The Second American Party System and the Transformation of Revolutionary Republicanism PDF

The Second American Party System and the Transformation of Revolutionary Republicanism Author(s): Marc W. Kruman Source: Journal of the Early Republic , Winter, 1992, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Winter, 1992), pp. 509-537 Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of...

The Second American Party System and the Transformation of Revolutionary Republicanism Author(s): Marc W. Kruman Source: Journal of the Early Republic , Winter, 1992, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Winter, 1992), pp. 509-537 Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3123876 REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3123876?seq=1&cid=pdf- reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms and University of Pennsylvania Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the Early Republic This content downloaded from 192.231.40.19 on Tue, 12 Nov 2024 03:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  THE SECOND AMERICAN PARTY SYSTEM AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF REVOLUTIONARY REPUBLICANISM Marc W. Kruman As George Washington prepared to retire from the presidency, he warned his countrymen against "the baneful effects of the spirit of party." "All combinations and associations," he explained, "with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities... serve to organize faction; to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community."1 Washington's assault on factions as parasitic, divisive, and destructive entities pursuing the selfish interests of the few rather than the commonweal reflected the ubiquitous republican ideology of the revolutionary era. Yet in little more than a generation, political leaders formed the kinds of parties Washington despised. They also transformed republicanism from an ideology antagonistic to parties into one that embraced and even relied upon them. Republican ideology prescribed that citizens pursue self-interest with one eye trained upon the good of the community. Drawing upon classical republicanism and English Real Whig modifications of it, Marc W. Kruman is a member of the department of history at Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan. He wishes to thank the following for their helpful comments: Joyce Appleby, Jeffrey J. Crow, Daniel Walker Howe, Christopher H. Johnson, Richard L. McCormick, John Murrin, and Harry Watson. He extends special thanks to Sandra F. VanBurkleo for her incisive criticism of numerous earlier drafts of this essay. ' George Washington, "Farewell Address," in Messages and Papers of the Presidents, ed. James D. Richardson (20 vols., Washington, D.C., 1897-1917), I, 209- 210. JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC, 12 (Winter 1992) ? 1992 Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. This content downloaded from 192.231.40.19 on Tue, 12 Nov 2024 03:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 510 JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC revolutionaries insisted that the interests of the community ought to be homogeneous. They believed that the success of the republican experiment required self-sacrifice by an economically independent, virtuous citizenry engaged continually in discussions of the fundamentals of government. Discourse, in turn, ensured the perpetual regeneration of the body politic. Revolutionary republicans asserted further that the republic's survival depended upon severe limitations on the power of their rulers.2 At its heart, therefore, revolutionary republicanism was profoundly hostile to modern partisan politics in the republicans' emphasis on consensus and the common good, in their assumption that conflict marked the republic's decline, and in their deep-seated fear of parties as the seedbeds both of demagoguery and of consolidationism. But in the 1820s and 1830s, party politicians began inadvertently to turn revolutionary republicanism on its head. During those decades politicians formed political parties, but they did so not because they rejected the ideology of republicanism. Rather they hoped that their parties would halt the republic's decline, root out corruption, restore civic virtue, and provide a means for obtaining republican consensus. Indeed, politicians viewed their own parties as the embodiments of the common good and elections as a mechanical 2 Gordon S. Wood, Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill 1969), esp. 46-75. Wood's mentor, Bernard Bailyn, who introduced American historians to republican ideology in his The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass. 1967), did not even include the words civic virtue or virtue in the index to his book. He stressed the persistence in the American colonies of the Real Whig emphasis on the interrelationship of power, corruption, and liberty. For a somewhat different view of virtue during the revolutionary era, see Robert H. Wiebe, The Opening of American Society. From the Adoption of the Constitution to the Eve of Disunion (New York 1984), 13. For excellent introductions to the many studies of republican ideology, see Robert E. Shalhope, "Toward a Republican Synthesis: The Emergence of an Understanding of Republicanism in American Historiography," William and Mary Quarterly, 29 (Jan. 1972), 49-80; Shalhope, "Republicanism and Early American Historiography," ibid., 39 (Apr. 1982), 334-356; Linda K. Kerber, "The Republican Ideology of the Revolutionary Generation," American Quarterly, 37 (Fall 1985), 474-495; and Lance Banning, "Jeffersonian Ideology Revisited: Liberal and Classical Ideas in the New American Republic," William and Mary Quarterly, 43 (Jan. 1986), 3-19. The last decade's flood of studies of republicanism-especially those relating to nineteenth-century political economy, artisan republicanism, and party politics-require extended historiographical analysis. The present synthetic essay, which explores the interplay of party politics and republican ideology, makes no attempt to meet that pressing need. This content downloaded from 192.231.40.19 on Tue, 12 Nov 2024 03:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE SECOND AMERICAN PARTY SYSTEM 511 means of approximating consensus in a heterogeneous society the consequences of the new party system deviated markedly fro originators' expectations. Republicanism became the idiom of a system that accepted (and sometimes glorified) conflict and conte in political life. By recasting republicanism into an ideology nourished partisanship, the politicians of the second American system invented modern American politics. They did so by espous a republican ideology that avowed libertarianism but refashi (and ultimately vitiated) concerns about civic virtue and independent citizenry. The transformation of republican ideology by party politic may be traced by examining the revolutionary generati understanding of republicanism, tracking its persistence int 1830s, and then explaining how the political parties of the s American party system revised it. Of primary importance wa evolution of three major, interrelated aspects of republica community-minded economic development fostered by govern an independent citizenry, and especially the belief in a common (and its corollary, the assumption that parties subverted the repu Revolutionary republicans took political economy, citizens and faction to be bound inextricably together.3 Republics, asserted, required "a firm adherence to justice, moderat temperance, frugality and virtue" by its citizens and public offici They believed that a man's economic independence (attained th property ownership) earned him membership in the pol community. Only those independent of others for their liveli could be trusted to make political decisions uninfluenced by o Furthermore, such men alone had sufficient stake in society's 3 In the following discussion, I have focused most of my attention on the who would enter the Republican party because of that party's domination national government after 1800 and because it deeply influenced the later v the Democratic and Whig parties. Although historians have often identifie Whigs as the heirs of the Federalist party, I am persuaded by Daniel Walker H contention that Whig ideology was an inheritance of Madisonian Republicanism Federalism. Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (C 1979). More generally, on the discontinuities from the first to the second system, see Richard P. McCormick, The Second American Party System: Party For in theJacksonian Era (Chapel Hill 1966), esp. 19-31. 4 Virginia Constitution, 1776, Declaration of Rights, Section 15, in The Fe and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters, and Other Organic Laws of the States, Terri and Colonies Now or Heretofore Forming the United States of America, comp. Francis Thorpe (7 vols., Washington 1909), VII, 3814. This content downloaded from 192.231.40.19 on Tue, 12 Nov 2024 03:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 512 JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC being. They acted in the the public public interest interest because because self-interest self-interest dictated dictated that they do so and because because their their economic economic independence independence enabled enabled them to transcend self-interest.5 self-interest.5 Conversely, Conversely, the the dependence dependence of of the the landless tenant and the employee employee upon upon aa landlord landlord oror employer employer made made them susceptible to corruption corruption and and factious factious interests. interests. Inevitably, Inevitably, they they would become the political political tools tools of of others. others. Revolutionaries Revolutionaries found found great wealth potentially potentially more more dangerous, dangerous, for for the the wealthy wealthy could could act act as as catalysts of corruption and and themselves themselves become become inured inured toto luxury luxury and and idleness, the scourge of republics. republics. AA republican republican polity, polity, therefore, therefore, needed a community-minded community-minded economy economy that that would would encourage encourage economic independence and and aa relatively relatively equal equal citizenry.6 citizenry.6 Revolutionaries thus hoped to promote widespread land ownership as the foundation of republican citizenship. Such desires led Jefferson, in 1776, to urge that Virginia distribute fifty acres of land to every landless citizen. No state followed Jefferson's lead. Instead, the states eliminated primogeniture and entail and, as Pauline Maier writes, "sang the praises of partible inheritances." Later, Jefferson and the Republican party that he led fostered landed expansion so that the United States would remain a republic of independent freeholders.7 But a citizenry that was temperate, industrious, and frugal was also likely (given the new republic's abundant natural resources) to flourish and obtain wealth. The revolutionary generation welcomed economic development and prosperity; some, beginning in the 1780s, even praised luxury. But others worried about whether economic development would undermine America's vaunted "mediocrity of 5 See John Adams to James Sullivan, May 26, 1776, in Papers of John Adams, ed. Robert J. Taylor et al. (8 vols., Cambridge, Mass. 1977-1989), IV, 208-212. See J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton 1975), 203-204, 385-390; Lance Banning, The Jeffersonian Persuasion. Evolution of a Party Ideology (Ithaca 1978), 51; Rowland Berthoff, "Independence and Attachment, Virtue and Interest: From Republican Citizen to Free Enterpriser, 1787-1837," in Richard L. Bushman et al., Uprooted Americans: Essays to Honor Oscar Handlin (Boston 1979); and Wiebe, Opening of American Society, 37. 6 Drew R. McCoy, The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America (Chapel Hill 1980), 131. 7 Maier, "The Transforming Impact of Independence Reaffirmed: 1776 and the Definition of American Social Structure," in James A. Henretta, Michael Kammen, and Stanley N. Katz, eds., The Transformation of Early American History: Society, Authority, and Ideology (New York 1991), 203; McCoy, Elusive Republic, 185- 208. This content downloaded from 192.231.40.19 on Tue, 12 Nov 2024 03:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE SECOND AMERICAN PARTY SYSTEM 513 circumstances. 8 Whether optimistic or pessimistic about the economic future, revolutionaries believed that republican government made state assemblies, in Gordon Wood's words, "the sovereign embodiments of the people with a responsibility to promote a unitary public interest that was to be clearly distinguishable from the many private interests." Political leaders of the revolution and early republic believed in a republican political economy, in which governments would "guide or restrain private and local interests." Both Federalists and Republicans, when each was in power, vigorously endorsed a national program of internal improvements directed by the central government "for the sake of liberty and union."9 Jefferson and Madison's policy of commercial discrimination and the embargo of 1807-1809 also reflected this understanding of 8 Maier, "The Transforming Impact of Independence Reaffirmed," 199-205, esp. 202; Cathy D. Matson and Peter S. Onuf, "Toward a Republican Empire: Interest and Ideology in Revolutionary America," American Quarterly, 37 (Fall 1985), 496-531; Matson and Onuf, A Union of Interests. Political and Ecomonic Thought in Revolutionary America (Lawrence, Kan. 1990), 92-93. 9 Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York 1992), 187; John Lauritz Larson, '"Bind the Republic Together': The National Union and the Struggle for a System of Internal Improvements," Journal of American History, 74 (Sept. 1987), 363-387 (quotations at 365 and 366). Larson, however, points to the triumph of liberal and democratic thinking with congressional passage of the Bonus Bill of 1817, which was to provide federal government funds to the states for internal improvements but which required no federal guidance or oversight. But the failure of Congress to override the Bonus Bill veto or to pass similar legislation again for some time suggests the emergence (but not the triumph) of a belief in the legitimacy of interest-based politics. Gordon Wood, Peter Onuf, and Cathy Matson have identified a growing acceptance of the idea of interest in the 1780s. Individuals, states, and regions had interests that were sometimes harmonious and sometimes in conflict with other individuals, states, and regions. (Wood, Radicalism of the American Revolution, 243-271; Onuf and Matson, A Union of Interests.) But where Onuf and Matson argue that the framers of the United States Constitution identified "an expanding union of interlocking interests" (149), Wood persuasively responds that the framers "still clung to the republican ideal of an autonomous public authority that was different from the many private interests of the society. They did not expect this public authority of the new federal government to be neutralized into inactivity by the competition of these numerous diverse interests. Nor did they see public policy or the common interest of the national government emerging naturally from the give- and-take of these clashing private interests.... Far, then, from the new national government being a mere integrator and harmonizer of the different special interests in the society, it would be a 'disinterested and dispassionate umpire in disputes between different passions and interests in the State."' Wood, Radicalism of the American Revolution, 253. This content downloaded from 192.231.40.19 on Tue, 12 Nov 2024 03:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 514 JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC government's government's responsibilities. responsibilities. So did So Jefferson's did Jefferson's acquisitionacquisition of of Louisiana. The Jeffersonians hoped to attain and remain indefinitely at a middle stage of development by "expand[ing] across space rather than develop[ing] through time." Landed expansion would permit male householders to become landowners-a necessity for those who believed that a "society of relatively equal, independent landowners was the necessary antidote to corruption." Land ownership gave men the independence "to pursue spontaneously the common or public good," and stimulated the frugality and industry necessary for ongoing political regeneration. The