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THE AMERICAN YAWP

9. Democracy in America

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I. Introduction | II. Democracy in the Early Republic | III. The Missouri Crisis | IV. The Rise of Andrew Jackson | V. The Nulli�cation

Masons, Anti-Immigrants, and the Whig Coalition | XI. Race and Jacksonian Democracy | XII. Primary Sources | XIII. Reference

Material

George Caleb Bingham, The County Election. Reynolda House Museum of American Art.

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I. Introduction

On May 30, 1806, Andrew Jackson, a thirty-nine-year-old Tennessee lawyer, came within inches of death. A duelist’s bullet struck him

in the chest, just shy of his heart (the man who �red the gun was purportedly the best shot in Tennessee). But the wounded Jackson re-

mained standing. Bleeding, he slowly steadied his aim and returned �re. The other man dropped to the ground, mortally wounded.

Jackson—still carrying the bullet in his chest—later boasted, “I should have hit him, if he had shot me through the brain.”

The duel in Logan County, Kentucky, was one of many that Jackson fought during the course of his long and highly controversial ca-

reer. The tenacity, toughness, and vengefulness that carried Jackson alive out of that duel, and the mythology and symbolism that would

be attached to it, would also characterize many of his later dealings on the battle�eld and in politics. By the time of his death almost

forty years later, Andrew Jackson would become an enduring and controversial symbol, a kind of cipher to gauge the ways that various

Americans thought about their country.

II. Democracy in the Early Republic

Today, most Americans think democracy is a good thing. We tend to assume the nation’s early political leaders believed the same. Wasn’t

the American Revolution a victory for democratic principles? For many of the founders, however, the answer was no.

A wide variety of people participated in early U.S. politics, especially at the local level. But ordinary citizens’ growing direct in�uence on

government frightened the founding elites. At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Alexander Hamilton warned of the “vices of

democracy” and said he considered the British government—with its powerful king and parliament—“the best in the world.” Another

convention delegate, Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, who eventually refused to sign the �nished Constitution, agreed. “The evils we

experience �ow from an excess of democracy,” he proclaimed.

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Too much participation by the multitudes, the elite believed, would undermine good order. It would prevent the creation of a secure

and united republican society. The Philadelphia physician and politician Benjamin Rush, for example, sensed that the Revolution had

launched a wave of popular rebelliousness that could lead to a dangerous new type of despotism. “In our opposition to monarchy,” he

wrote, “we forgot that the temple of tyranny has two doors. We bolted one of them by proper restraints; but we left the other open, by

neglecting to guard against the e�ects of our own ignorance and licentiousness.”

Such warnings did nothing to quell Americans’ democratic impulses in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Americans

who were allowed to vote (and sometimes those who weren’t) went to the polls in impressive numbers. Citizens also made public

demonstrations. They delivered partisan speeches at patriotic holiday and anniversary celebrations. They petitioned Congress, openly

criticized the president, and insisted that a free people should not defer even to elected leaders. In many people’s eyes, the American re-

public was a democratic republic: the people were sovereign all the time, not only on election day.

The elite leaders of political parties could not a�ord to overlook “the cultivation of popular favour,” as Alexander Hamilton put it. Be-

tween the 1790s and 1830s, the elite of every state and party learned to listen—or pretend to listen—to the voices of the multitudes.

And ironically, an American president, holding the o�ce that most resembles a king’s, would come to symbolize the democratizing spir-

it of American politics.

III. The Missouri Crisis

A more troubling pattern was also emerging in national politics and culture. During the �rst decades of the nineteenth century, Ameri-

can politics shifted toward “sectional” con�ict among the states of the North, South, and West.

Since the rati�cation of the Constitution in 1789, the state of Virginia had wielded more in�uence on the federal government than any

other state. Four of the �rst �ve presidents, for example, were from Virginia. Immigration caused by the market revolution, however,

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caused the country’s population to grow fastest in northern states like New York. Northern political leaders were becoming wary of

what they perceived to be a disproportionate in�uence in federal politics by Virginia and other southern states.

Furthermore, many northerners feared that the southern states’ common interest in protecting slavery was creating a congressional vot-

ing bloc that would be di�cult for “free states” to overcome. The North and South began to clash over federal policy as northern states

gradually ended slavery but southern states came to depend even more on enslaved labor.

The most important instance of these rising tensions erupted in the Missouri Crisis. When white settlers in Missouri, a new territory

carved out of the Louisiana Purchase, applied for statehood in 1819, the balance of political power between northern and southern

states became the focus of public debate. Missouri already had more than ten thousand enslaved labors and was poised to join the south-

ern slave states in Congress.

Accordingly, Congressman James Tallmadge of New York proposed an amendment to Missouri’s application for statehood. Tallmadge

claimed that the institution of slavery mocked the Declaration of Independence and the liberty it promised to “all men.” He proposed

that Congress should admit Missouri as a state only if bringing more enslaved people to Missouri were prohibited and children born to

those enslaved there were freed at age twenty-�ve.

Congressmen like Tallmadge opposed slavery for moral reasons, but they also wanted to maintain a sectional balance of power. Unsur-

prisingly, the Tallmadge Amendment met with �rm resistance from southern politicians. It passed in the House of Representatives be-

cause of the support of nearly all the northern congressmen, who had a majority there, but it was quickly defeated in the Senate.

When Congress reconvened in 1820, a senator from Illinois, another new western state, proposed a compromise. Jesse Thomas hoped

his o�er would not only end the Missouri Crisis but also prevent any future sectional disputes over slavery and statehood. Senator Hen-

ry Clay of Kentucky joined in promoting the deal, earning himself the nickname “the Great Compromiser.”

