The Rise of Jackson's Democratic Party

I'm Sean Adams, professor of history at the University of Florida,

and I'm going to talk about Jackson and Federal Power.

Probably the best way to start that off would

be to start off by talking about Andrew Jackson,

the person who gave his name to the era.

In many ways,

some historians still refer to this period as the

Age of Jackson or the rise of Jacksonian democracy,

uh, the era of the Jacksonian common man.

Now Andrew Jackson is a divisive figure. Uh, he was at the time.

He will remain to be, uh, if you want to start an argument,

start talking about Andrew Jackson, and he might have liked it that way.

He was kind of an argumentative person,

but I think that there are still good reasons why we refer

to Andrew Jackson when we talk about this period of Jacksonian America,

the period roughly from the end of the War of 18 12 up through 18 48.

And the reason why is because Andrew Jackson's administration

and his rise to political power triggered a

number of really important transformations in American politics,

it gave rise to new notions of citizenship.

It gave rise to new ideas about who should be in power.

It gave rise to a new system of political parties.

Um,

that would remain remarkably stable for a few generations

until the Civil War would sweep it away.

So there are good reasons, I think, for adding Jackson's name on this period,

so long as we don't see it as a celebration of his legacy

and more as a descriptive label that we used to talk about,

um, the changes that occurred in American politics and federal power.

So what changes are at work here?

Well,

in order understand the ways in which

Andrew Jackson helped revolutionise American politics.

We have to look at the state of

American politics around the time of the Constitution.

Now these are late 18th century ideas about the way politics should work,

ones that are very foreign to us now, basically,

the drafters of the Constitution.

The folks who kind of created the system of national

government that we still have in the United States today

believe that there needed to be buffers between the average

voter and positions of great power like the president.

That's why we have the Electoral College.

They also now they didnt explicitly set

out suffrage requirements in the federal Constitution.

But Americans in every state

had pretty definitive ideas about who should vote and who shouldn't vote,

who should hold office and who shouldn't hold office.

And those are late 18th century ideas.

The idea was that stakeholders should be providing

those roles and by stakeholders what I mean,

our folks that own property,

uh, folks that in the political philosophy of the day,

we're capable of making clear headed independent decisions.

They weren't going to be swayed by anyone.

And although we find it again to be a very, very foreign kind of idea,

that philosophy ruled out wide swaths

of the population from political participation.

Enslaved people could not be independent

women because they were naturally emotional.

They were naturally suited to follow the directives of men again.

A late 18th century idea, not my own,

but nonetheless they were ruled unsuitable for political participation.

Property list men who often work for wages and worth the whims of their employer.

You couldn't have them participating in politics,

so it's why many states had suffrage requirements based on property.

Why is this important in terms of the Jacksonian era.

Well, if we consider the Jacksonian era to be the one that follows the War of 18 12,

there are a lot of changes at work.

Suffrage is becoming more widespread.

It's still not universal, including women, uh, and including folks of all races.

But it is becoming less bound up with property rights.

Ohio, for example, becomes a state in 18 oh three without a property requirement.

Every one of six states admitted to the union in 18 12

between 18 12 and 18 21 come with universal white suffrage.

That is no significant property restrictions.

By 18 24 only three of 24 states have property restrictions on suffrage,

so those existing 13 states actually revise.

Many of them revised their constitutions to allow for suffrage.

Uh, not based on property. Now.

When they do that,

what they often do is revise it and say there's no property holding requirements,

but one must be white

in order to vote. And that's a big distinction in Jacksonian democracy.

The Jacksonian common man was white,

and Andrew Jackson would have been very comfortable with that as a slave holder,

as someone who dedicated his life to the expansion of the United States,

often at the expense of Native American lands.

Uh, this would not have been a political problem for him.

So what about Jackson's rise? Well, he really bursts onto the national scene

with the War of 18 12 and the Battle of New Orleans, which,

if you know your history of the War of 18 12

is actually fought after the formal peace treaty is signed.

The War of 18 12 was in many ways of military disaster for the United States.

Its capital is burned. British Army's roam across

the mid Atlantic without any kind of opposition. But

Andrew Jackson rallies a small,

group ragtag group of Americans to defend the

city of New Orleans from a British invasion.

And it becomes, although largely a symbolic victory,

a symbolic victory that will catapult him into the national consciousness.

And in 18 24 Andrew Jackson is popular enough that decides to run for president.

Now

there's another change I have to mention, and that is the change in which, uh,

in the manner in which presidential candidates are selected

prior to 18 24

the main way would have been through the caucus

that is all the sitting

Republicans with a Capital R

in Congress would get together

and they would caucus, and they would decide who is going to be president.

There was really only one party at play at the time,

and so there was no major major debate, certainly no campaign.

