Andrew Jackson(2000)

Documents and Readings Andrew Jackson (2000) by Harry L. Watson (1949- ) This essay is taken from The Reader’s Companion to the American Presidency, edited by Alan Brinkley (him again?) and Davis Dyer. I wrote the footnotes and the picture captions. Questions 1. Do you have any question? 2. An occasional poll asks historians to rank US presidents as great, near great, average, below average, or as a failure. Using this scale, where would you place Jackson? Why? Your answer should include plenty of examples; you might need a concession section in your notes. Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the United States, served two terms in the White House, starting in 1829. His administration has traditionally been linked to the dawning of “Jacksonian Democracy,” an elusive but attractive concept that implies a celebration of the values of ordinary white men and a demand for majority rule by such voters. The most conspicuous developments of Jackson’s administration were probably the president’s war on the Bank of the United States, his insistence on the removal of the eastern Indian tribes to reservations west of the Mississippi, his response to the nullification crisis in South Carolina, and his contribution to a permanent system of two-party politics. These events were intimately related, as Jackson built his reputation as a defender of the common man in large part through his attacks on Indians and on the “monster bank,” as well as by his defense of a strong Union based on majority rule. He likewise sought to institutionalize this approach to government through the creation of a revitalized Democratic party. In pursuing these objectives, Jackson made a lasting contribution to the structure of U.S. government and the ideology of American democracy. The major developments of Jackson’s presidency unfolded as part of a larger collision between the ideological legacy of America’s founding generation and the rapidly expanding economic development of the new nation. The republican1 principles of the late eighteenth century had stressed an eternal conflict between liberty and power, and called fora balanced and limited government to protect the former against the latter. Eighteenth-century republicans had also believed that the survival of free government depended on the maintenance of popular “virtue,” by which they meant a willingness to support the common good above particular, private interests. To possess this sort of virtue, a man must be socially and economically independent, for a dependent person like a tenant or a servant, to say nothing of a child, a pauper, or a woman, would be forced to serve the private interests of those who were more dominant. If political power were widely dispersed among many independent men, and there were few powerful enough to dominate others or too weak to resist their domination, no small group could oppress the others, while the majority would have no incentive to oppress itself. Adverse private interests would not be strong enough to control the state, and no one could advance his own private welfare except through support for the common good. The proper social and political structure could make private interests compatible with public virtue, and liberty might survive. Within this framework, ordinary men of small to 1 Note the lower-case “r.” This is a reference to a philosophy, not the program of a particular political party. The Republican Party as we now know it did not come into being until 1854. 1 Documents and Readings medium property and limited education would be expected to choose the wisest and most independent statesmen, probably gentlemen of wealth and standing, to handle the details of governance on behalf of the people as a whole. The preservation of social and economic arrangements that left most white men free and independent of others was thus an implicit part of the political vision of eighteenth-century republicanism. So too was the expectation that “the common good” would be easily identified by the virtuous and wise and quickly embraced by a consensus among the like-minded populace. In practice, these conditions would be difficult enough to maintain in a society of small, landed farmers with a broad and stable distribution of property and no clashing economic interests. In the rapidly changing economy of the early nineteenth century, protection of these conditions seemed virtually impossible. Even before the War of 1812 accelerated the process of economic change, the success of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain had inspired Andrew Jackson in 1824, by Thomas Sully American imitators, and restrictive colonial policies no longer stood in their way. Ambitious entrepreneurs launched successful experiments in factory production, especially of cotton cloth. Inspired by the success of the Erie Canal, begun in 1817 and completed in 1825, a new network of canals reached into the interior and invited farmers to produce more crops for sale to urban and foreign markets. The invention of the steamboat in 1807 and the expansion of the railroad after 1830 created even more opportunities for cheaper transportation and gave a powerful boost to the culture of cotton and use of slave labor. Businessmen eagerly promoted the spread of banks and paper money to finance the new developments, and reformers created public schools and other educational institutions to enable citizens to take full advantage of them. Historians have come to call this period of increased commercial activity the “market revolution.” 2 The prospect of economic development held momentous consequences for newly independent Americans. Abundant new chances for wealth and opportunity offered the possibility of higher 2 As I may have noted once before, it would be more accurate to say that many historians refer to these changes as the market revolution. Other historians disagree. 2 Documents and Readings standards of living for consumers and producers alike. For some Americans, the stable and deferential villages of the eighteenth century had been stifling traps. Limited economic opportunities kept a few families in security at the top, but a significant number of young people found it harder and harder to improve themselves, or even to replicate the social and economic status of their parents. For these frustrated citizens, the coming of the market revolution and the opening of western lands could offer the chance to cross the mountains for a fresh start, to move to town and learn a remunerative trade, or to cultivate a new crop and ship a profitable surplus to a previously unattainable market. In turn, these new opportunities could upset the frozen social and political hierarchies of the colonial era, giving newly prosperous citizens a chance to claim their own share of social recognition, to win public office perhaps, and to claim the equality with established families that the American Revolution had supposedly promised to everyone. More ominously, however, the market revolution also presented dangers for Americans, threatening economic bust as well as boom and fostering the growth of large enterprises that seemed to present far more harm to some citizens than they promised in rewards. A farmer’s experiment in market agriculture might fail, leading to the loss of his land and treasured independence. Mass production might destroy the jobs of skilled artisans. In either case, the loss of a farm or workshop could lead to a perceived loss of equality and a social descent into the ranks of permanent wage laborers. The New England farmers’ daughters who eagerly took positions in the region’s new textile mills may have welcomed the freedom that a regular pay envelope brought them. But men who were brought up to think of independence, property ownership, and manliness as part of an inseparable package were less likely to be satisfied by the new arrangements. A more powerful business cycle, moreover, would create depressions and recessions that could bring bankruptcy and ruin to thousands of families through no fault of their own, while the rise of powerful corporations could overwhelm the political strength of ordinary voters. In short, the economic developments of the market revolution challenged the political theories of the American Revolution. Beneficiaries of economic change could argue that development made men more independent and virtuous because nothing made men more dependent than poverty. Victims of change were likely to retort that development spread its costs and benefits unequally, making the majority of men dependent upon a few, and thereby undermining the social requirements of free government. Voting Americans thus experienced the changes of the market revolution with a mixture of pleasure and anxiety, and they passed along their ambivalence to their politically elected representatives. Andrew Jackson, the future president who came to symbolize much of this conflict, was born in 1767 in the Waxhaws, a frontier region on the border of North and South Carolina. Jackson himself always believed that his birthplace was on the South Carolina side of the line, but the exact spot remains disputed. The future president’s parents were Protestant immigrants from the north of Ireland who settled with relatives in a farming community where life was hard and luxuries were scarce. Jackson’s father died shortly before his wife gave birth to Andrew, the couple’s third child. Elizabeth Jackson took refuge with her sister and brother-in-law, raising her three boys in their home. As a child, Jackson probably studied in a one-room schoolhouse, followed by a year or two in a local academy. His adult writings reveal that the learned to express himself with eloquence, but that 3 Documents and Readings he never bothered with the fine points of spelling or grammar.3 He undoubtedly spent much time in outdoor sports, riding, hunting, and performing a boy’s share of labor on his uncle’s farm.

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