9. Democracy in America

Jackson was still standing.

He returned fire after Bleeding.

The other man was mortally wounded.
"If he had shot me through the brain, I would have hit him," Jackson said.
Jackson fought at least one duel in Kentucky during his long and controversial career.
Many of Jackson's later dealings on the battlefield and in politics would be characterized by the tenacity, toughness, and revenge that carried Jackson alive out of that battle.
By the time of Andrew Jackson's death forty years later, he would become an enduring and controversial symbol, a kind of cipher to gauge the way Americans thought about their country.

Most Americans think democracy is a good thing.

We assume the nation's political leaders believed the same.
The answer was no for many of the founding fathers.

Many people participated in early U.S. politics.

The founding elites were frightened by the growing influence of ordinary citizens.
At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Alexander Hamilton warned of the "vices of democracy" and said he considered the British government to be the best in the world.
The second convention delegate, Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, refused to sign the Constitution.

The elite believed that too much participation would undermine good order.

It would prevent the creation of a republican society.
The Revolution launched a wave of popular rebellion that could lead to a dangerous new type of dictatorship, according to Benjamin Rush, a Philadelphia physician and politician.
He wrote that the temple of tyranny has two doors.
We bolted one of them but left the other open because we didn't guard against the effects of our own ignorantness.

In the late 18th and early 19th century, warnings did nothing to quell Americans' democratic impulses.

Americans who were allowed to vote went to the polls in large numbers.
People made public demonstrations.

They delivered speeches at celebrations.

They petitioned Congress, openly criticized the president, and insisted that a free people should not defer to elected leaders.

The elite of every state and party learned to listen to the voices of the multitudes.

An American president holding the office that most resembles a king would symbolize the democratizing spirit of American politics.

There was a troubling pattern emerging in national politics and culture.

The first decades of the 19th century saw a shift in American politics towards "sectional" conflict between the states of the North, South, and West.

The state of Vir ginia has had more influence on the federal government than any other state.

Four of the first five presidents were from Virginia.
The country's population grew fastest in northern states due to immigration.

Political leaders in the north were becoming concerned about the influence of Virginia and other southern states in federal politics.

Many northerners feared that the southern states' interest in protecting slavery would make it hard for them to win votes in congress.

As northern states gradually ended slavery, southern states became dependent on slave labor, leading to a clash over federal policy.

The Missouri Crisis was the most important instance of rising tensions.

The balance of political power between northern and southern states became the focus of public debate when white settlers in Missouri applied for statehood in 1819.
Missouri had more than ten thousand slaves and was poised to join the southern slave states in Congress.
Congressman James Tallmadge of New York proposed an amendment to Missouri's application for statehood.
If more slaves were brought to Missouri and children born to them were freed before the age of 25, Congress should admit Missouri as a state.

Tallmadge opposed slavery for moral reasons, but he also wanted to maintain a sectional balance of power.

The Tallmadge Amendment met with resistance from politicians in the south.
It was defeated in the Senate despite the support of nearly all the northern congressmen who had a majority in the House.

A senator from Illinois proposed a compromise when Congress returned in 1820.

Jesse Thomas hoped his offer would prevent future disputes over slavery and statehood.

Congress would admit Missouri as a slave state as part of the Missouri Compromise of 1820.

Congress would admit Maine as a free state in order to maintain the balance between the number of free and slave states.
The rest of the Louisiana Purchase territory would be divided along the southern border of Missouri.
Slavery would not be allowed in other new states north of this line, but it would be allowed in new states to the south.
The Missouri Crisis ended peacefully after the compromise passed both houses of Congress.

Not everyone felt relieved.

The sectional nature of American politics was made impossible to ignore by the Missouri crisis.
The Democratic-Republican party was split along sectional lines by the Missouri crisis.

The slavery debate was demonstrated by the Missouri Crisis.

Thomas Jefferson was alarmed at how readily some Americans spoke of disunion and even civil war over the issue.
"This momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror," Jefferson wrote.

I thought it was the end of the Union.

The Missouri Crisis did not lead to disunion and civil war as Jefferson and others feared.
Slavery's expansion into new western territories was not settled.
The issue would cause more trouble in the future.

