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Introduction • The Era of good feelings was never peaceful. Economic distress and slavery issue raised the political stakes in the 1820’s and 1830’s. New political parties emerged. New styles of campaigning took hold. A new chapter opened in the history of American-and world-politics, as many European societies began to broaden democratic practices. • In 1828 an energetic new party, the Democrats, captured the White House. By the 1830’s the Democrats faced the Whigs. • New forms of politics emerged in this era. Voter turnout rose dramatically. One-Quarter of voters in the 1824 election, and in 1840 it reached to 78 percent.
The Corrupt Bargain of 1824 • The last of the old-style of elections was marked by the corrupt bargain of 1824. Four candidates towered above the others: John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, William H. Crawford, and Andrew Jackson. All four rivals professed to be Republicans. John C. Calhoun appeared as the vice presidential candidate on both the Adams and Jackson ticket. • In this deadlock, the House of Representatives, as directed by the 12th amendment, which states that they must choose among the top three candidates. Clay was eliminated, and he had to pick a winner (He was the speaker of the House). Clay was influential to throw the election to the candidate of his choice.
The Corrupt Bargain of 1824 • Crawford was out of the picture, because of a stroke. Clay hated Jackson, for his allegiance to the west. The only candidate left was Adams. These two men had much more in common politically. • Decision day came in 1825. On the first ballot, thanks to Clay’s influence, Adams was elected president. A few days later Clay would be the new secretary of state. • Masses of angry Jacksonian’s, most of them common folk, rose against this corrupt bargain. This clamor continued for four years. There was no evidence to prove that Adams and Clay entered into a formal bargain. Clay was a natural choice for secretary of state. Even if a bargain was made, it was not corrupt. The next president would not be chosen behind closed doors.
A Yankees Misfit in the White House • John Quincy Adams: he was short, thickset, and billiard-bald, he was even more austere that his father. Shunning people, he often went for early morning swims, sometime naked in the Potomac River. He was irritable, sarcastic, and tactless. Adams ranks as the most successful secretaries of state, and the least successful president. • Fewer than one third of the voters had voted have found it difficult to win popular support even under most favorable conditions.
A Yankees Misfit in the White House • Adams’ declined to oust efficient officeholders in order to create vacancies for his supporters. During his entire administration, he removed only 12 public servants from the federal payroll. Followers will throw up their hands in frustration. • His nationalistic views also upset people as well. Adams urged Congress the construction of roads and canals. Also he renewed George Washington’s proposal for a national university. • The response to this was prompt and unfavorable. They seemed like a public waste of funds. Adams land policy also antagonized the westerners. He attempted to deal fairly with the Indians, and he used federal authority on behalf of the Indians.
Going Whole Hog for Jackson in 1828 • Jackson’s presidential campaign started the four years that Adams became president. In the 1828 election, it was Adams and Jackson pitted against each other. Adams adopted an oak as the symbol of their independent candidate. Jackson, zealots were Bargain and Corruption, Huzza for Jackson, and All Hail Old Hickory. They also planted Hickory polls for their hero. • Mudslinging reached new lows in 1828, and the electorate developed a taste for bad politics. Adams would not stop gutter tactics. They described Jackson’s mother as a prostitute and his wife as an adulterer. They printed black bordered handbills shaped like coffins, and Jackson killing 6 Indian chiefs.
Going Whole Hog for Jackson in 1828 • Jackson also hit below the belt as well. Jackson purchased gambling table and chess tables for Adams, and called in gambling furniture. Jackson also accused Adams of having served as a pimp for a servant girl. • Election results: Jackson had trounced Adams by the count of 178 to 83.
Old Hickory as President • Description of Jackson: He was tall, lean, with a bushy iron gray hair brushed high above a prominent forehead, craggy eyebrows, and blue eyes. He was irritable: probably because of his dysentery, malaria, tuberculosis, and lead poisoning from 2 bullets. • Upbringing: He was born in the Carolina’s and early orphaned. He learned how to express himself in writing with vigor and clarity. He sometimes would miss-spell a word or two. He was afflicted with a violent temper; he early became involved in a number of duels, stabbings, and bloody frays. He was passionate, and would often get choked up.
