Transcript for:
Chapter 10 Development of American Democracy 1815-1840

hi everybody and welcome back to history 1301 today we are going to be talking about chapter 10 which is titled Democracy in America 1815 to 1840 but just FYI this chapter is going to be a lot about Andrew Jackson and the career of Andrew Jackson whose unprecedented presidential inauguration drew a rockus rowdy crowd of over 20,000 people that crashed through the White House he actually represented some major developments of this era Andrew Jackson's life and his presidency reflected the power of the market Revolution the power of Westward Expansion the power of the spread of slavery and the growth of democracy Andrew Jackson symbolized the self-made man having having risen from a very humble start in the frontiers of South Carolina and Tennessee orphaned at a young age he was able to teach himself law and then practiced as a lawyer served in the Tennessee State Legislature and court system and he did all of this before winning International Fame through his epic Triumph at the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812 but perhaps most importantly Andrew Jackson represented the rise of political Democracy in America politics during the age of Andrew Jackson began to open up more and more to White white men specifically in America the middle and lower ranks of society began to demand the right to vote and to have access to political office in order to potentially protect themselves from the growing commercial and Manufacturing interests that tended to benefit most in times of economic change but the most incessant demand was that all white men at the very least be treated equally in America and mass participation changed how a political elections were run in America we're going to see the Advent of advertising slogans and even more political parties here one basis of political democracy in this period was the challenge to property qualifications for voting it began back in the American Revolutionary War But ultimately culminated in the 19th century After the Revolutionary War no new state added to the United States of America required property ownership to be eligible to vote and in older states where property requirements were in place constitutional conventions were held throughout the 1820s and 1830s to specifically abolish those property qualifications partly because of the growing number of wage workers in those States who did not actually own much property who demanded the right to vote but down in the American South however where large fabulously wealthy slave owners dominated politics and deeply distrusted the idea of mass democracy property requirements are only going to be eliminated very gradually and they will eventually disappear quite late actually in the immediate runup to the Civil War in 1860 the level of personal Independence required of the American citizen is henceforth located not in one's owning of property but in owning one's own self having control over your own body and your own labor and that was a reflection of this particular period's focus on individualism the one single exception to this democratizing trend though was the state of Rhode Island which still required voters to own a considerable amount of real estate or rental property in order to be eligible to vote this state was actually the center of American factory production and there were thousands of wage earners living in Rhode Island who could not vote in the year 1841 though reformers met together at a so-called people's convention and tried to draft a completely new state constitution for Rhode Island that would have given the vote to all black to All American men who were white but also specifically stripped the right to vote in Rhode Island away from black men when this Con when this convention tried to illegally ratify the new Constitution that they had drafted up and they tried to inaugurate a lawyer named Thomas Dore as the new governor of Rhode Island it was at that point that US President John Tyler felt that things had gone too far and he eventually ended up dispatching federal troops to Rhode Island and this movement ended up collapsing In The End by the year 1840 more than 90% of the adult white male population could vote in America by then America had developed a fairly vibrant democratic system that constantly engaged massive numbers of citizens but lacking traditional bases of nationality in America such as a common ethnicity or a common religion Democratic political institutions are what imparted a sense of identity to the American people Alexis totville whose portrait is on this slide who was a French writer who visited the United States in the early 1830s wrote about his Reflections on the political culture in America in his classic book Democracy in America now born as an aristocrat himself back in France did toille expected to be incredibly suspicious of and expected to not like the Democracy that he encountered in America but when dville finally left the United States his key Insight was that in America democracy was much much more than just voting on Election Day or being a part of a political institution Democracy in America at least to dille was a whole entire culture that encouraged individual initiative affirmed equality and created a public sphere full of all kinds of different voluntary organizations that all wanted to overall improve Society this kind of democracy was something brand new that the world hadn't really seen before the idea that sovereignty ultimately resided in the mass of ordinary citizens of America was a huge departure in Western thought which was traditionally which traditionally had viewed democracy as a bad thing as the very last step on the road to