The democratization of politics

Nevertheless, American politics became increasingly democratic during the 1820s and ’30s. Local and state offices that had earlier been appointive became elective. Suffrage was expanded as property and other restrictions on voting were reduced or abandoned in most states. The freehold requirement that had denied voting to all but holders of real estate was almost everywhere discarded before 1820, while the taxpaying qualification was also removed, if more slowly and gradually. In many states a printed ballot replaced the earlier system of voice voting, while the secret ballot also grew in favor. Whereas in 1800 only two states provided for the popular choice of presidential electors, by 1832 only South Carolina still left the decision to the legislature. Conventions of elected delegates increasingly replaced legislative or congressional caucuses as the agencies for making party nominations. By the latter change, a system for nominating candidates by self-appointed cliques meeting in secret was replaced by a system of open selection of candidates by democratically elected bodies.

These democratic changes were not engineered by Andrew Jackson and his followers, as was once believed. Most of them antedated the emergence of Jackson’s Democratic Party, and in New York, Mississippi, and other states some of the reforms were accomplished over the objections of the Jacksonians. There were men in all sections who feared the spread of political democracy, but by the 1830s few were willing to voice such misgivings publicly. Jacksonians effectively sought to fix the impression that they alone were champions of democracy, engaged in mortal struggle against aristocratic opponents. The accuracy of such propaganda varied according to local circumstances. The great political reforms of the early 19th century in actuality were conceived by no one faction or party. The real question about these reforms concerns the extent to which they truly represented the victory of democracy in the United States.

Small cliques or entrenched “machines” dominated democratically elected nominating conventions as earlier they had controlled caucuses. While by the 1830s the common man—of European descent—had come into possession of the vote in most states, the nomination process continued to be outside his control. More important, the policies adopted by competing factions and parties in the states owed little to ordinary voters. The legislative programs of the “regencies” and juntos that effectively ran state politics were designed primarily to reward the party faithful and to keep them in power. State parties extolled the common people in grandiloquent terms but characteristically focused on prosaic legislation that awarded bank charters or monopoly rights to construct transportation projects to favored insiders. That American parties would be pragmatic vote-getting coalitions, rather than organizations devoted to high political principles, was due largely to another series of reforms enacted during the era. Electoral changes that rewarded winners or plurality gatherers in small districts, in contrast to a previous system that divided a state’s offices among the several leading vote getters, worked against the chances of “single issue” or “ideological” parties while strengthening parties that tried to be many things to many people.

The Jacksonians

To his army of followers, Jackson was the embodiment of popular democracy. A truly self-made man of strong will and courage, he personified for many citizens the vast power of nature and Providence, on the one hand, and the majesty of the people, on the other. His very weaknesses, such as a nearly uncontrollable temper, were political strengths. Opponents who branded him an enemy of property and order only gave credence to the claim of Jackson’s supporters that he stood for the poor against the rich, the plain people against the interests.

Jackson, like most of his leading antagonists, was in fact a wealthy man of conservative social beliefs. In his many volumes of correspondence he rarely referred to labor. As a lawyer and man of affairs in Tennessee prior to his accession to the presidency, he aligned himself not with have-nots but with the influential, not with the debtor but with the creditor. His reputation was created largely by astute men who propagated the belief that his party was the people’s party and that the policies of his administrations were in the popular interest. Savage attacks on those policies by some wealthy critics only fortified the belief that the Jacksonian movement was radical as well as democratic.

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At its birth in the mid-1820s, the Jacksonian, or Democratic, Party was a loose coalition of diverse men and interests united primarily by a practical vision. They held to the twin beliefs that Old Hickory, as Jackson was known, was a magnificent candidate and that his election to the presidency would benefit those who helped bring it about. His excellence as candidate derived in part from the fact that he appeared to have no known political principles of any sort. In this period there were no distinct parties on the national level. Jackson, Clay, John C. Calhoun, John Quincy Adams, and William H. Crawford—the leading presidential aspirants—all portrayed themselves as “Republicans,” followers of the party of the revered Jefferson. The National Republicans were the followers of Adams and Clay; the Whigs, who emerged in 1834, were, above all else, the party dedicated to the defeat of Jackson.

