Period 4.

2 Notes – The Age of Jackson

Directions: Click here to watch a video lecture on The Age of Jackson.

The 1824 Election – The “Corrupt Bargain”

Soon after the 1824 election, the party officially split into the National Republicans (led by Adams and Henry
Clay) and the Democratic (led by Jackson).

Who was Andrew Jackson?

● Born in 1767 in South Carolina.

● Jackson was the first president born in log cabin, he was the first president to not go to college, and he
was also the first president born outside of Virginia or Massachusetts.
● 14-year-old P.O.W. Andrew Jackson was held in South Carolina by the British in 1781.
○ Jackson got a saber across the face for refusing to shine the boots of a British officer.
● Delegate to Tennessee’s Constitutional Convention
○ Some say he proposed the state's name.
● In 1796, Jackson "volunteered" to become Tennessee’s first member of the U.S. House of
Representatives.
● From 1798 to 1804, Jackson served as a judge on Tennessee's Superior Court.
● Jackson shot and killed Charles Dickinson in an 1806 duel.
○ The bullet Charles Dickinson fired into Jackson was never removed.
○ Though Jackson supposedly fought 103 duels before becoming president, he killed a man in only
one of them.

Jacksonian Democracy: The time frame of 1829 to 1837 is known as the “Age of Jackson.” New suffrage laws,
changes in political parties, new campaigns, improved education, and increased newspaper circulation are all
characteristics of the Age of Jackson.

In the early 1800s, many states eliminated property ownership and religious qualifications for voting. As a
result, many more men gained the right to vote. In the 1828 election, many of these voters elected Andrew
Jackson as president.

● To make politics more democratic, Jackson supported a new way to select presidential candidates. He
replaced the caucus system, where congressional party members would choose the nominee behind
closed doors. Jackson’s supporters replaced this system with the national nominating convention.
Under it, delegates from the states met at conventions and chose the party’s presidential nominee.

The first third party in American history emerged in the Anti-Masonic Party. The Anti-Masons attacked the
secret societies and accused them of belonging to a privileged, antidemocratic society.

Campaigns also changed during the Age of Jackson. They featured parades, floats, marching bands, and rallies
where people were treated to food and drinks. Unfortunately, they also featured mudslinging, personal
attacks, and candidates that would detract from a candidate’s actual stance on issues.

● Later in Jackson’s presidency, a dairy farmer gifted a wheel of cheese to Jackson that was four feet in
diameter and two feet thick. It weighed nearly 1,400 pounds, and was wrapped in a giant belt that bore
patriotic inscriptions like, “The Union, it must be preserved.”
Who was Rachel Jackson?
Jackson’s wife Rachel had previously married a man named Lewis Robards at the age of 18.
● It was an unhappy marriage, and Rachel eventually moved to her mother’s house in Tennessee.
○ Andrew Jackson was boarding with her mother when Rachel arrived, and the two soon fell in
love.
Believing her first husband had divorced her, Rachel went to visit friends near Natchez, Mississippi and Jackson
accompanied her on the journey.
● While in Natchez they married.
● Because Rachel’s marriage to Robards had not been legally dissolved yet, theirs was technically invalid.

President Jackson believed in the participation of the average citizen in government. He supported the spoils
system, the practice of appointing people to government jobs on the basis of party loyalty and support. He
believed that this practice extended democracy and opened up the government to average citizens.

● Jackson also believed in a system of rotation in office. He supported limiting a person to one
term in office so that he could then appoint some other deserving Democrat in his place.

“The duties of all public officers are, or at least admit of being made, so plain and simple that men of
intelligence may readily qualify themselves for their performance. And I cannot but believe that more is lost
by the long continuance of men in office than is generally to be gained by their experience. I submit,
therefore, to your consideration whether the efficiency of the government would not be promoted, and
official industry and integrity better secured, by a general extension of the law which limits appointments to
four years... In a country where offices are created solely for the benefit of the people, no one man has any
more intrinsic right to an official station than another.”
- Andrew Jackson on rotation in office, 1829.
HIPPO: What is Jackson’s point of view on politics in this quote?
*Must be in past tense
*Avoid template writing (Ex: The author’s point of view was….)

