Forum on Democratic Style 441

The Irony of the Democratic Style

Jennifer R. Mercieca

“ he men who have preached these doctrines,” Noah Webster groused of T Jacksonian democracy in 1837, “have never defined what they mean by the people, or what they mean by democracy, nor how the people are to govern themselves, and how democracy is to carry on the functions of government.”1 As Webster’s complaint attests, the rise of Jacksonian democracy in America was precipitated by three distinct ruptures in American political discourse: the word “democracy” began to have positive connotations for many Americans; more Americans began to describe their government as a democracy rather than as a republic; and finally, the word “democracy” itself was all but drained of its precise, technical meaning in popular usage.2 These shifts in American politi- cal discourse were not unrelated; indeed, one could argue that if it were not for this last shift—if the word “democracy” had continued to denote and connote “the government of all over all”—then the first and second shifts might not have occurred at all, and Webster would not have had cause to be so grumpy. These three features likewise prefigure America’s democratic style—the rhe- torical performance of its political theory. America’s democratic style is pre- mised upon a positive disposition toward the word democracy, a mistaken belief that the United States is a democracy rather than a republic, and there- fore, an ironic gap between its literal political theory and its figurative politi- cal performance. My hope in this short essay is to show how these three fea- tures work together and in so doing to make an argument for one aspect of the democratic style: its ironic relationship to its political theory. To do this I briefly examine a representative anecdote from Andrew Jackson’s use of the democratic style—a use that could easily be confused with the courtly or the republican styles, but is actually, I believe, a classic use of the democratic style as it is ironically performed in American political discourse. This examination of the use of the new democratic style in Jacksonian political culture rewards our critical attention because it provides an opportunity to analyze how Old Hickory was able to craft a “coherent repertoire of rhetorical conventions” and strategically deploy them “for political effect” by conflating the well-known dif- ferences between republicanism and democracy.3 According to Robert Hariman political styles “operate as a mixture of rhe- torical designs, institutional customs, and philosophical arguments” specific to “historical periods and cultural locales.” Importantly for my discussion of the democratic style, these designs, customs, and arguments, while not “identical

