Andrew Jackson's America Andrew Jackson and the Second American Party System Unlike the plantation owners George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe and the lawyer John Adams, Jackson rose to the presidency from more humble origins. Jackson's presidency heralded the "Age of the Common Man," although Jackson was not a common man for he owned a plantation himself. He was not, however, from the political elite and so appealed to ordinary people and unlike his predecessors actively sought their support. After losing the Election of 1824 in a bitter contest, Jackson won in 1828 campaigning on the Democratic Republican ticket against President John Quincy Adams (son of John Adams) who ran as a National Republican. Jackson's campaign employed all of the techniques of the new democratic politics. Like sports today, politics then offered spectacle, camaraderie, and boosterism directed against not another team but another political party. Instead of wearing the jersey of your favorite player, you wore your party's badge, carried a placard, and marched in a parade and instead of attending a game, you went to a political rally to yell and clap (and probably drink too much). During his presidency, Jackson's actions inspired intense political opposition. His opponents organized and by 1836 ran under the Whig Party banner. Jackson's party that began as the Jeffersonian Republicans became the Democratic Republicans in the 1820s and finally just the Democratic Party that remains today. The Democrats and the Whigs waged the national political battles that marked the Second American Party System. The Whigs survived as a national party into the early 1850s when the issues of immigration and slavery transformed American politics.

The American System During the Era of Good Feelings, President Monroe and most others in national government advocated that the federal government nurture the economic and commercial health of the nation. Remember that in the early years of Washington's presidency, Hamilton and Jefferson divided the administration as Hamilton proposed the Bank of the United States and that the federal government promote commercial and industrial development and Jefferson objected. Gradually the Jeffersonians Madison and Monroe shifted their position to support Hamilton's ideas although Kentuckian Henry Clay, Speaker of the House of Representatives, was known as the architect of the American System, a program for national economic development. The American System consisted of 3 parts: 1. Tariffs to protect American industries. The Tariff of 1816 was the first substantial protective tariff in American history. WSBCTC

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2. Creation of the Second Bank of the United States in 1816 after the charter for Hamilton's original Bank of the United States expired in 1811. With a government contribution of $7 million and capital of $35 million, the Second Bank, as had the First Bank, provided large-scale financing beyond the means of smaller banks and created a strong national currency. 3. Funding for internal improvements such as roads and canals. Presidents Madison and Monroe supported federal funding for interstate projects, but regarded as unconstitutional funding for local projects and vetoed those requests. New York's Erie Canal, for example, though 364-miles long was all in New York State and thus received no federal funding despite attempts by New York State Congressmen.

Transportation Revolution The Erie Canal was but one of the many examples of the transformation of transportation that from 1800 to 1850 drmatically affected individual mobility and the economy. Not only could peopel move more easily but commercial goods could as well. In 1800 people and goods plodded or more often slogged through mud in spring, dust in summer, and snow in winter. Towns, counties, states attempted to improve local roads and private turnpike companies collected tolls to fund their efforts, but roads remained poor. The National Road was the greatest single federal transportation expense of the era as its gravel, not dirt, bed extended in stages across the Appalachians to open up the West and reached Columbus (Ohio) by 1833 and eventually the Mississippi River in 1850. Transporting goods, especially bulky ones such as corn or wheat, was difficult on any road and spurred the development of waterborne transportation with steamboats along river routes and, where those were not available, along canals built to connect those routes. The New York legislature approved a $7 million bond issue to finance the 364 miles of the Erie Canal that by 1825 linked New York City and the Hudson River system to the Great Lakes. [Locate it below from Albany on the Hudson River to Buffalo on Lake Erie.]

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Map from Allen Johnson, Union and Democracy (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1915) and is in the public domain.

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Beginning in 1830, railroads revolutionized transportation. From the first 13 miles of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, by the start of the Civil War 30 years later, railroads ran on 31,000 miles of track.

The video below offers a brief history of railroads in the United States from 1830 to the 1990s. The first 45 seconds explain the early growth or railroads before the Civil War.

Andrew Jackson and the American System Andrew Jackson entered the White House during the transportation revolution that saw steamboats plying American rivers, canals opening other transportation corridors, and railroads beginning to crisscross the country. Jackson disappointed his western supporters when he vetoed the use of federal funds for the Maysville road in Kentucky because like Madison and Monroe, Jackson objected to using federal money for local projects. With his Maysville Veto, Jackson defeated a project dear to his Kentucky rival Henry Clay. Jackson vetoed another bill that set the stage for Clay and others to coalesce into formal political opposition that by 1836 would be known as the Whig Party. The Second Bank of the United States had a 20-year charter that came up for renewal in 1836. An 1832 effort to renew the charter early precipitated Jackson's veto. He resented the Bank's power over state banks and its policies that he saw as favoring eastern businessmen and disadvantaging western farmers. Jackson based his 1832 re-election campaign on his veto message in which he defended states' rights and presented the Bank as unconstitutional and a threat to individual economic liberty. Jackson trounced Clay, but by 1836 opponents of Jackson organized the Whig Party and ran a national campaign against his vice president Martin Van Buren. The Second American Party System was now in place with the Democratic versus the Whig Party. The Bank War continued after the 1832 election and led directly to a recession in the winter of 1833-34 and then a severe economic panic in 1837. Although President Van Buren had not provoked the Bank controversy, the economic bust tainted his administration and in 1840 the Whigs defeated him and won the White House. In the Maysville and Bank vetoes, Jackson stood tall for states' rights over federal power, but, as we will see with the Nullification Crisis, Jackson could also defend to the verge of war federal authority and in Indian Removal presidential authority. ©Susan Vetter 2008, rev. 2011

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