It’s Professor Dave, let’s discuss Andrew Jackson.
The election of Andrew Jackson to the presidency is a watershed moment in the history of American
politics, since he is considered the founder of the modern Democratic Party.
He was the first true “man of the people” to be elected, as all of the previous presidents
had been well-educated members of the aristocracy.
Jackson however, was born into an immigrant Scotch-Irish farming family of relatively
modest means, and never attended college.
If one man can be said to symbolize both the best and worst of the American spirit, it
would be Jackson.
Though his election was hailed as a victory for democracy, he was also a racist slave
owner whose relocation policies of Native Americans drew condemnation even at the time.
Jackson’s presidency was the first to demonstrate the inherent dangers of American populism.
Jackson’s presidency was associated with the spread of Jacksonian democracy, the movement
of political power from established elites to ordinary voters.
“The Age of Jackson” shaped the national agenda and the course of American politics
for decades to come.
Jackson’s philosophy was much in the same vein as Thomas Jefferson, in advocating core
Republican values that had been held by the generation of the Revolution.
His presidency held a high moralistic tone; it railed against corruption and the banking
system.
Like Jefferson he had strong agrarian sympathies, having been a planter himself, and he held
to a limited view of the federal government.
But like Jefferson, Jackson’s moved away from his initially sympathetic views of States’
Rights as his presidency continued, and in time he would threaten to use force against
South Carolina if it pursued nullification over tariffs.
During the Revolutionary War, the young Jackson acted as a courier and was nearly starved
to death when captured by the British.
He became a lawyer and was elected to the House of Representatives and then twice to
the U.S. Senate.
In 1801, Jackson was appointed colonel in the Tennessee militia, which became his political
as well as military base.
He gained national fame in the War of 1812 during the Battle of New Orleans, where he
won a decisive victory over the superior British forces.
His men said he was as tough as old hickory wood, and he thusly acquired the nickname,
“Old Hickory.”
Ordered by President Monroe to lead a campaign against the Seminole and Creek Indians in
1817, Jackson was also ordered to prevent runaway slaves from escaping to Spanish Florida.
He captured Pensacola with little more than a few warning shots and deposed the Spanish
governor.
He tried and executed two Englishmen who had been supplying and advising the Indians, and
his actions struck fear into the Seminole tribes as word spread of his ruthlessness.
The executions and Jackson’s invasion of Spanish territory created an international
uproar.
Many in the Monroe administration called for Jackson to be censured, however, Secretary
of State John Quincy Adams, a believer in Manifest Destiny, defended Jackson.
Critics alleged that he exceeded his orders but Jackson claimed he was charged with ending
the conflict and that the best way to do it was to seize Florida from Spain, once and
for all.
When the Spanish minister demanded a “suitable punishment” for Jackson, Adams used Jackson’s
conquest and Spain’s own weakness to get Spain to cede Florida to the United States
with Jackson named as military governor.
In 1822, the Tennessee legislature nominated Jackson for President for the 1824 election.
To improve his credentials, Jackson ran for and captured one of Tennessee’s senate seats
in 1823.
He had previously served as the state’s senator in 1797, but resigned after less than
a year.
The 1824 presidential contest saw Jackson face off against Secretary of State John Quincy
Adams, Treasury Secretary William Crawford, and House Speaker Henry Clay.
Jackson received the largest share of the popular vote but not a majority.
He also captured more electoral votes than any other candidate, but again lacked a majority.
The election was therefore decided by the House of Representatives, which chose Adams,
despite the fact that Jackson was the clear victor.
Jackson’s supporters cried foul when Clay, after throwing his states’ support to Adams,
was subsequently appointed Secretary of State in the new Adams Administration.
The Massachusetts born Adams had been a Federalist, but after that party collapsed he became a
moderate Democratic-Republican, though never fully trusted by many Southerners.