He rose from humble frontier beginnings to become one of the most powerful Americans of the 19th century.

On the border between North and South Carolina, Andrew Jackson was born to two immigrants from Ireland.

He grew up in dangerous times.
He joined the American militia at the age of thirteen.
The British officer slashed at his head with a sword after he refused to shine the officer's shoes.
His two brothers and his mother died of disease during the war, leaving him an orphan.
Jackson had a deep hatred of Great Britain because of their deaths.

After the war, Jackson moved west to frontier Tennessee, where he prospered, working as a lawyer and acquiring land and slaves.

Jackson won a seat in the Senate after being elected as a U.S. representative, but he resigned within a year due to financial difficulties.

Jackson was able to get a general's commission at the War of 1812 because of his political connections.

General Jackson was nicknamed "Old Hickory" by his troops because of his lack of combat experience.

Jackson led his militiamen into battle in the Southeast during the Creek War, a side conflict that started between different groups of Muskogee Indians in Alabama.

He won the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814.
He defeated the British at the Battle of New Orleans a year later.
Jackson's troops, including backwoods militiamen, free African Americans, Indians, and a company of slavetrading pirates, successfully defended the city and inflicted more than two thousand casualties against the British.
The news of the treaty had not arrived in New Orleans.

Jackson's military career did not end after the War of 1812.

Jackson launched an invasion of Florida as commander of the U.S. southern military district.

American settlers were attacked by the Seminole Indians across the border.

In 1816, Jackson's troops destroyed the "Negro Fort," a British-built fortress on Spanish soil, killing 270 former slaves and executing some survivors.
Jackson executed two British subjects for helping the Seminoles after they occupied the main Spanish town in the region.
The international diplomatic crisis was created by the execution of the two Britons.

Jackson's behavior was useful to Secretary of State John Quincy Adams.

Jackson's legend was created because of Adams' use of Jackson's military successes in the First Seminole War to persuade Spain to accept the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819.

In 1824, four nominees competed for the presidency in one of the closest elections in American history.

Adams from Massachusetts, Jackson from Tennessee, William H. Crawford from Georgia, and Henry Clay from Kentucky came from different parts of the country.
Jackson got more popular votes than anyone else.

The election was thrown into the House of Representatives because there was no majority winner in the Electoral College.

Adams persuaded Clay to support him in his bid for the presidency.

Jackson would never forgive Adams, who his supporters accused of engineering a "corrupt bargain" with Clay to circumvent the popular will.

Jackson's supporters accused Adams of elitism and claimed that he had offered the Russian emperor an American prostitute while he was a diplomat.

Adams's supporters accused Jackson of murder and attacked the morality of his marriage, pointing out that Jackson had married his wife before the divorce on her prior marriage was complete.
Andrew Jackson easily won the election, but Rachel Jackson died before his inauguration.
Jackson wouldn't forgive the people who attacked his wife's character.

Jackson's appeal as a military hero won him presi dency.

He was the leader of plain frontier folk in New Orleans.
Many voters were proud of his wartime accomplishments.
He would claim to represent the interests of ordinary white Americans, especially from the South and West, against the country's wealthy and powerful elite over the next eight years.
He and his allies would go through a series of bitter political struggles because of this attitude.

Almost every American had an opinion about Jackson.

He epitomized democratic government and popular rule.
He was seen as the worst in a powerful and unaccountable executive, acting as president with the same arrogance he had shown as a general.
Jackson's no-holds-barred approach to government was defined by the sectional dispute over national tax policy that was one of the key issues dividing Americans during his presidency.

The so-called Tariff of Abominations was hated by most southerners when Andrew Jackson was in the White House.

The import tax gave protection to manufacturing interests in the north.
Southerners blamed the tariffs for a huge transfer of wealth.
European countries retaliated with high tariffs of their own, reducing foreign purchases of the South's raw materials.

The orga nized action only happened in South Carolina.

The state was still trying to shrug off the economic problems of the Panic of 1819, but it had also recently been affected by the Danes Vesey slave conspiracy, which convinced white South Carolinians that antislavery ideas put them in danger of a massive slave uprising.