1828 Election

Jackson won the election of 1828. Many voters who supported him were from the West and South, rural and
small-town men who thought Jackson would represent their interests.
● Jackson formed a new party (Democrats) to run against John Quincy Adams (Republicans) in 1828.
● Jackson’s party accused Adams’ wife of being born out of wedlock. In retaliation, Adams’ campaign
accused Jackson’s wife of adultery.
● The mudslinging campaign actually increased voter turnout, and Jackson was successful in carrying
every state west of the Appalachians.

Jackson’s closest advisors were known as his “kitchen cabinet.” The Kitchen Cabinet obtained its name since
most of them were not actually a part of the real presidential Cabinet.
John C. Calhoun from South Carolina was Jackson’s vice president. FUTURE PROBLEM?
Jackson learned that Calhoun called for Jackson’s court-martial when he invaded Florida in 1818.

● Jackson was also angry because Mrs. Calhoun didn’t like Peggy—the wife of Secretary of War John H.
Eaton, because Mrs. Eaton was the twice-married daughter of a tavernkeeper.
○ Jackson’s own late wife Rachel had been snubbed by society (partly because she smoked a pipe,
partly because she had unknowingly married Jackson before a divorce from her first husband
was final)
● Peggy Timberlake, a barmaid, married her husband John in 1815 and had two daughters.
○ John died at sea in 1828, but the rumor was that he may have committed suicide.
■ Peggy's 1829 quick marriage to Jackson’s Secretary of War John Eaton encouraged
rumors that Peggy and John Eaton had had along affair, and that the revelation of their
affair had led John Timberlake to suicide.

Peggy Eaton, the wife of Jackson’s secretary of war was the target of gossip by other cabinet members’ wives.
Jackson’s cabinet members resigned when he forced them to socially accept Peggy Eaton. A year later,
Jackson’s vice president John C. Calhoun resigned over the affair.

Indian Removal

President Jackson also supported the idea of moving all Native Americans to the Great Plains. In 1830, he
supported the passage of the Indian Removal Act, which allocated funds to relocate Native Americans.

A Cherokee named Sequoyah helped create a written language for the Cherokee nation. By 1821, he had
created a system of 86 symbols, representing all the syllables of the Cherokee language.
oThe Cherokee also attempted to convince whites that they were “civilized” by sending their
children to schools and making a constitution based on the U.S. Constitution.
● In 1828, thanks to Sequoyah’s syllabary, the Cherokee Phoenix became the USA's first
Indian language newspaper.
After the Battle of Tullushatchee, a baby was found clinging to his dead mother after U.S. forces overwhelmed
the Natives.
● The child was taken to Jackson, and he noted in a letter to his wife that he felt “unusual sympathy” for
the baby.
● Jackson saw the child’s plight as a reflection of his own experiences in losing his family at a young age.
● Jackson adopted the boy and named him Lyncoya

‘Although most Native Americans resettled in the West, the Cherokee of Georgia refused. They sued, and the
case reached the Supreme Court. In the first case the Cherokee Nation v Georgia, the Court decided that the
Cherokee were not a foreign nation with the right to sue in court. However, in Worcester v Georgia, John
Marshall ruled in favor of the Cherokee and ordered the state to honor their property rights. President Jackson
refused

A group of Cherokee, led by Major Ridge, claiming to speak for the entire nation fraudulently signed the Indian
Removal Act

● The Cherokee gave up their lands in exchange for $???. Chief John Ross collected more than 14,000
signatures attesting to the treaty’s fraudulent signing, but Ross’s protests were ignored.

President Martin Van Buren sent in an army to force the remaining people to move west to what is now
Ohklahoma. Thousands of Cherokee died on the journey that became known as the Trail of Tears. Although
most Americans supported the removal policy, some National Republicans and a few religious denominations
condemned it.

● It is estimated that nearly 4,000 Native Americans died on the Trail of Tears

HIPPO: Pick one letter of HIPPO to use to analyze this political cartoon.