Old Hickory as President • Inauguration Day was on March 4, 1829. Thousands came to witness Jackson take the oath of office. After being sworn in, Jackson led a parade of supporters back to the White House. The excited crowd ruined chairs, sofas, and the carpet.
The Peggy O’Neale Scandal • Peggy O’Neale was the daughter of a tavern keeper with whom Jackson and his friend John Eaton had stayed while they were serving as senators from Tennessee. O’Neale was married with two children. Rumors circulated in the mid-1820s that she and John Eaton were romantically involved. O’Neale’s husband died in 1828 and she and Eaton were soon married. • When Jackson was elected president, he appointed Eaton as Secretary of War. The rest of the Cabinet’s wives, led by Mrs. Calhoun, refused to receive her as a member of Washington society. • Jackson demanded that the wives accept Mrs. Eaton. • John C. Calhoun sided with his wife, against the president’s wishes. Martin Van Buren befriended the Eaton’s and because of that, he and Jackson became even closer. By 1831, Jackson had settled on Van Buren, not Calhoun, as his choice to replace him as president.
The Spoils System • Under Jackson, the spoils system is that it is rewarding political supporters with public office. The basic idea was as old as politics. Every man is as good as his neighbor-perhaps equally better. Jackson wanted to bring in new blood: each generation deserved its turn at public office. • Federal office holders who had been in Washington, D.C. for many years were removed and replaced. Most were removed because they were corrupt or had misused government funds. Jackson’s actions set a precedent for future presidents to appoint their own followers to public office. • Despite its abuse, the spoils system was an important element of the emerging two-party order. The promise of patronage provided a compelling reason for Americans to pick a party and stick with it thick and thin.
The Tricky Tariff of Abominations • In 1824, Congress had increased the general tariff significantly. The tariff passed in 1828 and Andrew Jackson inherited the political hot potato. • Southerners were hostile to the tariff. Hotheads branded it the Black Tariff, and the Tariff of Abominations. • Why did the south act angrily against the tariff? They believed that the tariff discriminated against the south. The north was experiencing a boom and the South was expanding into virgin cotton lands.
The Tricky Tariff of Abominations • Old south was falling on hard times. Southerners sold their cotton and other farm products unprotected by tariffs. They were forced to buy their products in an American market protected by tariffs. • Going a stride beyond the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798, it bluntly proposed that the states should nullify the tariff- that is; they should declare it null and void within their borders.
Nullies in South Carolina • South Carolina’s economy was slowing down. • South Carolina could not compete with more fertile cotton lands in the Southwest. South Carolina blamed the slow down on the Tariff of 1828. The tariff had raised prices on goods that they could not manufacture themselves. South Carolina was mad enough that they were ready to consider secession. • Such tactics might have intimidated John Quincy, but Andrew Jackson was the wrong president to stare down. Jackson privately threatened to invade the state and have the nullifiers hanged. He dispatched naval and military reinforcements, while preparing a sizable army.
Nullies in South Carolina • Henry Clay stepped forward. He put his influence to gradually reduce the tariff of 1832 by about 10 percent over a period of 8 years. By 1842 the rates would be back at the mildly protective level of 1816. • The Compromise Tariff of 1833 went through Congress. Debate was bitter, which most of the debate came from New England and middle states. Congress passed the Force bill, it authorize the president to use the army and navy if necessary, to collect federal tariff duties. • Neither Jackson nor the “Nullies” won a clear cut victory in 1833. Clay was a true hero. Armed conflict had been avoided, but the fundamental issues had not been resolved.
The Trail of Tears • Jackson’s democrats were committed to western expansion, but that expansion meant that there would be confrontation. More than 125,000 Native Americans lived in forests and prairies east of the Mississippi. • Many white Americans felt respect and admiration for the Indians and believed that they could be assimilated into white society. In 1793, Congress gave 20,000 for the promotion of literacy and agricultural and vocational instruction among the Indians.