South Carolina's elite were worried that the tariffs would be used to limit slavery.

The real fear was that the federal government would attack the peculiar domestick institution of the Southern States.

The doctrine of nullification was laid out in the "South Carolina Exposition and Protest," an essay and set of resolutions that were drafted secretly.

He thought that since the states had created the Union, they were still their own, so they could ignore a federal statute they considered unconstitutional.

The right of nullification would have to be conceded by other states.

There is a chance that a state could leave the Union.

Jackson was angry when the essay's author was made public, interpreting it as a challenge to his authority as president.

During the commemoration for Thomas Jefferson, he had a confrontation with Calhoun.
The Union is next to our Liberty.
Their divorce was not pretty.
The nickname "the Little Magician" was given to Martin Van Buren, a New York political leader who was the new vice president when Jackson ran for reelection.

The federal tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were nullified by a special state convention.

They were declared unconstitutional and null and void by the convention and South Carolina customs officers were ordered not to collect revenue from the federal government.

President Jackson responded quickly.

Disunion, by armed force, is a reason.
He persuaded Congress to pass a Force Bill that would allow him to send the military to enforce the tariffs.
Other southern states refused to join South Carolina.
Privately, Jackson supported the idea of compromise and allowed his political opponent Henry Clay to broker a solution.
The compromise bill lowered federal tariffs slowly.

The Force Bill was nullified by Carolina.

It's hard to sort out the legacy of the crisis.

Jackson's actions seemed to have forced South Carolina to back down.
Two concepts that had not been linked before were united by the crisis.
nullification showed that the political power of slaveholders was matched only by their anxiety about the future of slavery.

The Nullification Crisis was raised in later debates in the 1840s and 1850s.

The "Petticoat Affair" began as a disagreement among elite women in Washington, D.C., but eventually led to the dissolution of Jackson's cabinet.

Presi dent Jackson chose mostly provincial politicians, not Washington veterans, to serve in his administration.

Jackson nominated his friend John Henry Eaton, a senator from Tennessee, to be his secretary of war.

Margaret O' Neale Tim berlake was married to a navy officer.

A photograph shows a man at an older age.

The combination of beauty, outspokenness, and familiarity with so many men in the boardinghouse led to gossip.

Rumors had been circulating that she and John were having an affair while her husband was at sea.
The society women of Washington were scandalized when her first husband committed suicide just nine months after she married him.
One wrote that Margaret's reputation had been destroyed.

The wives of other cabinet members refused to have anything to do with John's wife.

No respectable lady who wanted to protect her own reputation would invite her to social events or be seen chatting with her.
Most importantly, the vice president's wife spent most of her time in South Carolina avoiding her.
Emily Donelson, Jackson's niece, refused to have any more contact with her.

Women were not allowed to vote or hold office, but they still played a role in politics.

One local society woman said that the ladies had as much ambition and party spirit as the male politicians.
They paid attention to the rules that governed their interactions.

President Jackson blamed Henry Clay for the attacks.

He thought that Washington women and his new cabinet started the gossip.
Jackson claimed that he didn't come to make a cabinet for the ladies of this place, but rather had live vermin on his back.
He decided that it was necessary to destroy the Vice President because of his ambition, and put him out of the cabinet.

Jackson was angry because he had just been through a scandal with his late wife.

She had been insulted by leading politicians' wives because of the circumstances of her marriage.
Jackson believed that Rachel's death was caused by those attacks.
He saw the assaults on the Eatons as attacks on his authority.

In one of the most famous presidential meetings in American history, Jackson called his cabinet members to discuss what they saw as the bedrock of society: women's position as protectors of the nation's values.

The men of the cabinet debated Margaret's character.
Jackson presented evidence against her attackers.
The men attending the meeting were not swayed.
The scandal was resolved with the resignation of four members of the cabinet, including Margaret's husband.

The most characteristic struggle of his presidency was financial, despite his reputation as a military and political warrior.

He waged a war against the Bank of the United States.

The charter of the national bank that Congress created under Alexander Hamilton's financial plan expired in 1812.

Congress gave a new charter to the Second Bank of the United States five years later.