The major parties

The great parties of the era were thus created to attain victory for men rather than measures. Once the parties were in being, their leaders understandably sought to convince the electorate of the primacy of principles. It is noteworthy, however, that former Federalists at first flocked to the new parties in largely equal numbers and that men on opposite sides of such issues as internal improvements or a national bank could unite behind Jackson. With the passage of time, the parties did come increasingly to be identified with distinctive, and opposing, political policies.

By the 1840s, Whig and Democratic congressmen voted as rival blocs. Whigs supported and Democrats opposed a weak executive, a new Bank of the United States, a high tariff, distribution of land revenues to the states, relief legislation to mitigate the effects of the depression, and federal reapportionment of House seats. Whigs voted against and Democrats approved an independent treasury, an aggressive foreign policy, and expansionism. These were important issues, capable of dividing the electorate just as they divided the major parties in Congress. Certainly it was significant that Jacksonians were more ready than their opponents to take punitive measures against African Americans or abolitionists or to banish and use other forceful measures against the southern Indian tribes, brushing aside treaties protecting Native American rights. But these differences do not substantiate the belief that the Democrats and Whigs were divided ideologically, with only the former somehow representing the interests of the propertyless.

Party lines earlier had been more easily broken, as during the crisis that erupted over South Carolina’s bitter objections to the high Tariff of 1828. Jackson’s firm opposition to Calhoun’s policy of nullification (i.e., the right of a state to nullify a federal law, in this case the tariff) had commanded wide support within and outside the Democratic Party. Clay’s solution to the crisis, a compromise tariff, represented not an ideological split with Jackson but Clay’s ability to conciliate and to draw political advantage from astute tactical maneuvering.

The Jacksonians depicted their war on the second Bank of the United States as a struggle against an alleged aristocratic monster that oppressed the West, debtor farmers, and poor people generally. Jackson’s decisive reelection in 1832 was once interpreted as a sign of popular agreement with the Democratic interpretation of the Bank War, but more recent evidence discloses that Jackson’s margin was hardly unprecedented and that Democratic success may have been due to other considerations. The second Bank was evidently well thought of by many Westerners, many farmers, and even Democratic politicians who admitted to opposing it primarily not to incur the wrath of Jackson.

Jackson’s reasons for detesting the second Bank and its president (Biddle) were complex. Anticapitalist ideology would not explain a Jacksonian policy that replaced a quasi-national bank as repository of government funds with dozens of state and private banks, equally controlled by capitalists and even more dedicated than was Biddle to profit making. The saving virtue of these “pet banks” appeared to be the Democratic political affiliations of their directors. Perhaps the pragmatism as well as the large degree of similarity between the Democrats and Whigs is best indicated by their frank adoption of the “spoils system.” The Whigs, while out of office, denounced the vile Democratic policy for turning lucrative customhouse and other posts over to supporters, but once in office they resorted to similar practices. It is of interest that the Jacksonian appointees were hardly more plebeian than were their so-called aristocratic predecessors.

Minor parties

The politics of principle was represented during the era not by the major parties but by the minor ones. The Anti-Masons aimed to stamp out an alleged aristocratic conspiracy. The Workingmen’s Party called for “social justice.” The Locofocos (so named after the matches they used to light up their first meeting in a hall darkened by their opponents) denounced monopolists in the Democratic Party and out. The variously named nativist parties accused the Roman Catholic Church of all manner of evil. The Liberty Party opposed the spread of slavery. All these parties were ephemeral because they proved incapable of mounting a broad appeal that attracted masses of voters in addition to their original constituencies. The Democratic and Whig parties thrived not in spite of their opportunism but because of it, reflecting well the practical spirit that animated most American voters.