But as suffrage expanded as old ideas of deference and old ideas of, of,

of property holding and elites running the show without

much input started to seem a bit antiquated.

So did King Caucus, as it was called. And in 18 24

only 66 of 218 representatives actually showed up for the caucus.

And in the end, what we got in 18 24 were for presidential candidates.

Andrew Jackson, the hero of the Battle of New Orleans. Henry Clay,

a rising star from the state of Kentucky.

John Quincy Adams, a kind of establishment figure from New England.

And William Crawford, who was actually a selection of the caucus.

William Crawford was from Georgia,

but he was probably the least electable and represented the kind of

irrelevance that the caucus had sunk down into by 18 24.

Now no candidate got the majority of the electoral vote,

and so the election was thrown to the House.

And when it's thrown to the House,

even though Andrew Jackson was in many ways the favourite to win the election,

instead goes to John Quincy Adams,

in part because of an assumed deal that he had made with Henry Clay,

another aspiring presidential candidate in which Clay

offered the support of his state,

Kentucky.

Because in when the election is thrown to the House, each state has one vote.

Um, and Clay,

Supposedly, we don't have a smoking gun on this.

But Clay supposedly forced Kentuckians to support John Quincy Adams and,

in exchange supposedly allegedly Henry Clay

become secretary of state.

Now Jackson Ian's as they started to call themselves Jacksonian Democrats,

as they will eventually call themselves, argue that this was a corrupt bargain,

an example of how elites were clinging onto the last

bit of power that they had over the American people.

By rigging the system against Andrew Jackson and

this new wave of common men that he represented

these aspiring white men largely from the South and from the West,

who felt themselves dispossessed by the established American

order those folks that were probably newly enfranchised.

And in 18 28 Andrew Jackson is going to run again and he's going to run.

With the help of Martin Van Buren, a crafty New York politician,

His nickname was the Little magician,

and what Martin Van Buren became an

expert in was organising political movements and,

in particular, a political party known as the Democratic Party.

Martin Van Buren developed ideas of mass rallies.

Andrew Jackson's nickname was Old Hickory.

They carried around old hickory sticks.

They rallied through torchlight parades.

The idea, Martin Van Buren surmised, was to get out the vote.

Now that you had this expanded electorate,

these expanded numbers of people that were eligible to vote if you could

get them to vote if you get them excited about their candidate.

Not necessarily a kind of intellectual debate about how Jackson felt

about tariffs or how he felt about internal improvements or canals,

but more the hero of New Orleans.

So someone that I feel like represents my interests.

That was important to the Democratic Party.

And that's how Jackson, uh,

ran his campaign in 18 28 a lot of mud slinging

a lot of calling names between Andrew Jackson and the incumbent,

John Quincy Adams.

It was an ugly campaign, to be sure, But in the end, Jackson was triumphant

and was more than just Andrew Jackson winning the presidency.

It was the arrival of a new kind of system of politics.

In 18 29 for example, um in Jackson's inaugural, 30,000 Americans,

many of whom represented these kind of

newly enfranchised white Southerners and Westerners,

showed up.

Jackson's folks opened up the White House. He called it the people's house.

They descended on the White House. They ripped up the curtains for souvenirs.

They wouldn't leave.

The only way they could get these folks to leave was they dragged the tubs

of punch that have been placed in a celebratory fashion in the White House,

dragged him out of the White House lawn and then locked the doors.

This ragtag bunch really made an impression on the Washingtonians that saw them,

and many of them went back and wrote in diaries and letters.

This is a new type,

a voter, that we're seeing a new influence in American politics

now.

Folks at the time called them the common man.

We'd be a little uncomfortable with that term now

because they were limited.

It was common white men, but nonetheless,

these were folks that were more than likely not to be on property,

more likely not to be non elite.

Uh, not very well educated but nonetheless aspiring.

And they had found their representative in Andrew Jackson

and Martin Van Buren and Andrew Jackson had found their

vehicle for promoting mass politics with the Democratic Party.

Jackson ran on a ticket,

and many candidates at the local level in

local elections assigned themselves to Andrew Jackson.

He was at the head of the ticket. Quite literally.

A ballot would be printed with Andrew Jackson on

the top and the local candidates on the bottom.

It's a process that still used today.

We talk about riding candidates,

coattails that starts with Martin Van Buren and the rise of the Democratic Party.

So in many ways,

the Democratic Party represents the advent of mass politics and

the ushering in of a new actor in American politics.

This common man,

which we should always put in quotes but nonetheless we should understand,

represents a real departure from the kind of deferential and elite based politics

of the early Republic of the 17 nineties and early 18 hundreds.

So the Democratic Party

would try to parlay this newfound electoral power into a series of programmes

that would very much remake the American nation and a new image,

a Jacksonian image and one that would come with

no less controversy than Andrew Jackson himself offered.