Jackson: Mayor Political Events
Andrew Jackson was the seventh President of the United States governed from 1829 to 1837. He was known as the “people’s president” and supporter of individual liberties. Jackson is famous for destroying of the Second Bank of the United States, the foundation of the Democratic Party, and policies that forced migration of the Natives. The aim of this paper is to give an overview of some of the major political events that took time during Jackson’s presidential administrations, and to analyze their consequences and fallouts.
For the first time, Jackson tried to run for the Presidency in 1824. Those days are known as a “Corrupt Bargain.” In the 1824 election, no one of the candidates got majority of voices; thus, the right of decision was given to the House of Representatives, which should have chosen between the top two candidates, Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams. The speaker Henry Clay took Adams’s part, and Jacksonians accused both of them in corruption that got the name “Corrupt Bargain”. The fallout of the “Corrupt Bargain” resulted in demonstration of “how different the politics of the 1820s were from the politics of the 1780s and 1790s” (Ellis 35). Despite Jackson got a majority of popular votes, Clay chose Adams, and thus contravened the people’s will, what had never happened even in 1800. Existed electoral procedure was questioned.
One of the consequences of the 1824 election was the end of the Era of Good Feelings. The Era of Good Feelings was a political period marked with dominance of the one party. It was a time under the Presidency of James Monroe, and dated from 1816 to 1824. Jackson was a representative of the Old Republicans, who clamored against the Federalist economic policies, and Adams was a member of the New Republicans who supported them. After Adams’s win, Jackson founded the Democratic Party, and Clay established the Whig Party ending of the Era of Good Feelings. The country got bipartisan system, and later, in times of Jackson’s Presidency, the Democratic Party significantly strengthened its positions.
After finally becoming a President in 1829, Jackson faced a number of problems, and one of them was the American system. Henry Clay suggested the American system in the times of Adams’s Presidency. Jackson had supported it as an effective way to “build the country's strength and secure its economic independence” (“Andrew Jackson: Domestic Affairs”). The American system established protective tariffs and federal subsidies; however, in Adams’s Presidency, they caused unrests among society and Congress members. That forced Jackson to rethink and to turn against the system seeing tariffs and subsidies as possible vehicles for appearing of the privileges and rise of corruption. He announced the new policy proclaiming return to simple minimal government; the era of the American system came to an end.
Jackson definitely is a notional figure in the political history of the United States. He was the first Democratic President of the United States; during his govern, the Democrats gained power, and got a push to further development and rise of that Democratic Party we have nowadays. Jackson had a powerful personality that played key role during his Presidency. He gave people the expectations of how the President should behave and what he owed them.
References
“Andrew Jackson: Domestic Affairs.” Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia. Miller Center of Public Affairs, n.d. Web. Accessed 1 Mar 2016.
Ellis, R.J. The Development of the American Presidency. New York and London: Routledge, 2015. Print.
