A Democratic Revolution (1800-1844) PDF

A Democratic Revolution 10 C H A P T E R 1800–1844 E THE RISE OF POPULAR uropeans who visited the United IDENTIFY THE BIG IDEA POLITICS, 1810–1828...

A Democratic Revolution 10 C H A P T E R 1800–1844 E THE RISE OF POPULAR uropeans who visited the United IDENTIFY THE BIG IDEA POLITICS, 1810–1828 States in the 1830s mostly praised What were the main features of the The Decline of the Notables and its republican society but not its Democratic Revolution, and what the Rise of Parties political parties and politicians. “The role did Andrew Jackson play in its The Election of 1824 gentlemen spit, talk of elections and the outcome? The Last Notable President: John price of produce, and spit again,” Frances Quincy Adams Trollope reported in Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832). In her view, American “The Democracy” and the politics was the sport of self-serving party politicians who reeked of “whiskey and Election of 1828 onions.” Other Europeans lamented the low intellectual level of American political THE JACKSONIAN debate. The “clap-trap of praise and pathos” from a Massachusetts politician “deeply PRESIDENCY, 1829–1837 disgusted” Harriet Martineau, while the shallow arguments advanced by the inept Jackson’s Agenda: Rotation and “farmers, shopkeepers, and country lawyers” who sat in the New York assembly aston- Decentralization ished Basil Hall. The Tariff and Nullification The negative verdict was nearly unanimous. “The most able men in the United The Bank War States are very rarely placed at the head of affairs,” French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville Indian Removal concluded in Democracy in America (1835). The reason, said Tocqueville, lay in the char- The Jacksonian Impact acter of democracy itself. Most citizens ignored important policy issues, jealously refused to elect their intellectual superiors, and listened in awe to “the clamor of a mountebank CLASS, CULTURE, AND [a charismatic fraud] who knows the secret of stimulating their tastes.” THE SECOND PARTY These Europeans were witnessing the American Democratic Revolution. Before SYSTEM 1815, men of ability had sat in the seats of government, and the prevailing ideology had The Whig Worldview been republicanism, or rule by “men of TALENTS and VIRTUE,” as a newspaper put it. Many Labor Politics and the of those leaders feared popular rule, so they wrote constitutions with Bills of Rights, Depression of 1837–1843 bicameral legislatures, and independent judiciaries, and they censured overambitious “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too!” men who campaigned for public office. But history took a different course. By the 1820s and 1830s, the watchwords were democracy and party politics, a system run by men who avidly sought office and rallied supporters through newspapers, broadsides, and great public processions. Politics became a sport — a competitive contest for the votes of ordinary men. “That the majority should govern was a fundamental maxim in all free governments,” declared Martin Van Buren, the most talented of the new breed of professional politicians. A republican-minded Virginian condemned Van Buren as “too great an intriguer,” but by encouraging ordinary Americans to burn with “election fever” and support party principles, he and other politicians redefined the meaning of democratic government and made it work. 314 The Politics of Democracy As ordinary American men asserted a claim to a voice in government affairs, politicians catered to their preferences and prejudices. Aspiring candidates took their messages to voters, in rural hamlets as well as large towns. This detail from George Caleb Bingham’s Stump Speaking (1855) shows a swanky, tail-coated politician on an improvised stage seeking the votes of an audience of well-dressed gentlemen and local farmers — identified by their broad-brimmed hats and casual attire. Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library. 315  316 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860 they elected men who dressed simply and endorsed The Rise of Popular Politics, popular rule. Smallholding farmers and ambitious laborers in 1810–1828 the Midwest and Southwest likewise challenged the old Expansion of the franchise (the right to vote) dramati- hierarchical order. In Ohio, a traveler reported, “no cally symbolized the Democratic Revolution. By the white man or woman will bear being called a servant.” 1830s, most states allowed nearly all white men to vote. The constitutions of the new states of Indiana (1816), Nowhere else in the world did ordinary farmers and Illinois (1818), and Alabama (1819) prescribed a broad wage earners exercise such political influence; in male franchise, and voters usually elected middling England, the Reform Bill of 1832 extended the vote to men to local and state offices. A well-to-do migrant in only 600,000 out of 6 million men — a mere 10 percent. Illinois was surprised to learn that the man who plowed Equally important, political parties provided voters his fields “was a colonel of militia, and a member of the with the means to express their preferences. legislature.” Once in public office, men from modest backgrounds restricted imprisonment for debt, kept taxes low, and allowed farmers to claim squatters’ rights to unoccupied land. The Decline of the Notables By the mid-1820s, many state legislatures had given and the Rise of Parties the vote to all white men or to all men who paid taxes The American Revolution weakened the elite-run or served in the militia. Only a few — North Carolina, society of the colonial era but did not overthrow it. Virginia, and Rhode Island — still required the posses- Only two states — Pennsylvania and Vermont — gave sion of freehold property. Equally significant, between the vote to all male taxpayers, and many families of 1818 and 1821, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New low rank continued to defer to their social “betters.” York wrote more democratic constitutions that reap- Consequently, wealthy notables — northern landlords, portioned legislative districts on the basis of popula- slave-owning planters, and seaport merchants — dom- tion and mandated the popular election (rather than inated the political system in the new republic. And the appointment) of judges and justices of the peace. rightly so, said John Jay, the first chief justice of the Democratic politics was contentious and, because Supreme Court: “Those who own the country are the it attracted ambitious men, often corrupt. Powerful most fit persons to participate in the government of it.” entrepreneurs and speculators — both notables and Jay and other notables managed local elections by self-made men — demanded government assistance building up an “interest”: lending money to small and paid bribes to get it. Speculators won land grants farmers, giving business to storekeepers, and treating by paying off the members of important committees, their tenants to rum. An outlay of $20 for refreshments, and bankers distributed shares of stock to key legisla- remarked one poll watcher, “may produce about 100 tors. When the Seventh Ward Bank of New York City votes.” This gentry-dominated system kept men who received a legislative charter in 1833, the bank’s officials lacked wealth and powerful family connections from set aside one-third of the 3,700 shares of stock for seeking office. themselves and their friends and almost two-thirds for state legislators and bureaucrats, leaving just 40 shares The Rise of Democracy To expand the suffrage, for public sale (America Compared, p. 317). Maryland reformers in the 1810s invoked the equal- More political disputes broke out when religious rights rhetoric of republicanism. They