Jacksonian Democracy (United States)
1828 CE to 1849 CE
Jacksonian Democracy refers to the political philosophy of United States President Andrew Jackson and his supporters, whose policies followed in the footsteps of Thomas Jefferson.
Jackson's Democratic Party is resisted by the rival Whig Party.
More broadly, the term refers to the period of the Second Party System (1824-1854) when Jacksonian philosophy is ascendant as well as the spirit of that era.
It can be contrasted with the characteristics of Jeffersonian democracy, which dominated the previous political era.
Jackson's equal political policy become known as Jacksonian Democracy, subsequent to ending what he terms a "monopoly" of government.
The Jacksonian era sees a great increase of respect and power for the common man, as the electorate expands to include all white male adult citizens, rather than only land owners in that group.In contrast to the Jeffersonian period, Jacksonian democracy promotes the strength of the presidency and executive branch at the expense of Congress, while also seeking to broaden the public's participation in government.
Jacksonians believe in enfranchising all white men, rather than just the propertied class, and support the patronage system that enables politicians to appoint their supporters into administrative offices, arguing it will reduce the power of elites and prevent aristocracies from emerging.
They demand elected (not appointed) judges and rewrite many state constitutions to reflect the new values.
In national terms, the Jacksonians favor geographical expansion, justifying it in terms of Manifest Destiny.
There is usually a consensus among both Jacksonians and Whigs that battles over slavery should be avoided.
The Jacksonian Era lasts roughly from Jackson's 1828 election until the slavery issue became dominant after 1850 and the American Civil War dramatically reshapes American politics as the Third Party System emerges.
Subject
Related Events
Showing 10 events out of 296 total
Mountain Men, as skilled fighters and hunters, trap beaver in small groups throughout the Rocky Mountains.
With the demise of the fur trade, they have established trading posts throughout the west, continuing to trade with the indigenous peoples.
They also serve as guides and hunters for the western migration of settlers to Utah, Oregon, and California.
Westward expansion by official acts of the U.S. Government has been accompanied by the western (and northern in the case of New England) movement of settlers on and beyond the frontier.
The frontiersman Daniel Boone, for example, had pioneered the settlement of Kentucky.
The former Jeffersonian (Democratic-Republican) party splits into factions.
They split over the choice of a successor to President James Monroe, and the party faction that supports many of the old Jeffersonian principles, led by Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren, becomes the Democratic Party.
Jackson is convinced that central banking is used by the elite to take advantage of the average American, and instead implements state banks, popularly known as "pet banks."
Its goal is primarily to remove Native Americans, including the "Five Civilized Tribes", from the American Southeast; they occupy land that settlers want.
Jacksonian Democrats demand the forcible removal of native populations who refuse to acknowledge state laws to reservations in the West; Whigs and religious leaders oppose the move as inhumane.
Thousands of deaths result from the relocations, as seen in the Cherokee Trail of Tears.
The Trail of Tears results in approximately two thousand to eight thousand of the sixteen thousand five hundred and forty-three relocated Cherokee perish along the way.
Many of the Seminole Indians in Florida refuse to move west; they fight the Army for years in the Seminole Wars.
The United States is occupied during this era with such internal conflicts as the Black Hawk War (1832), the forced removal of the Cherokee tribe to Indian Territory, and the long and costly second Seminole War (1835-42), while a border dispute with Canada flares up as the Indian Stream ”War”.
By 1825, more than thirty-six percent of all the enslaved people in the New World were in the southern United States.
Although slavery had been a divisive issue in the United States for decades, never before had sectional antagonism been so overt and threatening as it was in the Missouri crisis, but compromise measures appear to have settled the slavery-extension issue.
Low-level sectional conflict arises again, however, in response to the so-called Tariff of Abominations (1828).
The institution of slavery remains the nonpareil reform issue in the United States, however, and fuels such conflicts in Texas as the Fredonian Rebellion (1826-27) and the Texan War of Independence (1836).
In 1831 occurs the only effective, sustained slave rebellion in U.S. history, led by an enslaved African-American named Nat Turner (widely popularized by William Styron in his 1967 novel The Confessions of Nat Turner).
In the aftermath of the terror, a new wave of unrest spreads through the South, accompanied by corresponding fear among slaveholders and passage of more repressive legislation directed against both slaves and free blacks.
These measures are aimed particularly at restricting the education of blacks, their freedom of movement and assembly, and the circulation of inflammatory printed material.
Increased vigilance on the part of Southern authorities prevents the success of such bizarre episodes as Murrel's Uprising (1835).
The national financial panic of 1837 creates even greater unrest among U.S. farmers and workers, setting the stage for a new round of rebellion.
The nonnative population of Illinois has increased rapidly following the War of 1812, exceeding fifty thousand in 1820; a development that has sharpened previous disputes about land ownership, especially in the lead-mining region north of the Rock River, an area claimed by the close allies of the Sauk, the Fox.
In 1828, the U.S. government liaison, Thomas Forsyth, informs the tribes that they should begin vacating their settlements east of the Mississippi.
Sauk warrior and leader Black Hawk (or Black Sparrow Hawk: Makataimeshekiakiak), finally forced from Sauk and Fox tribal lands in Illinois, tries gamely but without success to enlist neighboring Kickapoo, Potawatami and Winnebago tribes in an anti-American coalition.
Jedediah Smith, at twenty-nine, has traveled more extensively in unknown territory than any other single mountain man.
Having rediscovered the South Pass in 1824, Smith opens the connecting trail between California and the Oregon Country in 1828, reaching the Willamette Valley in July.