{"id":911,"date":"2023-07-05T15:59:21","date_gmt":"2023-07-05T15:59:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315k-external\/?p=911"},"modified":"2023-07-05T15:59:21","modified_gmt":"2023-07-05T15:59:21","slug":"the-jacksonian-era-activity-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315k-external\/the-jacksonian-era-activity-5\/","title":{"rendered":"The Jacksonian Era: Activity 5"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The Presidency of Andrew Jackson<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Election of 1828<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJ. Q. Adams who can write\u201d squared off against \u201cAndy Jackson who can fight\u201d in the election of 1828, one of the most bitter campaigns in American history. Jackson\u2019s followers repeated the charge that Adams was an \u201caristocrat\u201d who had obtained office as a result of a \u201ccorrupt bargain.\u201d The Jackson forces also alleged that the president had used public funds to buy personal luxuries and had installed gaming tables in the White House. They even charged that Mrs. Adams had been born out of wedlock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adams\u2019s supporters countered by digging up an old story that Jackson had begun living with his wife before she was legally divorced from her first husband. This was technically true, although neither Jackson nor his wife Rachel knew her first husband was still living. They called the general a slave trader, a gambler, and a backwoods buffoon who could not spell more than one word out of four correctly. One Philadelphia editor published a handbill picturing the coffins of twelve men allegedly murdered by Jackson in numerous duels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Crowd in front of the White House during Jackson’s first inauguration, 1829.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Jackson campaign in 1828 was the first to appeal directly for voter support through a professional political organization. Skilled political organizers, like Martin Van Buren of New York, Amos Kendall of Kentucky, and Thomas Ritchie of Virginia, created an extensive network of campaign committees and subcommittees to organize mass rallies, parades, and barbecues, and to erect hickory poles, Jackson\u2019s symbol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the first time in American history, a presidential election was the focus of public attention, and voter participation increased dramatically. Twice as many voters cast ballots in the election of 1828 as in 1824, four times as many as in 1820. As in most previous elections, the vote divided along sectional lines. Jackson swept every state in the South and West and Adams won the electoral votes of every state in the North except Pennsylvania and part of New York.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contemporaries interpreted Jackson\u2019s resounding victory as a triumph for political democracy. Jackson\u2019s supporters called the vote a victory for the \u201cfarmers and mechanics of the country\u201d over the \u201crich and well born.\u201d Even Jackson\u2019s opponents agreed that the election marked a watershed in the nation\u2019s political history, signaling the beginning of a new democratic age. One Adams supporter said bluntly, \u201ca great revolution has taken place.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Who Was Andrew Jackson?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In certain respects, Jackson was truly a self-made man. Born in 1767 in a frontier region along the North and South Carolina border, he was the first president to be born in a log cabin. His father, a poor farmer from Northern Ireland, died two weeks before his birth, while his mother and two brothers died during the American Revolution. At the age of thirteen, Jackson volunteered to fight in the American Revolution. He was taken prisoner and a British officer severely slashed Jackson\u2019s hand and head when the boy refused to shine the officer\u2019s shoes. His military successes at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, the Battle of New Orleans, and the incursion into Spanish Florida earned him a reputation as the nation’s leading general.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He then shifted into a career in law and politics, becoming Tennessee\u2019s first congressman, a senator, and a judge on the state supreme court. Although he would later gain a reputation as the champion of the common people, in Tennessee he was allied by marriage, business, and political ties to the state\u2019s elite. As a land speculator, cotton planter, and attorney, he accumulated a large personal fortune and acquired more than one hundred slaves. His candidacy for the presidency was initially promoted by speculators, creditors, and elite leaders in Tennessee who hoped to exploit Jackson\u2019s popularity in order to combat anti-banking sentiment and fend off challenges to their dominance of state politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Expanding the Powers of the Presidency<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Cartoon criticizing the\u00a0“spoils system.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In office, Jackson greatly enhanced the power and prestige of the presidency. While each member of Congress represented a specific regional constituency, only the president, Jackson declared, represented all the people of the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jackson convinced many Americans that their votes mattered. He espoused a political ideology of \u201cdemocratic republicanism\u201d that stressed the common peoples\u2019 virtue, intelligence, and capacity for self-government. He also expressed a deep disdain for the \u201cbetter classes,\u201d which claimed a \u201cmore enlightened wisdom\u201d than common men and women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Endorsing the view that a fundamental conflict existed between working people and the \u201cnonproducing\u201d classes of society, Jackson and his supporters promised to remove any impediments to the ordinary citizen\u2019s opportunities for economic improvement. According to the Jacksonians, inequalities of wealth and power were the direct result of monopoly, favoritism, and special privileges, which made \u201cthe rich richer and the powerful more potent.\u201d Only free competition in an open marketplace would ensure that wealth would be distributed in accordance with each person\u2019s \u201cindustry, economy, enterprise, and prudence.\u201d The goal of the Jacksonians was to remove all obstacles that prevented farmers, artisans, and small shopkeepers from earning a greater share of the nation\u2019s wealth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Spoils System — awarding government jobs to loyal party supporters — came to symbolize Jackson’s attitude toward government.  Performance in public office, Jackson maintained, required no special intelligence or training, and rotation in office would ensure that the federal government did not develop a class of corrupt civil servants set apart from the people. His supporters advocated the spoils system on practical political grounds, viewing it as a way to reward party loyalists and build a stronger party organization. As Jacksonian Senator, William Marcy of New York, proclaimed, \u201cTo the victor belongs the spoils.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Election of 1828 \u201cJ. Q. Adams who can write\u201d squared off against \u201cAndy Jackson who can fight\u201d in the election of 1828, one of the most bitter campaigns in American history. Jackson\u2019s followers repeated the charge that Adams was an \u201caristocrat\u201d who had obtained office as a result of a \u201ccorrupt bargain.\u201d The Jackson […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"ayh396","author_link":"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315k-external\/author\/ayh396\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"The Election of 1828 \u201cJ. Q. Adams who can write\u201d squared off against \u201cAndy Jackson who can fight\u201d in the election of 1828, one of the most bitter campaigns in American history. Jackson\u2019s followers repeated the charge that Adams was an \u201caristocrat\u201d who had obtained office as a result of a \u201ccorrupt bargain.\u201d The Jackson…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315k-external\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315k-external\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315k-external\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315k-external\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315k-external\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=911"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315k-external\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":921,"href":"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315k-external\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911\/revisions\/921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315k-external\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315k-external\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/embed.la.utexas.edu\/his-315k-external\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}