eventual Anarchy but in the United States of America pressure from people who had originally been excluded from political participation namely white men who had money but who didn't have any official political standing or aristocratic titles had managed to create a new unique democracy meant for white men like themselves that actually ended up triumphing in the age of Andrew Jackson in America the right to vote and the right to participate in politics offered thousands of white men a sense of national identity the market revolution in America and political democracy expanded the size of the public sphere and the world of print culture in America this was known as the information revolution and it was facilitated in part by the invention of a new steampowered printing press which was able to print much more material at far lower costs in a very short amount of time and So eventually a new style of incredibly sensationalistic journalism which was catered to a mass readership which was soon soon used to create newspapers with total circulations that blew the circulation rates of European newspapers out of the water add to that the fact that postal rates were still incredibly low in America and combined with the growth of new political parties this also sparked a huge expansion of print culture in America soon all kinds of different groups from labor organizations to reform groups and even individual native American tribes started to print their own newspapers and newsletters for the very first time in American history and the subsequent growth of print culture did begin to offer a new generation of American women writers a new venue for their own expression but as democratization expanded the number of people who actively participated in American politics it started to become seen as necessary to precisely Define the boundaries of the political nation and to explicitly Define freedom and then delineate who exactly was supposed to enjoy that freedom in pre- war American political life democracy could be both expansive but also sometimes exclusive Democracy in America was absolutely willing to absorb native born white men and also white European born immigrants Living in America but it definitively established barriers to women and nonwhite men's participation by the time we get to the year 1829 the concept of universal male suffrage was the norm in every single state with a couple of exceptions which we'll talk about in just a second but in general free black men and all women were completely excluded from calls for access to the ballot at this time and furthermore by the time we get into the 1850s free black men were only legally allowed to vote in a small handful of New England states so as democracy seemingly triumphed in the age of Jackson the grounds for political exclusion started to shift from one's economic dependency to different concepts about natural capacity and incapacity gender and racial differences were seen as one part of a single natural hierarchy of alleged innate or natural end endowments and a natural boundary was not at all exclusive many people argued and women and people of color were simply deemed as lacking in the specific qualities necessary for democracy and self-government Advocates of increased access to the vote for white men in America at the same time explicitly argued that only white men had the level of intelligence to be trusted with political rights in this country women these same men argued were simply too weak and too emotional and African-American men were deemed to be too lazy to deserve the right to vote all white men in America generally tended to share the opinion that they and they alone had the natural superiority over women and people of color that was necessary to be trusted with the vote and while freedom for white men usually involved a process of personal individual transformation of developing their potential to the fullest extent democracy's limits ultimately rested on the idea that the character and the abilities of people of color and women were fixed in place and unchangeable by Nature at the same time and the world of politics in America was also partly defined against exactly what it was not and it was usually defined against the overwhelmingly feminine sphere of the home and domestic family space freedom in the public sphere in no way whatsoever required freedom in the private sphere so in a nation that seemed to be obsessed with the notion of equality eventually democracy started to be more and more associated with whiteness only and while white Americans of all different kinds of social classes tended to dress similarly and could mix together in public black black people were increasingly excluded from public life in America at the same time racist depictions of black people in American culture became widespread in the 1800s and then an ideology of alleged racial superiority and inferiority that allegedly had a scientific basis spoiler alert turns out it did not have any legitimate scientific basis began to take root in places where it had never before existed in American culture in fact for example after the year 1800 every single new state that was admitted to the United States of America with the exception of Maine specifically limited voting rights to white men only in 1821 for example the New York State Constitutional Convention that met together specifically to remove property ownership qualifications for white male voters at the same time literally raised property ownership requirements for black men to a level that effectively disenfranchised nearly every single black man living in New York at the time in fact by the year 1860 black men could only vote on the same basis as white men in just five New England