4.7 Expanding Democracy

LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Explain the causes and effects of the expansion of participatory democracy from 1800 to 1848.

INTRODUCTION

• The changing politics from 1800 to 1848 paralleled complex social and economic changes.

GREATER EQUALITY

• Visitors to the US were amazed by the informal manners and democratic attitudes of Americans

  • In hotels, men and women from all classes ate together at common tables, on stagecoaches, steamboats, and later railroad cars, there was only one class for passengers

    - rich and pook alike sat together in same compartments

  • Visitors could not distingush between classes in the US.

    - men of all backgrounds wore simple dark trousers and jackets, while less wealthy women emulated fanciful and confining styles

  • Equality was becoming a governing principle in American society.

RISE OF A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY

• Among the white majority, people shared a principle belief of equality

  • More percisely, the equal opportunity for white males

    - these beliefs ignored the enslavement of Africans, and descriminated against everyone who was not white.

    - equality of opportunity would at least allow a young man of humble origins to rise as far as his natural talent and industry would take him (¨self-made man¨)

  • Restrictions, both legal and cultural, limited what women could do.

    - there was no equivalent belief in the ¨self-made woman.¨

    - In the 1840s, feminist would take up the theme of equal rights and insist that it should be applied to both women and men.

POLITICS OF THE COMMON MAN

• Between 1824 and 1840, politics moved out of the fine homes of rich southern planters and merchants who dominated the government in past eras

  • Poltics began to move into middle- and lower-class homes

  • Several factors contributed to the spread of democracy

    - new suffrage laws, change in political parties and campaigns, improved education, and increased in the newspaper circulation.

UNIVERSAL WHITE MALE SUFFRAGE

• Western states newly adminited into the union (Indiana, Illinois, Missouri) all adopted states constutitions

  • Constitutions allowed white males to vote and hold office

    - newer constitutions omitted religious or property qualification for voting

    - most eastern states followed, eliminating such restrictions—→

    - white males being able to vote regardless of their social class or religion throughout the country (changes in voting laws and who could hold political offices changed)

CHANGES TO PARTIES AND CAMPAIGNS

• Political parties quickly became important

  • Channeled the energies of people into choosing leaders

PARTY NOMINATING CONVENTIONS

• Candiates had been commonly nominated by states legislatures or cacuses (closed-door meetings of a political party’s leaders)

  • Common citizens had no opportunity to participate

    - cacuses were later replaced by nominating conventions

    - party politicians and voters would gather in large meeting hall to nominate candidates.

  • Anti-Masonic party

    - first to hold such a nominating convention

    - method was more open to popular participation (more democratic)

POPULAR ELECTION OF ELECTORS

• In the presidential election of 1832, south carolina used the system of state legislature chosen electors for presidents

  • Other states had adopted more democratic methods for allowing voters to choose a state’s slate of presidental electiors

TWO-PARTY SYSTEM

• Popular election of presidental electors (and indirectly president) had important consequences for the two-party system

  • Campaigns for president became conducted on a national scale

    - candidates needed large political parties to organize these campaigns.

RISE OF THIRD PARTIES

• While only large national parties (democrats and whigs) hoped to win presidency, other political parties also emerged.

  • Anti-masonic party and the Workingmen’s party

    - reached out to groups of people who previously had shown little interest in politics

  • Anti-masonic party

    - attacked the secret socities of Masons and acused them of beloning to an antidemocratic elite

  • Workingmen’s party

    - tried to unite artisans and skilled laborers into political organization

MORE ELECTED OFFICES

• Duing the jacksonian era, a larger proportion of state and local officals were elected to office instead of being appointed

  • Change gave voters more voice in thier government

    - tended to increase their interest in partcipating in elections.

POPULAR CAMPAIGNING

• Candidates for office directed their campigns to the interest and predjudices of the common people

  • Politics became a form of local entertainment

    - campaigns featured parades of floats and marching bands and large rallies in which voters were treated to free food and drink

    - negative side included candidates resorting to personal attacks and ignoring issues ( a politician would attack the status of an opponent and make him seem unfriendly).

SPOILS SYSTEM AND ROTATION OF OFFICEHOLDERS

• Winning government jobs became the lifeblood of party organizations

  • President Jackson believed in appointing people to federal jobs strictly according to whether they had actively campaigned for the democratic party

    - any previous holder of the officer who was no a democrat was fired and replaced with a loyal democrat.

  • Soils system

    - practice of dispensing government jobs in return for party loyalty

    - victors seize the wealth/¨spoils¨ of the defeated

  • Jackson believed in a system of rotation in office

    - limiting a person to one term, and appointing another deserving democrat in that place

    - Jackson defended the replacement and rotation as a democratic reform

  • Both the spoils system and rotation of office

    - affirmed democratic ideal that one man was as good as another and that ordinary Americans were capable of holding any government office.

    - beliefs helped build a stong two-party system.