Because none of the candidates had a majority, the election was sent to the House of Representatives to choose from among the top three. Illness forced Crawford out of the running, and the choice was between Adams and Jackson. Because Adams had supported the American System, Henry Clay threw his support in Congress behind him. The House voted Adams into office over Jackson, who had received the greater number of electoral votes. Charging that a corrupt bargain had been made, Jackson’s supporters split from the Democratic-Republican party and became Democrats. Supporters who remained loyal to Clay were known as National Republicans.
Adams bad a tough time as a “minority president,” but he nevertheless boldly submitted a nationally based program to a Congress and a public that had become increasingly splintered into regional and other special interests. Adams’s support of canals and other internal improvements, his call for the establishment of a national university, and his advocacy of scientific explorations—all for the common, national good—were largely rejected by Congress. Instead, Congress focused on laissez-faire expansionism and frontier individualism. This attitude, which prevailed through the nation, swept Jackson into office in 1828.
Common Man or King Andrew?
Jackson, seventh president of the United States, was the first who had not been born in patrician Virginia or New England. Although he was, in fact, a wealthy man who lived in a magnificent mansion, the Hermitage, outside of Nashville, Tennessee, Jackson was also a self-made son of the Carolina back country. By the political geography of the day, he was a “westerner.”
There can be no doubt that Andrew Jackson’s two terms as president-from 1829 to 1837-brought a greater degree of democracy to American government. Jackson’s contemporaries, as well as subsequent generations of historians, have debated whether the kind of democracy his administration fostered was always a good thing. During the Jackson years, most states abandoned property ownership as a prerequisite for the right to vote. This move broadened the electorate and made elected officials act in a way that was more fully representative of the people who had put them in office. While this transformation nurtured democracy, it also encouraged demagoguery.
Although Jackson introduced a policy of equitable rotation in federal jobs—the forerunner of the modern civil service system—he also brought with him the so-called “spoils system,” boldly rewarding his supporters with lucrative and secure government jobs (known today as political patronage). Jackson also engineered the defeat of a program of internal improvements that was sponsored by Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams. Jackson argued that the plan favored the wealthy; yet, in defeating it, he retarded the development of commerce in the West—the very territory of his constituency. A believer in the paramount importance of preserving the Union, Jackson worked vigorously to silence the growing abolitionist movement, fearing that those who wanted to end slavery would tear the nation apart.
The Monster
Jackson reserved his strongest venom for the Second Bank of the United States. Never persuaded of the bank’s constitutionality, Jackson was also acutely aware that his supporters hated the institution. When the bank’s charter came up for renewal, Jackson opposed it, vetoing a recharter bill. After winning reelection in 1832, he issued an executive order withdrawing all federal deposits from the bank. That was a fatal blow, and the bank fizzled, finally closing its doors when its charter expired in 1836. With the demise of the Second. Bank of the United States, credit became more plentiful, and westward settlement proceeded more rapidly. But for the rest of the 19th century, the American economy—especially in the rough-and-tumble West-was doomed to a punishing roller-coaster ride, repeatedly rising to “boom” only to plummet to “bust.”
The Least You Need to Know
Monroe was a popular leader, who nevertheless presided over a period of great economic hardship and bitter sectional rivalries.
The “Age of Jackson” brought with it a vast expansion of the concept of democracy. However, this period also sacrificed some of the reason and restraint that had characterized the nation under the “Founding Fathers.”
Word for the Day
A tariff, as the word was used during the era of Monroe, is a tax on imported goods. Tariffs produce significant revenues for the government, and they “protect” certain domestic industries by giving their goods an artificial price advantage over imports. However, tariffs also result in higher prices to domestic purchasers because the higher costs are ultimately passed on to them.
Word for the Day
Specie payments are payments in gold and silver rather than paper money.
Voice from the Past
John Quincy Adams, recoiling from the bitter debate, called the Missouri Compromise the “title page to a great tragic volume,” and the aged Thomas Jefferson said that the clamor over Missouri, “like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror.”
Word for the Day
Laissez-faire, French for “let it happen,” describes both a general political attitude of not interfering or intervening in the actions of others and, more specifically, an economic doctrine opposed to government regulation of commerce beyond the bare minimum.
Trails of Tears
(1817-1842)