The bank was based in Philadelphia.
By requiring other banks to pay their debts in gold, it was supposed to prevent them from issuing too many paper notes.
The Bank of the United States was supposed to make a good profit for its private stockholders, like the Philadelphia banker Stephen Girard and the New York merchant John Jacob Astor.

Many Democrats and Republicans supported the new bank, but some still thought it was dangerous to the republic.

One of the skeptics was Andrew Jackson.
The Panic of 1819 was blamed on the bank by many of his supporters.
The national bank made the crisis worse by lending irresponsibly and then by using gold currency to save itself from the panic.
Jackson's supporters believed the bank corrupted politicians by giving them financial favors.

Jackson set his sights on the bank and its director after a few months in office.

Jackson became more and more adamant over the next three years as the bank's supporters fought to save it.
Jackson had once fought the Indians and the British and had declared a war to the death against the Bank, according to a visiting Frenchman.
The struggle was personal for Jackson.

The Bank of the United States' charter was not due for renewal for several years, but in 1832, Congress voted to reauthorize it.

The bill was vetoed by the president.

He explained that the charter didn't do enough to protect the bank from British stockholders.

Jackson wrote that the Bank of the United States had powers that were not granted in the Constitution.
The bank was a way for well- connected people to get richer at the expense of everyone else.
The president said that the rich and powerful often bend the acts of government to their will.
Jackson believed that a strictly limited government would treat people equally.

Edward Clay's depiction of the force that he depicted in this lithograph praised Jackson for ending the Second Bank of the United States.

Clay shows Nicholas Biddle as the devil running away from Jackson as the bank collapses around him.

The charter of the Bank of the United States would not be renewed, but it could still operate for several more years.

Jackson directed his cabinet to stop depositing federal funds in it in order to diminish its power.
The government would now do business with selected state banks.

Fierce controversy was set off by Jackson's bank veto.

The president's ideas were declared dangerous by opponents at a meeting.
They said that Jackson intended to place the honest earnings of the citizen at the disposal of the lazy, and that he would become a dictator.
The editor of a newspaper said that Jackson was trying to set the poor against the rich in order to take over as a military tyrant.

The Bank War gave Jackson's supporters a specific "democratic" idea to rally around.

The national bank's opposition came to define their beliefs.
The Bank War helped Jackson's political enemies organize.

Andrew Jackson supporters referred to themselves as Democrats.

The first modern party in the United States was built under the leadership of Martin Van Buren.
The Democratic Party had a centralized leadership structure and a consistent ideological program for all levels of government.
Jackson's enemies named themselves after the Whigs of the American Revolution, mocking him as "King Andrew the First".

Things looked good at first.

Between 1834 and 1836, a combination of high cotton prices, freely available foreign and domestic credit, and an influx of hard currency from Europe spurred a boom in the American economy.
The federal government's sales of western land promoted speculation and poorly regulated lending practices, creating a huge real estate bubble.

In just six years, the number of state-chartered banks grew from .

Between 1834 and 1836, the volume of paper banknotes per capita in circulation in the United States increased by 40 percent.
British capitalists were encouraged to make risky investments in America because of low interest rates.

The boom made banks more careless about the amount of hard currency they kept on hand.

Jackson hoped his bank veto would reduce bankers' and speculators' power over the economy, but it actually made the problems worse.

The situation was worsened by two more federal actions late in the Jackson administration.

There are 241 banks receiving federal deposits.

The banks that were already receiving federal money were undermined by this plan.
The Specie Circular was issued by the Treasury Department in July of 1836 in order to reduce speculation on credit.

Land buyers drained the eastern banks of more gold and silver.

America's economic bubbles began to burst in the fall of 1836.

Land sales plummeted.
The newspaper warned that nothing could be done to stop the reaction.

The first runs on banks began in New York on May 4, 1837.

The New York banks ran out of gold and silver by May 10.
Banks around the nation did the same as news spread.
By May 15, the largest crowd in Pennsylvania history had amassed, and many Americans blamed the Panic of 1837 on the economic policies of Andrew Jackson, who is depicted in the lithograph as the sun with top hat, spectacle, and a banner of "Glory" around him.

