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University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 8-2019 "The Jacksonian Reformation: Political Patronage and Republican Identity" Max Matherne University of Tennessee Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Recommended Citation Matherne, Max, ""The Jacksonian Reformation: Political Patronage and Republican Identity". " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2019. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/5675 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Max Matherne entitled ""The Jacksonian Reformation: Political Patronage and Republican Identity"." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in History. Daniel Feller, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Luke Harlow, Ernest Freeberg, Reeve Huston Accepted for the Council: Dixie L. Thompson Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) The Jacksonian Reformation: Political Patronage and Republican Identity A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Max Matherne August 2019 Dedicated to the memory of Joshua Stephen Hodge (1984-2019), a great historian and an even better friend. ii Acknowledgments This dissertation is the result not only of my own research, writing, and thinking, but also of others’ seemingly endless contributions of intellectual, moral, and emotional support. I am grateful to have reached the point where I can now thank them in print. I owe an especially strong debt to my adviser, Daniel Feller. The dissertation began with a conversation we had in April 2013, in which he assured me that there was, indeed, plenty of important research left to do on old topics like Jacksonian Democracy and the Spoils System. Since then, he has continued to provide crucial encouragement and vigilant editorial scrutiny. And at every step of the way, he encouraged me to follow my instincts and interests. It will take many years for me to repay him for his confidence and encouragement. For the time being, this dissertation will have to suffice as his thanks. My committee members have been generous in offering insight, criticism, and conversation. Luke Harlow and Ernie Freeberg both urged me early on to think about the big-picture dimensions of this topic. Luke and Ernie both have rare gifts for identifying the key takeaway of rambling, discursive lines of argument, and this dissertation benefited enormously from their perspicacity. Reeve Huston provided much-needed encouragement and equally necessary critiques at key stages in the development of this project. I have sent these three scholars numerous emails ending with expressions of thanks for their time and patience; at the risk of sounding like one of the officeseekers described in the following pages, I want Luke, Ernie, and Reeve to know that those expressions of gratitude were sincere. This dissertation could never have achieved its current shape without grants and fellowships provided by the American Philosophical Society, the Dirksen Center for Congressional Research, and the University of Tennessee Humanities Center. I would like to thank the individuals at all of those institutions for their votes of confidence in my work. I would also like to thank Armin Mattes, Johan Neem, and Sean Wilentz, all of whom looked at portions of this manuscript and offered advice on how to frame the larger project. My family has offered love, encouragement, and support for many years now, none of them more so than my redoubtable parents, Christian and Debra Matherne. It would take more than a page to list all of the other family members who helped me along the way; they know who they are, and hopefully they know how grateful I am to have them in my life. Finally, there is a category of individuals who supported me in their capacity as both fellow scholars and friends. I was especially fortunate to enter graduate school with perhaps the most supportive cohort imaginable – Elizabeth Eubanks, Christopher Gleason, Joshua Hodge, Brittany Poe, and Laura Roesch. They all provided me with stimulating conversation and vital encouragement throughout our years in the trenches. Along the way, I also built up a debt of gratitude to fellow UT colleagues Robert Glaze, Bob Hutton, and Will Rall. To all of these people, I owe a lifetime of thanks. iii Abstract Historians often dismiss the Jacksonian Democrats’ “spoils system” as a program without serious ideological underpinnings. A prevalent argument holds that Jacksonians were political realists who used the “spoils” of office to reward themselves and their friends, and in the process built an interest-based political party. Such interpretations overlook the ways in which Jacksonians strived to reconcile their patronage policies to a preexisting ideological landscape. This elision is significant. For in the process of rationalizing the so-called “spoils system,” Jacksonians completed the development of a lasting antiestablishment, “Manichean” political idiom. This dissertation looks at how Jacksonian Democrats drew upon older political notions to explain the ideological rationale behind their “reformation” of 1829. Drawing upon newspapers, published writings, correspondence, and letters of application for office, it traces the development of Americans’ ideas about political patronage and officeseeking from seventeenth-century England through Andrew Jackson’s first year in office. Seventeenth-century Anglophone political actors feared that a chief executive could use patronage to create a potentially dangerous separate interest of unprincipled, officeholding hirelings. This fear informed Americans’ attempts to shape their own republic throughout the revolutionary and early national periods. By the 1820s, it had become commonplace to dismiss one’s political enemies as unprincipled officeseekers hiring out their services to the highest bidders. Jacksonians exploited this political idiom, pitching themselves as those who sincerely defended the will of the people, while dismissing John Quincy Adams’s supporters as an unprincipled faction held together only by “corrupt bargains.” To protect themselves from similar accusations, Jacksonians in 1829 attempted to prove that their political engagement had been motivated by sincere principles rather than officeseeking opportunism. They demonstrated their sincerity with performances of defiance and antagonism in the face of officeholding adversaries, and simultaneously advanced a radical Jeffersonian idea that democratically elected presidents could prove their devotion to the people by punishing their enemies. In developing these lines of thought, Jacksonians made one’s propensity for militant antagonism the basis of moral authority – a development with fateful implications for the development of American democratic thought. iv Table of Contents Introduction ……..…………………………………………………………………………1 Chapter One: Political Patronage in English Oppositional Thought ……………...…………………….23 Chapter Two: The Problem of Placemen in the Age of Revolution ……………...……………………..58 Chapter Three: Pure Patriots and Plundering Parasites: Public Offices and the Language of Corruption, 1789-1792……………………………………………………………………………….100 Chapter Four: “The Sunshine of Executive Power”: Parties and Place-Seekers in the First American Party System, 1793-1800 ……………………………………………………………….145 Chapter Five: “Virtue Rising on the Ruins of Corruption”: The Jeffersonian Reformation of 1801.………………………………………………………………………………….…193 Chapter Six: Corrupt Bargains: Parties, Principles, and Patronage, 1803-1820..……………..………242 Chapter Seven: Augean Stables: Power, Patronage, and Partisanship in the 1820s….............................287 Chapter Eight: The Jacksonian Reformation: Sincere Antagonism and the Manichean Style …………325 Conclusion …...…………………………………………………………………………372 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………………378 Vita ……………………………………………………………………………………...393 v List of Abbreviations Used in Citations AHP Papers of Alexander Hamilton AFC Adams Family Correspondence AJP Papers of Andrew Jackson: Main Series Annals Annals of Congress DAJA Diary and Autobiography of John Adams DHRC Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution DWM The Diary of William Maclay and Other Notes on Senate Debates Farrand The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 GWP: PS Papers of George Washington: Presidency Series GWP: RS Papers of George Washington: Revolutionary War Series JAP John Adams Papers JMP: CS Papers of James Madison: Congressional Series JMP: SS Papers of James Madison: Secretary of State Series M639: [reel - frame number] Letters of Application and Recommendation during the Administration of Andrew Jackson, National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 59, General Records of the Department of State, Microcopy 639 House Journal Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States of America Senate Executive
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