Jennifer R. Mercieca is Assistant Professor of Communication at Texas A&M University in College Station. 442 Rhetoric & Public Affairs with a political theory,” may bear “strong correspondences reflecting common origins or interests.”4 When attempting to assess America’s democratic politi- cal style, then, we would likewise expect that it would carry some resemblance to America’s democratic political theory. Or as Hariman might have argued, since the democratic political style is “the artistic expression” of America’s “political theory,” we should find evidence of American democratic theory in its performances.5 Yet, as Noah Webster observed in 1837, the rise of America’s democratic style was not supported by a coherent or systematic political theory. Indeed, American republican political theory had developed between 1764 and 1824 in opposition to monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy.6 Quite simply, America’s first generation of political leaders had distrusted democracy as the rule of the worst. They viewed the government of all over all as tumultuous, short lived, and violent; neither property nor liberty, they feared, were secure under democracy.7 In short, prior to the rise of Jacksonianism, American political theory and political discourse were avowedly antidemocratic. The prodemo- cratic discourse that emerged between 1824 and 1839 therefore was markedly different from the previous elite and vernacular republican discourses of the founding generation, which makes it an excellent place to begin an analysis of the democratic style.8 When the votes were counted for the 1824 presidential election, Andrew Jackson had won a majority of the popular vote, but not the Electoral College.9 The House gave the office to John Quincy Adams, who had a long and dis- tinguished political career and who had served most recently as Secretary of State in Monroe’s administration. Jackson swore that Adams and “the Judas of the west,” Henry Clay, had “struck a corrupt bargain” in which Clay betrayed the will of the people in return for the promise of the office of Secretary of State, and presumably, the 1832 presidency. Jackson vowed to revenge those who would subvert the people’s will and thus began “the longest, bitterest, ugli- est campaign in American political history.”10 Meanwhile, Martin Van Buren and his Albany Regency had been crafting a new style of party politics based on loyalty to party above all else. The second party system was conducted by men who had a “passion for organization”—a “passion that would have seemed strange, possibly even sinister to their pre- decessors”—and “winning . . . elections became to an unprecedented degree the business of professionals.”11 Van Buren joined forces with Jackson sup- porters, forming a coalition between the “the planters of the South and the plain Republicans of the North.”12 The new-style professional politicians of the Democratic Party founded pro-Jackson newspapers, promised govern- ment jobs to the party faithful, and pressed state officials into the service of the national organization. The leaders of the new “political machine” had learned Forum on Democratic Style 443 that without the “aristocrat’s wealth, prestige, and connections,” they could still rise to power by enlarging their constituency and by compelling obedience with strict “party unity” achieved by any means necessary. Indeed, the Democrats’ new political machine “reached into every neighborhood [and] inducted ordi- nary citizens of all sorts into active service.”13 Because the Democratic coalition included “politicians of all creeds, sec- tions, and interests,” Jackson “exercised extreme caution in defining his position on current issues.”14 Supported by a shaky and testy coalition and backed by a party machine that demanded loyalty to party, but not necessarily to principles, Jackson found no need to reveal his own political principles during the 1828 campaign. As Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. notes, “it was clear that Jackson had an impressive mandate, but it was unclear what the mandate was for.” Indeed, the Democrats’ “opposition to Adams and Clay had been confused and oppor- tunistic, hiding a basic lack of ideas behind a smoke-screen of parliamentary obstruction and campaign invective.”15 Americans knew that Old Hickory was against “corruption” and for “reform” and “union,” but otherwise, his positions on the questions of the day—the constitutionality of the “American System,” the future of the Bank of the United States, the 1828 Tariff among others—were left purposely vague.16 Over the next eight years Jackson would destroy the Bank, suppress the Nullifiers, censor the Abolitionists, and remove the Indians; he would fire his Cabinet, veto more bills than any previous president, and introduce a spoils system to reward his friends and punish his enemies. When he wanted to retire, Jackson even named his successor—his most loyal political ally, the “Little Magician,” Martin Van Buren. In short, Jackson consolidated power in the exec- utive branch and, as his Whig critics charged, he acted more like “King Andrew” than any president properly should. Yet, Jackson justified each of his actions by appealing to the authority of the people. If he acted as a king, Jackson demurred, it was only to protect the people, the Union, and the Constitution. As Van Buren was sworn in on March 4, 1837, Jackson took the opportunity to give a Farewell Address—only the second president to do so—in which he finally informed the nation of “the leading principles upon which” he had “endeavored to adminis- ter the Government.”17 Jackson followed George Washington in using his Farewell Address to cau- tion the nation that the Union must be preserved, the federal government’s powers must be limited, and the liberties of the people must be protected. Jackson characterized his presidency as one of “prompt decision” and “ener- getic action”; indeed, he had “fearlessly encountered” adversity because he knew that “the continued and unbroken confidence” of the people would “sustain” him through “every trial.” Thus claiming support by the will of the people, Jackson took on all adversaries in the people’s name: “Indian tribes” 444 Rhetoric & Public Affairs and “foreign powers” were no match for him. “Artful and designing men” who “persuade themselves . . . that they are laboring in the cause of humanity and asserting the rights of the human race,” and supporters of the American System “who wished to enlarge the powers of the General Government” were routed. Nullifying “State politicians” and “political partisans” were vanquished. And, perhaps most hated of all, the “corporations and wealthy individuals,” who sup- ported “paper money” and speculated in “public lands and various kinds of stock” and who conspired with the “Bank of the United States”—capitalists of all kinds who had “waged war upon the people”—were crushed. In short, as Jackson had found the people “continually beset by enemies,” he had continu- ally devoted his presidency to defending the people from the people’s enemies. Because President Jackson was a fearless warrior, the people were safe. But, Jackson warned, the enemies of the people “will continue to besiege the halls of legislation . . . and will seek by every artifice to mislead and deceive the public servants” and thus, without his protection the people must “look [to themselves] for safety and the means of guarding and perpetuating” their “free institutions.” Indeed, “eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty”:

In your hands is rightfully placed the sovereignty of the country, and to you everyone placed in authority is ultimately responsible. It is always in your power to see that the wishes of the people are carried into faithful execution, and their will, when once made known, must sooner or later be obeyed; and while the peo- ple remain, as I trust they ever will, uncorrupted and incorruptible, and continue watchful and jealous of their rights, the Government is safe, and the cause of free- dom will continue to triumph over all its enemies.