states and those five New England states only held about 4% of the entire nation's free black population at the time white men of the revolutionary era might have considered black men as potential members of the American Body politic but as we get further into the 19th century membership in the American political Nation started to be increasingly demarcated by race no black person in America had full complete equality before the law with white men and black people were routinely banned from schools militia groups and all kinds of other public institutions so in effect race started to replace class as the number one boundary between American men who were allowed political freedom and those who specifically were denied political freedom and keep in mind this is a process that was absolutely willing to incorporate many poor white European immigrants into an American democracy at the same time that black men were being excluded the War of 1812 had showed just how far the United States still was at the time from being a thoroughly integrated Nation when the war started the bank of the United States has expired Transportation was very poor and Manufacturing had actually been required in an attempt to counter the British trade embargo even though they wanted the United States to still remain on the pathway to Thomas Jefferson's idealized agrarian Republic members of the Republican party which was now by people like Henry Clay and John C Calhoun whose portrait is here on this slide they believed that manufacturers in America needed special protection if the United States was ever truly going to become economically independent from Great Britain back in the year 1815 James Madison who was president at the time proposed a full-fledged plan for government promoted economic development that came to be known as the American system and the American system system would ultimately rest on three things number one developing a new National Bank number two maintaining a high tariff rate on imported goods in an effort to try to protect and maybe even encourage more Manufacturing in America and third this Plan called for federal government financing to help build more roads and canals this was generally called internal improvements the building of better transportation systems that is all although two parts of the American system the Tariff and The New National Bank did effectively become law in the year 1816 it was actually President Madison himself who became afraid that the national government if it was ever given Powers not explicitly spelled out in the Constitution would ultimately end up interfering with individual liberty and the practice of slavery in southern states so president mat Madison went ahead and actually vetoed the segment on internal improvements when he was trying to implement the American system so the Second Bank of the United States was created and it was like its predecessor a private profit making corporation that also served as the American government's Number One Financial agent but the bank quickly became deeply resented by many American citizens you see the bank of the United States was also given the task of regulating the amount of pay money that was printed by privately owned Banks and they were also tasked with trying to prevent fluctuations in the value of currency and inflation now at this point I need to point out that the federal government did not print paper money it was actually private banking institutions that printed all of America's paper money and thus the bank of the United States as the chief financial agent of the American government was given the job of trying to regulate the amount of paper money money that was in circulation at any given time in America but instead of actually regulating the currency and the amount of loans issued by local individual Banks the bank of the United States actually ended up massively contributing to widespread speculation and wild investment advice mostly encouraging American investors to buy up land especially after the end of of the War of 1812 the American people did enjoy a wave of economic Prosperity very briefly between the years 1815 and 1818 that managed to fuel a lot of land speculation and investment and extended credit to people amidst Rising crop prices all around the country and on top of that in the aftermath of the War of 1812 so much public land was now available out in the west and Banks were offering easy access to credit terms to buy them that land and as a result land sales soared State Banks though and even worse the bank of the United States itself began to feed into this land speculation by handing out loans in paper money that was much more than what their actual stores of g gold and silver could back up in essence the bank of the United States was just printing more and more money whenever it felt like the country needed it and they didn't really take into consideration whether or not this money was held any kind of tangible value soon after as a result of these activities prices for goods all throughout America started to return to their normal rates there was however reduced demand for cotton and food stuffs in the European continent that very quickly led to a fast credit contraction that led to a sharp decline in commodity prices and in the value of real estate that eventually came to be known as the panic of 1819 when the Panic started the bank of the United States actually immediately stopped giving out loans and immediately called in all debts owed to it and that ended up stimulating a financial depression that hit people living out in the western territories harder than anyone else you see the problem was is that Western Farmers had basically mortgaged their futures an effort