hello and welcome to our king andrew jackson lecture today we'll be looking at how and why jackson killed the bank and how and why the whig party developed so we get a whole new political party in american history in today's lecture so the election of 1828 pitted andrew jackson once again against john quincy adams so if you remember back in 1824 we have one big political party the democratic republican party but we have four different people running which means none of them get the 50 they need in the electoral college to win outright the decision gets sent to the house of representatives where henry clay the speaker of the house helps push for john quincy adams to become president and then adams makes clay his secretary of state which looks really shady even though we don't necessarily know there's a quid pro quo there but jackson decries a corrupt bargain and he and van buren go found the democratic party as a result and that is the democratic party of today uh even though the party basically has the complete opposite views as what it has uh today when it was founded so 1828 is the rematch now jackson representing the democratic party against john quincy adams the sitting president from the democratic republican party and by this point the old republicans have kind of bailed on that party so that faction has just become the democrats and the faction that was the national republicans is really the only group left in the democratic republican party jackson was born on the carolina frontier the back country if you will in the west in 1767. he lacked any formal education family connections or inherited wealth so as much as anyone in the united states is ever a self-made man he was he was a conqueror of the british of the spanish and of native americans all of whom blocked western frontier expansion for white american settlers and that is the group that jackson is representing jackson's image is that of an anti-elitist champion southern planters that that is those big plantation owners and states rights supporters backed jackson out of fear that adams might use federal power against slavery or at least that the federal government's getting a little too powerful and maybe it will use that power to go after slavery eventually westerners joined because atoms revived their suspicions of the east and especially of the banking system of course the bank of the united states is kind of at the top of that system and the american system that adam supports which is the bank tariffs and internal improvements all of that kind of riles up those westerners who think that's not really benefiting us the democratic republican party has basically become the national republicans because those old republicans left and joined the jacksonian democrats van buren was the ideological leader of this new democratic party and he organized new york into a state political machine called the albany machine when we talk about political machines we're talking about kind of a series of not necessarily kickbacks but it could be uh in which people go to these machines for jobs for advice on where to live maybe they're from the rural areas and they're just coming to town for the first time or they're immigrants from another country and this is the groups that go that is going to help get them set up like this is where you go to work this is where uh the best place to to find a roof to have over your head tonight would be and then when it comes time for elections those same groups that reached out to these people will expect their votes and in some ways they've earned that vote but they also set themselves up for a lot of corruption a lot of taxpayer dollars lining certain people's pockets because they're going to walk away with some of that money so they start out as kind of having good intentions and really trying to help common people but there's a lot of room for corruption and certainly into the 20th century we'll see that south texas was rife with these types of political machines so van buren argued something new here that political parties in and of themselves were a good thing remember the founding generation did not like the party system he says that the parties will help empower common people to be heard in politics so maybe your average farmer is not going to get a big say in washington but through his party that represents him he can have a better say van buren organized the first campaign that relied on new techniques of mass mobilization remember those voting laws have changed by about 18 into the 1820s especially by 1830 and this is the 1828 presidential election so they're going to use that those different kinds of voters and especially to reach out to them in different kinds of ways so they're going to knock on doors they'll give out literature they mass produce buttons for the first time they are having mass political events politics became kind of a folk spectacle they had political barbecues where they doled out whiskey and barbecue to farmers from the surrounding countryside trying to convince them to vote for this candidate that gave you whiskey and barbecue why wouldn't you vote for them and of course their critics will call it bribery which you know in a sense it was crossing some lines there now this further goes to the idea of white male democracy now that all men all white men can vote they don't need to have money they don't need to have land but this is also excluding black people people of color and women and one way that it does that is because women can't be seen in public with hard liquor not a respectable woman so this further removes women from politics by having these types of masculine events personal attacks emerged too republicans attacked jackson for his controversial relationship with his wife rachel rachel was divorced which is pretty controversial in that day and age but even worse her divorce papers were never officially signed which meant that when she married jackson she was still legally married to her first husband adam's camp claimed that jackson and rachel actually had an immoral bigamist relationship and of course bigamy is the criminal charge for polygamy having more than one spouse rachel jackson died shortly after the election of 1828 and jackson always said that she had died of a broken heart he blamed his political opponents for her death and that kind of bitterness about her death plays a lot into how he responded to the so-called petticoat war that you read about the election of 1828 saw mass participation in politics and