That the uncorrupted people were the rightful rulers of the government seems simple enough, but we could ask along with Noah Webster, just who did Jackson think that “the people” were? Jackson’s people were a very specific segment of the American population: “the farmer, the mechanic, and the laboring classes of society.” The people were, without exception, white and male. Slaves did not count as people, nor did women, or Native Americans. In fact, in Jackson’s view the proper rulers of the government were precisely those middle and lower class white males who were most likely to defend the South from the “weak men” who “cast odium upon their institutions.” Jackson’s people would never “disturb [southern] rights of property” because they knew that such action would be “in direct opposition to the spirit in which the Union was formed, and must endanger its safety.”18 Indeed, the Democrats’ movement to extend the right of suffrage and allow the people to vote directly for Electors—“egalitarian republicanism for whites,” as William Freehling has called it—was necessary to ensure the continuation of Forum on Democratic Style 445 the “peculiar institution” because for the first time the North had a larger popu- lation than the South, which threatened the southern stronghold in the House of Representatives.19 With the House no longer solidly for slavery, with deter- mined abolitionists gaining support in the North, with petitions flooding into Congress to end the slave trade in the District of Columbia, with the economy becoming more and more modern and therefore less and less reliant on slave labor, and with Virginia actually debating abolition, slavery was in its most pre- carious position in American history.20 This fact, perhaps more than any other, accounts for whom Jackson despised as a “villain” and whom he lauded as “the people.” Native Americans occupied land that American slaveholders could have exploited; the Whigs’ American System taxed southern slaveholders for the benefit of northern capitalists and further threatened the profitability of the slave economy; abolitionists attacked slavery as debased and impugned the honor of the South, thereby threaten- ing southern lives and livelihoods; and the capitalists and bankers were doubly damned because they prohibited the easy expansion of slavery with all of their “speculating” and “credit schemes,” and at the same time their paper money and stock supported the northern capitalists. In other words, “Jackson’s party organization institutionalized racially selective egalitarianism. The party ral- lied white male commoners to shape decisions. . . . John Quincy Adams and fel- low Whigs were tagged with the unpardonable American label: undemocratic about whites.”21 Thus, to answer Noah Webster’s question, Jacksonian democ- racy was not really very democratic, nor was it meant to be. We could say many interesting things about Andrew Jackson’s use of the rhetoric of republicanism in his Farewell Address—how he relied upon the republican analysis of liberty, which does not include equality; how he feared that liberty was constantly threatened by a lack of virtue; how he defended his consolidation of power in the Executive branch as consistent with how a Patriot King would act to protect his subjects; and how he exhorted Americans to be patriotic republican heroes themselves and jealously guard their own lib- erties—but such an analysis would not help us to understand his use of the democratic style. Rather, to understand Jackson’s use of the democratic style in his Farewell Address, we have to consider what he did not say and how what he did not say relates to what we would have expected him to say. After 12 years of promising power to the people and successfully destroying the enemies of the people, surely Jackson’s Farewell Address would wax poetic about the strength of the American democracy and the triumph of Jacksonian democracy itself. We would certainly expect his Address to mimic the prolifera- tion of democratic rhetoric that had saturated the nation since the House had made Adams president in 1824. But, no; as it turns out, Jackson did not use the word “democracy” at all in his Address. When he referred to the American 446 Rhetoric & Public Affairs political system, which he found occasion to do five times during his speech, he always called it a “republic.” Americans were “citizens of this great Republic”; the “history of republics” like America’s was full of “fatal divisions”; disunion would ruin “this great and glorious Republic”; Americans must adhere to the “principles of economy, which ought to characterize every republican gov- ernment”; and finally, “the progress of the United States under our free and happy institutions has surpassed the most sanguine hopes of the founders of the Republic.” In other words, although Jackson had spent 12 years promising Americans democracy and had in the process helped to change the nature of American political discourse, in the end, when he finally told Americans what he thought about their nation’s political theory, he told them that he had left the government just as he had found it; he had left the government a republic. What we learn about the democratic style from this short examination of the circumstances of Andrew Jackson’s run for the presidency and a far too brief analysis of his Farewell Address is that when rhetors invoke democracy, there is always a slippage between the nation’s republican political