charged that reformers sought laws to enforce the cultural agenda property qualifications for voting were a “tyranny” of the Benevolent Empire. In Utica, New York, evan- because they endowed “one class of men with privi- gelical Presbyterians insisted upon a town ordinance leges which are denied to another.” To defuse such restricting Sunday entertainment. In response, a mem- arguments and deter migration to the West, legislators ber of the local Universalist church — a freethinking in Maryland and other seaboard states grudgingly Protestant denomination — denounced the measure as accepted a broader franchise and coercive and called for “Religious Liberty.” IDENTIFY CAUSES its democratic results. The new What was the relationship voters often rejected candidates Parties Take Command The appearance of political between the growth of who wore “top boots, breeches, parties encouraged such debates over government democracy and the emer- and shoe buckles,” their hair in policy. Revolutionary-era Americans had condemned gence of political parties? “powder and queues.” Instead, political “factions” as antirepublican, and the new state AMERICA C O M PA R E D Alexis de Tocqueville In 1831, the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859) came to the United States to report on its innovative penal system. Instead, he produced a Letter to Louis de brilliant analysis of the new republican society and politics, Democracy in Amer- ica (1835, 1840). This letter to a French friend reveals his thinking and insights. Kergorlay, June 29, 1831 Do you know what, in this country’s political realm, so vigorous that it was bound before long to destroy the makes the most vivid impression on me? The effect of foundations of the edifice it raised.... We are moving laws governing inheritance.... The English had exported toward an unrestricted democracy... that... would not their laws of primogeniture, according to which the eld- suit France at all.... [However,] there is no human power est acquired three-quarters of the father’s fortune. This capable of changing the law of inheritance, and with this resulted in a host of vast territorial domains passing change our families will disappear, possessions will pass from father to son and wealth remaining in families. My into other hands, wealth will be increasingly equalized, American informants tell me that there was no aristoc- the upper class will melt into the middle, the latter will racy but, instead, a class of great landowners leading a become immense and shape everything to its level.... simple, rather intellectual life characterized by its air of What I see in America leaves me doubting that gov- good breeding, its manners, and a strong sense of family ernment by the multitude, even under the most favorable pride.... Since then, inheritance laws have been revised. circumstances — and they exist here — is a good thing. Primogeniture gave way to equal division, with almost There is general agreement that in the early days of the magical results. Domains split up, passing into other hands. republic, statesmen and members of the two legislative Family spirit disappeared. The aristocratic bias that marked houses were much more distinguished than they are the republic’s early years was replaced by a democratic today. They almost all belonged to that class of land- thrust of irresistible force.... I’ve seen several members owners I mentioned above. The populace no longer of these old families.... They regret the loss of everything chooses with such a sure hand. It generally favors those aristocratic: patronage, family pride, high tone.... who flatter its passions and descend to its level. There can be no doubt that the inheritance law is responsible in some considerable measure for this com- Source: From Letters from America: Alexis de Tocqueville, edited, translated, and with plete triumph of democratic principles. The Americans... an introduction by Frederick Brown, Yale University Press, 2010. Copyright © 2010 by agree that “it has made us what we are, it is the founda- Frederick Brown. Used by permission of Yale University Press. tion of our republic.”... When I apply these ideas to France, I cannot resist the thought that Louis XVIII’s charter [of 1814 sought to QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS restore the pre-Revolutionary regime by creating]... 1. According to Tocqueville, what is the legal basis of Ameri- aristocratic institutions in political law, but [by mandating can social equality and political democracy? What is the equality before the law and retaining the Revolutionary- comparable situation in France? era inheritance laws giving all children, irrespective of 2. Why does Tocqueville doubt that democratic rule is a good thing, even in the United States, and “would not sex, an equal share of the parental estate] within the suit France at all”? domain of civil law gave shelter to a democratic principle and national constitutions made no mention of politi- efficiently wove together the interests of diverse social cal parties. However, as the power of notables waned in and economic groups. the 1820s, disciplined political parties appeared in a Martin Van Buren of New York was the chief archi- number of states. Usually they were run by professional tect of the emerging system of party government. The politicians, often middle-class lawyers and journalists. ambitious son of a Jeffersonian tavern keeper, Van One observer called the new parties political machines Buren grew up in the landlord-dominated society of because, like the new power-driven textile looms, they the Hudson River Valley. To get training as a lawyer, he 317 318 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860 Between 1817 and 1821 in New York, Van Buren turned his “Bucktail” supporters (who wore a deer’s tail on their hats) into the first statewide political machine. He purchased a newspaper, the Albany Argus, and used it to promote his policies and get out the vote. Patronage was an even more important tool. When Van Buren’s Bucktails won control of the New York legislature in 1821, they acquired the power to appoint some six thousand of their friends to posi- tions in New York’s legal bureaucracy of judges, jus- tices of the peace, sheriffs, deed commissioners, and coroners. Critics called this ruthless distribution of offices a spoils system, but Van Buren argued it was fair, operating “sometimes in favour of one party, and sometimes of another.” Party government was thor- oughly republican, he added, because it reflected the preferences of a majority of the citizenry. To ensure the passage of the party’s legislative program, Van Buren insisted on disciplined voting as determined by a caucus, a meeting of party leaders. On one crucial occasion, the “Little Magician” — a nickname reflect- ing Van Buren’s short stature and political dexterity — honored seventeen New York legislators for sacrificing “individual preferences for the general good” of the Martin Van Buren party. Martin Van Buren’s skills as a lawyer and a politician won him many admirers, as did his personal charm, sharp intellect, and imperturbable composure. “Little Van” — a mere 5 feet 6 inches in height — had almost as many detractors. Davy The Election of 1824 Crockett, Kentucky frontiersman, land speculator, and con- The advance of political democracy in the states under- gressman, labeled him “an artful, cunning, intriguing, selfish mined the traditional notable-dominated system of lawyer,” concerned only with “office and money.” In truth, Van Buren was a complex man, a middle-class lawyer with national politics. After the War of 1812, the aristocratic republican values and aristocratic tastes who nonetheless Federalist Party virtually disappeared, and the