acquisition of Louisiana, Republicans hoped, would enable future generations of Americans to become independent farmers.'1 Jeffersonians continued to fret about what they considered antirepublican, artificially created wealth. They were troubled about credit, speculation, finance, and a large public debt. Republicans worried too about commerce in manufactures, trade severed from agriculture, and urged instead small-scale, rural-based, and family- operated manufacturing. And they generally opposed government aid for manufacturing enterprises." Conflict with England and France during Jefferson's second administration and the War of 1812 proved to many Jeffersonians that they could not always count upon foreign commerce to absorb America's bountiful agricultural production. Increasingly, they advocated the development of a domestic market and its natural concomitant, manufacturing, all the while seeking to reconcile economic development with their republican ideology.1 10 McCoy, Elusive Republic, 62, 67, 68, 79-84. See also Matson and Onuf, "Toward a Republican Empire," 496-531; and Matson and Onuf, A Union of Interests, 92-93. Matson and Onuf contend that the nationalists of the 1780s envisioned development through time and space. "Looking west... Americans could conceive of forward progress in time as well as space" (97). Yet the evidence adduced on this point shows a commitment to commercial agriculture and to small scale, family-operated manufacturing in rural areas, similar to the views of Jefferson and Madison, as portrayed by McCoy. Onuf and Matson, A Union of Interests, 157- 161, esp. 159. I McCoy, Elusive Republic, 105-119, 136-184. 2 Ibid., 239-248. Congruent with changing attitudes toward manufactures after the War of 1812, the American conception of an independent citizenry gradually lost its moorings in real property ownership and came to encompass all free producers of wealth, even factory workers, as republican citizens. Berthoff, "Independence and Attachment," 118. Also see Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City & the Rise This content downloaded from 192.231.40.19 on Tue, 12 Nov 2024 03:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE SECOND AMERICAN PARTY SYSTEM 515 Yet Yetthe thetensions tensions that existed that existed between republicanism between republicanism and economic and econom modernization persisted, and many Americans approached the "market revolution" armed with republican ideas about commonwealth and independent citizenship. Kentuckians, during the relief crisis spawned by the Panic of 1819, tried to reconcile the advances of the marketplace with revolutionary republican idealism.13 So did the artisans of antebellum cities and the farmers of rural Cumberland County, North Carolina, in the 1830s, hill country Alabama in the 1850s, and upcountry Georgia in the 1870s.'4 Indeed, from the 1820s onward, Americans struggled to harmonize economic development with republican belief.15 In antebellum upcountry South of the American Working Class, 1788-1850 (New York 1984), ch. 3. For an excellent discussion of Madison's changing thinking about political economy, see Drew R. McCoy, The Last of the Fathers: James Madison and the Republican Legacy (Cambridge, Mass. 1989), 171-207, esp. 171-192. 13 Sandra Frances VanBurkleo, "'That Our Pure Republican Principles Might Not Wither': Kentucky's Relief Crisis and the Pursuit of 'Moral Justice,' 1818- 1826," (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota 1988). 14 Wilentz, Chants Democratic; Charles G. Steffen, The Mechanics of Baltimore: Workers and Politics in the Age of Revolution, 1763-1812 (Urbana, Ill., 1984); Harry L. Watson, Jacksonian Politics and Community Conflict: The Emergence of the Second American Party System in Cumberland County, North Carolina (Baton Rouge 1981); J. Mills Thornton III, Politics and Power in a Slave Society: Alabama, 1800-1860 (Baton Rouge 1978); Steven Hahn, The Roots of Southern Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry, 1850-1880 (New York 1983). 15 This view of the continuities and changes in the revolutionary republican tradition, of the "republican" attempt to bridge what McCoy calls the "gap between antiquity and modernity," has been challenged by several historians. Among them, Joyce Appleby is the most influential. Appleby argues that the fundamentally incompatible ideologies of liberalism and republicanism coexisted uneasily in the United States in the decades before 1790. Then, inspired by the commercial revolution of agriculture in the 1790s, the Jeffersonians liberated themselves from centuries of western political thought and fully embraced Lockean liberalism. Appleby asserts that in the 1790s liberal thinking triumphed throughout the country, but her evidence points to its victory only in the already commercialized Middle Atlantic states and especially New York City and Philadelphia. And even there, the works of Sean Wilentz, Howard Rock, and Charles Steffen indicate that urban artisans, who composed an important part of the urban Jeffersonian party, believed in an artisan or mechanic republicanism and, well into the nineteenth century, often resisted the emergence of the market economy. Liberalism's triumph even in the urban northeast was at best incomplete. Second, Appleby largely ignores the region where the Republicans were strongest, the South. Thus, even if Appleby is partially correct about ideological change in Middle Atlantic cities, she still has not proven the triumph of liberalism and the collapse of republicanism in the countryside or among the urban working classes. See Joyce Appleby, Capitalism and a New Social This content downloaded from 192.231.40.19 on Tue, 12 Nov 2024 03:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 516 JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC Carolina, Carolina, for for instance, instance, white whitefarmers farmersclung clungtotothe therepublican republicanbelief belief that personal personal independence, independence,rooted rootedininthe theownership ownershipofofproductive productive property, property, was was the the only only true truebasis basisfor forrepublican republicancitizenship. citizenship. They They lived as as they they believed: believed: most mostagriculturalists agriculturalistswere wereself-sufficient self-sufficientinin grains grains and and in in meat. meat. Only Onlyafter afterthey theyhad hadsecured securedeconomic economic independence independence and and their their families' families'basic basicneeds needsdid didthey theygrow growcotton cotton for for the market.16 Just as many Americans attempted to reconcile economic modernization with revolutionary republicanism, so too did they legitimize political democratization with republican language. Republicanism had long been associated with an opposition loyally guarding liberty against a potentially tyrannical government. Indeed, from the beginning of the revolution, demands for the reduction or elimination of property qualifications were expressed in the language Order. The Republican Vision of the 1790s (New York 1984). For her critique of the "republican school," see especially Joyce Appleby, "What Is Still American in the Political Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson?" William and Mary Quarterly, 39 (Apr. 1982), 287-304; Appleby "The Social Origins of American Revolutionary Ideology," Journal of American History, 64 (Mar. 1978), 935-958; and Appleby "Commercial Farming and the 'Agrarian Myth' in the Early Republic," ibid., 68 (Mar. 1982), 833-849, all reprinted in a valuable collection of her essays: Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination (Cambridge 1992). On artisan republicanism, see Wilentz, Chants Democratic; Howard B. Rock, Artisans of the New Republic. The Tradesmen of New York City in the Age of Jefferson (New York 1979); and Steffen, The Mechanics of Baltimore. On skilled craftsmen's eligibility to vote in New York City in the 1790s, see Alfred F. Young, The Democratic Republicans of New York. The Origins, 1763-1797 (Chapel Hill 1967), 85; on their significance in the Jeffersonian coalition, see Rock, Artisans of the New Republic, 31-32. William J. Cooper, Jr., Liberty and Slavery: Southern Politics to 1860 (New York 1983), 70-113, makes clear the dominant role of the South in the Jeffersonian Republican party. Steven Watts marks the eclipse of republicanism during the War of 1812. The war itself, he argues, purged Americans of their republicanism and established liberalism as the country's dominant ideology. But Watts's conclusions that postwar Americans embraced a liberal, pluralist multiparty system and the liberal ideal of self-control ignore the continuing predominance of antiparty sentiment and the uncanny resemblance that postwar self-control bore to prewar republican civic virtue. Steven Watts, The Republic Reborn: War and the Making of Liberal America, 1790-1820 (Baltimore 1987). On liberal self-control as republican civic virtue, see ibid., 291-292, 296-297. Also, see Ronald T. Takaki, Iron Cages. Race and Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (New York 1979), 3-11. On antiparty sentiment, see below, n. 36. 