1. Expansion of the franchise was the most dramatic expression of the Democratic Revolution; beginning in the late 1810s, many states revised their constitutions to give the franchise to nearly every white farmer and wage earner.
2. In
3. In the
4. To deter migration to the western states, the elites in most eastern legislatures grudgingly accepted a broader franchise for their states.
5. Between 1818 and 1821, some eastern states reapportioned legislatures on the basis of population and instituted more democratic forms of local government.
6. Americans began to turn to government in order to advance business, religious, and cultural causes.
7. As the power of the notables declined, the political party emerged as the organizing force in the American system of government.
8. Parties were political machines that gathered the diverse agenda of social and economic groups into a coherent legislative program. Party power enabled men of little or no personal distinction or ability to achieve office by following party policy.
9. Between 1817 and 1821,Martin Van Buren created the first statewide political machine, and he later organized the first nationwide political party, the Jacksonian Democrats.
10. Van Buren argued that political parties kept the government from abusing its power and insisted that state legislators follow the majority decisions of a party meeting, or caucus.
1. With the democratization of politics, the aristocratic Federalist Party virtually disappeared, and the Republicans broke up into competing factions.
2. The election of 1824 had five candidates who all called themselves Republicans: John Quincy Adams, John C. Calhoun,William H. Crawford, Henry Clay, and Andrew Jackson.
3. Congress selected William Crawford as the official candidate, yet the other candidates refused to accept the selection and sought support among ordinary voters.
4. Although
5. Clay assembled a
coalition of congressmen that voted for Adams, and
6. Jacksonians in Congress condemned Clay for arranging this “corrupt bargain.”
1.
2. Adams’s policies
favored the business elite of the Northeast and the entrepreneurs and
commercial farmers in the
3. Congress defeated
most of
4. Adams’s Tariff of
1816 effectively excluded imports of cheap English cotton cloth, giving control
of that market to
5. The new tariff of 35 percent on imported goods alienated the South, which now had to buy either higher-cost northeastern goods or highly taxed British goods.
6. Southerners felt the tariff was legalized pillage and labeled it a “Tariff of Abominations.”
1. Southerners refused
to support
2.
3. Jacksonians initially called themselves “Democratic Republicans” but eventually became simply “Democrats,” and their name conveyed their message that through them the middling majority—the democracy—would rule.
4.
1. To decide policy,
2. Using the spoils system to reward backers with government posts, Jackson created a loyal and disciplined national party, and he also insisted on rotation in office to free up still more jobs for his followers.
3.
1. Although opposition
to the Tariff of 1828 helped
2. In November 1832 the
3. John C. Calhoun maintained that the U.S. Constitution had been ratified by state conventions; therefore, a state convention could declare a congressional law null and void.
4.
5. Congress passed a
Force Bill authorizing the use of the army and navy to force
6.
1. By collecting notes and regularly demanding specie, the Second Bank of the United States kept state banks from issuing too many notes—preventing monetary inflation and higher prices.
2. Most Americans did not understand the regulatory role of the Second Bank and feared its ability to force bank closures, which left them holding worthless paper.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
1. In the late 1820s,
whites in both the West and East called for the resettlement of the Indians west
of the
2. Indian peoples still controlled vast tracts of land, and in 1827 the Cherokees introduced a new charter of government modeled directly on the U.S. Constitution.
3. The
4.
5.
6. In Cherokee
Nation v. Georgia (1831) the Supreme Court denied Indian
independence; however, in Worchester v. Georgia (1832) the Supreme Court voided
7. Far from respecting
Cherokee territory,
8. Upon President
Martin Van Buren’s orders, General Winfield Scott’s army marched the Cherokees
1,200 miles to the new
9. The national government asserted its control over most eastern Indian peoples and forced their removal to the West.
1.
2. Appointed chief
justice of the Supreme Court by
3. In Charles
River Bridge Co. v.Warren Bridge
4. In 1837, Taney’s
decisions enhanced the regulatory role of state governments (Mayor of
5. Most states mounted a constitutional revolution—extending the vote to all white men, reapportioning legislatures on the basis of population, and mandating the election of officials.
6. The new state constitutions changed the “republican” governments to “liberal” regimes that limited the power of the state and protected taxpayers from state debt.
7. Jacksonian “populists” embraced a small government and a laissez-faire outlook; in public, at least, they attacked government granted special privileges and celebrated the power of the ordinary people.
1. The rise of the
Democracy and
2. Whigs, whose goal was a political world dominated by men of ability and wealth, sought votes among evangelical Protestants and upwardly mobile middle- and working-class citizens in the North.
3. Northern Whigs
called for a return to Clay and
4. Many Whig voters previously were Anti-Masons, members of a powerful but shortlived political movement of the late 1820s.
5. In the election of 1836, the Whigs faced Martin Van Buren; Van Buren emphasized his opposition to the American System and his support for individual rights.
6. The Whigs ran four regional candidates in the election in hopes of throwing the contest to the House, which they controlled, but the plan failed, and Van Buren won.
1. Working Men’s parties embraced the ideology of artisan Republicanism; their vision led them to join the Jacksonians in demanding equal rights and attacking chartered corporations and monopolistic banks.
2. Taking advantage of the economic boom of the early 1830s, workers formed unions to bargain for higher wages.
3. Employers attacked the union movement and brought lawsuits to overturn closed shop agreements that required them to hire only union members.
4. Employers argued that such agreements violated both the common law and legislative statutes that prohibited “conspiracies” in restraint of trade; judges usually agreed.
5. At this juncture,
the Panic of 1837 threw the American economy into disarray; the panic began
when the Bank of England sharply curtailed the flow of money and credit to the
6. To pay their foreign loans and commercial debts, Americans had to withdraw specie from domestic banks. Lacking adequate specie and without a national bank to turn to, domestic banks suspended all payments in specie.
7. By 1839 the American economy fell into deep depression: canal construction fell by 90 percent, prices dropped nearly 50 percent, and unemployment rose to 20 percent in some areas.
8. The depression devastated the labor movement by depleting the membership of unions and destroying their bargaining power; by 1843, most unions had disappeared.
9. During the depression, Commonwealth v. Hunt upheld the rights of workers to form unions and enforce a closed shop, and Van Buren established a ten-hour day for federal employees.
1. The Whigs blamed
2. Van Buren’s Independent Treasury Act of 1840 actually delayed recovery because it took specie out of state banks and put it in government vaults.
3. In 1840 the Whigs nominated William Henry Harrison, victor of the Battle of Tippecanoe,
4.
5. The contest—the great “log cabin” campaign —was the first time two well-organized parties competed for the loyalties of a mass electorate, using organized public events to draw in voters. The Whigs used the log cabin as an icon of their candidate’s (largely fictional) egalitarian tastes and common background.
6. The Whigs boosted their political hopes and their populist image by welcoming women to their festivities.
7. Harrison was voted
into the White House, and the Whigs had a majority in Congress, but a month
later Harrison died of pneumonia, so
8. Tyler—who was more like a Democrat when it came to economic issues—was hostile toward the Second Bank and the American System.
9.
10. The split between Tyler and the Whigs allowed the Democrats to regroup and recruit more supporters; the Democrats remained the majority party in most parts of the nation.
11. The Democratic Revolution exacted a price in that the practices adopted to sway masses of voters introduced the spoils system and a coarser, less substantive, standard of public debate.
12. Still, unlike most of
the contemporary world, the