created a democratic political party. National Portrait Gallery, Republican Party splintered into competing factions Smithsonian Institution/Art Resource, NY. (Chapter 7). As the election of 1824 approached, five Republican candidates campaigned for the presidency. Three were veterans of President James Monroe’s cabinet: Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, the son relied on the Van Ness clan, a powerful local gentry of former president John Adams; Secretary of War family. Then, determined not to become their depen- John C. Calhoun; and Secretary of the Treasury dent “tool,” Van Buren repudiated their tutelage and set William H. Crawford. The other candidates were out to create a political order based on party identity, Henry Clay of Kentucky, the hard-drinking, dynamic not family connections. In justifying party govern- Speaker of the House of Representatives; and General ments, Van Buren rejected the traditional republican Andrew Jackson, now a senator from Tennessee. When belief that political factions were dangerous and the Republican caucus in Congress selected Crawford claimed that the opposite was true: “All men of sense as the party’s official nominee, the other candidates know that political parties are inseparable from free took their case to the voters. Thanks to democratic government,” because they checked an elected official’s reforms, eighteen of the twenty-four states required inherent “disposition to abuse power.” popular elections (rather than a vote of the state legis- lature) to choose their representatives to the electoral To see a longer excerpt of Martin Van Buren’s college. autobiography, along with other primary sources Each candidate had strengths. Thanks to his diplo- from this period, see Sources for America’s History. matic successes as secretary of state, John Quincy  CHAPTER 10 A Democratic Revolution, 1800–1844 319 Adams enjoyed national recognition; and his family’s prestige in Massachusetts ensured him the electoral 9 votes of New England. Henry Clay based his candidacy 7 8 on the American System, his integrated mercantilist 26 15 MICH. TERR. 5 8 program of national economic development similar to 14 4 UNORGANIZED 28 the Commonwealth System of the state governments. TERRITORY 16 7 8 2 2 1 1 5 Clay wanted to strengthen the Second Bank of the 24 3 1 United States, raise tariffs, and use tariff revenues to 3 14 15 finance internal improvements, that is, public works 11 ARK. 11 such as roads and canals. His nationalistic program TERR. 5 9 3 won praise in the West, which needed better transpor- 3 tation, but elicited sharp criticism in the South, which FL 2 A. relied on rivers to market its cotton and had few TE RR manufacturing industries to protect. William Crawford. of Georgia, an ideological heir of Thomas Jefferson, Electoral Popular Percent of denounced Clay’s American System as a scheme to Candidate Vote* Vote Popular Vote “consolidate” political power in Washington. Recog- John Quincy Adams 84 108,740 30.5 Andrew Jackson 99 153,544 43.1 nizing Crawford’s appeal in the South, John C. Calhoun Henry Clay 37 47,136 13.2 of South Carolina withdrew from the race and endorsed William H. Crawford 41 46,618 13.1 Andrew Jackson. *No distinct political parties. As the hero of the Battle of New Orleans, Jackson MAP 10.1 benefitted from the surge of patriotism after the War The Presidential Election of 1824 of 1812. Born in the Carolina backcountry, Jackson Regional voting was the dominant pattern in 1824. settled in Nashville, Tennessee, where he formed ties to John Quincy Adams captured every electoral vote in influential families through marriage and a career as an New England and most of those in New York; Henry Clay carried Ohio and Kentucky, the most populous attorney and a slave-owning cotton planter. His rise trans-Appalachian states; and William Crawford took from common origins symbolized the new democratic the southern states of Virginia and Georgia. Only age, and his reputation as a “plain solid republican” Andrew Jackson claimed a national constituency, attracted voters in all regions. Still, Jackson’s strong winning Pennsylvania and New Jersey in the East, Indiana and most of Illinois in the Midwest, and showing in the electoral college surprised most politi- much of the South. Only 356,000 Americans voted, cal leaders. The Tennessee senator received 99 electoral about 27 percent of the eligible electorate. votes; Adams garnered 84 votes; Crawford, struck down by a stroke during the campaign, won 41; and Clay finished with 37 (Map 10.1). Because no candidate received an absolute major- The Last Notable President: ity, the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution (rati- fied in 1804) set the rules: the House of Representatives John Quincy Adams would choose the president from among the three As president, Adams called for bold national action. highest vote-getters. This procedure hurt Jackson “The moral purpose of the Creator,” he told Congress, because many congressmen feared that the rough-hewn was to use the president to “improve the conditions of “military chieftain” might become a tyrant. Excluded himself and his fellow men.” Adams called for the from the race, Henry Clay used his influence as Speaker establishment of a national university in Washington, to thwart Jackson’s election. Clay assembled a coalition scientific explorations in the Far West, and a uniform of representatives from New England and the Ohio standard of weights and measures. Most important, he River Valley that voted Adams into the presidency in endorsed Henry Clay’s American 1825. Adams showed his gratitude by appointing Clay System and its three key elements: his secretary of state, the traditional stepping-stone to protective tariffs to stimulate UNDERSTAND the presidency. Clay’s appointment was politically fatal manufacturing, federally subsi- POINTS OF VIEW for both men: Jackson’s supporters accused Clay and dized roads and canals to facili- Why did Jacksonians consider the political deal Adams of making a corrupt bargain, and they vowed to tate commerce, and a national between Adams and Clay oppose Adams’s policies and to prevent Clay’s rise to bank to control credit and provide “corrupt”? the presidency. a uniform currency.  320 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860 The Fate of Adams’s Policies Manufacturers, Carolina and an advocate of free trade. “[B]y some entrepreneurs, and farmers in the Northeast and Mid- strange mechanical contrivance [it has become]... a west welcomed Adams’s proposals. However, his poli- machine for manufacturing Presidents, instead of cies won little support in the South, where planters broadcloths, and bed blankets.” Disregarding southern opposed protective tariffs because these taxes raised protests, northern Jacksonians joined with supporters the price of manufactures. South- of Adams and Clay to enact the Tariff of 1828, which EXPLAIN CAUSES ern smallholders also feared pow- raised duties significantly on raw materials, textiles, What were the suc- erful banks that could force them and iron goods. cesses and failures of into bankruptcy. From his death- The new tariff enraged the South, which produced John Adams’s presidency, bed, Thomas Jefferson condemned the world’s cheapest raw cotton and did not need to and what accounted for Adams for promoting “a single protect its main industry. Moreover, the tariff cost those outcomes? and splendid government of southern planters about $100 million a year. Planters [a monied] aristocracy... riding had to buy either higher-cost American textiles and and ruling over the plundered ploughman and beg- iron goods, thus enriching northeastern businesses gared yeomanry.” and workers, or highly dutied British imports, thus Other politicians