Jacksonian Democracy: Constituencies and Key Political Issues

The Contours of Jacksonian Democracy

Introduction to Jacksonian Democracy

• This module traces the characteristics of Jacksonian democracy, expanding on its origins.
• Key areas of focus include its constituency and major political issues.
• Strong connections to American capitalism and the Market Revolution are central to understanding Jackson and his party's perspective.
• Other important issues include states' rights, the institution of slavery, and a specific vision of "the people."
• The objective is to outline the ideology, political rhetoric, and structure of this broad coalition.

Key Elements of the Jacksonian Coalition

The coalition broadly included:

• Western migrant settlers
• Wage laborers
• Yeoman farmers
• Enslavers

Western Migrant Settlers

• Continued Migration: After the War of $1812$, migration to Western lands by Americans continued at a strong pace.
  • More details will be provided in Module $4$.
  • In the first two decades of the $19^{th}$ century, $6$ states joined the Union.
  • Populations in these states grew rapidly in the following decade.
• Quest for Land Ownership: Migrants sought land ownership as a model of empowerment.
• Dependence on Credit: To acquire land, easy access to credit was crucial as most lacked the capital to purchase land outright.
  • This made Western migrants highly dependent on local and state banks.
• "Hate but Dependent" Relationship with Banks: Migrants were distrustful of banks yet reliant on them.
  • Banks often preferred making deals with land speculators (safer bets for larger credit extensions) over smaller, riskier loans to migrants lacking financial stability.
• Responses to Obstacles: Many migrants responded by "squatting" or claiming land simply by occupying it.
• Financial Ruin: The Panic of $1819$ financially ruined many who secured loans, further cementing anti-bank sentiment.
  • The panic's causes were complex but widely attributed to the banking system, translating politically into a broader indictment of the economic and banking systems.
• Appeal of Jackson: Voters found Jackson's depiction of a corrupt, greedy financial and political elite manipulating the system to their benefit appealing.
• Economic Populism: Jackson's populism valorized individual laboring Americans and their families, with Western migrants forming an essential part of his base.
• Jackson's Biography: Jackson himself experienced financial panics in the $1790s$ in Tennessee, suffering losses but also benefiting greatly from the financial system, which allowed him to become a large-scale enslaver and gain socioeconomic entrenchment. He identified with the migrants' distaste for the economic system while simultaneously benefiting from and resenting it.
• White Western migrants were essential to Jackson's coalition.

Wage Laborers

• Support for Jackson: While not uniformly supportive, a majority of free wage-laboring Americans identified with Jacksonian Democrats.
• Impact of Market Revolution: The Market Revolution shifted labor from independent artisans to dependent wage labor as manufacturing and industrialization grew, especially in Northern cities by the second decade of the $19^{th}$ century.
  • This led to disempowering circumstances regarding wages, working conditions, and hours.
• Vulnerability After Panic of $1819$: The panic highlighted the vulnerability and dependency of wage laborers, leading to the start of organized labor protests and the formation of unions in the $1820s$.
• Emerging Working-Class Identity: This period saw the development of a working-class identity defined against capitalist investors, employers, and the rising managerial class.
• Concerns about Inequality: Like Western migrants, wage workers worried the market economy was creating a society where they were losing out and becoming dependent on rich, elite, and well-connected Americans.
• Jackson as a Champion: Many wage laborers viewed Jackson as a critic of banks and socio-economic elites, seeing him as a symbol of political power used to defend the "producing classes." He gave them a sense of dignity and a "voice."
  • Despite the complicated economic consequences of Jackson's actual policies for workers, the symbolic appeal was strong.
• Jackson's Stance on Unions: Paradoxically, while Jackson's rhetoric resonated with workers, he did not directly support unions, generally favoring a laissez-faire political approach (though he did interfere in the economy).
• $1830s$ Cartoon Example: A political cartoon from the $1830s$ depicted a "working man" as virtuous and looking to politics to uphold liberty, contrasting with an aristocrat making a deal with the devil, symbolizing the perceived dichotomy between the virtuous many and the corrupt few.