16 Lacy K. Ford, Jr., Origins of Southern Radicalism: The South Carolina Upcountry, 1800-1860 (New York 1988). This content downloaded from 192.231.40.19 on Tue, 12 Nov 2024 03:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE SECOND AMERICAN PARTY SYSTEM 517 of ofthe theEnglish English Real Whigs.17 Real Whigs.17 And, as MajorAnd, Wilsonaspoints Majorout,Wilson poin advocates advocates of suffrage of suffrage expansionexpansion in the 1830s embraced in the 1830s Real Whig embraced Rea republicanism but gave it a significant egalitarian twist. They believed that political "equality gave each citizen a defensive power, when joined with others, for foiling the designs of the self-serving few."18 The tenacity of revolutionary-era conceptions of the political community was evident too in the persistence of property-holding and taxpaying requirements and the disfranchisement of paupers. Virginia maintained property qualifications until 1851, Louisiana and Connecticut until 1845, North Carolina until 1857, and Rhode Island until after the Civil War. Moreover, when many states altered suffrage qualifications, they either only reduced property qualifications or substituted a taxpaying requirement. Connecticut lowered its property-owning requirement in 1818 but did not erase it until 1845. In 1820, Massachusetts eliminated its property requirement, but substituted a taxpayer qualification and pauper disfranchisement. Overall, a dozen states retained a taxpayer qualification for some or all of the antebellum period; between 1792 and 1844, eight states disfranchised paupers; several linked the suffrage to militia service; and all retained substantial residency requirements.19 Nevertheless, the eventual elimination of property requirements during the antebellum decades reflected changing benchmarks of capacity for republican citizenship. Political incompetence remained, as it long had been, linked to gender and became increasingly identified with African-Americans too. Most men continued to think of women as politically incapable and thus persisted in connecting civic virtue with masculinity (or what many called "manly independence"). White Americans who absorbed the racist ideology then emerging in Europe and the United States also linked civic 17 For example, see "An Elector," "To the Free and Independent Electors of the City of Philadelphia," Dunlap's Pennsylvania Packet, or, the General Advertiser (Philadelphia), Apr. 29, 1776. 18 Major Wilson, "Republicanism and the Idea of Party in the Jacksonian Period," Journal of the Early Republic, 8 (Winter 1988), 429. 19 Most of this sentence is based upon a survey of all of the state constitutions written between 1776 and 1860. For a discussion of pauper disfranchisement, see Robert J. Steinfeld, "Property and Suffrage in the Early Republic," Stanford Law Review, 41 (Jan. 1989), 335-376. This content downloaded from 192.231.40.19 on Tue, 12 Nov 2024 03:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 518 JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC virtue to race.20 race.20 Thus Thus John John Z. Z. Ross, Ross, aa delegate delegate to to the the New New York York Constitutional Convention of 1821, advocated a restricted franchise for blacks on the ground that such "a peculiar people [were] incapable...of exercising that privilege with any sort of discretion, prudence, or independence.' 21 Conversely, political leaders became more receptive to the notion that white men, by their nature, were rational, discrete, prudent, and independent.22 Responding to these changes in thinking, between 1790 and 1840 virtually every state from North Carolina northward to Connecticut disfranchised free blacks, while by 1860 they enfranchised almost all white adult male citizens.23 20 The quotation is from Earl J. Hess, Liberty, Virtue, and Progress: Northerners and Their War for Union (New York 1988), 6. The disfranchisement of women in New Jersey in 1807 suggests a hardening of these attitudes. The process of disfranchisement may be followed in Richard P. McCormick, The History of Voting in New Jersey. A Study of the Development of Election Machinery, 1664-1911 (New Brunswick, N.J. 1953), 98-100; and Judith Apter Klinghoffer and Lois Elkis, "'The Petticoat Electors': Women's Suffrage in New Jersey, 1776-1807," Journal of the Early Republic, 12 (Summer 1992), 159-193. On women's relationship to the polity in the revolutionary era, see Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill 1980). Also, see Kerber, "The Republican Ideology of the Revolutionary Generation," 483-485. For the Jacksonian era and after, see Paula Baker, "The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780-1920," American Historical Review, 89 (une 1984), 620-648; and Norma Basch, "Equity vs. Equality: Emerging Concepts of Women's Political Status in the Age of Jackson," Journal of the Early Republic, 3 (Fall 1983), 297-318. It was not a coincidence that New Jersey's political leaders disfranchised taxpaying women and free blacks at the same time. See McCormick, History of Voting in New Jersey, 100. 21 Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Democracy, Liberty, and Property: The State Constitutional Conventions of the 1820s (Indianapolis, Ind. 1966), 215. Cf. Rowland Berthoff, "Conventional Mentality: Free Blacks, Women, and Business Corporations as Unequal Persons, 1820-1870," Journal of American History, 76 (Dec. 1989), 753-784. 22 For a perceptive and somewhat different reading of the suffrage issue, see Rush Welter, The Mind of America, 1820-1860 (New York 1975), 179-185. 23 Virginia had disfranchised blacks earlier; Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont never did exclude them. In 1821, New York required that free black men own $250 worth of property to vote. At the same time, the state lowered the qualification for white men and eliminated it in 1826. The new states of the Northwest and Southwest never did enfranchise blacks. On disfranchisement, see the brief discussions in Leon Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790- 1861 (Chicago 1961), 64-92; Ira Berlin, Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (1974; rep., New York 1976) 187-192; and John Hope Franklin, The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790-1860 (1943; rep., New York 1971), 109-116. In This content downloaded from 192.231.40.19 on Tue, 12 Nov 2024 03:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE SECOND AMERICAN PARTY SYSTEM 519 Like Like revolutionary revolutionary republican republican understandings understandings of citizenship and of citizensh political political economy, economy, antiparty antiparty sentiment remained sentiment a powerful remained a powe component component of American of American political ideology. political But the ideology. strains ofBut the strai revolutionary revolutionary republicanism republicanism evident in the evident 1820s were in absorbed the 1820s and were absor transformed transformed by theby political the parties political of the parties second American of the party second American system. system. Members Membersof the revolutionary of the revolutionary generation feared generation and despised feared and d political political parties parties as engines as engines of corruption of that corruption promoted thethat interests promoted of the int selfish selfish minorities minorities at the expense at the of expense