so for several issues with jackson's presidency there's more style than substance to the things that he's saying and or doing so he'll proclaim he's going to do a big thing and then if you actually look at it it's not so much of a thing so jackson initiated a reform of the appointment process for federal office holders and he insists that these federal jobs require no special expertise or training and we're talking about civil service jobs in the federal government so this is like jobs in the post office in customs you know any kind of job that yes is based in the government but is not based on your politics we're not talking about secretary of state or attorney general those types of political jobs we're talking about jobs just working for the government so he says that you don't really need any special expertise to do this so he proposes to rotate honest hard-working citizens in and out of the civil service there's more style than substance here he only removes about one-fifth of the office holders he inherited from adams so even though he says he's going to do this he only does it to about 20 of the civil service jobs and most of his appointments come from the very same high status groups that adams has had so he's not actually changing the socioeconomic status of civil service job holders what he did do was create the spoils system which was rife with corruption so the spoil system is what we call it when the victorious political party basically fires anyone in government that has anything to do with the other party and gives those government jobs to its supporters so they would use these federal jobs basically for their friends and use them to build the strength of the party and again these are not politically based jobs these are just jobs working for the government these could be career jobs jackson says they really shouldn't be career jobs they'll just rotate honest people in and out every time the basically the presidency changes parties critics called it bribery and it was rife with corruption jackson calls it the rotation of office idea eventually it will get an american president assassinated in the second half of the 19th century because somebody wants a job they didn't get and only at that point will congress actually go back and provide protections for civil service workers where you are not allowed to fire them just because they don't agree with you politically because their jobs really don't have anything to do with politics now when jackson railed against economic privilege he had in mind clay's american system the protective tariffs to protect american manufacturing the national bank and federal subsidies for internal improvements but again jackson's a little more style over substance here in 1830 jackson vetoed the maysville road bill which would have provided federal money for a road almost entirely in kentucky it wasn't entirely in kentucky but most of it was now kentucky happened to be henry clay's home state and henry clay is the political enemy of andrew jackson so jackson calls the bill unconstitutional and said his veto prevented the federal government from directing economic growth and development again more style than substance here jackson approved more internal improvements and roads than all previous administrations combined but they're mostly interstate and they're usually primarily in democratic states that voted for him not democratic republican states that voted for someone like clay or john quincy adams so jackson is happy to funnel federal funds to states with democratic supporters he's not going to send federal money to a primarily democratic republican state like clay's kentucky it's more style than substance and really using the federal government to build his party and loyalty to himself in ways that we recognize now to be pretty dangerous the other major issue we have with jackson is indian removal 125 000 native americans lived east of the mississippi river and of course here's the mississippi river so we're talking about this area here tennessee alabama georgia the carolinas that sort of area in the south you have the cherokees creeks choctaws chickasaws and seminoles which controlled millions of acres collectively now because they had adopted anglo ways they were known as the five civilized tribes obviously that's a pretty demeaning way to describe them today that's what they were called in 1828 white farmers wanted that land right so they wanted to take this land illegally from native americans so in 1825 georgia finalized a frankly fraudulent treaty that ceded most of the creek lands to georgia now if native americans are sovereign nations which legally they were who should those treaties be signed with the united states states aren't allowed to make international treaties with like france or spain so they can't make international treaties with native american nations either georgia signs this fraudulent treaty anyway and claims that it now owns all this native land when president adams tried unsuccessfully to stop them georgia argued it's a states rights issue the federal government shouldn't butt in here which basically means they agree with the people running their state and not the people running the federal government at that point in time if things flipped they're going to be fine with federal power carrying out this issue in 1828 georgia moved against the cherokees a prosperous society of small farmers in 1827 they adopted a written constitution declaring themselves an independent nation with complete sovereignty over their lands the georgia legislature reacted by passing state laws placing the cherokee directly under state law not federal american law and annulling all cherokee laws of nullifying them even the rights of the cherokee to make their own laws georgia then passed a law defining all cherokee as tenants on georgia land and another that prohibited charity cherokees from testifying in court against white people so if a bunch of white people want their land and now they can't testify in court how are they going to protect that land if somebody sues them for it they can't that's the whole point that white people will be able to steal this native land alabama and mississippi follow georgia's lead and they pass laws denying native americans their basic rights as well now jackson didn't like the idea of negotiating with native americans as sovereign nations which was the tradition in the united states he thought states should be able to quote remove native americans if they wanted to in his first annual message jackson advised american indians and the south quote to immigrate beyond the mississippi river or to submit to the laws of those states and of course the laws of those states say that you can't stay here you have to move so it's really move or move jackson's indian removal act of 1830 gave five hundred