hyper partisanship people were very very motivated and very different in their political views americans were shocked by the intense pervasive part partisanship of this election remember we were just in the era of good feelings there was only one party it's all buddy buddy and now the whole thing fell apart and we're at each other's throats again voter turnout in 1824 was 25 people are so upset after the corrupt bargain and so kind of politicized uh by the developments in american politics that voter turnout four years later was 55 more than double so this election really marks the entrance of ordinary americans onto the political stage because most of them can vote now at least if they're white and male and that's a much bigger percentage of the population that could have voted before so it reflects the ongoing democratization of u.s politics but as i've mentioned before we need to remember that that is at the price of excluding black americans and women especially we've got a couple of pieces about jackson on the slide here this is a an ad he took out in pursuit of a runaway slave of course he is a a slave owner and a very large plantation owner i'll post a link to his plantation on the canvas page so you can get an idea of the kind of wealth we're talking about this is a pretty typical propaganda piece that was used in the election of 1828 depicts jackson as a boy standing up to the british and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment in the election of 1828 jackson carried every state south and west of pennsylvania so here's pennsylvania every state to the south and to the west he carries some of these states have kind of stripy things up here and that's because those states were still splitting their electoral college votes so say a candidate got 60 of the vote in that state well they get 60 of its electoral college votes and the other 40 would go to the other candidate unlike today where most states in all states today have a winner take all systems if you win more than 50 percent of the vote in that state you get all of its electoral college votes so this was a slightly more democratic way of splitting it here not many states do this and the few that do won't do it for long so jackson is elected president and basically a landslide victory with 56 percent of the popular vote now we need to be clear about that because this is a landslide that map is very very blue and yet it's only 56 percent of the popular vote so even when we're talking about landslide elections in u.s history the country is still pretty split pretty evenly split jackson's appeal was strongest among those who felt threatened by banks and by a powerful federal government especially one that might be powerful enough to one day move against slavery he held heavy majorities of scots irish farmers from the evangelical back country the west which when we're talking about the west in 1828 we're talking about this part of the country right here and heading into kentucky but this is basically the west for people who are used to being east of the appalachian mountains the nouveau riche that is people with new money who didn't inherit their wealth but had somehow made this wealth resented older families that continued to run so many of the banks and businesses supported by jackson so the nuvarish will support him as well it's not just working-class people it's not middle-class people he's got a lot of wealthy backers as well anyone hurt by the panic of 1819 who blames the u.s government for that panic instead of market fluctuations in europe is going to turn to jackson for support people losing their farms people having to become free laborers working for other people turned to jackson and he also benefits from the first modern campaign in us history and of course that is run by the newly founded democratic party and especially martin van buren jackson's first term was notable primarily for political infighting now his appeal had included his charisma uh he's really good with people he's a military hero out of the battle of new orleans from the war of 1812 and he's got this longer history as well the british had captured and imprisoned a very young jackson during the revolution he was just a boy really and he was known for dueling had many scars and wounds he's not a healthy man he's covered in these scars and and wounds and such and he's been in so many fights and battles and scuffles that who knows which scar went with which fight all that being said he was also a very wealthy lawyer and in his limited political career he'd been the first tennessee congressman he was briefly a senator but most of his wealth is based off the fact that he owns more than a thousand acre plantation and about 150 enslaved people whose labor is the source of his wealth so take a look at thehermitage.com i've got the link on the canvas page and you can see the kind of wealth we're talking about although led by wealthy plantation owners and entrepreneurs jacksonians skillfully depicted themselves as champions of the common man against all these aristocratic interests so even though they're pretty aristocratic themselves they're going to paint themselves as being kind of more for common working people than the other guys who were just as aristocratic as they are jackson proclaimed his job as restoring the federal government to the ideal of jeffersonian republicanism so that's the original idea behind the democratic republican party uh so the other guy's party uh when jefferson and madison were kind of outside of the white house and trying to restrict the power of the federal government not liking the way the federalists were operating the irony of this is that jackson went on to become one of the most powerful presidents we've ever had he wielded a lot of power as president more than his predecessors and that's one of the ironies of american history that even people who criticize federal power once they're in the seat of power tend to expand that power he's also one of the most loved and most hated politicians of his day and is still extremely controversial so we're going to watch two different video clips in this lecture with very different takes on jackson so if you don't like one you'll probably like the other both of them have good information about his presidency just from two different viewpoints so we're going to watch the first clip here which is very critical of andrew jackson it does have some language in it but i think you can handle it let's take a look at the first clip