the commonwealth. of the Parties commonwealth. too Par destroyed destroyed good good republicans republicans by turning by themturning into passive them receivers into of passive receiv political political goods.24 goods.24 Even as Even the first asparties the first emergedparties in the 1790s, emerged in the political political leaders leaders still considered still considered parties corrosive. parties Federalists corrosive. and Federalis Republicans Republicans each saw each themselves saw themselves as the champions as the of thechampions common of the c good good andand theirtheir opponents opponents as a dangerasto the a danger republic, to in no thesmall republic, part in no sma because because fewfew political political leaders were leaders prepared were to acknowledge prepared that tothere acknowledge that might might notnot be anbeindivisible an indivisible common good.25 common good.25 In Inthethemidst midst of pervasive of pervasive antiparty sentiment, antiparty during sentiment, the crisis of during the cr republicanism republicanism in the in1820s, the the1820s, second American the secondparty American system began party syste to toemerge. emerge. Republicanism Republicanism encouraged encouraged citizens to view citizens the polity as to view the p perpetually perpetually endangered endangered and in need and of renewal. in need Events of in renewal. the early Events in th years years of of the the republic republic seemed toseemed confirm that to confirm fear. In the that 1790s, both fear. In the 1790s Federalists and Republicans considered their opponent as an illegitimate menace to the new and fragile republican government.26 several midwestern states, adult male aliens were also enfranchised. For the later arguments supporting the enfranchisement of women and the reenfranchisement of black men, see Ellen Carol DuBois, "Outgrowing the Compact of the Fathers: Equal Rights, Woman Suffrage, and the United States Constitution, 1820-1878," Journal of American History, 74 (Dec. 1987), 836-862; and Eric Foner, "Rights and the Constitution in Black Life during the Civil War and Reconstruction," ibid., 863-883. Also see Daniel T. Rodgers, Contested Truths. Keywords in American Politics Since Independence (New York 1987), 80-111. 24 Richard Hofstadter, The Idea of a Party System. The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780-1840 (Berkeley, Cal. 1969); Ralph Ketcham, Presidents Above Party: The First American Presidency, 1789-1829 (Chapel Hill 1984). 25 John R. Howe, "Republican Thought and the Political Violence of the 1790s," American Quarterly, 14 (Summer 1967), 147-165; Ronald P. Formisano, "Deferential-Participant Politics: The Early Republic's Political Culture, 1789- 1840," American Political Science Review, 68 (June 1974), 473-487; Formisano, "Federalists and Republicans: Parties, Yes-System, No," in Paul Kleppner et al., The Evolution of American Electoral Systems (Westport, Conn. 1981), 33-76; Formisano, The Transformation of Political Culture. Massachusetts Parties, 1790s-1840s (New York 1983), 57-148; Ketcham, Presidents Above Party; Hofstadter, Idea of a Party System; Wiebe, Opening of American Society, 83, 87. 26 See Howe, "Republican Thought and the Political Violence of the 1790s." This content downloaded from 192.231.40.19 on Tue, 12 Nov 2024 03:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 520 JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC Similarly, in the first decade of the new century, many many Americans- Americans- distressed about the dramatic economic and social changes changes then then transforming America-perceived the republic as plunging plunging toward toward corruption. They sought republican regeneration through through war, war, aa war war that they got in 1812.27 But because republicans conceived conceived of of political political regeneration as an ongoing process, they did not rest easily easily once once the the war was over. The 1820s seemed a particularly dangerous tim 1819 and subsequent depression convinced many t become inured to luxury and that the republic wa ruin. That fear for the future was reinforced by the Union- threatening crisis over Missouri's admission to statehood. So, as the revolutionary generation passed on the mantle of political leadership (the coincidence of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams's deaths on July 4, 1826, symbolized the transition), its successors worried whether they had virtue enough to preserve and restore the republic.28 Their anxieties found fullest expression in concerns about the scramble to elect a president in 1824.29 Four years earlier, they had applauded James Monroe's virtually uncontested reelection to the presidency. Then they had expected to maintain republican consensus under the aegis of the Republican party. Instead, the triumph of republican consensus foreshadowed the demise of the Republican party-which crumbled into warring factions in the struggle for presidential succession. As three cabinet members (ohn Quincy Adams, John C. Calhoun, and William Crawford) and the speaker of the House (Henry Clay) scrambled for the presidency, it seemed that men were corruptly maneuvering to obtain an office that the people should have bestowed upon a worthy statesman. The growing disenchantment with national politics was embodied in the presidential candidacy of Andrew Jackson, military hero and political outsider. Jackson's campaign biographers portrayed him as a "private citizen, committed to no party, pledged to no system, allied to no intrigue, free of all prejudices, but coming directly from the people...." His military career was no hazard to the republic but 27 Watts, Republic Reborn. 28 George B. Forgie, Patricide in the House Divided: A Psychological Interpretation of Lincoln and His Age (New York 1979), 51-52. 29 This paragraph and the two following rely heavily upon M. J. Heale, The Presidential Quest: Candidates and Images in American Political Culture (New York 1982), 37-82. This content downloaded from 192.231.40.19 on Tue, 12 Nov 2024 03:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE SECOND AMERICAN PARTY SYSTEM 521 an anemblem emblemof Jackson's of Jackson's self-sacrifice self-sacrifice for the public's for good.30 the Indeed, public's good.30 Ind Jackson's candidacy benefited from the traditional republican association of civic virtue, citizenship, and military service. Fear turned to outrage when John Quincy Adams, after winning the presidency with Henry Clay's aid, appointed Clay as his secretary of state. Dubbed the "corrupt bargain" by Jackson men, whose candidate had gained a plurality of the popular and electoral college votes, the apparent pact convinced Jacksonians that Adams had purchased the presidency and anointed his own successor. Only the election of the Old Hero in 1828 could save the republic.31 Jackson and his supporters believed that his victory in 1828 rescued the republic from corruption and faction, but the recent elections convinced them that the danger remained. They supposed that there would always be selfish factions like the Federalists and National Republicans seeking to corrupt and ultimately destroy the republic ("to absorb... all power from its legitimate sources, and to condense it in a single head"); therefore Jacksonians (who "labor[ed] as assiduously to resist the encroachments and limit the extent of executive authority") required a permanent organization.32 Rather than perceiving parties as divisive and disruptive and as a sign of corruption and political decay, Jacksonians gradually came to defend party organizations as conservators and protectors of the republic.33 Conceiving of their Democratic party as the embodiment of the people vigilant, politicians like Martin Van Buren-who earlier saw the virtues of party and had built an effective organization in New York-argued that parties "rouse the sluggish to exertion, give increased energy to the most active intellect, excite a salutary vigilance over our public functionaries, and prevent that apathy which has proved the ruin of Republics. 34 30 The Letters of Wyoming, to the People of the United States, on the Presidential Election, and in Favor of Andrew Jackson. Originally Published in the Columbian Observer, (Philadelphia 1824), quoted in Heale, The Presidential Quest, 58. 