Purpose is show his power, it shows that Jackson is kind of paternal

The Nullification Crisis

In the early 1800s, South Carolina’s economy was weakening, and many people blamed the nation’s tariffs.
South Carolina purchased most of its manufactured goods from England, and the high tariffs made these
goods expensive. When Congress levied a new tariff in 1828—called the Tariff of Abominations by
critics—South Carolina threatened to secede, or withdraw, from the Union.
oJohn C Calhoun, the nation’s vice president, was torn between supporting the nation’s policies
and supporting fellow South Carolinians. Instead of supporting secession, he proposed the idea
of nullification. The idea argued that because states had created the Union, they had the right
to declare a federal law null, or not valid.

Webster - Hayne Debate: South Carolina Senator Robert Hayne grew angry over a proposal by a Connecticut
senator to limit federal land sales in the West. Hayne said that states should have the right to control their own
lands and that they could "nullify" federal laws that they believed were unconstitutional. Hayne continued
that the North was intentionally trying to destroy the South through a policy of high tariffs and its increasingly
vocal opposition to slavery.
Sen. Daniel Webster of Massachusetts debated Hayne in the Senate and proclaimed that the U.S. was not
simply a compact of the states.
● It was a creation of the people, who had invested the Constitution and the national government with
the ultimate sovereignty.
If a state disagreed with an action of the federal government, it had a right to sue in federal
court or seek to amend the Constitution, but it had no right to nullify a federal law.
● Webster declared that the government was "made by the people, made for the people,
and answerable to the people."

Jackson revealed his position on the questions of states rights and nullifications at a Jefferson Day dinner on
April 13, 1830. Fixing his eyes on Vice President John C. Calhoun, Jackson expressed his sentiments with the
toast: “Our Union it must be preserved”

Citing political differences with President Andrew Jackson and a desire to fill a vacant Senate seat in South
Carolina, John C. Calhoun becomes the first vice president in U.S. history to resign the office.

The Nullification Crisis

President Jackson defended the Union. After Congress passed another tariff law in 1832, South Carolina called
a special convention, which declared the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 unconstitutional.

Jackson considered the declaration an act of treason, and he sent a warship to Charleston. Congress passed
the Force Bill, authorizing the president to use the military to enforce acts of Congress.

After Senator Henry Clay pushed through a bill that would lower tariffs within two years, South Carolina
repealed its nullification of the tariff law.

● Federal troops never marched on South Carolina. Instead, Jackson actually opened the door for
compromise. The tariff was lowered, and South Carolina postponed nullification.
● Although the South Carolina legislature voted to rescind its nullification of the tariff acts, it also
nullified Jackson’s Force Bill.

“Give my compliments to my friends in your State, and say to them, that if a single drop of blood shall be
shed there in opposition to the laws of the United States, I will hang the first man I can lay my hand on
engaged in such treasonable conduct, upon the first tree I can reach."
- Andrew Jackson
HIPPO: What is Jackson’s point of view in this quote?

Directions: Click here to watch a video lecture on The Age of Jackson.

The Bank War

Andrew Jackson opposed the Second Bank of the United States since private bankers owned it. The Bank
controlled the flow of silver and gold upon which state banks based their paper money. He hated it because it
could alter the value of its paper money at will. Lastly, he despised it because it used its influence to raise
money for campaigns and to have certain men elected into office.
 ● Henry Clay, Jackson’s opponent in the 1832 election, decided to challenge him by proposing a bank
recharter bill.

What is the cartoonist saying about Andrew Jackson and the Bank of the U.S.?

What do the many heads of the monster represent?

Jackson complained that the Bank was a private bank that preyed upon the common people of America. He
described it as a “mini-headed hydra.”

● Many western settlers who needed easy credit opposed the Bank’s policies. President Jackson believed
the Bank was unconstitutional, even though the Supreme Court ruled otherwise.