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Their bargain, the Missouri Compromise of 1820, contained three parts. First, Congress would admit Missouri as a slave state. Second,

Congress would admit Maine (which until now had been a territory of Massachusetts) as a free state, maintaining the balance between

the number of free and slave states. Third, the rest of the Louisiana Purchase territory would be divided along the 36°30’ line of latitude

—or in other words, along the southern border of Missouri. Slavery would be prohibited in other new states north of this line, but it

would be permitted in new states to the south. The compromise passed both houses of Congress, and the Missouri Crisis ended

peacefully.

Not everyone, however, felt relieved. The Missouri Crisis made the sectional nature of American politics impossible to ignore. The Mis-

souri Crisis split the Democratic-Republican party entirely along sectional lines, suggesting trouble to come.

Worse, the Missouri Crisis demonstrated the volatility of the slavery debate. Many Americans, including seventy-seven-year-old Thomas

Je�erson, were alarmed at how readily some Americans spoke of disunion and even civil war over the issue. “This momentous question,

like a �re bell in the night, awakened and �lled me with terror,” Je�erson wrote. “I considered it at once as the [death] knell of the

Union.”

For now, the Missouri Crisis did not result in disunion and civil war as Je�erson and others feared. But it also failed to settle the issue of

slavery’s expansion into new western territories. The issue would cause worse trouble in years ahead.

IV. The Rise of Andrew Jackson

The career of Andrew Jackson (1767–1845), the survivor of that backcountry Kentucky duel in 1806, exempli�ed both the opportuni-

ties and the dangers of political life in the early republic. A lawyer, enslaver, and general—and eventually the seventh president of the

United States—he rose from humble frontier beginnings to become one of the most powerful Americans of the nineteenth century.

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Andrew Jackson was born on March 15, 1767, on the border between North and South Carolina, to two immigrants from northern

Ireland. He grew up during dangerous times. At age thirteen, he joined an American militia unit in the Revolutionary War. He was soon

captured, and a British o�cer slashed at his head with a sword after he refused to shine the o�cer’s shoes. Disease during the war had

claimed the lives of his two brothers and his mother, leaving him an orphan. Their deaths and his wounds had left Jackson with a deep

and abiding hatred of Great Britain.

After the war, Jackson moved west to frontier Tennessee, where despite his poor education, he prospered, working as a lawyer and ac-

quiring land and enslaved laborers. (He would eventually come to keep 150 enslaved laborers at the Hermitage, his plantation near

Nashville.) In 1796, Jackson was elected as a U.S. representative, and a year later he won a seat in the Senate, although he resigned within

a year, citing �nancial di�culties.

Thanks to his political connections, Jackson obtained a general’s commission at the outbreak of the War of 1812. Despite having no

combat experience, General Jackson quickly impressed his troops, who nicknamed him “Old Hickory” after a particularly tough kind of

tree.

Jackson led his militiamen into battle in the Southeast, �rst during the Creek War, a side con�ict that started between di�erent factions

of Muskogee (Creek) �ghters in present-day Alabama. In that war, he won a decisive victory at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814. A

year later, he also defeated a large British invasion force at the Battle of New Orleans. There, Jackson’s troops—including backwoods

militiamen, free African Americans, Native Americans, and a company of slave-trading pirates—successfully defended the city and in-

�icted more than two thousand casualties against the British, sustaining barely three hundred casualties of their own. The Battle of

New Orleans was a thrilling victory for the United States, but it actually happened several days after a peace treaty was signed in Europe

to end the war. News of the treaty had not yet reached New Orleans.

The end of the War of 1812 did not end Jackson’s military career. In 1818, as commander of the U.S. southern military district, Jackson

also launched an invasion of Spanish-owned Florida. He was acting on vague orders from the War Department to break the resistance of

the region’s Seminole people, who protected runaway enslaved people and attacked American settlers across the border. On Jackson’s

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orders in 1816, U.S. soldiers and their Creek allies had already destroyed the “Negro Fort,” a British-built fortress on Spanish soil, killing

270 formerly enslaved people and executing some survivors. In 1818, Jackson’s troops crossed the border again. They occupied Pen-

sacola, the main Spanish town in the region, and arrested two British subjects, whom Jackson executed for helping the Seminoles. The

execution of these two Britons created an international diplomatic crisis.

Most o�cials in President James Monroe’s administration called for Jackson’s censure. But Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, the

son of former president John Adams, found Jackson’s behavior useful. He defended the impulsive general, arguing that he had had been

forced to act. Adams used Jackson’s military successes in this First Seminole War to persuade Spain to accept the Adams-Onís Treaty of

1819, which gave Florida to the United States.

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Images like this—showing a young Jackson defending his family from a British o�cer—established Jackson’s legend. Currier & Ives, The Brave Boy of the Waxhaws, 1876. Wikimedia.

Any friendliness between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, however, did not survive long. In 1824, four nominees competed

for the presidency in one of the closest elections in American history. Each came from a di�erent part of the country—Adams from

Massachusetts, Jackson from Tennessee, William H. Crawford from Georgia, and Henry Clay from Kentucky. Jackson won more pop-

ular votes than anyone else. But with no majority winner in the Electoral College, the election was thrown into the House of Represen-

tatives. There, Adams used his political clout to claim the presidency, persuading Clay to support him. Jackson would never forgive

Adams, whom his supporters accused of engineering a “corrupt bargain” with Clay to circumvent the popular will.

