Old Hickory
Andrew Jackson who was born on March 15, 1767 and died on June 8, 1845 was the seventh President of the United States Of America. Based in frontier Tennessee, Jackson was a politician and army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, and the British at the Battle of New Orleans .He was a polarizing figure who dominated the Second Party System in the 1820s and 1830s, as president he dismantled the Second Bank of the United States and initiated ethnic cleansing. Jackson who was an essential frontier tycoon and an opportunist for whom the ideals of democracy provided effective public rhetoric. During his time this idea of deference had began to slowly fade away and this idea of the self made man had slowly crept in and emerged. One could argue that the election of 1828 was more a result than a cause of the rise of democracy, but many historians argue that the election of 1828 was the cause of the rise of democracy. There were limitations to Jacksonian democracy, and they were that with the improvement of one’s rights and privileges others had to be taken. While Jacksonian democracy created an age of greater equality, he did have his own ideologies and philosophies which were especially present in the Bank of War. There were three main points related to Jacksonian politics and they are Defender of the Union, Indian Removal, and the Bank of War.
One of the leading controversies in Congress during Jackson's first term was the "American SystemSystem advocated by Henry Clay for modernizing the nation's economy. Of economic development policies”. Part of this System, the Tariff of 1828A divisive tariff that was supported by the north and opposed to by the south., was widely hated by Southerners, who viewed it as a device to transfer wealth from cotton planters to northern manufacturers.
As Southern opposition to the tariff grew, radical South Carolinians, headed by Vice President John C. Calhoun a U.S. Senator and strong proponent of states' rights and nullification., decided that it was unconstitutional. An argument fermented that an individual state had the right to be declared null and void if it deemed any federal law as unconstitutional. South Carolina passed its Nullification Ordinance. The theory that an individual state can void a federal law if it believes it to be unconstitutional, In November 1832, though a strong states' rights advocate, Jackson thought the nullification doctrine would inevitably lead to disunion, hence was both treasonous and absurd. As far as he was concerned, nothing could dissolve the Union. In December, he issued an official proclamation against nullification. Jackson in his quotes says “Disunion by armed force is treason. Are you ready to incur its guilt?" (Jackson to the South Carolina citizens).
Secondly Jackson’s policy of Indian removal began with Jackson’s election in the presidency in 1828, symbolizing an age of new opportunity for the common man. The first chief executive born in a log cabin, Jackson proved that almost any man could rise to the highest post in America. During his administration, he championed democratic ideals by attacking the Bank of the United States as a privileged monopoly and promoting rotation in his office to broaden the political participation. He curtailed the rights of others while creating new opportunities for some Americans. His Indian policy satisfied land-hungry whites but victimized the Native Americans. The Cherokees, who had lived for hundreds of years in the southern Appalachians, suffered especially at Jackson’s hands. In response to American policy, they had adopted many white customs early in the nineteenth century, only to be forced off their land in the 1830s to “protect” their native customs. Opportunity, as it appeared, could damage one of the groups while encouraging another.
In an effort to resolve this problem, Jackson pushed the Indian Removal Act in 1980;the act empowered the president to negotiate removal treaties with Indian nations, through Congress. The Act gave the president power to negotiate removal treaties with Indian tribes in east of the Mississippi in which the tribes would give up their lands in exchange for lands to the west. Though Jackson believed this controversial policy benefited the Indians, many Americans saw it as brutal and inhumane and protest against it vehemently. Still, by the end of Jackson's second term, over 45,000 Indians had been moved to the west of the Mississippi.
The third problem that Jackson faced was the Bank of War. Jackson had a difficult time while dealing with the bank because “among all the exclusive privileged monopolies in the country the Bank of the United States was the largest, the best-known and the most powerful” (Hofstadter 75). Jackson is most famously known for quoting Martin Van Buren “The bank, is trying to kill me, but I will kill it!” (Hofstadter 79). When Congress voted to reauthorize the Bank, Jackson, as incumbent and candidate in the race, promptly vetoed the bill. His veto message justifying his action was a polemical declaration of the social philosophy of the Jacksonian movement pitting “farmers, mechanics and laborers” against the “rich and powerful” and arguing against the Bank’s constitutionality. Pro-Bank interests warned the public that Jackson would abolish the Bank altogether if granted a second term.
In the presidential campaigns of 1832, the second national bank served as the central issue in mobilizing the opposing Jacksonian Democrats and National Republicans. Jackson and Biddle personified the positions on each side; the Jacksonian successfully concealed the incompatibility of their “hard money” and “paper money” factions in the anti-Bank campaign, allowing Jackson to score an overwhelming victory against Henry Clay.
Andrew Jackson’s victory in the 1828 presidential race was achieved through harnessing the widespread social resentments and political unrest persisting since the economic disaster of 1819 and the Missouri Crisis of 1820. Under the banner of “Jackson and Reform” the Democratic Party launched a spirited and sophisticated campaign [42] against incumbent president John Quincy Adams, personifying him as a purveyor of corruption and fraudulent republicanism, and a menace to American democracy In the heart of the campaign was the conviction that Andrew Jackson had been denied the presidency in 1824 only through a “corrupt bargain” devised by Adams and Clay; a Jackson victory promised to rectify this betrayal of the popular will.
Jackson was both the champion and beneficiary of the revival of the Jeffersonian North-South alliance, reasserting the Old Republican precepts of limited government, strict construction, state sovereignty and Southern prominence. Upon these principles, the Missouri Compromise would be honored, and the issue of slavery suppressed the interests of preserving the Union. Federal institutions that conferred privileges producing “artificial inequality” would be eliminated through a return to strict constructionism. The “planter of the South” and the “plain Republican of the north” would provide the support, wielding universal white male suffrage. These precepts would necessarily bring the Jacksonian Democracy politically into collision with the Second Bank of the United States. So as to conceal the incompatibility of their hard-money and paper-money factions, Jackson’s associates never offered a platform on banking and finance reforms. As such, the Second Bank of the United States was not an issue in the 1828 elections.
Finally, Jacksonian policies were a polarizing figure that dominated the Second Party System in the 1820s and 1830s. As president, he dismantled the Second Bank of the United States and initiated ethnic cleansing. Jackson, who was an essential frontier tycoon and an opportunist for whom the ideals of democracy provided effective public rhetoric. During his time this idea of deference had began to slowly fade away and this idea of the self made man had slowly crept in and emerged. There were limitations to Jacksonian democracy, and they were that with the improvement of one’s rights and privileges others had to be taken in the Indian Removal Act. While Jacksonian democracy created an age of greater equality, as promised he did have ideologies and philosophies which were especially present in the Bank of War. According to Richard Hofstadter “The Jacksonian movement grew out to expand opportunities and with a common desire to enlarge these opportunities still further by removing restrictions and privileges that had their origin in acts of governmentessentially a movement of laissez-faire an attempt to divorce government and business” (Hofstadter 72).
