Part III and IV

Era of Good Feelings

  • James Monroe (VA)

  • only 1 political party - Democratic Republican

  • Federalist party had declined

Seminole War

  • Seminole Indians hid in the swamp and stole from settlements

  • Jackson was only supposed to punish the Seminoles (almost started a way with Spain and Britain)

  • Adams-Onis Treaty

  • John Quincy Adams supported Jackson

Henry Clay and the Missouri Compromise

  • 1820

  • if a free state is added, a slave state is added (for balance)

  • Missouri wants to join as a slave state

Henry Clay

  • As part of the compromise, Missouri is added (slave state) and Maine becomes a separate free state (no longer part of Massachusetts)

  • 36° 30 Mins line - no slavery above that line

  • compromise would last for around 34 years

Monroe Doctrine (1823)

  • warned European powers against further colonization or intervention in the Americas

Election of 1824

  • Henry Clay (KY)

  • John Quincy Adams (MA)

  • William H. Crawford

  • Andrew Jackson (TN)

Corrupt Bargain

  • John Quincy Adams becomes President

  • Henry Clay becomes the Secretary of State

  • Andrew Jackson resigns from the Senate and calls Henry Caly the “Judas of the West”

John Quincy Adams

  • not well liked

  • returns to the House of Representatives after his presidency (fights against slavery and Indian removal)

  • Supports the Tariff of 1828 (Tariff of Abominations)

Election of 1828

  • Andrew Jackson wins

  • John Quincy Adams only serves one term

Andrew Jackson

  • “Old Hickory” → hard to cut

  • first president from the West (of that time)

  • 2nd president who didn’t go to college

  • first Democratic president

  • first president to survive an assassination

  • grew up poor; self-made

Rise of Mass Politics

  • still have to be white and male

  • removes property owning requirement

Alexis de Tocqueville

  • wrote Democracy in America

Spoils System

  • if you win the election, you give government position jobs to your political friends

Nullification Crisis

  • caused by the Tariff of 1828 (high tariff rates hurts southern agriculture, doesn’t help them due to little industry)

  • The South Carolina Exposition → John C. Calhoun

  • It argues that based off the VA and the KY resolutions and Compact Theory, the states have the right to nullify laws within their borders

  • “Nullies” → people in SC all fired up about the tariff who are ready to go to war and threatened to take SC out of the Union

  • Andrew Jackson dispatches the navy to SC to prepare an army

  • Henry Clay intervenes and passes a smaller tariff that backs the rates down (save the Union)

Peggy Eaton Affair

  • wife of Andrew Jackson’s friend

  • isn’t liked by Cabinet members’ wives (she is young and pretty while they are older; they feel jealous)

  • Jackson dissolves his cabinet and chooses Martin Van Buren to be his next Vice-President

“Kitchen cabinet”

  • informal group of friends

  • Jackson stops meeting the official cabinet

Black Hawk War

  • Indian resistance

  • Abraham Lincoln takes part in it

Indian Removal

  • forces Indians to move west

  • “5 civilized tribes” → Cherokee, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek), Chicksaw, Seminole

  • those tribes had adapted white settlers’ way of life including having slaves

  • Georgia Legislatures claims they have the right to take the Cherokee’s land

  • Cherokee Nation v. Georgia

  • Worchester v. Georgia

  • Andrew Jackson ignores the Supreme Court’s rulings

Trail of Tears

  • Many die (weather, disease, etc.)

  • forced move westward

  • happens when Martin Van Buren is president

  • Jackson thought he was helping/protecting the tribes

  • area for Indian Nation later becomes Oklahoma

Jackson and the Bank War

  • 2nd U.S. Bank - Jackson hated it (because he was the “Champion of the Common Man”)

  • Jackson declares war against it

  • Henry Clay forces the renewal of the bank to happen on an election year (1832)

  • Jackson vetoes it

Free-Masons: group of men that try to do good for their environment (secret society)

Nicholas Biddle

  • president of the bank

  • Biddle starts calling in loans - causes financial crisis

  • Andrew Jackson keeps trying to pull out the deposits

  • smaller banks start calling in loans to

  • “if the big bank gets a little shaky, the smaller banks get even shakier that that”

  • money/currency becomes unstable (Specie circular: coin → contracts money supply)

  • Martin Van Buren is blamed

Whig Party

  • “Jackson is acting like a king”

Founders: Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster

  • they all hate Jackson

Election of 1836

  • 3 Whig candidates run (“Favorite Sons” → Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster)

  • Henry Clay is still the Speaker of the House

  • Van Buren wins because of Jackson’s popularity

  • Trail of Tears start

Panic of 1837

  • There is no longer a bank

  • little banks pop up, people put their money in it, and the bank closes so they lose their money

  • not enough circulation of money

  • the common man is affected

  • Van Buren’s campaign is hurt

Log Cabin Campaign

  • “If you can’t beat them, join them”

  • William Henry Harrison → hero of Tippecanoe

  • “Tippecanoe and Tyler too!”

  • copies Jackson in order to beat Van Buren (war hero and supporting the common man)

  • William Henry Harrison wins the election