thousand dollars of federal funding for these new fraudulent treaties until rich native americans were forced to surrender their lands now again we had a states rights argument a minute ago the federal government's not supposed to be a part of this but once the federal government supports what these people want states rights goes out the window because it's a tool it's not necessarily a logical ideology so native americans were forced to surrender their lands and in fact jackson deployed the united states army to remove those who refused to comply uh with indian removal so again federal power here most american indians were forced to leave the eastern united states the choctaws in 1830 the creeks and chickasaws in 1832 and the cherokees in 1838. now some native americans unsuccessfully took up arms to resist removal for example the salk and fox indians resisted removal and blackhawks war but in 1832 after they were defeated federal troops and the illinois militia units slaughtered 500 american indian men women and children as a result so even if you lose militarily it's not like you can just surrender and just be moved east excuse me be moved west right there there's some very serious consequences to trying to save one's land in one's culture in this way the seminoles whose leaders included runaway slaves fought the us army to a standstill in the swamps of florida in the longest american indian war in u.s history but despite native resistance and the efforts of eastern reformers and protestant missionaries who tried to stop this as you've read about jackson proceeded with removal now opponents of removal allied with conservatives who became concerned by jackson's careless disregard for federal treaty obligations the us government had promised certain things to these nations and it was not living up to those treaties to the laws of the united states they came within three votes in the house from blocking the removal bill but in the end they failed as removal was a gross violation of u.s treaties with american indians the cherokee sued in federal court and the case went to the supreme court in cherokee nation v georgia in 1831 and booster v georgia 1832 chief justice john marshall remember john marshall to the court what george washington is to the presidency marshall defined american indian tribes is quote dependent domestic nations subject only to the authority of the federal government not state governments like georgia which again is what the law had always been in other words federal treaties superseded state laws in regard to native americans so marshall wins the legal argument but whose job is it to enforce the law and the rulings of the court the executive branch it's their job to execute the law and the head of the executive branch is the president but president jackson refused to enforce the marshall court's decision allegedly saying quote john marshall has made his decision now let him enforce it so jackson ignores the supreme court ruling and in fact in fact uses the power of the federal government to carry out indian removal by putting the us army in charge of parts of it this is an extremely dangerous precedent that the president was above the law and could choose to not enforce the law or to be bound by a supreme court decision this is very very dangerous territory and frankly in which the government could quite easily cease to be a democracy as we would recognize it now actual indian removal was carried out by jackson's successor martin van buren because these things take several years to happen but basically the federal government provided private groups with contracts to move american indians against their will so this is again federal power carrying out indian removal so these private white armies are militias along with federal troops and local state militias removed tribes that resisted thousands of native americans as many as one-fourth of those who started this trek especially the cherokees over here in georgia moving all the way into what's now oklahoma died in route most of them were victims to cold hunger or disease and others just to the brutality of the militia and armies that were moving them the cherokee remember the deaths and suffering of forced removal as the trail of tears now jackson supported state over federal power only when it was politically convenient for him so he says basically that the state should have the right to remove those indians and then he's going to have the power of the federal government to help them go with removal even though federal treaties say that is not legal as did the supreme court however he only sides with state power when it's convenient for him the south called that protectionist tariff of 1828 the tariff of abominations and really they wanted to set limits on federal power so that the federal government could never move against slavery regardless of majority opinion because they know slave owners are not the majority even people living in slave states who don't own slaves they're not the majority of the united states anymore and south carolina feared a growing anti-slavery movement in the north which we'll be talking about later this week they believed it was time as james hamilton jr put it to quote stand manfully at the safety valve of nullification so remember nullification theory that jefferson first suggested madison doesn't go anywhere near that the idea that a state could nullify a federal law make it null and void and then we had john c calhoun's plan in his 1828 track the south carolina exposition and protest arguing the same thing that's what they're going to put into place so the south carolina exposition and protest argued that states could nullify federal laws that they felt were unconstitutional and then if the federal government tried to enforce that law using the military using some kind of force that the next step was to secede and leave the nation which of course is illegal under the constitution would have been illegal under the articles and will eventually lead us into civil war so calhoun who wrote that south carolina exposition and protest pamphlet was elected vice president 1828 with jackson as president but when jackson didn't immediately remove the tariff or completely remove the tariff calhoun broke with jackson in 1830. he's actually going to step down as vice president in 1832 jackson passed a compromise tariff which reduced the tax rate but it didn't eliminate it nullifiers weren't satisfied with the compromise they believed the federal government didn't have the power to pass this type of tax a tariff that was to protect american manufacturing when manufacturing is mostly in the north and it won't really help the south at least that's how they see it so they think the whole thing needs to go away with calhoun's approval a south carolina convention declared the terrorists