theory and its democratic discourse. American republican government is characterized by representation, hierarchy, and stability. In other words, republicanism was designed to filter the will of the people through representation, to preserve hier- archy and prevent equality, and to provide stability at all costs. The Jacksonian Democrats promised the people participation and equality, which, if put into practice, would have made the government profoundly unstable. Jackson was able to prevaricate on his principles, to abuse party loyalty, and to wield “smoke and mirrors” to gain the presidency. These three characteristics thus represent the tenor of the “repertoire of rhetorical conventions” in Jackson’s use of the democratic style: loosely articulated principles, blind loyalty to party, and an abuse of parliamentary tricks and campaign invective to win at all costs. Once in office, power is used to reward friends and to punish enemies. Noah Webster’s lament that Jacksonians “never defined what they mean by the people, or what they mean by democracy, nor how the people are to govern themselves, and how democracy is to carry on the functions of government” helps us to focus on a fundamental problem with Jackson’s use of the demo- cratic style.22 Jackson’s democratic style did not give us a way to think about democracy as anything more than an empty signifier: he offered no precise definition of what democracy was, or who would count as the people, or how the Constitution would be changed so that the people could govern themselves. Further, because Jackson used the democratic style to consolidate power in the Executive Branch, the way that he performed his democratic theory forced the people into a passive subject, rather than an active citizen, position. Jackson acted to protect the people, but he did little to empower the people to act for themselves—a point substantiated by his final warning that with his retirement Forum on Democratic Style 447 the people would now need to act to protect their own liberties from their enemies. Thus, Jackson’s democratic style flattered and enticed the people into believing that they had more actual power than they really did while simultane- ously rendering “democracy” an empty, yet powerful, term.23 If Jackson’s use of the democratic style is typical, then America’s demo- cratic style is primarily ironic. The democratic style figuratively negates its lit- eral political theory; it allows politicians to occupy the realm of democratic appearances by eliding the fact that the American government is a republic. This ironic negation and the resulting obfuscation of American republicanism has two consequences: First, citizens are told to judge their government by the standards of democracy, but the democratic style has allowed the word itself to be drained of its precise technical meaning, which hinders citizens’ ability to judge whether their government is performing as they would wish. Second, the rise of the democratic style made conflict over America’s political theory nearly impossible. As Regina Morantz, Russell L. Hanson, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Sean Wilentz, and just about every other historian of American politics argues, after the triumph of Jacksonianism, it was difficult for any politician of the sec- ond generation to admit publicly that they feared the rule of the people—even if they did. Americans had all become democrats with the rise of Jacksonian Democracy, and thus the triumph of Jackson’s democratic style was to move the locus of political debate from political theory to political action—politi- cal action organized by party and professional politicians. Therefore, the rise of the democratic style under Jackson was enabling—not of the people, cer- tainly—but of party conflict. The Era of Good Feelings had minimized conflict; as Jackson told us in his Farewell Address, his democratic style thrived on it. In other words, whereas Jackson had not made the government a democ- racy, he had created a new democratic style in American political discourse—a new style that can be used by politicians of every political stripe. In 1828 his Democratic Party had appealed to average citizens’ desire for political power and equality and used that desire to gain power for themselves. By the 1840 election the Whigs would successfully employ the Democrats’ democratic style, using it to get their man of “Hard Cider and Log Cabins” elected, despite the fact that William Henry Harrison was a member of the old Virginia Tidewater elite and not at all a man of the people. That the people fell for the Whigs’ dis- ingenuous performance of the Democrats’ democratic style would cause much consternation among those who had promised to trust the will of the people above all. For, if the democratic style could help the Whigs to win elections, Democrats like Orestes A. Brownson lamented, then of what use was it for the Democrats to laud the power of the people? Since the Democrats’ 1840 loss, other politicians and parties have recognized that the answer to Brownson’s quandary is actually quite simple: the people know themselves not to be in 448 Rhetoric & Public Affairs power, yet the people want to believe that they are in power. Thus, America’s democratic style functions as a powerfully enticing legerdemain—a sleight of hand—with which a party can ambiguously promise power to the people to gain political power for themselves and for their preferred constituency.