President Jackson vetoed a bill that would extend the charter of the Bank for another 20 years. During the
1832 presidential election, President Jackson opposed the Bank. Most Americans supported Jackson.
O Jackson viewed their support as a reason to destroy the Bank. Jackson attacked the Bank by
removing the government’s deposits from it and forced it to call in its loans and stop lending.
He transferred all the funds to various state banks, which Jackson’s critics called “pet banks.”
Inflation grew in America as a result of Jackson’s monetary policies—especially in land speculation. In order to
fix inflation, Jackson issued a presidential order known as Specie circular. It required that all future purchases
of federal lands be made in specie (gold and silver) rather than in paper bank notes.

● Unfortunately, bank notes lost their value and land sales plummeted. A financial panic in 1837 soon
followed Jackson’s second term.

“The storm in Congress is still raging, Clay reckless and as full of fury as a drunken man in a brothel… This
mammoth of power and corruption must die. The power it possesses would destroy our government in a
few years. It is a power that never ought to have existed. Its present course now convinces all honest men
that it never ought, and must be put down at the end of its charter. I have it chained. The monster must
perish.”
- Andrew Jackson on Henry Clay and the Second Bank of the U.S., 1834
HIPPO: What is Jackson’s point of view in this quote?

Evolution in Politics

By the mid-1830s, a new political party called the Whigs formed to oppose President Jackson. Whigs
promoted a national bank, federal funds for internal improvements, and a protective tariff. The Whigs
resembled Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist party by advocating expanding the federal government and
encouraging commercial development.

The Whigs could not settle on one presidential candidate in the 1836 election. As a result, they ran three
candidates. Jackson’s popularity and the nation’s continued economic prosperity helped Democrat Martin
Van Buren win.
O Jackson did not seek a third term—keeping with Washington’s tradition.

Who was Martin van Buren?

● First president to be born an American citizen and not a British subject.

● Van Buren's great-great-great-grandfather came to America from the Netherlands
● Although born in the United States, Martin Van Buren was the only president who spoke English as a
second language.
● Martin Van Buren was known as the Little Magician for his behind-the-scenes maneuvers.

Jackson After the Presidency

● In 1835, Jackson survived an assassination attempt when both of Richard Lawrence’s pistols ???
○ Jackson then went on to beat Lawrence with his cane
● Jackson enjoyed ??? on the ponies; he also bred racehorses at his Hermitage home.
● On his deathbed, Andrew Jackson addressed his slaves, saying he'd see them in heaven.
○ During Jackson’s funeral at the Hermitage, his ??? "commenced swearing so loud and long as to
disturb the people.”
○ Upon his death in 1845, Jackson was buried next to his wife Rachel in the Garden Of The
Hermitage.
Shortly after Van Buren took office, the country experienced an economic crisis, known as Panic of 1837. State
banks' reckless credit led to massive speculation in Western lands. By 1837, after Van Buren had become
president, banks were clearly in trouble. Some began to close, businesses began to fail, and thousands of
people lost their land. Thousands of farmers were forced to foreclose, and unemployment soared.
O Van Buren believed in very limited government interference. He moved federal funds from
state banks to an independent treasury. This didn't stop the economic turmoil.

Despite a severe economic depression triggered by a bank crisis in 1837, President Martin Van Buren
purchased fine glassware, gilt-bordered tableware, marble tables, and large chandeliers.

Pennsylvania Whig Congressman Charles Ogle Charles Ogle's Gold Spoon Oration decried Martin Van Buren
for his lavish refurbishments of the White House while the country suffered in the Panic of 1837.

Ogle said that Van Buren was “strutting by the hour before golden-framed mirrors, NINE FEET HIGH and
FOUR FEET and a HALF WIDE… in a PALACE as splendid as that of the Caesars, and as richly adorned as the
proudest Asiatic mansion.”
- Charles Ogle’s Gold Spoon Oration, 1840

Whigs Take the White House

The Whigs saw the economic crisis as an opportunity to defeat the Democrats. In the 1840 election they
nominated General William Henry Harrison for president and John Tyler, a former Democrat, for vice
president. The Whig candidate defeated Van Buren. Harrison died 31 days after his inauguration; caught
pneumonia from giving a long inaugural address in the cold rain. John “His Accidency” then succeeded to the
presidency.
· The Whigs paraded log cabins through streets of cities and towns, passed out hard cider for voters
to drink, and gave hats and buttons to supporters.