objected to the American System paying the expenses of the national government. The on constitutional grounds. In 1817, President Madison new tariff was “little less than legalized pillage,” an had vetoed the Bonus Bill, which proposed using the Alabama legislator declared, calling it a Tariff of national government’s income from the Second Bank Abominations. Ignoring the Jacksonians’ support for of the United States to fund improvement projects in the Tariff of 1828, most southerners heaped blame on the states. Such projects, Madison argued, were the sole President Adams. responsibility of the states, a sentiment shared by the Southern governments also criticized Adams’s Republican followers of Thomas Jefferson. In 1824, Indian policy. A deeply moral man, the president sup- Martin Van Buren likewise declared his allegiance to ported the treaty-guaranteed land rights of Native the constitutional “doctrines of the Jefferson School” and his opposition to “consolidated government,” a powerful and potentially oppressive national adminis- tration. Now a member of the U.S. Senate, Van Buren helped to defeat most of Adams’s proposed subsidies for roads and canals. The Tariff Battle The major battle of the Adams administration came over tariffs. The Tariff of 1816 had placed relatively high duties on imports of cheap English cotton cloth, allowing New England textile producers to control that segment of the market. In 1824, Adams and Clay secured a new tariff that pro- tected New England and Pennsylvania manufacturers from more expensive woolen and cotton textiles and also English iron goods. Without these tariffs, British imports would have dominated the market and signifi- cantly inhibited American industrial development (Chapter 9, America Compared, p. 289). The “Tariff of Abominations” Recognizing the appeal of tariffs, Van Buren and Political cartoons enjoyed wide use in eighteenth-century his Jacksonian allies hopped on the bandwagon. By England and became popular in the United States during the political battles of the First Party System (1794–1815). By the increasing duties on wool, hemp, and other imported 1820s, American newspapers, the mouthpiece of political raw materials, they hoped to win the support of farm- parties, published cartoons daily. This cartoon attacks the ers in New York, Ohio, and Kentucky for Jackson’s tariffs of 1828 and 1832 as hostile to the prosperity of the South. The gaunt figure on the left represents a southern presidential candidacy in 1828. The tariff had become a planter, starved by high tariff duties, while the northern political weapon. “I fear this tariff thing,” remarked textile manufacturer has grown stout feasting on the Thomas Cooper, the president of the College of South bounty of protectionism. © Bettmann/Corbis.  CHAPTER 10 A Democratic Revolution, 1800–1844 321 Americans against expansion-minded whites. In 1825, praised “Old Hickory” as a “natural” aristocrat, a self- U.S. commissioners had secured a treaty from one made man. faction of Creeks ceding its lands in Georgia to the The Jacksonians called themselves Democrats or United States for eventual sale to the state’s citizens. “the Democracy” to convey their egalitarian message. When the Creek National Council repudiated the As Thomas Morris told the Ohio legislature, Democrats treaty, claiming that it was fraudulent, Adams called were fighting for equality: the republic had been cor- for new negotiations. In response, Georgia governor rupted by legislative charters that gave “a few indi- George M. Troup attacked the president as a “public viduals rights and privileges not enjoyed by the citizens enemy... the unblushing ally of the savages.” Mobil- at large.” Morris promised that the Democracy would izing Georgia’s congressional delegation, Troup per- destroy such “artificial distinction.” Jackson himself suaded Congress to extinguish the Creeks’ land titles, declared that “equality among the people in the rights forcing most Creeks to leave the state. conferred by government” was the “great radical prin- Elsewhere, Adams’s primary weakness was his out- ciple of freedom.” of-date political style. The last notable to serve in the Jackson’s message appealed to many social groups. White House, he acted the part: aloof, inflexible, and His hostility to corporations and to Clay’s American paternalistic. When Congress rejected his activist eco- System won support from north- nomic policies, Adams accused its members of follow- eastern artisans and workers who TRACE CHANGE ing the whims of public opinion and told them not to felt threatened by industrializa- OVER TIME be enfeebled “by the will of our constituents.” Ignoring tion. Jackson also captured the Jackson lost the presi- his waning popularity, the president refused to dismiss votes of Pennsylvania ironwork- dential election of 1824 hostile federal bureaucrats or to award offices to his ers and New York farmers who and won in 1828: what supporters. Rather than “run” for reelection in 1828, had benefitted from the contro- changes explain these Adams “stood” for it, telling friends, “If my country versial Tariff of Abominations. different outcomes? wants my services, she must ask for them.” Yet, by astutely declaring his sup- port for a “judicious” tariff that would balance regional interests, Jackson remained popular in the South. Old “The Democracy” and the Hickory likewise garnered votes in the Southeast and Election of 1828 Midwest, where his well-known hostility toward Native Martin Van Buren and the politicians handling Andrew Americans reassured white farmers seeking Indian Jackson’s campaign for the presidency had no reserva- removal. tions about running for office. To put Jackson in the The Democrats’ celebration of popular rule carried White House, Van Buren revived the political coalition Jackson into office. In 1824, about one-quarter of the created by Thomas Jefferson, championing policies electorate had voted; in 1828, more than one-half went that appealed to both southern planters and northern to the polls, and 56 percent voted for the Tennessee farmers and artisans, the “plain Republicans of the senator (Figure 10.1 and Map 10.2). The first president North.” John C. Calhoun, Jackson’s running mate, from a trans-Appalachian state, Jackson cut a dignified brought his South Carolina allies into Van Buren’s party, figure as he traveled to Washington. He “wore his hair and Jackson’s close friends in Tennessee rallied voters carelessly but not ungracefully arranged,” an English throughout the Old Southwest. The Little Magician observer noted, “and in spite of his harsh, gaunt fea- hoped that a national party would reconcile the diverse tures looked like a gentleman and a soldier.” Still, “interests” that, as James Madison suggested in “Fed- Jackson’s popularity and sharp temper frightened men eralist No. 10” (Chapter 6), inevitably existed in a large of wealth. Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, a republic. Equally important, added Jackson’s ally Duff former Federalist and now a corporate lawyer, warned Green, it would put the “anti-slave party in the his clients that the new president would “bring a breeze North... to sleep for twenty years to come.” with him. Which way it will blow, I cannot tell At Van Buren’s direction, the Jacksonians orches- [but]... my fear is stronger than my hope.” Supreme trated a massive publicity campaign. In New York, fifty Court justice Joseph Story shared Webster’s apprehen- Democrat-funded newspapers declared their support sions. Watching an unruly Inauguration Day crowd for Jackson. Elsewhere, Jacksonians used mass meet- climb over the elegant White House furniture to con- ings, torchlight parades, and barbecues to celebrate gratulate Jackson, Story lamented that “the reign of the candidate’s frontier origin and rise to fame. They King ‘Mob’ seemed triumphant.” 