Four years later, in 1828, Adams and Jackson squared o� in one of the dirtiest presidential elections to date. Pro-Jackson partisans ac-

cused Adams of elitism and claimed that while serving in Russia as a diplomat he had o�ered the Russian emperor an American prosti-

tute. Adams’s supporters, on the other hand, accused Jackson of murder and attacked the morality of his marriage, pointing out that

Jackson had unwittingly married his wife Rachel before the divorce on her prior marriage was complete. This time, Andrew Jackson

won the election easily, but Rachel Jackson died suddenly before his inauguration. Jackson would never forgive the people who attacked

his wife’s character during the campaign.

In 1828, Jackson’s broad appeal as a military hero won him the presidency. He was “Old Hickory,” the “Hero of New Orleans,” a leader

of plain frontier folk. His wartime accomplishments appealed to many voters’ pride. Over the next eight years, he would claim to repre-

sent the interests of ordinary white Americans, especially from the South and West, against the country’s wealthy and powerful elite.

This attitude would lead him and his allies into a series of bitter political struggles.

V. The Nulli�cation Crisis

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Nearly every American had an opinion about President Jackson. To some, he epitomized democratic government and popular rule. To

others, he represented the worst in a powerful and unaccountable executive, acting as president with the same arrogance he had shown

as a general in Florida. One of the key issues dividing Americans during his presidency was a sectional dispute over national tax policy

that would come to de�ne Jackson’s no-holds-barred approach to government.

Once Andrew Jackson moved into the White House, most southerners expected him to do away with the hated Tari� of 1828, the so-

called Tari� of Abominations. This import tax provided protection for northern manufacturing interests by raising the prices of Eu-

ropean products in America. Southerners, however, blamed the tari� for a massive transfer of wealth. It forced them to purchase goods

from the North’s manufacturers at higher prices, and it provoked European countries to retaliate with high tari�s of their own, reduc-

ing foreign purchases of the South’s raw materials.

Only in South Carolina, though, did the discomfort turn into organized action. The state was still trying to shrug o� the economic

problems of the Panic of 1819, but it had also recently endured the Denmark Vesey slave conspiracy, which convinced white South Car-

olinians that antislavery ideas put them in danger of a massive uprising.

Elite South Carolinians were especially worried that the tari� was merely an entering wedge for federal legislation that would limit slav-

ery. Andrew Jackson’s own vice president, John C. Calhoun, who was from South Carolina, asserted that the tari� was “the occasion,

rather than the real cause of the present unhappy state of things.” The real fear was that the federal government might attack “the pecu-

liar domestick institution of the Southern States”—meaning slavery. When Jackson failed to act against the tari�, Vice President Cal-

houn was caught in a tight position.

In 1828, Calhoun secretly drafted the “South Carolina Exposition and Protest,” an essay and set of resolutions that laid out the doctrine

of nulli�cation.” Drawing from the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and 1799, Calhoun argued that the United States was

a compact among the states rather than among the whole American people. Since the states had created the Union, he reasoned, they

were still sovereign, so a state could nullify a federal statute it considered unconstitutional. Other states would then have to concede the

right of nulli�cation or agree to amend the Constitution. If necessary, a nullifying state could leave the Union.

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When Calhoun’s authorship of the essay became public, Jackson was furious, interpreting it both as a personal betrayal and as a chal-

lenge to his authority as president. His most dramatic confrontation with Calhoun came in 1832 during a commemoration for Thomas

Je�erson. At dinner, the president rose and toasted, “Our Federal Union: it must be preserved.” Calhoun responded with a toast of his

own: “The Union: next to our Liberty the most dear.” Their divorce was not pretty. Martin Van Buren, a New York political leader

whose skill in making deals had earned him the nickname “the Little Magician,” replaced Calhoun as vice president when Jackson ran

for reelection in 1832.

Calhoun returned to South Carolina, where a special state convention nulli�ed the federal tari�s of 1828 and 1832. It declared them un-

constitutional and therefore “null, void, and no law” within South Carolina. The convention ordered South Carolina customs o�cers

not to collect tari� revenue and declared that any federal attempt to enforce the tari�s would cause the state to secede from the Union.

President Jackson responded dramatically. He denounced the ordinance of nulli�cation and declared that “disunion, by armed force, is

TREASON.” Vowing to hang Calhoun and any other nulli�er who de�ed federal power, he persuaded Congress to pass a Force Bill

that authorized him to send the military to enforce the tari�s. Faced with such threats, other southern states declined to join South Car-

olina. Privately, however, Jackson supported the idea of compromise and allowed his political enemy Henry Clay to broker a solution

with Calhoun. Congress passed a compromise bill that slowly lowered federal tari� rates. South Carolina rescinded nulli�cation for the

tari�s but nulli�ed the Force Bill.

The legacy of the Nulli�cation Crisis is di�cult to sort out. Jackson’s decisive action seemed to have forced South Carolina to back

down. But the crisis also united the ideas of secession and states’ rights, two concepts that had not necessarily been linked before. Per-

haps most clearly, nulli�cation showed that the immense political power of enslavers was matched only by their immense anxiety about

the future of slavery. During later debates in the 1840s and 1850s, they would raise the ideas of the Nulli�cation Crisis again.

VI. The Eaton A�air and the Politics of Sexuality

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Meanwhile, a more personal crisis during Jackson’s �rst term also drove a wedge between him and Vice President Calhoun. The Eaton

A�air, sometimes insultingly called the “Petticoat A�air,” began as a disagreement among elite women in Washington, D.C., but it even-

tually led to the disbanding of Jackson’s cabinet.