Jackson denounced the “corrupt bargain” and along with Vice President John C. Calhoun,
Martin Van Buren, and Thomas Ritchie, founded the Democratic Party to revive many of the
ideals of the old Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican Party, and forge a national organization dedicated
to the common man of the United States.
Jackson and Calhoun easily defeated Adams in 1828.
During the election, his opponents referred to him as a “jackass” but Jackson enjoyed
the insult and used the jackass as his symbol for a while.
Years later, cartoonist Thomas Nast revived the symbol, making it the symbol for the entire
Democratic Party.
Jackson was the first President to invite the public to attend the White House inaugural ball.
The massive crowd tracked mud on the floor and on chairs, breaking valuable items just
to get a glimpse of Jackson.
To get them to leave, White House attendants had to serve punch in huge tubs on the lawn.
This event earned Jackson another nickname, “King Mob.”
Jackson saw himself as a reformer and attempted to purge the government of corruption from
previous administrations, launching presidential investigations into all executive Cabinet
offices and departments.
He believed in direct election of the president and repeatedly called for the abolition of
the Electoral College by constitutional amendment.
Sharing Jefferson’s distrust of the moneyed elites, he finally succeeded in abolishing
the Bank of the United States.
Many believed this was responsible for the Panic of 1837 and blamed Jackson for the economic
recession that lasted nearly a decade.
Jackson’s presidency also initiated a policy of Indian removal.
Though relations between Europeans and Indians were always complicated, they grew increasingly
more so in the years after the American Revolution.
By the era of Jackson’s Administration, the earlier policy of non-intervention had
grown untenable.
The issue was especially problematic in the South, with its larger Indian population.
Jackson became an advocate for a relocation policy to the territories of the Louisiana
Purchase, in what is considered by some historians to be the most controversial aspect of his
presidency.
On May 26th, 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, Jackson’s first legislative
victory.
The act was especially popular in the South where the discovery of gold on Cherokee land
had increased pressure in the region.
The state of Georgia became involved in a jurisdictional dispute with the Cherokees,
resulting in the 1832 U.S. Supreme Court decision Worcester vs. Georgia, in which Supreme Court
Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that Georgia could not impose any laws upon the Cherokee
territory.
Jackson is credited with the reply, “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him
enforce it,” but the quote is actually newspaperman Horace Greeley’s.
As many as four thousand Cherokees died during their relocation to Oklahoma on the infamous
“Trail of Tears.”
Overall, more than forty five thousand American Indians were relocated to the West during
Jackson’s administration.
In an effort to purge the government of the corruption of previous administrations, Jackson
launched presidential investigations into all executive Cabinet offices and departments.
After a Congressional investigation into the postal service revealed egregious mismanagement,
Jackson implemented much needed reforms.
During his presidency, those in opposition to Jackson’s purging of office holders and
expansion of executive power formed the Whig Party, and took to calling Jackson “King
Andrew the First”.
However, Jackson’s repeated calls for the abolition of the Electoral College by constitutional
amendment went unheeded.
Holding to the belief that the college was an impediment to direct democracy, Jackson
stressed “I have heretofore recommended amendments of the Federal Constitution giving
the election of President and Vice-President to the people.
So important do I consider these changes in our fundamental law that I cannot, in accordance
with my sense of duty, omit to press them upon the consideration of a new Congress.”
But in other reforms, he was more successful.
Jackson’s Service Pension Act of 1832 provided pensions to veterans and his Act of July 1836
enabled widows of Revolutionary War soldiers to receive their husband’s pensions.
In 1836, he established the ten-hour day in national shipyards.
Jackson also oversaw a massive restructuring of the government spoils system, fearing it
would lead to public corruption.
But the conflict that had the most profound legacy was the so-called “Nullification
Crisis” of 1828 to 1832.
Southern planters claimed that high tariffs on European imports made those goods so expensive
that they had to instead buy them from producers in the northern US, raising their overall
prices.
Southern politicians argued that these tariffs benefited northern industrialists at the expense
of farmers in the south.