The Trail of Tears • Many tribes resisted, but some followed. Some Cherokees became prosperous cotton planters and even turned to slaveholding. 13 hundred black slaves toiled for their Native American masters in the Cherokee nation in the 1820’s. • This civilization was not good enough for whites. 1828, the Cherokee tribal council illegal and asserted its own jurisdiction over Indian affairs and Indian lands. The appeals moved to the Supreme Court, Jackson refused to recognize the Court’s decision. In a callous jibe the Indians defender, Jackson allegedly snapped, John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.
The Trail of Tears • Jackson proposed a bodily removal of remaining eastern tribes-chiefly Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles beyond the Mississippi. Jackson evidently consoled himself with the belief that the Indians could preserve their native cultures in the wide open west. • Indian Removal Act in 1830 was providing for the transplanting of all Indian tribes. The Five Civilized Tribes took the hardest brunt, along the notorious Trail of Tears.
The Trail of Tears • Suspicious of white intentions from the start, Sauk and Fox braves from Illinois and Wisconsin led by Black Hawk resisted eviction. They were crushed in the Black Hawk War of 1832 by regular troops. Regular Troops: Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln. • In Florida, Seminole Indians retreated, and they waged a guerilla war that took 1500 soldiers. The spirit of the Seminoles broke in 1837, when their leader Osceola was taken. The war dragged on for 5 years. Four-Fifths of them were moved to present-day Oklahoma were they survived.
The Bank War • President Jackson did not hate all banks and all businesses, but he distrusted monopolistic banking and over-big businesses, as did his followers. • The Bank of the U.S. in the 1830s was a powerful institution. Its headquarters were in Philadelphia and it had branches in 29 other cities. By law, the Bank was the only place that the federal government could deposit its own funds. • The Bank provided credit to businesses, it issued bank notes, which served as a dependable medium of exchange throughout the country and it exercised a restraining effect on less well-managed state banks. The president of the Bank was Nicholas Biddle from 1823 on.
The Bank War • What made the bank a monster in Jackson’s eyes? The national government minted gold and silver coins, but did not issue paper money. Paper notes were printed by private banks. This gave the private banks power over the nation’s economy. • In a way the bank acted like a branch of the government. A source of credit and stability, the bank was an important and useful part of the nation’s expanding economy. • The Bank War erupted in 1832, when Daniel Webster and Henry Clay presented Congress with a bill to renew the Bank of the United States. Clay thought this was a perfect way for him to win the next presidency. Reason being was that if Jackson signed it, he would alienate his western followers. If he didn’t then he would lose the next president election.
The Bank War • Jackson declared the bank unconstitutional. Jackson’s veto message squashed the bank and made him presidential more powerful. The bank issue was now thrown into the noisy arena of the presidential contest of 1832.
Old Hickory Wallops Clay in 1832 • Henry Clay enjoyed impressive advantages; ample funds flowed in their campaign chest, including 50,000 in life insurance from the Bank of the United States. • Jackson idol of the masses easily defeated the big money Kentuckian. The popular vote stood at 687,502 to 530,189 for Jackson; the electoral count was lopsided 219 to 49.
Burying Biddle’s Bank • Its charter denied, the Bank of the United States was due to expire in 1836. Jackson was convinced that Biddle might try and manipulate the bank. Jackson proposed depositing no more funds with Biddle and gradually shrinking existing deposits by using them to defray that day to day expense of the government. By doing this he would bleed the bank dry. • The President’s advisors opposed this policy. Biddle called for his bank’s loans, a lot of Biddle’s banks were driven to the wall by Biddle’s Panic. But it didn’t work.
Burying Biddle’s Bank • The death of the Bank left a financial vacuum in the American economy and kicked off a cycle of booms and busts. • Jackson named Attorney General Roger Taney was to be secretary of the treasury.Taney began placing the government’s money in a number of state banks that opponents of Jackson called “pet banks”. • As a result, the banking system of the U.S. was chronically unstable for the next 100 years.
The Birth of the Whigs • Democrats: Steadily expanding economic and political opportunities for white males; limited government; attack centers of corruption and privilege. • Whigs: Expand the power of the federal government; encourage industrial and commercial development; cautious about westward expansion; favored legislation establishing banks and corporations. They divided their loyalties among Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun, known as the “Great Triumvirate”.
