U.S. History

Jacksonian Democracy

Once upon a time (1800s), the U.S. government had no idea what it was doing (not unlike now...) and asked itself two very important questions:

1. How do we protect the Union and deal with the deepening rift between slave states and free states?
2. How much participation in economic life should the federal government have?

The Whig Party: We like the American System. The national government should subsidize roads and canals, fost industry with protective tariffs, and maintain a national bank capable of exercising centralized control of credit and currency. Then, there would be a peaceful, prosperous national market society. By doing business with each other, sectional fears and jealousies would quiet down.

Jacksonian Democrats: The American System is unconstitutional. It violates the rights of states and localities, it taxes honest citizens in order to benefit corrupt and wealthy insiders, and most dangerous of all, Whig economic nationalism would creat an activist, interventionalist national government.

Prologue: 1819

Jacksonian democracy was rooted in two events:

1. The admission of Missouri into the Union in 1819.
2. A severe financial collapse (Panic of 1819)

The two results:

1. By 1820, politicians (ugh...) had reconstructed the limited-government, states-rights coalition that elected Thomas Jefferson
2. By 1828, they had formed the Democratic party with Andrew Jackson at its head

In 1804, Jefferson sends Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the Louisiana Purchase.

Meriwether Lewis was President Jefferson's personal secretary, and William Clark was the brother of Indian fighter George Rogers Clark.

The purposes of the Lewis and Clark expedition was to explore the land, to make maps, and to keep meticulous journals. They had an indispensible guide, Sacagawea--a teenager at the time. She was the Shoshone wife of a French fur trader named Toussaint Charbonneau. They left in the May of 1804 amd returned to St. Louis in September 1806.

Louisiana enters the Union in 1812, but there was an Indian tribe controlling the northern part of teh Louisiana Purchase: the Sioux.

Missouri

The first new state carved out of the Louisiana Purchase was Missouri. This led to a serious conflicts which brought about the proposals of several amendments.

The Tal madge Amendments:

1. Barred additional slaves from being brought into Missouri.
2. Emancipated slaves born after admission when they reached the age of 25
3. Missouri enters Union as a free state
4. Not the result of humitarian concerns but about balance of political power; because of the 3/5 clause in the Northwest Ordinance, 3/5 of the slave population counted for representation of the South, which made the North nervous

Virginia had a "stranglehold" on the presidency (all first four presidents except for John Adams) were from Virginia.

In Congress, the House opposed to admitting Missouri as a slave state, and the Senate was in favor of admitting Missouri as a slave state. The result was one of the angriest sessions of Congressional history.

Then they came to a compromise. The North gets the new state of Maine (who, at the time, belonged to Massachusetts), and it would be a free state. Missouri would become a slave state, in turn.

The Thomas Proviso:

1. Admitted Missouri as a slave state
2. Outlawed slavery above the 36-30 N Latitude
3. Two states opened to slavery: Oklahoma and Arkansas
4. Closed to slavery: the remainder of the Louisiana Purchase
5. Number of resulting free states: 9

Congress passed the Thomas Proviso.

The Missouri crisis caused a collision between Southern commitment to slavery and Norther resentment of southern political power. It also revealed uncompromising gulf between slave and free states.

Southerners talked openly of disunion and civil war. Northerners opposed the extension of slavery.

"The slavery question like a fire-bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror" --Thomas Jefferson

Panic of 1819

European agriculture was recovering from the Napoleonic wars. Therefore, Europe did not need as much American food as they did during the war (the agricultural fields had turned into battlefields). American gold and silver cut off from Europe by war and revolution in the New World. Debt-ridden, the European governments hoarded available gold and silver.

American bankers and businessmen expanded credit; unfortunately, the expanded credit was based on dreams--not actual gold and silver.

In 1816, Congress chartered the Bank; however, it became a part of the problem. The Western branches of the Bank got involved in the land speculation boom. Eastern branches of the Bank hatched criminal schemes to enrich themselves. The new Bank president saved the Bank of the United States. The result was that national money and credit system collapsed. The economic depression was the first failure of the market economy.

Results of the Panic of 1819:

• Massive unemployment nationwide
• Americans resented banks
• "The Bank was saved and the people ruined."
• The Bank's nickname: "the Monster"