322 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860 FIGURE 10.1 All eligible voters Winner Democratic votes The Rise of Voter Turnout, 1824–1844 Republican/Whig votes As the shrinking white sections of these Nonparticipating voters Votes for other parties pie graphs indicate, the proportion of eligible voters who cast ballots in presi- 1824 1828 1832 dential elections increased dramatically over time. In 1824, 27 percent voted; in 1840 and thereafter, about 80 percent went to the polls. Voter participation soared first in 1828, when Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams con- John Quincy Adams Andrew Jackson Andrew Jackson tested for the White House, and again Andrew Jackson John Quincy Adams Henry Clay in 1840, as competition heated up Henry Clay William Wirt between Democrats and Whigs, who William H. Crawford John Floyd advocated different policies and phi- losophies of government. Democrats 1836 1840 1844 won most of these contests because their policies had greater appeal to ordinary citizens. Martin Van Buren William H. Harrison James K. Polk William H. Harrison Martin Van Buren Henry Clay Hugh L. White James G. Birney Daniel Webster W. P. Mangum 8 1 The Jacksonian Presidency, 7 8 15 1829–1837 16 MICH. TERR. 20 8 4 American-style political democracy — a broad fran- UNORGANIZED 28 TERRITORY 16 5 8 chise, a disciplined political party, and policies favor- 3 5 3 24 6 ing specific interests — ushered Andrew Jackson into 3 14 office. Jackson used his popular mandate to transform 15 11 the policies of the national government and the defini- ARK. 11 TERR. tion of the presidency. During his two terms, he 5 9 3 enhanced presidential authority, destroyed the mer- 5 cantilist and nationalist American System, and estab- FL A. lished a new ideology of limited government. An Ohio T ER supporter summed up Jackson’s vision: “the Sovereignty R. Electoral Popular Percent of of the People, the Rights of the States, and a Light and Candidate Vote Vote Popular Vote Simple Government.” Andrew Jackson 178 647,286 56 (Democratic Republican) John Q. Adams (National Republican) 83 508,064 44 Jackson’s Agenda: Rotation MAP 10.2 and Decentralization The Presidential Election of 1828 To make policy, Jackson relied primarily on his so- As in 1824, John Quincy Adams carried all of New called Kitchen Cabinet. Its most influential members England and some of the Mid-Atlantic states. However, were two Kentuckians, Francis Preston Blair, who Andrew Jackson swept the rest of the nation and won edited the Washington Globe, and Amos Kendall, who a resounding victory in the electoral college. Over 1.1 million American men cast ballots in 1828, more than wrote Jackson’s speeches; Roger B. Taney of Maryland, three times the number who voted in 1824. who became attorney general, treasury secretary, and  CHAPTER 10 A Democratic Revolution, 1800–1844 323 Jackson’s highest priority was to destroy the American System. He believed that Henry Clay’s system — and all government-sponsored plans for national economic development — were contrary to the Constitution, encouraged “consolidated govern- ment,” and, through higher tariffs, increased the bur- den of taxation. As Clay noted apprehensively, the new president IDENTIFY CAUSES wanted “to cry down old [expan- Jackson cut the national sive, Hamiltonian] constructions budget and the national of the Constitution... to make debt but increased the all Jefferson’s opinions the articles number of federal employ- of faith of the new Church.” ees. How do you explain Declaring that the “voice of the this paradox? people” called for “economy in the expenditures of the Government,” Jackson rejected national subsidies for transportation projects. Invoking constitutional arguments, he vetoed four internal improvement bills in 1830, including an extension of the National Road, arguing that they infringed on “the reserved powers of states.” By eliminating potential expenditures by the federal government, these vetoes also undermined the case for protective tariffs. As Jacksonian senator William Smith of South Carolina pointed out, “[D]estroy internal improvements and President Andrew Jackson, 1830 you leave no motive for the tariff.” The new president came to Washington with a well- deserved reputation as an aggressive Indian fighter and unpredictable military leader. In this official portrait, The Tariff and Nullification Jackson looks “presidential” — his dress and posture, and the artist’s composition, conveyed an image of a calm, The Tariff of 1828 had helped Jackson win the presi- deliberate statesman. Subsequent events would show dency, but it saddled him with a major political crisis. that Jackson had not lost his hard-edged authoritarian There was fierce opposition to high tariffs through- personality. Library of Congress. out the South and especially in South Carolina. That state was the only one with an African American majority — 56 percent of the population in 1830 — and then chief justice of the Supreme Court; and Martin its slave owners, like the white sugar planters in the Van Buren, whom Jackson named secretary of state. West Indies, feared a black rebellion. Even more, they Following Van Buren’s example in New York, worried about the legal abolition of slavery. The British Jackson used patronage to create a disciplined national Parliament had declared that slavery in its West Indian party. He rejected the idea of “property in office” (that colonies would end in 1833; South Carolina planters, a qualified official held a position permanently) and vividly recalling northern efforts to end slavery in insisted on a rotation of officeholders when a new Missouri (Chapter 8), worried that the U.S. Congress administration took power. Rotation would not lessen would follow the British lead. So they attacked the tar- expertise, Jackson insisted, because public duties were iff, both to lower rates and to discourage the use of “so plain and simple that men of intelligence may federal power to attack slavery. readily qualify themselves for their performance.” The crisis began in 1832, when high-tariff con- William L. Marcy, a New York Jacksonian, offered a gressmen ignored southern warnings that they were more realistic explanation for rotation: government “endangering the Union” and reenacted the Tariff of jobs were like the spoils of war, and “to the victor Abominations. In response, leading South Carolinians belong the spoils of the enemy.” Jackson used those called a state convention, which in November boldly spoils to reward his allies and win backing for his adopted an Ordinance of Nullification declaring the tar- policies. iffs of 1828 and 1832 to be null and void. The ordinance  324 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860 Who Will Be Jackson’s Heir? Elected vice president in 1828, John C. Calhoun hoped to succeed Jackson in the White House. He failed to account for the ambition of Martin Van Buren, who managed Jackson’s campaign and claimed the prized office of secretary of state. When Van Buren resigned as secretary in 1831 and Jackson nominated him as minister to Britain, Calhoun sought to destroy his rival by blocking his confirmation in the Senate. The “Little Magician” pounced on this miscalculation, persuading Jackson, already disillusioned by Calhoun’s support for nullification, to oust him from the ticket. Van Buren took his place as vice president in 1832, carried into the office — as the cartoonist tells the tale — on Jackson’s back, and succeeded to the presidency in 1836. © Collection of the New-York Historical Society. prohibited the collection of those resolutions asserted that, because state-based conven- UNDERSTAND