The poor people in the foreground are suffering while a prosperous attorney rides in an elegant carriage in the background.

The general economic depression was caused by the Panic of 1837.

The total capital held by American banks dropped by 40 percent between 1839 and 1843 as prices fell and economic activity around the nation slowed to a crawl.
The price of cotton in New Orleans dropped 50 percent in January of 1842.
Over the previous decade, the American economy had soared to fantastic new heights.

Normal banking activity did not resume until late in the 19th century.

Two hundred banks closed, cash and credit became scarce, prices declined, and trade slowed.
British banks made loans to eight states and a territorial government to finance internal improvements during the downturn.
The National Republicans, a loose alliance concentrated in the Northeast, had become the core of a new anti-Jackson movement.
Jackson's enemies included pro-slavery southerners angry about Jackson's behavior during the Nullification Crisis as well as antislavery Yankees.

After they failed to prevent Andrew Jackson's reelection, they formed a new party to save the Government and public liberty.

Henry Clay, who was a senator from Kentucky at the time, held private meetings with anti-Jackson leaders to convince them to unite.
The Whig Party had an anti-monarchical name.

The Whigs focused on winning seats in Congress and opposing "King Andrew" from outside the presidency.

They were divided by regional and ideological differences.

Andrew Jackson democratized American politics by portraying himself as the defender of the common man.

Jackson's willingness to use the powers of the executive office was the focus of his opponents.

The Whigs gained a lot of public support after the Panic of 1837.

The first national convention was held in Pennsylvania.

General William Henry Harrison of Ohio was nominated by the convention as the Whig candidate for president in 1840, despite Henry Clay's disappointment.

The Battle of Tippecanoe in present-day Indiana was the most well-known of Harrison's victories over the Shawnee.
He was viewed as a candidate with broad patriotic appeal by Whig leaders.
He was portrayed as a plain man of the country, unlike the easterner Martin Van Buren.
John Tyler, a slave-owning Virginia senator, was nominated for vice president by the Whigs.
During the Nullification Crisis, Tyler broke with Jackson over states' rights.

AlthoughTippecanoe and Tyler Too easily won the presidential election of 1840, this choice of ticket turned out to be disastrous for the Whigs.

The popular he contracted pneumonia after delivering a nearly two-hour inaugural slogan "Tippe address without an overcoat or hat" and died after just thirty-one days in canoe and Tyler Too.

When John Tyler became president, he adopted policies that looked a lot like Andrew Jackson's.

The issue of slavery strained the Wikimedia.

Unable to agree on a consistent national position on slavery, and unable to find another national issue to rally around, the Whigs broke apart.

The Whig coalition drew strength from several earlier parties, including two that harnessed American political paranoia.

The purpose of the party was to destroy the Freemasons.

The American Party was formed by anti- immigrants sentiment.

nativism had already been an influence on the Whig Party, whose members could not fail to notice that urban Irish Catholics tended to support Democrats.

Medieval Europe is thought to have started the international network of social clubs with arcane traditions and rituals as a trade organization for stonemasons.

By the 18th century, it had become a secular order that was committed to the ideals of the Enlightenment.

The social life of men in the new republic's elite was influenced by Freemasonry.

George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Jackson, and Henry Clay all claimed membership.
The order for African American men was founded by Prince Hall, a free leather worker in Boston.
Many Americans were suspicious of the organization because of its secrecy, elitism, rituals, and secular ideals.

Anti-Masonic suspicion would emerge for the first time as an organized political force in upstate New York in the 19th century.

The disappearance and probable murder of William Morgan triggered this.
The book claimed to reveal the order's secret rituals, and it upset other Freemasons.
There were attempts to prevent the book from being published, including an attempt to burn the press and a conspiracy to have Morgan jailed for alleged debts.
Morgan vanished in September.
He was forced into a carriage by four men.
When a corpse washed up on the shore of Lake Ontario, Morgan's wife and friends claimed that it was his.

Many people were convinced by the Morgan story that Masonry was dangerous.

The publicity surrounding the trials transformed local outrage into a political movement that had significant power in New York and parts of New England.

The movement gave Americans an explanation as to why the republic was controlled by a secret society.