Yeoman Farmers

• Resistance to Market Revolution: Support for Jackson also came from Americans, North and South, who were either outside of or resistant to the Market Revolution, including non-enslaving or non-commercialized farmers.
• Pre-Market Practices: These "yeoman farmers" practiced pre-Market Revolution farming, including subsistence agriculture and neighborhood exchange of goods and labor.
• Pre-Capitalist Attributes: Their households displayed characteristics of pre-capitalist American society: large families, family-based labor, a patriarchal family structure, a barter-based economy, and relative isolation from market forces.
• Majority in the $1830s$: In the $1830s$, a majority of farming households still operated outside the direct influence of the Market Revolution, representing a large number of potential voters.
• Shared Ideology: While not directly dependent on the capitalist economy, many yeoman farmers shared a conception of American society and politics with wage laborers and Western migrants, contrasting the virtuous labor of the "many" with the non-laboring wealthy "few" who held disproportionate political power and manipulated things for their own aims.

Enslavers

• Key, Complicated Constituency: Enslavers formed a key, albeit complex, part of Jackson's base.
• States' Rights Creed: The Missouri Crisis had highlighted growing divisions over slavery, leading enslavers to strongly embrace the states' rights creed to fear an active national government potentially threatening slavery.
• Southern Base: Jackson's Democratic Party found its firmest base in the South among both enslavers and non-enslavers.
• The Tariff of $1828$ and Nullification Crisis (During Jackson's First Term):
  • The Tariff of $1828$ had been passed before Jackson's presidency.
  • Many prominent enslavers expected Jackson to oppose renewing the tariff.
  • However, the Jackson administration maintained it to solidify support in key Mid-Atlantic swing states (e.g., New York, Philadelphia) where emerging industries favored protective tariffs.
  • Enslavers opposed tariffs because their export-oriented economy relied on imported goods and feared European retaliation for higher duties.
  • By $1832$, John C. Calhoun led a movement against the tariff, articulating the doctrine of nullification, arguing state legislatures could declare federal laws unconstitutional and non-applicable within their borders.
  • The South Carolina legislature nullified the tariff in $1832$.
  • Jackson viewed this as a personal threat to his executive power and to the federal government's authority and law.
  • Irony: Jackson, himself an enslaver and generally emphasizing states' rights, asserted federal power during the Nullification Crisis. Later, during the Civil War era, he was lionized as an asserter of federal power against secession, as shown in a cartoon depicting Calhoun bowing to Jackson.
  • Southern Response: Despite South Carolina's nullification, no other state legislature joined them, indicating that the majority of Southern enslavers still believed their interests were best served within the Democratic Party due to its general emphasis on states' rights and strong Southern support.
  • However, some enslavers became open to an opposition political party due to this conflict.
• Van Buren's Vision: Martin Van Buren, a key figure in forming the Democratic Party, aimed to create a cross-sectional alliance joining the "planters" (enslavers) of the South and the "plain Republicans" of the North.
• Successful Alliance: By $1832$, this objective had largely succeeded, creating a cross-sectional alliance mostly among white male voters with Jacksonian Democrats, primarily based on economic issues.