True to his backwoods reputation, when he took o�ce in 1829, President Jackson chose mostly provincial politicians, not Washington

veterans, to serve in his administration. One of them was his friend John Henry Eaton, a senator from Tennessee, whom Jackson nomi-

nated to be his secretary of war.

A few months earlier, Eaton had married Margaret O’Neale Timberlake, the recent widow of a navy o�cer. She was the daughter of

Washington boardinghouse proprietors, and her humble origins and combination of beauty, outspokenness, and familiarity with so

many men in the boardinghouse had led to gossip. During her �rst marriage, rumors had circulated that she and John Eaton were having

an a�air while her husband was at sea. When her �rst husband died by suicide and she married Eaton just nine months later, the society

women of Washington had been scandalized. One wrote that Margaret Eaton’s reputation had been “totally destroyed.”17

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This photograph shows Eaton at a much older age. “Eaton, Mrs. Margaret (Peggy O’Neill), old lady,” c. 1870-1880. Library of Congress.

John Eaton was now secretary of war, but other cabinet members’ wives refused have anything to do with his wife. No respectable lady

who wanted to protect her own reputation could exchange visits with her, invite her to social events, or be seen chatting with her. Most

importantly, the vice president’s wife, Floride Calhoun, shunned Margaret Eaton, spending most of her time in South Carolina to avoid

her. Even Jackson’s own niece, Emily Donelson, visited Eaton once and then refused to have anything more to do with her.

Although women could not vote or hold o�ce, they played an important role in politics as people who controlled in�uence. They

helped hold o�cial Washington together. And according to one local society woman, “the ladies” had “as much rivalship and party spir-

it, desire of precedence and authority” as male politicians had. These women upheld a strict code of femininity and sexual morality.

They paid careful attention to the rules that governed personal interactions and o�cial relationships.

Margaret Eaton’s social exclusion thus greatly a�ected Jackson, his cabinet, and the rest of Washington society. At �rst, President Jack-

son blamed his rival Henry Clay for the attacks on the Eatons. But he soon perceived that Washington women and his new cabinet had

initiated the gossip. Jackson sco�ed, “I did not come here to make a cabinet for the ladies of this place,” and claimed that he “had rather

have live vermin on my back than the tongue of one of these Washington women on my reputation.” He began to blame the ambition

of Vice President Calhoun for Floride Calhoun’s actions, deciding “it was necessary to put him out of the cabinet and destroy him.”

Jackson was so indignant because he had recently been through a similar scandal with his late wife, Rachel. Her character, too, had been

insulted by leading politicians’ wives because of the circumstances of her marriage. Jackson believed that Rachel’s death had been caused

by those slanderous attacks. Furthermore, he saw the assaults on the Eatons as attacks on his authority.

In one of the most famous presidential meetings in American history, Jackson called together his cabinet members to discuss what they

saw as the bedrock of society: women’s position as protectors of the nation’s values. There, the men of the cabinet debated Margaret

Eaton’s character. Jackson delivered a long defense, methodically presenting evidence against her attackers. But the men attending the

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meeting—and their wives—were not swayed. They continued to shun Margaret Eaton, and the scandal was resolved only with the resig-

nation of four members of the cabinet, including Eaton’s husband.

VII. The Bank War

Andrew Jackson’s �rst term was full of controversy. For all of his reputation as a military and political warrior, however, the most char-

acteristic struggle of his presidency was �nancial. As president, he waged a “war” against the Bank of the United States.

The charter of the controversial national bank that Congress established under Alexander Hamilton’s �nancial plan had expired in

1811. But �ve years later, Congress had given a new charter to the Second Bank of the United States. Headquartered in Philadelphia, the

bank was designed to stabilize the growing American economy. By requiring other banks to pay their debts promptly in gold, it was sup-

posed to prevent them from issuing too many paper banknotes that could drop suddenly in value. Of course, the Bank of the United

States was also supposed to reap a healthy pro�t for its private stockholders, like the Philadelphia banker Stephen Girard and the New

York merchant John Jacob Astor.

Though many Democratic-Republicans had supported the new bank, some never gave up their Je�ersonian suspicion that such a pow-

erful institution was dangerous to the republic. Andrew Jackson was one of the skeptics. He and many of his supporters blamed the

bank for the Panic of 1819, which had become a severe economic depression. The national bank had made that crisis worse, �rst by

lending irresponsibly and then, when the panic hit, by hoarding gold currency to save itself at the expense of smaller banks and their cus-

tomers. Jackson’s supporters also believed the bank had corrupted many politicians by giving them �nancial favors.

In 1829, after a few months in o�ce, Jackson set his sights on the bank and its director, Nicholas Biddle. Jackson became more and

more insistent over the next three years as Biddle and the bank’s supporters fought to save it. A visiting Frenchman observed that Jack-

son had “declared a war to the death against the Bank,” attacking it “in the same cut-and-thrust style” with which he had once fought

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Native Americans and the British. For Jackson, the struggle was a personal crisis. “The Bank is trying to kill me,” he told Martin Van Bu-

ren, “but I will kill it!”

The bank’s charter was not due for renewal for several years, but in 1832, while Jackson was running for reelection, Congress held an

early vote to reauthorize the Bank of the United States. The president vetoed the bill.

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“The bank,” Andrew Jackson told Martin Van Buren, “is trying to kill me, but I will kill it!” That is just the unwavering force that Edward Clay depicted in this lithograph, which praised Jackson for terminating the Second Bank of the United States. Clay shows Nicholas Biddle as the Devil running away from Jackson as the bank collapses around him, his hirelings, and speculators. Edward W. Clay, c. 1832. Wikimedia.

