chapter 12: the rise of a mass democracy (1824 - 1840) - part 3

part 3 (12.15 - 12.21)

What kind of leader was Martin Van Buren?

• He was the first president born under the American flag.

• He was a skilled strategist and spoilsman called the "wizard of Albany," with wide experience in government.

What handicaps did Van Buren face as president?

• Many Democrats resented him as a machine-made candidate who rode in on Jackson's coattails.

• He lacked Jackson's popularity but inherited his many enemies.

What problems troubled Van Buren's presidency?

• Rebellions in Canada in 1837 caused border incidents that threatened war with Britain.

• Northern antislavery activists opposed annexing Texas.

• Worst of all, he inherited a severe depression from Jackson's policies.

What caused the panic of 1837?

• Rampant speculation in western lands, canals, roads, railroads, and enslaved people, much of it on wildcat bank credit.

• Jackson's Bank War and Specie Circular made the shaky economy worse.

• Wheat crop failures and British bank failures, which led British investors to call in loans, added to the crisis.

What were the effects of the panic of 1837?

• Hundreds of banks collapsed, including some pet banks holding government money.

• Prices dropped, land sales fell, customs revenue dried up, and factories closed.

• It was the nation's first major depression.

How did Whigs and Van Buren respond differently to the depression?

• Whigs wanted active government: more bank credit, higher tariffs, and support for internal improvements.

• Van Buren followed the Jacksonian belief in keeping government out of the economy and rejected those ideas.

What was the Independent Treasury (the "Divorce Bill")?

• Van Buren wanted to separate, or "divorce," the government from banking.

• Government money would be kept in vaults in several large cities instead of private banks.

• This kept federal funds safe but reduced the credit available to the economy.

What happened to the Independent Treasury?

• It passed in 1840 and was repealed by the Whigs in 1841.

• Democrats restored it in 1846, and it lasted until the Civil War.

How did Americans come to settle in Mexican Texas?

• After Mexico won independence in 1821, it gave Stephen Austin a large land grant in 1823.

• Austin agreed to bring in three hundred American families.

• Settlers were supposed to become Mexican citizens and Roman Catholics.

Why did conflict grow between Texans and the Mexican government?

• Settlers ignored the requirements to become Catholic and Mexican and kept bringing in enslaved people.

• In 1830 Mexico abolished slavery and banned further American immigration, but settlers defied it.

• Santa Anna jailed Stephen Austin in 1833 and wiped out local rights in 1835.

Who were the notable Americans in Texas?

• By 1835, about thirty thousand Americans lived in Texas, some "G.T.T." (Gone to Texas) to escape the law.

• They included Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and Sam Houston, a former governor of Tennessee.

Who was Stephen Austin?

• He carried out his father Moses Austin's plan for an American colony in Texas.

• He tried sincerely to make his settlers good Mexican citizens until Mexico's government became too authoritarian.

Who were the Tejanos, and what role did they play in the Texas Revolution?

• They were Texans of Mexican descent; within ten years the Anglos outnumbered them ten to one.

• Several signed the Texas declaration of independence, and seven died defending the Alamo.

• Lorenzo de Zavala, a Mexican liberal, became vice president of the Texas republic.

How was the Texas Revolution more than a conflict between cultures?

• It was also a fight between local rights and the central authority of Mexico's government.

• Like the American revolutionaries, Texans first demanded their rights under the Mexican constitution of 1824 before rebelling.

What happened at the Alamo (1836)?

• Texans declared independence in 1836 and named Sam Houston commander.

• Santa Anna's army of about six thousand besieged nearly two hundred Texans in San Antonio for thirteen days and killed them all.

• "Remember the Alamo!" became a rallying cry.

What happened at Goliad (1836)?

• About four hundred American volunteers surrendered to the Mexican army and were then killed as "pirates."

• "Remember Goliad!" became another rallying cry.

What happened at the Battle of San Jacinto (April 21, 1836)?

• Sam Houston retreated east, then surprised Santa Anna's army during its siesta.

• The Texans wiped out the Mexican force and captured Santa Anna.

• Santa Anna signed treaties to withdraw and recognize the Rio Grande as Texas's border, then repudiated them as signed under duress.

How did the United States help Texas win independence?