The Election of 1836 • Before leaving office, Jackson issued an order called the “specie circular”. It said that the government would only accept gold or silver as payment for public land sales. It produced a financial panic that caused hundreds of banks and businesses to fail and unemployment to grow. • Martin Van Buren was Jackson’s choice for appointment. Jackson was too old for a third term. Jackson carefully rigged the nominating convention and rammed his favorite down the throats of the delegates.
The Election of 1836 • As the election neared, the Whigs showed their inability to nominate a single presidential candidate. Van Buren squirmed into office by the close popular vote 765,483 to 739,765, but by the comfortable margin of 170 to 124 in the Electoral College. • Van Buren strongly opposed government intervention in the economy and did little to fight the depression. As a result, he became unpopular with the American public. • He was the leader of the Democratic Party in New York. He was elected Governor of New York in 1828. He had a reputation as a political wizard/genius. He was short and thin. He had many nicknames: The Sage of Kinderhook The Little Magician The Red Fox Old Kinderhook
Big Woes for the Little Magician • Van Buren’s four years overflowed with toil and trouble. Jackson gave Van Buren a searing depression. Much of his panic was battling the panic, and it was impossible to come out of this winning the next presidential election.
Gone to Texas • Americans greedy for land, continued to covet the vast expanse of Texas, which the United States had abandoned to Spain when acquiring Florida. Spaniard’s wanted to populate this unpeopled area, but before they could carry out their plans, the Mexicans won their independence in 1821. • They concluded arrangement in 1823 for granting a huge plot of land to Stephen Austin, with the understanding that he would bring families with him. Immigrants had to be a part of the Roman Catholic faith. • This was largely ignored. Texans remained Americans at heart. They were largely upset by Mexican soldiers, many of whom were ex-convicts.
Gone to Texas • Texan-Americans numbered about 30 thousand. Most of them were God-fearing, and law abiding people, but some had to leave, one or two jumps ahead to the sheriff. Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie were just some of them. • Friction increased over issues such as slavery, immigration, and local rights. Slavery was a touchy topic. Mexico emancipated their slaves in 1830. The Texans refused to follow these decrees. When Stephen Austin went to Mexico City in 1833 to speak to Santa Anna clapped him in jail for 8 months. Explosion came when Santa Anna wiped out all local rights and started to raise an army to suppress the upstart Texans.
The Lone Star Rebellion • Early in 1836 the Texans declared their independence, and named Sam Houston commander in chief. Santa Anna swept into Texas, trapping a band of 200 Texans at the Alamo. He wiped them out. The Texans commander Travis declared: “I shall never surrender nor retreat… Victory or Death.” The American volunteers, having thrown down their arms at Goliad, were butchered as pirates. All of these operations delayed the Mexican advance. • Slain heroes like Bowie and Crockett, became legendary in death. Texan war cries were “Remember the Alamo.” Scores of vengeful Americans seized their rifles and rushed to the aid of relatives, friends, and compatriots.
The Lone Star Rebellion • General Sam Houston’s small army retreated east, and lured Santa Anna to San Jacinto. The Mexicans numbered about 1300, and the Texans about 900. Houston took advantage of the Siesta and attacked. Texans wiped them off of the course. Santa Anna was found cowering in the trees. He quickly signed the two treaties. • He agreed to withdraw Mexican troops and to recognize the Rio Grande as the extreme southwestern boundary of Texas. • Many Texans wanted not just recognition of their independence but outright union with the United States. Uncle Sam was jerked back by the black hand of the slavery issue. Antislavery crusaders were against this annexation. • Texans were slaveholders, and admitting Texas to the Union inescapably meant enlarging American slavery.
Log Cabins and Hard Cider of 1840 • Martin Van Buren was re-nominated by the Democrats in 1840; the party had no acceptable alternative to what the Whigs called Martin Van Ruin. • Whigs nominated William Henry Harrison, rather than one of the “Great Triumvirate”, for president. John Tyler ran with him. Democrats nominated Van Buren because he was the sitting president with little hope that he would win. Election results: Harrison received 234 electoral votes to Van Buren’s 60. • Inauguration of Harrison gave a 90-minute address in freezing rain without a hat. He soon caught pneumonia and died one month after taking office. John Tyler became the next president of the United States. They called him: His Accidency.