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In his veto message, Jackson called the bank unconstitutional and “dangerous to the liberties of the people.” The charter, he explained,

didn’t do enough to protect the bank from its British stockholders, who might not have Americans’ interests at heart. In addition, Jack-

son wrote, the Bank of the United States was virtually a federal agency, but it had powers that were not granted anywhere in the Consti-

tution. Worst of all, the bank was a way for well-connected people to get richer at everyone else’s expense. “The rich and powerful,” the

president declared, “too often bend the acts of government to their sel�sh purposes.” Only a strictly limited government, Jackson be-

lieved, would treat people equally.

Although its charter would not be renewed, the Bank of the United States could still operate for several more years. So in 1833, to di-

minish its power, Jackson also directed his cabinet to stop depositing federal funds in it. From now on, the government would do busi-

ness with selected state banks instead. Critics called them Jackson’s “pet banks.”

Jackson’s bank veto set o� �erce controversy. Opponents in Philadelphia held a meeting and declared that the president’s ideas were

dangerous to private property. Jackson, they said, intended to “place the honest earnings of the industrious citizen at the disposal of the

idle”—in other words, redistribute wealth to lazy people—and become a “dictator.” A newspaper editor said that Jackson was trying

to set “the poor against the rich,” perhaps in order to take over as a military tyrant. But Jackson’s supporters praised him. Pro-Jackson

newspaper editors wrote that he had kept a “monied aristocracy” from conquering the people.

By giving President Jackson a vivid way to defy the rich and powerful, or at least appear to do so, the Bank War gave his supporters a spe-

ci�c “democratic” idea to rally around. More than any other issue, opposition to the national bank came to de�ne their beliefs. And by

leading Jackson to exert executive power so dramatically against Congress, the Bank War also helped his political enemies organize.

Increasingly, supporters of Andrew Jackson referred to themselves as Democrats. Under the strategic leadership of Martin Van Buren,

they built a highly organized national political party, the �rst modern party in the United States. Much more than earlier political par-

ties, this Democratic Party had a centralized leadership structure and a consistent ideological program for all levels of government.

Meanwhile, Jackson’s enemies, mocking him as “King Andrew the First,” named themselves after the patriots of the American Revolu-

tion, the Whigs.

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VIII. The Panic of 1837

Unfortunately for Jackson’s Democrats (and most other Americans), their victory over the Bank of the United States worsened rather

than solved the country’s economic problems.

Things looked good initially. Between 1834 and 1836, a combination of high cotton prices, freely available foreign and domestic credit,

and an infusion of specie (“hard” currency in the form of gold and silver) from Europe spurred a sustained boom in the American econ-

omy. At the same time, sales of western land by the federal government promoted speculation and poorly regulated lending practices,

creating a vast real estate bubble.

Meanwhile, the number of state-chartered banks grew from 329 in 1830 to 713 just six years later. As a result, the volume of paper ban-

knotes per capita in circulation in the United States increased by 40 percent between 1834 and 1836. Low interest rates in Great Britain

also encouraged British capitalists to make risky investments in America. British lending across the Atlantic surged, raising American

foreign indebtedness from $110 million to $220 million over the same two years.

As the boom accelerated, banks became more careless about the amount of hard currency they kept on hand to redeem their banknotes.

And although Jackson had hoped his bank veto would reduce bankers’ and speculators’ power over the economy, it actually made the

problems worse.

Two further federal actions late in the Jackson administration also worsened the situation. In June 1836, Congress decided to increase

the number of banks receiving federal deposits. This plan undermined the banks that were already receiving federal money, since they

saw their funds distributed to other banks. Next, seeking to reduce speculation on credit, the Treasury Department issued an order

called the Specie Circular in July 1836, requiring payment in hard currency for all federal land purchases. As a result, land buyers

drained eastern banks of even more gold and silver.

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By late fall in 1836, America’s economic bubbles began to burst. Federal land sales plummeted. The New York Herald reported that

“lands in Illinois and Indiana that were cracked up to $10 an acre last year, are now to be got at $3, and even less.” The newspaper

warned darkly, “The reaction has begun, and nothing can stop it.”

Runs on banks began in New York on May 4, 1837, as panicked customers scrambled to exchange their banknotes for hard currency. By

May 10, the New York banks, running out of gold and silver, stopped redeeming their notes. As news spread, banks around the nation

did the same. By May 15, the largest crowd in Pennsylvania history had amassed outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia, denouncing

banking as a “system of fraud and oppression.”

The Panic of 1837 led to a general economic depression. Between 1839 and 1843, the total capital held by American banks dropped by

40 percent as prices fell and economic activity around the nation slowed to a crawl. The price of cotton in New Orleans, for instance,

dropped 50 percent.

Traveling through New Orleans in January 1842, a British diplomat reported that the country “presents a lamentable appearance of ex-

haustion and demoralization.” Over the previous decade, the American economy had soared to fantastic new heights and plunged to

dramatic new depths.

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Many Americans blamed the Panic of 1837 on the economic policies of Andrew Jackson, who is sarcastically represented in the lithograph as the sun with top hat, spectacle, and a banner of “Glory” around him. The destitute people in the foreground (representing the common man) are su�ering while a prosperous attorney rides in an elegant car- riage in the background (right side of frame). Edward W. Clay, “The Times,” 1837. Wikimedia.

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Normal banking activity did not resume around the nation until late 1842. Meanwhile, two hundred banks closed, cash and credit be-

came scarce, prices declined, and trade slowed. During this downturn, eight states and a territorial government defaulted on loans made

by British banks to �nance internal improvements.