duties in South Carolina after tions had ratified the Constitution, sovereignty lay POINTS OF VIEW February 1, 1833, and threatened in the states, not in the people. Beginning from this How did South Carolina justify nullification on secession if federal officials tried premise, Calhoun argued that a state convention could constitutional grounds? to collect them. declare a congressional law to be void within the state’s South Carolina’s act of nullifi- borders. Replying to this states’ rights interpretation of cation — the argument that a state has the right to void, the Constitution, which had little support in the text of within its borders, a law passed by Congress — rested the document, Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts on the constitutional arguments developed in The presented a nationalist interpretation that celebrated South Carolina Exposition and Protest (1828). Written popular sovereignty and Congress’s responsibility to anonymously by Vice President John C. Calhoun, the secure the “general welfare.” Exposition gave a localist (or sectional) interpretation Jackson hoped to find a middle path between to the federal union. Because each state or geographic Webster’s strident nationalism and Calhoun’s radical region had distinct interests, localists argued, protec- doctrine of localist federalism. The Constitution clearly tive tariffs and other national legislation that operated gave the federal government the authority to establish unequally on the various states lacked fairness and tariffs, and Jackson vowed to enforce it. He declared legitimacy — in fact, they were unconstitutional. An that South Carolina’s Ordinance of Nullification vio- obsessive defender of the interests of southern slave lated the letter of the Constitution and was “destructive owners, Calhoun exaggerated the frequency and sever- of the great object for which it was formed.” More ity of such legislation, declaring, “Constitutional gov- pointedly, he warned, “Disunion by armed force is ernment and the government of a majority are utterly treason.” At Jackson’s request, Congress in early 1833 incompatible.” passed a military Force Bill, authorizing the president Calhoun’s constitutional doctrines reflected the to compel South Carolina’s obedience to national laws. arguments advanced by Jefferson and Madison in Simultaneously, Jackson addressed the South’s objec- the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798. Those tions to high import duties with a new tariff act that,  CHAPTER 10 A Democratic Revolution, 1800–1844 325 The Great Webster-Hayne Debate, 1830 The “Tariff of Abominations” sparked one of the great debates in American history. When Senator Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina (seated in the middle of the picture, with his legs crossed) opposed the federal tariffs by invoking the doctrines of states’ rights and nullification, Daniel Webster rose to the defense of the Union. Speaking for two days to a spellbound Senate, Webster delivered an impassioned oration that cele- brated the unity of the American people as the key to their freedom. His parting words — “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!” — quickly became part of the national memory. “Webster’s Reply to Haynes,” by G.P.A. Healy, City of Boston Art Commission. over the course of a decade, reduced rates to the mod- 1816 (Chapter 7), the bank was privately managed and est levels of 1816. Subsequently, export-hungry mid- operated under a twenty-year charter from the federal western wheat farmers joined southern planters in government, which owned 20 percent of its stock. The advocating low duties to avoid retaliatory tariffs by for- bank’s most important role was to stabilize the nation’s eign nations. “Illinois wants a market for her agricul- money supply, which consisted primarily of notes and tural products,” declared Senator Sidney Breese in bills of credit — in effect, paper money — issued by 1846. “[S]he wants the market of the world.” state-chartered banks. Those banks promised to Having won the political battle by securing a tariff redeem the notes on demand with “hard” money (or reduction, the South Carolina convention did not press “specie”) — that is, gold or silver coins minted by the its constitutional stance on nullification. Jackson was U.S. or foreign governments — but there were few coins satisfied. He had assisted the South economically while in circulation. By collecting those notes and regularly upholding the constitutional principle of national demanding specie, the Second Bank kept the state authority — a principle that Abraham Lincoln would banks from issuing too much paper money and depre- embrace to defend the Union during the secession cri- ciating its value. sis of 1861. This cautious monetary policy pleased creditors — the bankers and entrepreneurs in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, whose capital investments were under- The Bank War writing economic development. However, expansion- In the midst of the tariff crisis, Jackson faced a major minded bankers, including friends of Jackson’s in challenge from politicians who supported the Second Nashville, demanded an end to central oversight. Bank of the United States. Founded in Philadelphia in Moreover, many ordinary Americans worried that the 326 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860 Second Bank would force weak banks to close, leaving the Treasury Department. Taney promptly transferred them holding worthless paper notes. Many politicians the federal government’s gold and silver from the resented the arrogance of the bank’s president, Nicholas Second Bank to various state banks, which critics Biddle. “As to mere power,” Biddle boasted, “I have labeled Jackson’s “pet banks.” To justify this abrupt been for years in the daily exercise of more personal (and probably illegal) transfer, Jackson declared that authority than any President habitually enjoys.” his reelection represented “the decision of the people against the bank” and gave him a mandate to destroy it. Jackson’s Bank Veto Although the Second Bank This sweeping claim of presidential power was new and had many enemies, a political miscalculation by its radical. Never before had a president claimed that vic- friends brought its downfall. In 1832, Henry Clay and tory at the polls allowed him to pursue a controversial Daniel Webster persuaded Biddle to seek an early policy or to act independently of Congress (American extension of the bank’s charter (which still had four Voices, p. 328). years to run). They had the votes in Congress to enact The “bank war” escalated into an all-out political the required legislation and hoped to lure Jackson into battle. In March 1834, Jackson’s opponents in the a veto that would split the Democrats just before the Senate passed a resolution composed by Henry Clay 1832 elections. that censured the president and warned of executive Jackson turned the tables on Clay and Webster. He tyranny: “We are in the midst of a revolution, hitherto vetoed the rechartering bill with a masterful message bloodless, but rapidly descending towards a total change that blended constitutional arguments with class rhet- of the pure republican character of the Government, oric and patriotic fervor. Adopting the position taken and the concentration of all power in the hands of one by Thomas Jefferson in 1793, Jackson declared that man.” Clay’s charges and Congress’s censure did not Congress had no constitutional authority to charter a deter Jackson. “The Bank is trying to kill me but I will national bank. He condemned the bank as “subversive kill it,” he vowed to Van Buren. And so he did. When of the rights of the States,” “dangerous to the liberties of the Second Bank’s national charter expired in 1836, the people,” and a privileged monopoly that promoted Jackson prevented its renewal. “the advancement of the few at the expense of... farm- Jackson had destroyed both national banking — the ers, mechanics, and laborers.” Finally, the president handiwork of Alexander Hamilton — and the American noted that British aristocrats owned much of the bank’s System of protective tariffs and public works created by stock. Such a powerful institution should be “purely Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams. The result was a American,” Jackson declared with patriotic zeal. profound check on economic activism and innovative Jackson’s attack on the bank carried him to victory policymaking by the national government. “All is in 1832. Old Hickory and Martin Van Buren, his gone,” observed a Washington newspaper correspon- new running mate, overwhelmed Henry Clay, who dent. “All is gone, which the General Government was headed the National Republican ticket, by 219 to instituted to create and preserve.” 