of 1828 and 1832 nullified so null and void you can't enforce them in our state just a reminder states do not have the constitutionally the power to declare a law unconstitutional who has that power the supreme court right that's the court system's job calhoun assumed other southern states would follow suit that they all felt the same way but they didn't remember south carolina is a different beast it has a different form of slavery a different history with those black codes and slave walls it's a little different than the rest of the south the rest of the south is not on board with this just yet so south carolina nullifies the law and then is left all by itself out in the cold and they will remember this in 1860 because remember they will be the first to secede in the civil war but the very next thing they do is send people to other states to say you gotta join us you gotta join us they don't wanna be left out in the cold again now jackson agrees with daniel webster who argues that the u.s is one nation it is indivisible in other words secession the next step if the federal government enforced an allegedly nullified law was illegal and indefensible and you if you've ever been to public school right have made that pledge every morning that the united states is indivisible in other words it is illegal for a state to secede you can't just leave the union and divide it so whereas south carolinians kind of expect jackson to back them on this he doesn't jackson's response can be characterized as the carrot and stick approach so we call this the nullification crisis that south carolina has triggered and when you talk about carrot and stick it's a way to train a horse back in the day basically the carrot is the reward if it does something you like you give it the reward the carrot and the stick is the punishment if it does something you don't like right that was what they would do back in the day the stick the punish to beat the horse so that's kind of the approach jackson takes here so in january of 1833 congress passed the force bill which gave jackson the authority to put down nullification by military force that's the stick the punishment right if they don't back down jackson's going to take the us military and march it into south carolina and make them back down nullifiers called jackson king andrew and scornfully declared the force bill nullified right so that's their thing that they could nullify federal law so that's what they do then henry clay the great compromiser who has no love for jackson but does not want this to turn into a civil war or even a domestic insurrection proposed the compromise tariff of 1833 this is the carrot the you know just back down this is the reward you'll get if you do so it lowers the tariff to 20 percent over 10 years right so it's not as bad as it was before it's it was never really about the tariff itself anyway it was the fact that there was a tariff so south carolina is not thrilled about this but it accepts it instead of taking on jackson and congress and the u.s military all in one go jackson stand reinforced the principle of national supremacy grounded in the will of the majority it is different now that so many white men could vote but states rights doctrine still remained popular among slave holders jackson's actions drove many planters those plantation owners out of the democratic party temporarily and a new anti-jackson coalition began to form within the party too so many americans still disliked the second bank of the united states which they blamed for the panic of 1819 but the astute nicholas biddle was running the bank and it performed really well in the 1820s it underwrote the nation's economic expansion with healthy credit reserves stable bank notes you know if you have a bank of the u.s note that you can take it in and exchange it for gold or silver it's not going to be a problem and they police state banks by returning their notes and redemption for specie 2. so there's no law that says that a bank in georgia can't you know print out a ton of paper money but if that paper money makes its way back to the bank of the united states they're going to call it in and ask for the gold or silver so this restricts how much wild cat banking those state banks can do the u.s bank effectively prevented state banks from overextending themselves in credit so by 1832 the bank is as popular as it is ever going to be and henry clay needed an issue so he could run against jackson uh because he knows you know jackson beat john quincy and he's very much tied to john quincy's policy so he needs something more if he's going to beat him in the 1832 election so he asked biddle to apply for a new charter for the bank even though the old one's still good for former years through 1836 so clay thinks that if jackson signs the bank charter clay can take credit for it and if jackson won't sign it clay could attack him as an enemy of the sound banking system the nation has built but clay's strategy backfired spectacularly jackson realized the bank was still vulnerable as a symbol of privilege and moneyed wealth even if it was doing everything it was supposed to do and being run quite well many of jackson's advisors ran state banks too and they resented that the u.s bank was calling in their notes for specie and preventing them from wildcatting and remember jackson is all about rewarding loyal people with kind of the spoils of government so on july 10 1832 jackson vetoed the u.s bank's early recharter and he said he was taking a quote stand against all new grants of monopolies and exclusive privileges against any prostitution of our government to the advancement of the few at the expense of the many now the business community and eastern elites called the veto the demagogic ravings of an economic fool right so this is just terrible to them that he would do this for the record a demagogue is a person or a political leader who gains power and popularity by arousing people's emotions and passions and prejudices not through sound logic so there's no logical explanation for why you would attack the bank it's doing what it's supposed to be doing it's it's kind of preventing uh bubbles which would lead to crashes from happening and yet he's using people's passions and people's prejudices to go after the bank anyway so when they say he's being demagogic they're saying he's manipulating a political issue by obscuring or distorting it with emotion and prejudice biddle said that the veto quote had all the fury of a chained panther biting the bars of his cage the pro-bank forces have the better economic argument here they're right but jackson won the political battle and he won re-election as the champion of the people against the banking aristocracy which brings us to the more flattering view of jackson in our disney series lecture so go take a look at that one