IX. Rise of the Whigs

The disaster of the Panic of 1837 created an opportunity for the Whig Party, which had grown partly out of the political coalition of

John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay and opposed Andrew Jackson and the Democratic Party. The National Republicans, a loose al-

liance concentrated in the Northeast, had become the core of a new anti-Jackson movement. But Jackson’s enemies were a varied group;

they included pro-slavery southerners angry about Jackson’s behavior during the Nulli�cation Crisis as well as antislavery Yankees.

After they failed to prevent Andrew Jackson’s reelection, this fragile coalition formally organized as a new party in 1834 “to rescue the

Government and public liberty.” Henry Clay, who had run against Jackson for president and was now serving again as a senator from

Kentucky, held private meetings to persuade anti-Jackson leaders from di�erent backgrounds to unite. He also gave the new Whig Party

its anti-monarchical name.

At �rst, the Whigs focused mainly on winning seats in Congress, opposing “King Andrew” from outside the presidency. They remained

divided by regional and ideological di�erences. The Democratic presidential candidate, Vice President Martin Van Buren, easily won

election as Jackson’s successor in 1836. But the Whigs gained signi�cant public support after the Panic of 1837, and they became in-

creasingly well organized. In late 1839, they held their �rst national convention in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

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Andrew Jackson portrayed himself as the defender of the common man, and in many ways he democratized American politics. His opponents, however, zeroed in on Jackson’s willingness to utilize the powers of the executive o�ce. Unwilling to defer to Congress and absolutely willing to use his veto power, Jackson came to be regarded by his adver- saries as a tyrant (or, in this case, “King Andrew I”.) Anonymous, c. 1832. Wikimedia.

To Henry Clay’s disappointment, the convention voted to nominate not him but General William Henry Harrison of Ohio as the Whig

candidate for president in 1840. Harrison was known primarily for defeating Shawnee warriors led by Tecumseh before and during the

War of 1812, most famously at the Battle of Tippecanoe in present-day Indiana. Whig leaders viewed him as a candidate with broad pa-

triotic appeal. They portrayed him as the “log cabin and hard cider” candidate, a plain man of the country, unlike the easterner Martin

Van Buren. To balance the ticket with a southerner, the Whigs nominated a slave-owning Virginia senator, John Tyler, for vice presi-

dent. Tyler had been a Jackson supporter but had broken with him over states’ rights during the Nulli�cation Crisis.

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The popular slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too” helped the Whigs and William Henry Harrison (with John Tyler) win the presidential election in 1840. Pictured here is a campaign banner with shortened “Tip and Ty,” one of the many ways that Whigs waged the “log cabin campaign,” Wikimedia.

Although “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too” easily won the presidential election of 1840, this choice of ticket turned out to be disastrous for

the Whigs. Harrison became ill (for unclear reasons, though tradition claims he contracted pneumonia after delivering a nearly two-

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hour inaugural address without an overcoat or hat) and died after just thirty-one days in o�ce. Harrison thus holds the ironic honor of

having the longest inaugural address and the shortest term in o�ce of any American president. Vice President Tyler became president

and soon adopted policies that looked far more like Andrew Jackson’s than like a Whig’s. After Tyler twice vetoed charters for another

Bank of the United States, nearly his entire cabinet resigned, and the Whigs in Congress expelled “His Accidency” from the party.

The crisis of Tyler’s administration was just one sign of the Whig Party’s di�culty uniting around issues besides opposition to Democ-

rats. The Whig Party succeeded in electing two more presidents but remained deeply divided. Its problems grew as the issue of slavery

strained the Union in the 1850s. Unable to agree on a consistent national position on slavery, and unable to �nd another national issue

to rally around, the Whigs broke apart by 1856.

X. Anti-Masons, Anti-Immigrants, and the Whig Coalition

The Whig coalition drew strength from several earlier parties, including two that harnessed American political paranoia. The Anti-Ma-

sonic Party formed in the 1820s for the purpose of destroying the Freemasons. Later, anti-immigrant sentiment formed the American

Party, also called the Know-Nothings. The American Party sought and won o�ce across the country in the 1850s, but nativism had al-

ready been an in�uential force, particularly in the Whig Party, whose members could not fail to notice that urban Irish Catholics strong-

ly tended to support Democrats.

Freemasonry, an international network of social clubs with arcane traditions and rituals, seems to have originated in medieval Europe as

a trade organization for stonemasons. By the eighteenth century, however, it had outgrown its relationship with the masons’ craft and

had become a general secular fraternal order that proclaimed adherence to the ideals of the Enlightenment.

Freemasonry was an important part of the social life of men in the new republic’s elite. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, An-

drew Jackson, and Henry Clay all claimed membership. Prince Hall, a free leather worker in Boston, founded a separate branch of the

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order for African American men. However, the Masonic brotherhood’s secrecy, elitism, rituals, and secular ideals generated a deep suspi-

cion of the organization among many Americans.

In 1820s upstate New York, which was fertile soil for new religious and social reform movements, anti-Masonic suspicion would emerge

for the �rst time as an organized political force. The trigger for this was the strange disappearance and probable murder of William Mor-

gan. Morgan announced plans to publish an exposé called Illustrations of Masonry. This book purported to reveal the order’s secret

rites, and it outraged other local Freemasons. They launched a series of attempts to prevent the book from being published, including an

attempt to burn the press and a conspiracy to have Morgan jailed for alleged debts. In September, Morgan disappeared. He was last seen

being forced into a carriage by four men later identi�ed as Masons. When a corpse washed up on the shore of Lake Ontario, Morgan’s

wife and friends claimed at �rst that it was his.