31 Ibid., 64-82; Harry L. Watson, Liberty and Power. The Politics of Jacksonian America (New York 1990), 73-95. 32 Martin Van Buren, Substance of Mr. Van Buren's Observations in the Senate of the United States, on Mr. Foote's Amendment (Feb. 12, 1828), quoted in Michael Wallace, "Changing Concepts of Party in the United States, 1815-1828," American Historical Review, 74 (Dec. 1968), 483. Also see Wilson, "Republicanism and the Idea of Party in the Jacksonian Period." 33 See Wallace, "Changing Concepts," 453-491. 34 Martin Van Buren, "The Autobiography of Martin Van Buren," quoted in Wallace, "Changing Concepts," 489. This content downloaded from 192.231.40.19 on Tue, 12 Nov 2024 03:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 522 JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC Van Buren and his colleagues thus offered a distinctively republican defense of party; they did not hail the advent of a modern, pluralistic party system. The Democratic party's founders endorsed the idea of party but not of a party system.35 In so doing, though, they undermined the republican idea that parties inherently represented the selfish interests of the few against the public good. Antiparty sentiment nevertheless persisted, especially in the Whig party. Whigs resisted the apparently unbridled partisanship of the Democrats, which seemed to promote the good of Democrats, not the public good. It was this concern that underlay their 1836 plea for the election of "a president of the nation, not a president of party."36 But gradually many of them came to see party, not as a threat to republicanism but as the only way to protect the republic from their opponents.37 35 Wilson, "Republicanism and the Idea of Party," 419-442. For a somewhat different reading of Van Buren, see Jean H. Baker, Affairs of Party: The Political Culture of Northern Democrats in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Ithaca 1983), 125-132. 36 Wilson, "Republicanism and the Idea of Party," 419-442 (quotation at 425). See also Edward L. Mayo, "Republicanism, Antipartyism, and Jacksonian Party Politics: A View from the Nation's Capital," American Quarterly, 31 (Spring 1979), 3- 20. Although antiparty sentiment has necessarily been discussed here in the context of republican ideology, it should be pointed out that such views were also derived from other sources. Ronald P. Formisano, "Political Character, Antipartyism, and the Second Party System," American Quarterly, 21 (Winter 1969), 683-709, finds it rooted in the evangelical Protestantism of many Whigs; in Massachusetts, though, Formisano, Transformation of American Political Culture, locates it in the Workingmen's and Know Nothing parties, 222-244, esp. 242, and 331-343; John Ashworth, 'Agrarians' and 'Aristocrats'.: Party Political Ideology in the United States, 1837-1846 (Cambridge, Eng. 1987), 205-218, in the social and economic conservatism of the Whigs (he also links Democratic pro-party views to their economic radicalism); Howe, Political Culture of the American Whigs, 51-54, in contemporary faculty psychology and Antimasonry (in addition to the persistence of republican ideology); Wilentz, Chants Democratic, 197, 236, 245, in the Workingmen's party insurgency and, more generally, in artisan republicanism. 37 For example, see Thomas Brown, Politics and Statesmanship: Essays on the American Whig Party (New York 1985), 169. The contrast of Democratic and Whig views of party and of the Whigs' eventual acceptance of party are examined from the vantage point of presidential elections in Heale, Presidential Quest, 83-132; and Richard P. McCormick, The Presidential Game. The Origins of American Presidential Politics (New York 1982), 168-178. The growing acceptance of party thus modified but did not obliterate the strong undercurrent of antipartyism that persisted in American political thought. Richard Hofstadter overemphasizes the degree to which Americans accepted the legitimacy of political parties. On the reservations of even the Democratic party builders, see Baker, Affairs of Party, 108-132, and Wilson, "Republicanism and the Idea of Party"; for a discussion of late nineteenth-century This content downloaded from 192.231.40.19 on Tue, 12 Nov 2024 03:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE SECOND AMERICAN PARTY SYSTEM 523 When When politicians politicians began began to endorse to the endorse idea of party the idea as theof party as salvation salvation of the of republic, the republic, and not as and an engine not asof an the engine republic'sof the repu demise, demise, theythey effectively effectively recast republican recast ideology. republican Parties, ideology. as Jean Parties, as H. Baker has shown, taught their members "that they were a community, a political brotherhood of white males devoted to the public good." By speaking in military language and organizing quasi-military campaign ceremonies, the parties told their adherents that they were "republican soldiers" sacrificing themselves for the common good.38 The Ohio Whig party's "Log Cabin Song" of 1840 beckoned to Whig voters: By whom, tell me whom, will the battle next be won? The spoilsmen and leg treasurers will soon begin to run! And the 'Log Cabin Candidate' will march to Washington!39 And politicians organized their parades on a military model: marchers wore quasi-military uniforms and were organized into companies, which were led by captains. "Parades," as Baker observes, "evoked the sensation of an army of light, on its way to battle. "40 Elections thus became surrogate battles to preserve republican government, as each party fought valiantly to save the republic from its iniquitous foe. One North Carolina Whig's fears about the presidential election of 1840 typified his generation's understanding of the significance of elections: "It is 'sink or swim' with the Nation, & if we do not succeed in the coming elections, I believe, 'The People' will never elect another President, till we have had another antiparty thought, see Richard L. McCormick, "Antiparty Thought in the Gilded Age," in his The Party Period and Public Policy. American Politics from the Age of Jackson to the Progressive Era (New York 1986), 228-259. 38 Jean Baker, "From Belief Into Culture: Republicanism in the Antebellum North," American Quarterly, 37 (Fall 1985), 545, 547. Baker restricts her purview to the North and denies its applicability to the South. Evidence drawn from Thornton, Politics and Power, and Marc W. Kruman, Parties and Politics in North Carolina, 1836- 1865 (Baton Rouge 1983), suggests that this interpretation can be applied to the South as well. Cf. Kenneth S. Greenberg, Masters and Statesmen. The Political Culture of American Slavery (Baltimore 1985), 45-64. 39 "Log Cabin Song," quoted in Robert Gray Gunderson, The Log-Cabin Campaign (Lexington, Ky. 1957), 76. 40 Baker, Affairs of Party, 292-297 (quotation at 297). This content downloaded from 192.231.40.19 on Tue, 12 Nov 2024 03:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 524 JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC Revolution. "41 The quasi-military nature of the electoral battle confirmed and reinforced anxieties about the fragility of republican government and about conspiracies to subvert the republic, even though the parties expressed them in different ways. The Antimasons spied the danger in a Masonic conspiracy, Whigs in executive despotism, Democrats in active government and indeed all power centers, Know-Nothings in a Papist conspiracy, Republicans in a slave power conspiracy, and southern Democrats in an abolitionist-Black Republican conspiracy.42 The martial rhetoric of the parties also expressed the continuing republican belief-expressed during the revolution, the War of 1812, and the pseudo-warfare of the parties-that war affirmed, celebrated, and regenerated the polity.43 Contemporaries imagined that the sacrifices required by war (or political pseudo-war) would compel good republican citizens to cast off their self-interest for the public good. John Adams anticipated in 1776 that the struggle for independence "will inspire Us with many Virtues, which We have not, and correct many Errors, Follies, and Vices, which threaten to disturb, dishonour, and destroy us." Henry Clay advocated war against England in 1812, according to Steven Watts, "as an exercise in regeneration of character as much as a demonstration of national strength." Indeed, Watts demonstrates how many Americans hoped that the War of 1812 would revive civic virtue in what they believed to be a degenerating republic.44 41 James Owens to James W. Bryan, May 9, 1840, quoted in Kruman, Parties and Politics in North Carolina, 3. See also ibid., 3-5; and Baker, Affairs of Party, 287-291. 