Local anti-Masonic committees in New York decided not to vote for anyone who belonged to the Freemasons.

The Anti-Masonic Declaration of Independence was the basis for the Anti-Masonic Party.
The Anti-Masons won 12 percent of the vote for governor in New York in 1828.

The leaders of the Anti-Masonic Party folded their movement into the Whig Party after a poor showing in the presidential elections.

The Anti-Masonic Party's absorption into the Whig coalition demonstrated the importance of conspiracy theories.
Some of Andrew Jackson's enemies were able to detect a foreign plot in the form of the Bank of the United States because of the Freemasons.
nativists blamed immigrants.

Catholicism may have been the most important foreign threat detected by nativists.

Nativists were horrified as more and more Catholic immigrants arrived in American cities.
The immigrants spoke unfamiliar languages and had different beliefs.

Europe's history of warfare between Catholics and Protestants was remembered by nativists.

They were worried that Catholics would bring religious violence to the United States.

A mob of Protestants attacked a Catholic con vent in Boston in the summer of 1834.

There were rumors that a woman was being held against her will by the nuns.
The men burned the convent to the ground.
A young woman named Rebecca Reed, who had spent time in the convent, published a memoir describing abuses she claimed the nuns had directed toward novices and students.

The Catholic faith was seen by many Protestants as a superstition that made them slaves to the pope in Rome.

They accused catholic priests of preying on young women.
Their ancestors had feared that England would be conquered by Catholicism.

In 1834, the painter and inventor Samuel F. B. Morse warned that European tyrants were planning to send Catholic immigrants to the United States.

The Protestant minister was lecturing in various cities around the same time.

It was racial inequality that exposed American democracy's limits.

State governments had lowered their property requirements to make it easier for poorer men to vote.
Whites were worried that free black men would go to the polls in large numbers.
New laws made racial discrimination the basis of American democracy.

Only two states limited black voting rights during the Revolution.

Almost all states did by that time.
The New York state constitution enfranchised most white male taxpayers but only the richest black men.
In Pennsylvania, black voting was banned completely in the 18th century.

One of the richest people in Philadelphia was excluded from the new Pennsylvania constitution.

James Forten, a free-born sailmaker who had served in the American Revolution, became a wealthy merchant.
He used his wealth and influence to promote the abolition of slavery, and after the constitution he undertook a lawsuit to protect his right to vote.
His voting rights were terminated after he lost.

Andrew Jackson's rise worsened race relations because of the social tensions that had preceded it.

Four hundred thousand free blacks lived in America by the end of the decade.

Riots in American cities during the 1830s were caused by racial and ethnic resentment.

In Philadelphia, thousands of white rioters torched an antislavery meeting house and attacked black churches and homes.
The editor of a newspaper was murdered for defending his printing press.
The popular culture was influenced by 42 racial tensions.
He was copied by many other white entertainers.
They turned cruel stereotypes into one of America's favorite forms of entertainment by borrowing from the work of real black performers.

In the 1830s, some whites joined free black activists in testing racial inequality.

They came from the lower middle class and usually lived in northern cities.
They expected to rise in the world, even though they were not rich.

The Female Anti-Slavery Society in Boston included women whose husbands sold coal, mended clothes, and baked bread, as well as women from wealthy families.

Many slaves were shoemakers in Lynn.
They sold their own handmade goods at antislavery fund-raising fairs and organized boycotts of consumer products that came from slave labor.
The antislavery movement was a way for both men and women to have a say in American life.

The debates about slavery reflected tensions in the society.

Whether American democracy had room for people of different races and religions was the ultimate question.
Some people struggled to make American society more welcoming.

Democrats or Whigs said no.

Content contributions by Christopher Childers, William Cossen, Adam Costanzo, and Nathaniel C. Green were edited by Jonathan Wilfred Wilson.

Ross M. Lence is from Indianapolis, IN.

Andrew Jackson made a statement regarding nullification on December 10, 1832.

The Bank of the United States was vetoed by Andrew Jackson.

Quoted in ibid.

Quoted in ibid.

"Henry Clay to Francis Brooke" was quoted in Michael F.

A Government and a City.