49 electoral votes. Jackson’s most fervent supporters were eastern workers and western farmers, who blamed the Second Bank for high urban prices and stagnant Indian Removal farm income. “All the flourishing cities of the West are The status of Native American peoples posed an equally mortgaged to this money power,” charged Senator complex political problem. By the late 1820s, white Thomas Hart Benton, a Jacksonian from Missouri. voices throughout the South and Midwest demanded Still, many of Jackson’s supporters had prospered dur- the resettlement of Indian peoples west of the Mis- ing a decade of strong economic growth. Thousands of sissippi River. Many whites who were sympathetic to middle-class Americans — lawyers, clerks, shopkeep- Native Americans also favored resettlement. Removal ers, and artisans — had used the opportunity to rise in to the West seemed the only way to protect Indians the world and cheered Jackson’s attack on privileged from alcoholism, financial exploitation, and cultural corporations. decline. However, most Indians did not want to leave their PLACE EVENTS The Bank Destroyed Early ancestral lands. For centuries, Cherokees and Creeks IN CONTEXT in 1833, Jackson met their had lived in Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama; Chick- Why — and how — did wishes by appointing Roger B. asaws and Choctaws in Mississippi and Alabama; and Jackson destroy the Taney, a strong opponent of Seminoles in Florida. During the War of 1812, Andrew Second National Bank? corporate privilege, as head of Jackson had forced the Creeks to relinquish millions of  CHAPTER 10 A Democratic Revolution, 1800–1844 327 acres, but Indian tribes still controlled vast tracts and Congress over the determined opposition of evangeli- wanted to keep them. cal Protestant men — and women. To block removal, Catharine Beecher and Lydia Sigourney composed a Cherokee Resistance But on what terms? Some Ladies Circular, which urged “benevolent ladies” to use Indians had adopted white ways. An 1825 census “prayers and exertions to avert the calamity of removal.” revealed that various Cherokees owned 33 gristmills, Women from across the nation flooded Congress with 13 sawmills, 2,400 spinning wheels, 760 looms, and petitions. Nonetheless, Jackson’s bill squeaked through 2,900 plows. Many of these owners were mixed-race, the House of Representatives by a vote of 102 to 97. the offspring of white traders and Indian women. They The Removal Act created the Indian Territory on had grown up in a bicultural world, knew the political national lands acquired in the Louisiana Purchase and and economic ways of whites, and often favored assim- located in present-day Oklahoma and Kansas. It prom- ilation into white society. Indeed, some of these mixed- ised money and reserved land to Native American race people were indistinguishable from southern peoples who would give up their ancestral holdings planters. At his death in 1809, Georgia Cherokee James east of the Mississippi River. Government officials Vann owned one hundred black slaves, two trading promised the Indians that they could live on their new posts, and a gristmill. Three decades later, forty other land, “they and all their children, as long as grass grows mixed-blood Cherokee families each owned ten or and water runs.” However, as one Indian leader noted, more African American workers. on the Great Plains “water and timber are scarcely to be Prominent mixed-race Cherokees believed that seen.” When Chief Black Hawk and his Sauk and Fox integration into American life was the best way to pro- tect their property and the lands of their people. In 1821, Sequoyah, a part-Cherokee silversmith, per- fected a system of writing for the Cherokee language; six years later, mixed-race Cherokees devised a new charter of Cherokee government modeled directly on the U.S. Constitution. “You asked us to throw off the hunter and warrior state,” Cherokee John Ridge told a Philadelphia audience in 1832. “We did so. You asked us to form a republican government: We did so.... You asked us to learn to read: We did so. You asked us to cast away our idols, and worship your God: We did so.” Full-blood Cherokees, who made up 90 percent of the population, resisted many of these cultural and politi- cal innovations but were equally determined to retain their ancestral lands. “We would not receive money for land in which our fathers and friends are buried,” one full-blood chief declared. “We love our land; it is our mother.” What the Cherokees did or wanted carried no weight with the Georgia legislature. In 1802, Georgia had given up its western land claims in return for a fed- eral promise to extinguish Indian landholdings in the state. Now it demanded fulfillment of that pledge. Having spent his military career fighting Indians and seizing their lands, Andrew Jackson gave full support Blackhawk to Georgia. On assuming the presidency, he withdrew This portrait of Black Hawk (1767–1838), by George Catlin, shows the Indian leader holding his namesake, a black hawk the federal troops that had protected Indian enclaves and its feathers. When Congress approved Andrew Jackson’s there and in Alabama and Mississippi. The states, he Indian Removal Act in 1830, Black Hawk mobilized Sauk and declared, were sovereign within their borders. Fox warriors to protect their ancestral lands in Illinois. “It was here, that I was born — and here lie the bones of many friends and relatives,” the aging chief declared. “I... never The Removal Act and Its Aftermath Jackson then could consent to leave it.” Courtesy Warner Collection of Gulf pushed the Indian Removal Act of 1830 through States Paper Corporation, Tuscaloosa, AL. AMERICAN VOICES From the start of his career, Andrew Jackson was a controversial figure. “Hot- tempered,” “Indian-hater,” “military despot,” said his critics, while his friends praised him as a forthright statesman. His contemporary biographer, the jour- The Character and nalist James Parton, found him a man of many faces, an enigma. Others thought they understood his personality and policies: James Hamilton, a loyal Jacksonian Goals of Andrew congressman, recalled Jackson’s volatile temper. Henry Clay, his archrival, warned that Jackson’s quest for power threatened American republicanism, while Jackson wealthy New York Whig Philip Hone accused him of inciting class warfare. After talking with dozens of Americans, Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville offered a balanced interpretation of the man and his goals. James Parton Philip Hone Preface to The Life of Andrew Ruminating in His Diary on the Jackson (1860) Jacksonians’ Victory in the New York Elections of 1834 If any one... had asked what I had yet discovered