The issue came to a head when Vice President Calhoun supported his home state, South Carolina,
which claimed it had the right to nullify the tariff legislation of 1828 and any Federal
laws that went against its own self-interest.
Although Jackson sympathized with the South over this matter, he also fiercely supported
a strong union, with a powerful central government.
The issue developed into a bitter rivalry between the two men.
At the Jefferson Day dinner in 1830, one toast was to “The Union of the States, and the
Sovereignty of the States,” whereupon Jackson rose and addressed his toast to “Our federal
Union: It must be preserved!” – a clear challenge to Calhoun.
Calhoun clarified his position by responding “The Union: Next to our Liberty, the most
dear!”
At the first Democratic National Convention, Calhoun and Jackson broke from each other
politically and Martin Van Buren replaced Calhoun as Jackson’s running mate in the
1832 presidential election.
On December 28th, 1832, with less than two months remaining on his term, Calhoun resigned
as Vice President to become a U.S. Senator for South Carolina.
In response to South Carolina’s nullification claim, Jackson promised to send troops to
the state to enforce the law.
In December 1832, he issued a resounding proclamation against the nullifiers, stating that he considered
“the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one State, incompatible
with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution,
unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and
destructive of the great object for which it was formed.”
Jackson claimed that South Carolina stood on “the brink of insurrection and treason”,
and he requested that its citizens declare their allegiance to the Union their ancestors
had fought for.
Jackson also denied the right of secession, saying: “The Constitution forms a government
not a league.
To say that any State may at pleasure secede from the Union is to say that the United States
is not a nation.”
But this crisis was far from over.
Another unfortunate element of Jackson’s legacy is that he indirectly triggered the
worst economic crisis in American History up to that point.
When he dissolved the Second Bank of the United States during his second term, he removed
restrictions on some state banks; and wild speculation in lands, based on easy bank credit,
had swept the West.
To end this speculation, Jackson issued a Specie Circular requiring that lands be purchased
with gold or silver, which over time resulted in panic.
Hundreds of banks and businesses failed.
Thousands lost their land.
The U.S. Senate censured Jackson on March 28th, 1834, for removing funds from the Bank.
The censure was a political maneuver spearheaded by Jackson’s archrival, Senator Henry Clay.
During the proceedings, Jackson called Clay “as full of fury as a drunken man in a brothel”,
and the issue was highly divisive within the Senate; however, the censure, which was largely
symbolic, was approved 26 to 20.
When the Jacksonians had a majority in the Senate, the censure was expunged after years
of effort by his supporters, led by Thomas Hart Benton, who had once shot Jackson in
a street fight but eventually became his ardent defender.
Jackson was notorious for his quick temper.
One biographer wrote: “Observers likened him to a volcano, and only the most intrepid
or recklessly curious cared to see it erupt.
His close associates all had stories of his blood-curdling oaths, his summoning of the
Almighty to loose His wrath upon some miscreant, typically followed by his own vow to hang
the villain or blow him to perdition.
Given his record – in duels, brawls, mutiny trials, and summary hearings – listeners
had to take his vows seriously.”
The great French chronicler of American Life in the 19th Century, Alexis de Tocqueville,
criticized Jackson for his domineering actions, stating: “General Jackson stoops to gain
the favor of the majority; but when he feels that his popularity is secure, he overthrows
all obstacles in the pursuit of the objects which the community approves.
Supported by a power his predecessors never had, he tramples on his personal enemies,
whenever they cross his path, with a facility without example; he takes upon himself the
responsibility of measures that no one before him would have ventured to attempt.
He even treats the national representatives with a disdain approaching insult; he puts
his veto on the laws of Congress and frequently neglects even to reply to that powerful body.”
But one gets the impression that Jackson wouldn’t have it any other way.
On the last day of his presidency he admitted to only two regrets - that he “had been
unable to shoot Henry Clay or hang John C. Calhoun.”