42 For examples on the Whig fear of executive despotism, see Howe, Political Culture of the American Whigs, 87-92; and Brown, Politics and Statesmanship, 24-30. On the Democratic fear of concentrations of power, especially governmental power, see Thornton, Politics and Power; and Watson, Jacksonian Politics and Community Conflict. On the fear of a slave power conspiracy, see David Brion Davis, The Slave Power Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style (Baton Rouge 1969); Richard H. Sewell, Ballots for Freedom. Antislavery Politics in the United States, 1837-1860 (1976; rep., New York 1980); and especially, William E. Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852-1856 (New York 1987). On southern fears, see Michael F. Holt, The Political Crisis of the 1850s (New York 1978); Thornton, Politics and Power; and Greenberg, Masters and Statesmen, 107-123. Those politicians sought to preserve what they took to be a preexisting liberty. Yet many reformers-like the abolitionists and the woman suffragists-sought to expand the bounds of liberty. 43 Wiebe, Opening of American Society, 98, 103, 104. 44 John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776, quoted in Wood, Creation of the American Republic, 117; Watts, Republic Reborn, 88. This content downloaded from 192.231.40.19 on Tue, 12 Nov 2024 03:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE SECOND AMERICAN PARTY SYSTEM 525 In Insimilar similar ways,ways, the Whig theandWhig Democratic and Democratic parties offered parties their offered t followers followers the the challenge challenge to root out to the root corruption out the of the corruption opposition of the oppo and andrestore restore a pure a republic. pure republic. That was the That Democratic was the message Democratic in messag 1828 1828 when when theythey offeredoffered Andrew Jackson Andrew as a Jackson latter day Cincinnatus as a latter day Cincin abandoning abandoning the plow the at plow the Hermitage at the Hermitage to redeem the to national redeem the nati government government and in and 1832in when 1832 Jackson when began Jackson his "war"began against his the "war" agains second Bank of the United States.45 Democrats and Whigs conceived of their political mission as the attainment of the public good. The Democratic conception of the party was captured best in the way that the party defined itself and its opponents. Democrats thought of themselves as the representatives of the "real people"--what Andrew Jackson called "the bone and sinew of the country"-and their opponents as the representatives of aristocracy. True Democrats comprised all but a handful of bankers and others who sought "wealth without labor." The policies of their party, Democrats assumed, therefore expressed the public will and furthered the public good.46 By endorsing only a negative role for government, Democrats denied that positive government was necessary to achieve public morality. Believing that virtuous white citizens, if left alone by government, would spontaneously seek the common good, they thereby affirmed the self-regenerating capacity of individuals. Indeed, Jackson confidently asserted that by demolishing the second Bank of the United States, he would "perpetuate those habits of economy and simplicity... so congenial to the character of republicans" and thereby further the commonweal.47 Whigs, conversely, saw their party and active government as agents of the public good. Their opponents, motivated solely by a lust for public office, elevated their selfish interests over the public's. Unlike the Democrats, Whigs viewed society as an organic whole and thought of constructive government as a means to the common good. They expected their governmental leaders to establish "a sense of shared destiny among a people with seemingly disparate goals and ambitions. 1148 45 Heale, Presidential Quest, 69-73. On the Whig view of William Henry Harrison in the role of Cincinnatus, see Gunderson, Log-Cabin Campaign, 111. 46 This discussion is based upon Marvin Meyer's dissection of Jackson's presidential messages in The Jacksonian Persuasion. Politics and Belief (1957; rep., Stanford 1960),18-24. 47 Jackson quoted ibid., 27. Cf. Lawrence Frederick Kohl, The Politics of Individualism. Parties and the American Character in the Jacksonian Era (New York 1989), 105. 48 Brown, Politics and Statesmanship, 217. This content downloaded from 192.231.40.19 on Tue, 12 Nov 2024 03:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 526 JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC In these these ways, ways, party partyrituals ritualsand andrhetoric rhetorictransmitted transmitted to to supporters supporters the republican republican inheritance. inheritance.But Butititwas wasa alegacy legacythat thatmany many of of thethe revolutionary revolutionary generation generationscarcely scarcelywould wouldhave haverecognized: recognized:supposedly supposedly independent independent citizens citizenswere werebeing beingtold toldwhat what toto believe believe and andhowhowto to behave. behave. The The very verynature natureofofwell-organized well-organized political politicalparties parties thus thus vitiated vitiated the the republican republicanideal idealof ofthe theindependent independent citizen. citizen. Once Once those those republican republicansoldiers soldiershad hadattained attained victory victory for for their their party, party, they they expected expectedtheir theirleaders leaderstotodispense dispense patronage. patronage. The The revolutionary revolutionary generation generationhad hadfeared fearedthat thatmagistrates magistratesand and legislators legislators would would use use the the patronage patronagepower powertotocorrupt corruptpolitical political society. society. It was It was this this concern concern that that lent lentsuch suchexplosive explosivepower powertotothe the"corrupt "corrupt bargain" bargain" charge charge during during the thepresidential presidentialelection electioncampaign campaign ofof 1828. 1828. YetYet that that symbol symbol ofof corruption corruptionand anddecay decaybecame becamethethe glue glue that that held held political political parties parties together. together. The TheJacksonians Jacksoniansassumed assumed that that only only like-minded like-minded Democrats Democrats would would receive receivepolitical politicaloffices officesand and that that officeholders officeholders would would toe the the party party and andadministration administrationline lineduring duringtheir their official official tenure. tenure. Such Such an an understanding understandingdictated dictateda areevaluation reevaluationofof the the virtues virtues required required for officeholding officeholdingfrom fromthe therevolutionary revolutionary emphasis emphasisononcharacter, character, merit, merit, and and personal personalrelationships relationshipstotothe theJacksonian Jacksonianstress stress on on active active loyalty loyalty to to party.49 party.49 Although Although assuming assumingaadifferent differentform, form,the theDemocratic Democratic fear fear of of a a corrupted corrupted polity polity persisted. persisted.Now NowDemocrats Democrats located located itsits sources sources in in privileged privileged corporations, corporations,especially especiallybanks. banks.TheThe intervention intervention of of officials officials of the the second second Bank Bankofofthe theUnited UnitedStates Statesinin local local and and national national politics politics initially initially provoked provokedJackson's Jackson'sassault assaultononthe the Bank. Bank. More More generally, generally, as as Jackson argued in his Bank veto message: "Lavish public disbursements and corporations with exclusive privileges would be... the means by whose silent and secret operation a control would