• American volunteers and supplies poured into Texas despite U.S. neutrality laws, which the government did not enforce.

• Jackson recognized the Lone Star Republic the day before he left office in 1837.

Why was Texas not annexed after 1837?

• Texas petitioned for annexation in 1837.

• Northern antislavery activists said Texas was a "slavocracy" plot to add slave territory.

• Texas was large enough to create as many as five slave states.

Who did the Whigs nominate in 1840, and why?

• They united behind William Henry Harrison of Ohio, the hero of Tippecanoe and the Thames.

• His views were vague, so he had no issues and no enemies to attack.

• John Tyler, a Virginia slaveowner and former Democrat, was his running mate.

How did the "log cabin and hard cider" campaign begin?

• A Democratic editor mocked Harrison as a poor old man who should be happy with a pension, a log cabin, and hard cider.

• The Whigs adopted the log cabin and hard cider as symbols of a humble man of the people.

How did the Whigs portray Harrison and Van Buren in 1840?

• Harrison was the poor "Farmer of North Bend," called from his plow to drive out corrupt spoilsmen.

• Van Buren was a dandy aristocrat who ate French food from golden plates.

• In truth, Harrison came from a Virginia elite family and lived in a sixteen-room mansion.

What was the slogan of the 1840 campaign?

"Tippecanoe and Tyler too."

What were the results of the election of 1840?

• Harrison won a close popular vote but an overwhelming electoral vote of 234 to 60.

• Voters blamed Van Buren for the depression.

What real choice did voters face in 1840?

• Whigs wanted to expand and stimulate the economy.

• Democrats favored cutting back and ending powerful banks and corporations.

What did the election of 1840 show about the democratic style?

• Being an aristocrat was now a political liability; candidates had to appeal to ordinary voters.

• Daniel Webster even apologized for not being born in a log cabin.

• Wealthy leaders still held office, but had to hide social pretensions and show the common touch.

What were the limits of Jacksonian democracy?

Political participation remained all white and all male.

Why had a lasting two-party system not existed before the 1830s?

• The Jeffersonians had absorbed the Federalists' programs, so the Federalists faded.

• Many believed parties were a dangerous "faction" in a virtuous republic.

How did Democrats and Whigs differ in their beliefs?

• Democrats stressed individual liberty, states' rights, and keeping government out of social and economic life.

• Whigs stressed the harmony of society and the common good and wanted to use government to achieve their goals.

What policies did the Whigs favor?

• A renewed national bank, protective tariffs, internal improvements, and public schools.

• Increasingly, moral reforms such as prohibition of liquor and eventually abolition of slavery.

How were the Democrats and Whigs alike?

• Both grew out of Jeffersonian republicanism.

• Both were mass-based "catchall" parties drawing voters from all classes and all sections.

How did the two-party system help hold the Union together?

• Because each party had members in every section, it had to compromise internally and avoid extreme positions.

• This slowed the rise of purely sectional parties and suppressed the slavery issue.

• When the two-party system broke down in the 1850s, the Union was in danger.

How did historians before 1945 view Jacksonian democracy?

• Nineteenth-century eastern historians saw Jackson as a backwoods barbarian and his democracy as mob rule.

• Frederick Jackson Turner and his followers saw the western frontier as the source of democratic virtue and Jackson as its hero.

How did Arthur Schlesinger Jr. interpret Jacksonian democracy?

• In The Age of Jackson (1945), he saw it as a class conflict, not a sectional one.

• Poor farmers, laborers, and noncapitalists fought eastern business interests, symbolized by the bank.

How did historians after Schlesinger challenge his view?

• Richard Hofstadter said Jacksonians were rising entrepreneurs who wanted laissez-faire policies.

• Lee Benson found that ethnic and religious divisions, not class, shaped party loyalties.

How did Sean Wilentz and Charles Sellers interpret the era?

• Wilentz said artisans threatened by new manufacturing supported Jackson against emerging capitalism.

• Sellers argued in The Market Revolution that Jacksonian democracy was an attempt to resist capitalist expansion.

How do more recent historians like Daniel Walker Howe view the Jacksonians?

• Howe said the democratic surge also led to racist policies like Indian removal and the defense of slavery.

• He argued that mass politics came from the transportation and communication revolutions, not as a reaction against industrialization.