Notes

1. Noah Webster to William Stone, August 29, 1837, Letters of Noah Webster, ed. Harry R. Warfel (New York: Library Publishers, 1953), 504–6. 2. According to Regina Morantz, “As the word democracy became acceptable, its meaning began to change. It was now understood in it very general sense, as connoting a large degree of pop- ular sovereignty.” Regina Ann Markell Morantz, “‘Democracy’ and ‘Republic’” in American Ideology, 1787–1840” (Ph.D. thesis, Columbia University, 1971), 153. 3. Robert Hariman, Political Style: The Artistry of Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 4. 4. Hariman, Political Style, 96. 5. Hariman, Political Style, 71. 6. The word “democracy” was largely forgotten until about the mid-thirteenth century when it was introduced into the “European political language” with the translation of Aristotle’s Politics. David Held reports that “democracy” instantly “took on a pejorative connotation and became associated with the politics of the rabble; government conducted for the ben- efit of the poor rather than the public interest; and a form of power . . . in which the com- mon people can be tyrannical.” David Held, Models of Democracy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987), 42. In fact, “there was no controversy over the meaning of the term ‘democracy’ in colonial America,” writes Roy N. Lokken; “colonists gave little thought to it, and the word seldom appeared in their political writings, speeches, sermons, public papers, and private correspondence.” Roy N. Lokken, “The Concept of Democracy in Colonial Political Thought,” William & Mary Quarterly 16 (1959): 568–80. Likewise, Russell Hanson argues that “there were very few men willing to call themselves ‘democrats’” in the founding generation. Russell L. Hanson, The Democratic Imagination in America: Conversations with our Past (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), 56. 7. Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and its Critics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989). 8. James Arnt Aune and I described the vernacular republican style as characterized by: “(1) the aggressive use of a rhetoric of critique; (2) the belief that public debate should be transpar- ent and open to all opinions; (3) the rejection of elite leadership; and (4) the belief that lib- erty, freedom, and republicanism exist for the common good, not just for the benefit of the few” (135). Jennifer R. Mercieca and James Arnt Aune, “A Vernacular Republican Rhetoric: William Manning’s Key of Libberty,” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 91 (2005): 119–43. 9. According to H. W. Brands, “In fact, by all evidence he did not want to be president. For habitual politicians, the presidency was a natural goal, the top rung on the ladder of ambi- tion. But for a soldier, a general used to giving orders and having them obeyed—or seeing the disobedient imprisoned or executed—the presidency wasn’t such an obvious prize.” Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times (New York: Doubleday, 2005), 370. 10. Brands, Andrew Jackson, 389. 11. Richard Hofstadter, The Idea of a Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780–1840 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 246–47. Forum on Democratic Style 449

12. Martin Van Buren to Thomas Ritchie, Janurary 13, 1827, Van Buren Papers, Library of Congress. 13. Marvin Meyers, The Jacksonian Persuasion: Politics and Belief (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1957), 7. 14. Robert Vincent Remini, Andrew Jackson (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1966), 110. 15. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Age of Jackson (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1945), 45. 16. Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy (New York: Norton, 2005), 302. 17. Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address, March 4, 1837. William Jennings Bryan, ed. The World’s Famous Orations (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1906; New York: Bartleby.com) www. bartleby.com/268/ (accessed May 2008). 18. Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address. 19. William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion: Secessionists at Bay 1776–1854 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York: Basic Books, 2000). 20. Lyon Rathbun, “The Debate over Annexing Texas and The Emergence of Manifest Destiny,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 4 (2001): 459–93; Susan Zaeske, “Signatures of Citizenship: The Rhetoric of Women’s Antislavery Petitions,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 88 (2002): 147–68; Susan Zaeske, Signatures of Citizenship: Petitioning, Antislavery, and Women’s Political Identity (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); Cal M. Logue, “Transcending Coercion: The Communicative Strategies of Black Slaves on Antebellum Plantations,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 67 (1981): 31–46; Michael William Pfau, “Time, Tropes, and Textuality: Reading Republicanism in Charles Sumner’s ‘Crime Against Kansas,’” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 6 (2003): 385–414; Gary S. Selby, “Mocking the Sacred: Fredrick Douglass’s ‘Slaveholder’s Sermon’ and the Antebellum Debate over Religion and Slavery,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 88 (2002): 326–41; William E. Wiethoff, “The Nature and Limits of Slave Insolence in the American South,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 87 (2001): 197–207; David Zarefsky, “Rhetorical Interpretations of the American Civil War,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 81 (1995): 108–38; David Zarefsky, “The Continuing Fascination with Lincoln,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 6 (2003): 337–70; Stephen H. Browne, “‘Like Gory Spectres’: Representing Evil in Theodore Weld’s American Slavery As It Is,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 80 (1994): 277–92; E. Culpepper Clark, “Pitchfork Ben Tillman and the Emergence of Southern Demagoguery,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 69 (1983): 423–33; Donald K. Enholm, David Curtis Skaggs, and W. Jeffrey Welsh, “Origins of the Southern Mind: The Parochial Sermons of Thomas Cradock of Maryland, 1744–1770,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 73 (1987): 200–18; V. William Balthrop, “Culture, Myth, and Ideology as Public Argument: An Interpretation of the Ascent and Demise of ‘Southern Culture,’” Communication Monographs 51 (1984): 339–52; Kirt H. Wilson, “The Racial Politics of Imitation in the Nineteenth Century,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 89 (2003): 89–108. Jennifer Rose Mercieca, “The Culture of Honor: How Slaveholders Responded to the Abolitionist Mail Crisis of 1835,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 10 (2007): 51–76. 21. Freehling, The Road to Disunion, 450. 22. Noah Webster to William Stone, 504–06. 23. I am indebted to Robert Ivie for this analysis.