be exercised by the few over the political conduct of the many by first acquiring that control over the labor and earnings of the great body of the people. Wherever this spirit has effected an alliance with political power, tyranny and despotism have been the fruit." After 1837, when Democrats aimed their wrath at state banks too, they blamed 49 For somewhat different formulations of the transformation, see Sean Wilentz, "On Class and Politics in Jacksonian America," Reviews in American History, 10 (Dec. 1982), 56; and Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, 287-305. Also see Watson, Jacksonian Politics and Community Conflict, 298; and Kermit L. Hall, The Politics of Justice: Lower Federal Judicial Selection and the Second Party System, 1829-61 (Lincoln, Neb. 1979). William Marcy's famous comment, "To the victor belong the spoils," is quoted in Hofstadter, Idea of a Party System, 250. Also see Formisano, Transformation of Political Culture, 248-249. This content downloaded from 192.231.40.19 on Tue, 12 Nov 2024 03:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE SECOND AMERICAN PARTY SYSTEM 527 banks banks for for corrupting corrupting legislatures legislatures through bribery.50 throughThebribery.50 WashingtonThe Washing Globe Globe summarized summarized its party's its party's apprehensions apprehensions when it maintained when that it maintained the thepresidential presidentialelection election of 1840of would 1840answer would the answer question: the question "SHALL THIS BE A GOVERNMENT OF THE BANKS OR OF THE PEOPLE?"5' Because Democrats considered legislatures particularly susceptible to the blandishments of corporations, only the presidential veto power could prevent banking corporations from despoiling the government. Others, mostly Whigs, discerned no threat of corruption from the creation or existence of banking corporations. Rather, they clung to older fears that professional politicians and party organizations were antirepublican; the birth of the second party system intensified their distinctively republican anxieties about the executive's corrupt use of patronage powers. In the late 1830s Whigs denounced Martin Van Buren and the Democrats for undermining the political process through the patronage and electoral fraud. Therefore, Whigs sought to limit the president to one term and eliminate his veto power.52 As the Democrats and Whigs completed the process of party formation in the late 1830s, they also clarified their ideological differences.53 Recent studies of party ideology suggest that 50 Richardson, ed., Messages and Papers of the Presidents, III, 165; William G. Shade, Banks or No Banks: The Money Issue in Western Politics, 1832-1865 (Detroit 1972), 125. 51 Globe, quoted in Watson, Liberty and Power, 224-225. 52 On patronage, see the comment of John Lauritz Larson, "'Bind the Republic Together': The National Union and the Struggle for a System of Internal Improvements," 384. On the "corrupt bargain," see Howe, Political Culture of the American Whigs, 126; and Watson, Jacksonian Politics and Community Conflict, 114-115. On patronage and corruption in the 1830s, see Matthew A. Crenson, The Federal Machine. Beginnings of Bureaucracy in Jacksonian America (Baltimore 1975). Concerns about patronage persisted for many years; witness the popular obsession with the massive political corruption of the 1850s and the postwar civil service reform movement. On the 1850s, see Mark W. Summers, The Plundering Generation. Corruption and the Crisis of the Union, 1849-1861 (New York 1987), 23-36; on the postwar era, see John G. Sproat, "The Best Men": Liberal Reformers in the Gilded Age (New York 1968), 244-271; and Ari Hoogenboom, Outlawing the Spoils. A History of the Civil Service Movement, 1865-1883 (Urbana 1961). For concerns about patronage in the Confederate Constitution, see Donald Nieman, "Republicanism, the Confederate Constitution, and the American Constitutional Tradition," in Kermit L. Hall and James W. Ely, Jr., An Uncertain Tradition. Constitutionalism and the History of the South (Athens, Ga. 1989), 209-212. 53 On the influence of the Panic of 1837 on party disagreement, see Holt, Political Crisis of the 1850; William G. Shade, "Political Pluralism and Party This content downloaded from 192.231.40.19 on Tue, 12 Nov 2024 03:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 528 JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC revolutionary revolutionary republicanism republicanismbequeathed bequeatheda afractured fracturedlegacy legacyto to Jacksonian Jacksonian America. America.The TheDemocrats, Democrats,ititappears, appears, largely largely rejected rejected republican republican notions notions of ofan anorganic organicsociety societyand andofofhierarchy hierarchy while whileWhigs Whigs tended tended to to accept accept them. them.Most MostDemocrats Democratsviewed viewed the the suffrage suffrage as as a right a right inherent inherent in in every every white whiteadult adultmale. male.Whigs Whigstreated treated it it as as a privilege. a privilege. They They embraced embraced the therepublican republicanidea ideathat thatthe thecitizen citizen voted voted as as a a member member of of aa community communityand andtherefore thereforeopposed opposedalien alien suffrage suffrage and and supported supported lengthy lengthy residency residencyrequirements requirementsand and voter voter registration registration laws. laws. Whereas Whereas Democrats Democratsemphasized emphasizedthe theequality equalityofof every every white white adult adult male, male, Whigs Whigs stressed stressedthe theorganic organicnature natureofofsociety society and and the the importance importance of the characteristics that differentiated one man from another.54 If Whigs tended to retain revolutionary republican notions of the citizen and his relationship to the state and Democrats to abandon them, in the realm of political economy the parties reversed positions. Whigs relinquished republican fears of commerce; Democrats denounced commerce separated from productive labor. Thus, as Marvin Meyers points out, Democrats attacked those whose "pursuits... are primarily promotional, financial, or commercial." Whereas Whigs advocated a diversified economy, Democrats idealized the farmer. And whereas Democrats envisioned a society whose members were relatively equal in wealth, Whigs anticipated economic inequality. As Daniel Walker Howe has observed, Democrats feared economic change, and Whigs political modernization.55 Party rhetoric was generally matched by party behavior in the state and national legislatures. Democratic state legislators not only denounced banks in the late 1830s and early 1840s, but voted to curb or eliminate them. In Congress, Democrats consistently attacked the second Bank of the United States and opposed a protective tariff. On the other hand, Whig legislators voted for banks and bank charters and for funds to aid in the construction of transportation projects. Development: The Creation of a Modern Party System, 1815-1852," in Kleppner et al., The Evolution of American Electoral Systems, 101, 104-105; Kruman, Parties and Politics in North Carolina, 22-27; and Thornton, Politics and Power, 35, 48. 54 Ashworth, 'Agrarians' and 'Aristocrats'; Welter, Mind of America, 1820-1860; Howe, Political Culture of the American Whigs; Brown, Politics and Statesmanship. Meyers, Jacksonian Persuasion, an older study, remains valuable. In this summary of party views, I am discussing tendencies in the parties. The parties were not monolithic entities. The authors discussed in this paragraph tend to overstate the homogeneity of each party. 55 Meyers, Jacksonian Persuasion, 22; Ashworth, 'Agrarians' and 'Aristocrats', 64; Howe, Political Culture of the American Whigs, 76. This content downloaded from 192.231.40.19 on Tue, 12 Nov 2024 03:06:02 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE SECOND AMERICAN PARTY SYSTEM 529 And AndWhig Whigcongressmen congressmen generally generally defended adefended national bank a and national a bank protective protective tariff. tariff. In those In states those that states did not that allow did all white not allow adult male all white adul citizens citizens to to votevote by the by1830s, the like 1830s, Rhodelike Island Rhode and Nor