respect- ing General Jackson, I might have answered thus: “Andrew I apprehend that Mr. Van Buren [Jackson’s vice president] Jackson, I am given to understand, was a patriot and a and his friends have no permanent cause of triumph in traitor. He was one of the greatest of generals, and wholly their victory. They... have mounted a vicious horse, ignorant of the art of war.... The first of statesmen, he who, taking the bit in his mouth, will run away with never devised, he never framed a measure. He was the [them].... This battle had been fought upon the ground most candid of men, and was capable of the profoundest of the poor against the rich, and this unworthy prejudice, dissimulation. A most law-defying, law-obeying citizen. this dangerous delusion, has been encouraged by the A stickler for discipline, he never hesitated to disobey his leaders of the triumphant party, and fanned into a flame superior. A democratic autocrat. An urbane savage. An by the polluted breath of the hireling press in their atrocious saint.” employ.... The cry of “Down with the aristocracy!” mingled with the shouts of victory.... They have succeeded in James Hamilton Jr. raising this dangerous spirit [of the mob], and have Recalling an Event in 1827, as Jackson gladly availed themselves of its support to accomplish a Campaigns for the Presidency temporary object; but can they allay it at pleasure?... The steamer Pocahontas was chartered by citizens of New Eighteen thousand men in New York have voted for Orleans to convey the General and his party from Nash- the high-priest of the party whose professed design is ville to that city. She was fitted out in the most sumptuous to bring down the property, the talents, the industry, manner. The party was General and Mrs. Jackson,... the steady habits of that class which constituted the real Governor Samuel Houston, Wm. B. Lewis, Robert strength of the Commonwealth, to the common level of Armstrong, and others.... The only freight was the the idle, the worthless, and the unenlightened. Look to it, General’s cotton-crop.... ye men of respectability in the Jackson party, are ye not In the course of the voyage an event occurred, which afraid of the weapons ye have used in this warfare? I repeat, as it is suggestive of [his] character. A steamer of greater speed than ours, going in the same direction, Henry Clay passed us, crossed our bow; then stopped and let us pass her and then passed us again in triumph. This was repeated Introducing a Senate Resolution Censuring again and again, until the General, being excited by the Jackson, December 26, 1833 offensive course, ordered a rifle to be brought to him; We are in the midst of a revolution, hitherto bloodless, hailed the pilot of the other steamer, and swore that if he but rapidly tending toward a total change of the pure did the same thing again he would shoot him. republican character of the government, and to the 328 concentration of all power in the hands of one man. The been imagined that General Jackson is bent on establish- powers of Congress are paralyzed, except when exerted ing a dictatorship in America, introducing a military in conformity with his will, by frequent and an extraordi- spirit, and giving a degree of influence to the central nary exercise of the executive veto, not anticipated by the authority that cannot but be dangerous to provincial founders of our Constitution, and not practiced by any [state] liberties.... of the predecessors of the present chief magistrate.... Far from wishing to extend the Federal power, the The judiciary has not been exempt from the pre- President belongs to the party which is desirous of vailing rage for innovation. Decisions of the tribunals, limiting that power to the clear and precise letter of deliberately pronounced, have been contemptuously the Constitution and which never puts a construction disregarded.... Our Indian relations, coeval with upon that act favorable to the government of the Union; the existence of the government, and recognized and far from standing forth as the champion of centralization, established by numerous laws and treaties, have been General Jackson is the agent of the state jealousies; and subverted.... The system of protection of improvement he was placed in his lofty station by the passions that are lies crushed beneath the veto. The system of protection of most opposed to the central government. American industry [will soon meet a similar fate].... In a term of eight years, a little more than equal to that which Sources: James Parton, The Life of Andrew Jackson. In Three Volumes (New York: Mason Brothers, 1860), vol. 1, vii–viii; Sean Wilentz, ed., Major Problems in the Early Republic, was required to establish our liberties [as an independent 1787–1848 (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1991), 374 (Hamilton) and 392–393 (Hone); republic between 1776 and 1783], the government will Calvin Colton, ed., The Life... of Henry Clay, 6 vols. (New York: A. Barnes, 1857), 576–580; Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, abr. by Thomas Bender (New have been transformed into an elective monarchy — the York: Modern Library, 1981), 271–273. worst of all forms of government. Alexis de Tocqueville QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS Analysis of Jackson in Democracy 1. Was Jackson a “democratic autocrat,” as Parton puts in America (1835) it? Would the authors of the other excerpts agree? Did Jackson instigate class warfare, as Hone suggests? We have been told that General Jackson has won battles; 2. In your judgment, which writer, Clay or Tocqueville, that he is an energetic man, prone by nature and habit to offers the more accurate assessment of Jackson and his the use of force, covetous of power and a despot by incli- policies? nation. 3. Do you agree with Philip Hone’s view that the Jackso- nian Democrats mobilized “poor against the rich”? What All this may be true; but the inferences which have evidence would support or contradict Hone’s assertion? been drawn from these truths are very erroneous. It has 329  330 PART 4 OVERLAPPING REVOLUTIONS, 1800–1860 followers refused to leave rich, they claimed the status of a “foreign nation.” In COMPARE AND well-watered farmland in western Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), Chief Justice John CONTRAST How did the views of Illinois in 1832, Jackson sent Marshall denied that claim and declared that Indian Jackson and John Marshall troops to expel them by force. peoples were “domestic dependent nations.” However, differ regarding the sta- Eventually, the U.S. Army pur- in Worcester v. Georgia (1832), Marshall and the Court tus and rights of Indian sued Black Hawk into the sided with the Cherokees against Georgia. Voiding peoples? Wisconsin Territory and, in the Georgia’s extension of state law over the Cherokees, the brutal eight-hour Bad Axe Court held that Indian nations were “distinct political Massacre, killed 850 of his 1,000 warriors. Over the communities, having territorial boundaries, within next five years, American diplomatic pressure and mil- which their authority is exclusive [and is] guaranteed itary power forced seventy Indian peoples to sign trea- by the United States.” ties and move west of the Mississippi (Map 10.3). Instead of guaranteeing the Cherokees’ territory, In the meantime, the Cherokees had carried the the U.S. government took it from them. In 1835, defense of their lands to the Supreme Court, where American officials and a minority Cherokee faction L C A NA DA VT. IOWA.H SAUK N.H. ur TERRITORYFt. Snelling i WISCONSIN o L. Michigan nt a r on M MASS. UNORGANIZED iss iss TERRITORY AGO OTTAWA L. O N.Y. ipp FOX CONN. R.I. TERRITORY iR NEB. MIAMI MICH. Mi Ft. 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