The Morgan story convinced many people that Masonry was a dangerous in�uence in the republic. The publicity surrounding the trials

transformed local outrage into a political movement that, though small, had signi�cant power in New York and parts of New England.

This movement addressed Americans’ widespread dissatisfaction about economic and political change by giving them a handy explana-

tion: the republic was controlled by a secret society.

In 1827, local anti-Masonic committees began meeting across the state of New York, committing not to vote for any political candidate

who belonged to the Freemasons. This boycott grew, and in 1828, a convention in the town of LeRoy produced an “Anti-Masonic Dec-

laration of Independence,” the basis for an Anti-Masonic Party. In 1828, Anti-Masonic politicians ran for state o�ces in New York,

winning 12 percent of the vote for governor.

In 1830, the Anti-Masons held a national convention in Philadelphia. But after a dismal showing in the 1832 presidential elections, the

leaders of the Anti-Masonic Party folded their movement into the new Whig Party. The Anti-Masonic Party’s absorption into the Whig

coalition demonstrated the importance of conspiracy theories in American politics. Just as Andrew Jackson’s followers detected a vast

foreign plot in the form of the Bank of the United States, some of his enemies could detect it in the form of the Freemasons. Others,

called nativists, blamed immigrants.

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Nativists detected many foreign threats, but Catholicism may have been the most important. Nativists watched with horror as more and

more Catholic immigrants (especially from Ireland and Germany) arrived in American cities. The immigrants professed di�erent beliefs,

often spoke unfamiliar languages, and participated in alien cultural traditions. Just as importantly, nativists remembered Europe’s histo-

ry of warfare between Catholics and Protestants. They feared that Catholics would bring religious violence with them to the United

States.

In the summer of 1834, a mob of Protestants attacked a Catholic convent near Boston. The rioters had read newspaper rumors that a

woman was being held against her will by the nuns. Angry men broke into the convent and burned it to the ground. Later, a young

woman named Rebecca Reed, who had spent time in the convent, published a memoir describing abuses she claimed the nuns had di-

rected toward novices and students. The convent attack was among many eruptions of nativism, especially in New England and other

parts of the Northeast, during the early nineteenth century.

Many Protestants saw the Catholic faith as a superstition that deprived individuals of the right to think for themselves and enslaved

them to a dictator, the pope, in Rome. They accused Catholic priests of controlling their parishioners and preying sexually on young

women. They feared that Catholicism would overrun and conquer the American political system, just as their ancestors had feared it

would conquer England.

The painter and inventor Samuel F. B. Morse, for example, warned in 1834 that European tyrants were conspiring together to “carry

Popery through all our borders” by sending Catholic immigrants to the United States. If they succeeded, he predicted, Catholic domi-

nance in America would mean “the certain destruction of our free institutions.” Around the same time, the Protestant minister Ly-

man Beecher lectured in various cities, delivering a similar warning. “If the potentates of Europe have no design upon our liberties,”

Beecher demanded, then why were they sending over “such �oods of pauper emigrants—the contents of the poorhouse and the sweep-

ings of the streets—multiplying tumults and violence, �lling our prisons, and crowding our poorhouses, and quadrupling our

taxation”—not to mention voting in American elections?

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XI. Race and Jacksonian Democracy

More than anything else, however, it was racial inequality that exposed American democracy’s limits. Over several decades, state govern-

ments had lowered their property requirements so poorer men could vote. But as northern states ended slavery, whites worried that free

Black men could also go to the polls in large numbers. In response, they adopted new laws that made racial discrimination the basis of

American democracy.

At the time of the Revolution, only two states explicitly limited Black voting rights. By 1839, almost all states did. (The four exceptions

were all in New England, where the Democratic Party was weakest.) For example, New York’s 1821 state constitution enfranchised near-

ly all white male taxpayers but only the richest Black men. In 1838, a similar constitution in Pennsylvania prohibited Black voting

completely.

The new Pennsylvania constitution disenfranchised even one of the richest people in Philadelphia. James Forten, a free-born sailmaker

who had served in the American Revolution, had become a wealthy merchant and landowner. He used his wealth and in�uence to pro-

mote the abolition of slavery, and after the 1838 constitution, he undertook a lawsuit to protect his right to vote. But he lost, and his

voting rights were terminated. An English observer commented sarcastically that Forten wasn’t “white enough” to vote, but “he has al-

ways been considered quite white enough to be taxed.”

During the 1830s, furthermore, the social tensions that had promoted Andrew Jackson’s rise also worsened race relations. Almost four

hundred thousand free Black people lived in America by the end of the decade. In the South and West, Native Americans stood in the

way of white expansion. And the new Irish Catholic immigrants, along with native working-class whites, often despised nonwhites as

competitors for scarce work, housing, and status.

Racial and ethnic resentment thus contributed to a wave of riots in American cities during the 1830s. In Philadelphia, thousands of

white rioters torched an antislavery meeting house and attacked Black churches and homes. Near St. Louis, abolitionist newspaper edi-

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tor Elijah Lovejoy was murdered as he defended his printing press. Contemplating the violence, another journalist wondered, “Does it

not appear that the character of our people has su�ered a considerable change for the worse?”

Racial tensions also in�uenced popular culture. The white actor Thomas Dartmouth Rice appeared on stage in Blackface, singing and

dancing as a clownish enslaved man named “Jim Crow.” Many other white entertainers copied him. Borrowing from the work of real

Black performers but pandering to white audiences’ prejudices, they turned cruel stereotypes into one of antebellum America’s favorite

forms of entertainment.

Some whites in the 1830s, however, joined free Black activists in protesting racial inequality. Usually, they lived in northern cities and

came from the class of skilled laborers, or in other words, the lower middle class. Most of them were not rich, but they expected to rise in

the world.