Jacksonian Democratic Ideology and Major Issues

Economic Populism

• Context: Jacksonian Democrats gained power during the height of the Market Revolution.
• Balancing Ideals: They sought to balance the older agrarian ideals of Jeffersonian vision (yeoman farmers) with the realities of the new market economy.
• Not Anti-Market: Jacksonian Democrats did not reject the Market Revolution outright. Instead, they aimed to make it beneficial for "the people" (as they defined them) rather than exclusively for "the privileged few."
• Less Government Involvement: This translated into lessened federal government involvement in the market, believing less government involvement made capitalism more democratic.
• Ending Special Privileges: A primary goal was to end the "special privileges" enjoyed by bankers, speculators, and other financial and politically well-connected elites – collectively termed the "money power."
  • The "money power" concept, depicting a nebulous group conspiring behind the scenes, tapped into deep-rooted fears of political corruption and conspiracy.
  • Connection to "Slave Power": The concept of the "money power" would later be echoed in the idea of the "slave power," which similarly depicted a few elite, corrupt interests oppressing the masses, ironically turned against slavery, an institution Jacksonians often defended or silenced as a political issue.
• Vision: Jacksonian Democrats aimed to put the Market Revolution "into the hands of the people and out of the hands of the federal government."
• Jackson's Symbolism: Jackson's personal narrative reinforced this ideology. A famous story, often depicted (e.g., in a post-Civil War image), recountshis refusal as an $11$-year-old child, briefly captured during the Revolutionary War, to shine the boots of a British general. This symbolized his stance as a common person against aristocratic elites, a narrative that extended to his presidency in battling American political and economic elites.

Corporations

• Rise of Corporations: By the second decade of the $19^{th}$ century, corporations were becoming prevalent.
  • The Marshall Court, as discussed in Module $1$, legally supported corporations, which were created by legislative charters.
• Critiques: Critics argued that these charters granted monopolies and concentrated wealth, power, and special privilege in the hands of a select few.
• Support: Supporters, aligned with the American System, contended that corporations were essential for a functioning market economy.
• Jacksonian View: For Jacksonian Democrats, corporations symbolized inequality, special interests, elite connections, and potential corruption.

The American System (Opposing View)

• Jacksonian Democrats were opposed by those who advocated for a more centralized and active national government to oversee the Market Revolution, epitomized by Henry Clay's "American System," which emphasized federal roles in facilitating a market economy.

The Bank of the U.S. (The Bank War)

• Symbol of Corruption: For Jackson and his supporters, the Bank of the U.S., led by Nicholas Biddle, was the ultimate symbol of corruption, greed, and inequality in the American Republic.
  • It was popularly, though simplistically, blamed for the Panic of $1819$.
• Consolidation of Power: Critics argued the Bank represented an illegitimate consolidation of national government power over the market, favoring the interests of the elite and privileged few (especially businessmen and financial interests) who controlled the credit system and currency.
  • This was seen as coming "at the expense of the plain people" (farmers, wage workers, and enslavers, who relied on market forces for cotton prices and credit with enslaved people as collateral).
• Jackson's Declaration: Jackson insisted the Bank represented a "concentration of power in the hands of a few men irresponsible to the people." In his veto message, he accused the "rich and powerful" of bending "the government to their selfish purposes" while "the many, the people suffer."
• Defenders' View: Defenders of the Bank (businessmen, creditors, manufacturers, merchants) saw it as essential for stabilizing the economy, creating coherent economic exchange, linking regions, providing a stable currency, and fostering an orderly financial system and market revolution.
• The $1832 Re-charter: The Bank's charter was set to expire in $1836$. Nicholas Biddle and Henry Clay decided to move up the re-charter application to $1832$, making it a central political issue for Jackson's re-election, believing he would suffer.
  • Congress passed the re-charter bill in $1832$.
  • Jackson vetoed the re-chartering, seeing the Bank as the embodiment of anti-democratic forces.
• $1832$ Presidential Election: Henry Clay ran against Jackson in $1832$, confident the Bank issue would secure him victory.
  • Jackson overwhelmingly defeated Clay, demonstrating that a majority of white male voters supported his view of the Bank and the broader narrative of an economic system acting against the interests of the majority.
  • This endorsed the Jacksonian vision of economic policy and politics.
• Irony of Consequences: The dismantling of the Bank of the U.S. paradoxically led to the proliferation of state banks that lent more recklessly, becoming a significant factor in causing the Panic of $1837$.
  • While the Bank of the U.S. played a part in the Panic of $1819$, its absence contributed to the Panic of $1837$.
• By $1832$, Jacksonian Democrats had clearly won the political battle on this issue, establishing a potent political ideology and rhetoric, though a new opposition party would eventually emerge.