jacksonian
Democracy, as in all epochs of ferment, there was a close relation
between the thought of the New World and the Old. In England, the
successes of the American experiment were used as arguments in favor of
overthrowing the aristocracy which George III had manipulated with such
effect against America half a century before. In the United States, on
the other hand, conservatives like Chancellor Kent, the stout opponent
of manhood suffrage in New York, cited the riots of the British working
classes as a warning against admitting the same classes to a share in
the government of the United States. Along with the agitation of opinion
went epoch-making events. In 1832, the year of Jackson's second
triumph, the British Parliament passed its first reform bill, which
conferred the ballot--not on workingmen as yet--but on mill owners and
shopkeepers whom the landlords regarded with genuine horror. The initial
step was thus taken in breaking down the privileges of the landed
aristocracy and the rich merchants of England.
About the same time a popular revolution occurred in France. The Bourbon
family, restored to the throne of France by the allied powers after
their victory over Napoleon in 1815, had embarked upon a policy of
arbitrary government. To use the familiar phrase, they had learned
nothing and forgotten nothing. Charles X, who came to the throne in
1824, set to work with zeal to undo the results of the French
Revolution, to stifle the press, restrict the suffrage, and restore the
clergy and the nobility to their ancient rights. His policy encountered
equally zealous opposition and in 1830 he was overthrown. The popular
party, under the leadership of Lafayette, established, not a republic as
some of the radicals had hoped, but a "liberal" middle-class monarchy
under Louis Philippe. This second French Revolution made a profound
impression on Americans, convincing them that the whole world was moving
toward democracy. The mayor, aldermen, and citizens of New York City
joined in a great parade to celebrate the fall of the Bourbons. Mingled
with cheers for the new order in France were hurrahs for "the people's
own, Andrew Jackson, the Hero of New Orleans and President of the United
States!"
European Interest in America
To the older and more settled
Europeans, the democratic experiment in America was either a menace or
an inspiration. Conservatives viewed it with anxiety; liberals with
optimism. Far-sighted leaders could see that the tide of democracy was
rising all over the world and could not be stayed. Naturally the country
that had advanced furthest along the new course was the place in which
to find arguments for and against proposals that Europe should make
experiments of the same character.
De Tocqueville's Democracy in America
In addition to the casual
traveler there began to visit the United States the thoughtful observer
bent on finding out what manner of nation this was springing up in the
wilderness. Those who looked with sympathy upon the growing popular
forces of England and France found in the United States, in spite of
many blemishes and defects, a guarantee for the future of the people's
rule in the Old World. One of these, Alexis de Tocqueville, a French
liberal of mildly democratic sympathies, made a journey to this country
in 1831; he described in a very remarkable volume, Democracy in
America, the grand experiment as he saw it. On the whole he was
convinced. After examining with a critical eye the life and labor of the
American people, as well as the constitutions of the states and the
nation, he came to the conclusion that democracy with all its faults was
both inevitable and successful. Slavery he thought was a painful
contrast to the other features of American life, and he foresaw what
proved to be the irrepressible conflict over it. He believed that
through blundering the people were destined to learn the highest of all
arts, self-government on a grand scale. The absence of a leisure class,
devoted to no calling or profession, merely enjoying the refinements of
life and adding to its graces--the flaw in American culture that gave
deep distress to many a European leader--de Tocqueville thought a
necessary virtue in the republic. "Amongst a democratic people where
there is no hereditary wealth, every man works to earn a living, or has
worked, or is born of parents who have worked. A notion of labor is
therefore presented to the mind on every side as the necessary, natural,
and honest condition of human existence." It was this notion of a
government in the hands of people who labored that struck the French
publicist as the most significant fact in the modern world.
Harriet Martineau's Visit to America
This phase of American life
also profoundly impressed the brilliant English writer, Harriet
Martineau. She saw all parts of the country, the homes of the rich and
the log cabins of the frontier; she traveled in stagecoaches, canal
boats, and on horseback; and visited sessions of Congress and auctions
at slave markets. She tried to view the country impartially and the
thing that left the deepest mark on her mind was the solidarity of the
people in one great political body. "However various may be the tribes
of inhabitants in those states, whatever part of the world may have been
their birthplace, or that of their fathers, however broken may be their
language, however servile or noble their employments, however exalted or
despised their state, all are declared to be bound together by equal
political obligations.... In that self-governing country all are held to
have an equal interest in the principles of its institutions and to be
bound in equal duty to watch their workings." Miss Martineau was also
impressed with the passion of Americans for land ownership and
contrasted the United States favorably with England where the tillers of
the soil were either tenants or laborers for wages.
Adverse Criticism
By no means all observers and writers were
convinced that America was a success. The fastidious traveler, Mrs.
Trollope, who thought the English system of church and state was ideal,
saw in the United States only roughness and ignorance. She lamented the
"total and universal want of manners both in males and females," adding
that while "they appear to have clear heads and active intellects,"
there was "no charm, no grace in their conversation." She found
everywhere a lack of reverence for kings, learning, and rank. Other
critics were even more savage. The editor of the Foreign Quarterly
petulantly exclaimed that the United States was "a brigand
confederation." Charles Dickens declared the country to be "so maimed
and lame, so full of sores and ulcers that her best friends turn from
the loathsome creature in disgust." Sydney Smith, editor of the
Edinburgh Review, was never tired of trying his caustic wit at the
expense of America. "Their Franklins and Washingtons and all the other
sages and heroes of their revolution were born and bred subjects of the
king of England," he observed in 1820. "During the thirty or forty
years of their independence they have done absolutely nothing for the
sciences, for the arts, for literature, or even for the statesmanlike
studies of politics or political economy.... In the four quarters of the
globe who reads an American book? Or goes to an American play? Or looks
at an American picture or statue?" To put a sharp sting into his taunt
he added, forgetting by whose authority slavery was introduced and
fostered: "Under which of the old tyrannical governments of Europe is
every sixth man a slave whom his fellow creatures may buy and sell?"
Some Americans, while resenting the hasty and often superficial
judgments of European writers, winced under their satire and took
thought about certain particulars in the indictments brought against
them. The mass of the people, however, bent on the great experiment,
gave little heed to carping critics who saw the flaws and not the
achievements of our country--critics who were in fact less interested in
America than in preventing the rise and growth of democracy in Europe.