In Boston, for example, the Female Anti-Slavery Society included women whose husbands sold coal, mended clothes, and baked bread,

as well as women from wealthy families. In the nearby village of Lynn, many abolitionists were shoemakers. They organized boycotts of

consumer products like sugar that came from slave labor, and they sold their own handmade goods at antislavery fund-raising fairs. For

many of them, the antislavery movement was a way to participate in “respectable” middle-class culture, a way for both men and women

to have a say in American life.

Debates about slavery, therefore, re�ected wider tensions in a changing society. The ultimate question was whether American democra-

cy had room for people of di�erent races as well as religions and classes. Some people said yes and struggled to make American society

more welcoming. But the vast majority, whether Democrats or Whigs, said no.

XII. Primary Sources

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1. Missouri Controversy documents, 1819-1920

Southerners dominated the highest federal o�ces for the �rst decades of the United States, as Virginians held the Presidency for na-

tion’s �rst thirty-two of the �rst thirty-six years. Northerners resented this dominance and sectional tensions simmered until they

threatened to boil over in 1820 when James Tallmadge included the below amendment to Missouri’s application for statehood. In-

cluded below is Tallmadge’s amendment; the �nal act which settled the crisis, at least temporarily; and a private letter from Thomas

Je�erson illustrating his reaction to the crisis.

2. Rhode Islanders protest property restrictions on voting, 1834

Many poor white men gained voting rights, also known as su�rage, for the �rst time in the 1830s. These changes in American

democracy did not take place without con�ict. Voting rights in Rhode Island only changed after poor Rhode Islanders raised a mili-

tia and threatened violence. Below is the proposal of many of the men who seven years later took up arms to right for voting rights.

3. Black Philadelphians defend their voting rights, 1838

The expansion of voting rights to poor white men brought a loss of voting rights for Black men. Race, rather than class, quickly be-

came the most important social distinction in the United States. Some wealthy Black men, like James Forten and Robert Purvis of

Pennsylvania, lost voting rights that they previously enjoyed. In this document, Philadelphians protest the loss of their voting rights.

4. Andrew Jackson’s veto message against re-chartering the Bank of the United States, 1832

President Andrew Jackson, like Thomas Je�erson before him, was highly suspicious of the Bank of the United States. He blamed

the bank for the Panic of 1819 and for corrupting politics with too much money. After Congress renewed the bank charter, Jackson

vetoed the bill. The following was the message he gave to Congress after issuing his veto. Jackson’s decision was controversial. Some

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Americans accused him of acting like a dictator to redistribute wealth. Others saw the act as an attack on a corrupt system that only

favored the rich.

5. Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July,” 1852

Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in Talbot County, Maryland in 1818. He was separated from his mother in infancy and

lived with his grandmother until he was separated from her as well at age seven. After several attempts, he �nally successfully escape

slavery in 1838. He became one of the most in�uential abolitionist speakers and before a crowd of white abolitionists in 1852, he

delivered this, one of the greatest abolitionist speeches.

6. Rebecca Reed accuses nuns of abuse, 1835

In 1834 anti-Catholic rioters burned the Ursuline Convent in Charestown, Massachusetts. In 1835, Rebecca Reed published a

memoir about her time staying at the convent. Prior to its publication, rumors existed about Reed’s experience that may have moti-

vated the arsonists. In these documents, we read excerpts from Reed’s account and the response from the convent’s Mother Superi-

or Mary St. George.

7. Samuel Morse fears a Catholic conspiracy, 1835

Irish immigrants in the early nineteenth century �lled jobs created by the Market Revolution. Their arrival provided an important

source of labor for a growing economy, but many Americans worried about the in�uence of these arrivals. Samuel Morse, an inven-

tor who contributed to the development of the telegraph and Morse Code, feared that Irish immigrants represented the front line

of a Catholic conspiracy to destroy the United States.

8. County election painting, 1854

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Beginning in the late 1840s, George Caleb Bingham created a series of paintings illustrating American democracy. He was drawn to

the energy and near-chaos of speeches, rallies, election days, public announcements of voting results and more. Prior to painting

this work, Bingham himself ran for state o�ce in Missouri as a Whig. Here he shows the tumult of a county election day. Children

play games, drunkards raise their glass (while political operatives drag inebriated men to the poll), citizens carefully debate the issues,

while others study the newspaper. Art historians argue whether Bingham is celebrating or mocking American democracy.

9. Martin Van Buren cartoon, 1837

This caricature of President Martin Van Buren cloaked in worthless bank notes was created during the Panic of 1837. The artist

mocks Van Buren and the policies of his predecessor, Andrew Jackson. The cartoon includes mentions to Jackson’s “Specie Circu-

lar,” an order that government o�cials only accept gold or silver as payment for land and Van Buren’s “Safety Fund,” a program de-

signed to o�set the damage of bank failures. A document labeled “Indian claims” also refers to Jackson’s policy of Indian Removal.

These and other subtle details reveal the anxieties of economic collapse and the policy di�erences between Democrats and Whigs.

XIII. Reference Material

This chapter was edited by Jonathan Wilfred Wilson, with content contributions by Myles Beaupre, Christopher Childers, William

Cossen, Adam Costanzo, Nathaniel C. Green, Robert Gudmestad, Spencer McBride, Kevin Waite, and Jonathan Wilfred Wilson.

Recommended citation: Myles Beupre et al., “Democracy in America,” Jonathan Wilfred Wilson, ed., in The American Yawp, eds.

Joseph Locke and Ben Wright (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018).

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