to get their hands on money to buy land out west and when the bank started calling in all of the debts that they were owed those farmers were the people who ended up losing their life savings and their land when they couldn't pay their debts back right away and those farmers were left with virtually nothing so obviously Western Farmers hated the bank of the United States in fact for westerners the bank of the United States became known as the monster it was portrayed as a ruthless bloodthirsty institution that was controlled by Eastern fatat Bankers who didn't care at all about destroying the lives of simple American people living out on the west but the short-lived panic of 1819 massively disrupted political Harmony that had been established in the immediate aftermath of the end of the war of 1812 some states actually made things worse by controversially trying to provide debt relief programs to debtors in their states much to the Chagrin of creditors who were owed that money but most importantly the panic of 1819 deeply reinforced many American people's long-standing distrust of banking institutions and it totally undermined the reputation of the bank of the United States which was ultimately blamed for causing the panic in the first place when individual state governments tried to retaliate against the bank of the United States by heavily taxing its local branches within their state borders at this point the Supreme Court of the United States stepped in and under Chief Justice John Marshall ruled in the case of McCulla versus Maryland in the year 1819 that in the Supreme Court's opinion and that's the opinion that mattered that the bank of the United States was indeed a legal legitimate exercise of congressional Authority under the opes of the Constitution this ruling though directly contradicted the strict constructionist view that Congress was only supposed to use powers that were expressly spelled out in the document of the constitution in 1816 James Monroe also from the state of Virginia became America's next president and his presidency inaugurated a short lived period of one party Republican rule in America which was known as the Era of Good Feelings because almost no competing political parties existed and no Federalists won any kind of powerful federal or state level government job just about everyone in all of Congress and the president himself were all members of the same one political party the Republican party and as such it was generally thought thought that there would be very little or no political infighting while only this one political party was in power in the year 1820 though Monroe was reelected almost unanimously the reason for this is because there was no party opposition to the Republican candidate but with no party opposition politics in America started to be totally reorganized around competing sectional interests and wouldn't you know slavery was the number one sectional issue that threatened to disrupt America's national Unity at this time now let's go back a little bit in time uh the Northwest Ordinance that was written back in 1787 had previously banned the practice of slavery in all federal territories to the north of the Ohio River but the Southwest ordinance of 1790 allowed the practice of slavery in all federal territories to the South of the Ohio River up until this point those two ordinances had served as the compromise which basically allowed slavery to be practiced in the South but completely banned its practice in the north and those laws basically served as the default guide used by the rest of the US government when it came to deciding whether or not slavery would be allowed in any future territory or state but when America acquired all of the Louisiana Territory the lines of demarcation surrounding the Ohio River didn't actually easily apply to any territories to the west of the Mississippi River you couldn't just extend the line of the Ohio River to the west of the Mississippi didn't work like that and then on top of that there was a massive explosion in the demand for American grown cotton that started in the 1790s with the start of the Industrial Revolution over in England most of England's early industry focused almost exclusively on clothing and textile production so their need for more and more American grown cotton increased precipitously every single year and as it turns out the area known as Missouri was a fantastic place to grow cotton and people who were living in Missouri territory definitely wanted to be able to own their own slaves and to work on and develop cotton plantations in Missouri but Missouri was technically to the north of the Ohio river and thus according to the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 slavery was not legally allowed to be practice there but again Missouri turned out to be a really great place to grow cotton cotton production could be massively increased in Missouri if slave labor was allowed there so this the proposed government of the state of Missouri wanted to be allowed to join the United States as a slave owning State even though technically older laws including the 1787 North Northwest Ordinance should have prohibited it then there erupted a huge dispute in Congress over whether or not Missouri should be allowed an exception to the rule and whether or not Missouri should be admitted as a slave state ended up increasing dramatically Northern resentment over the expansion of slavery and Southern domination in National political Affairs in the year 1819 when Missouri officially applied for Statehood as a slave owning State a New York Republican stepped forward and proposed that Congress Force the new state constitution to ban any future importation of slaves and furthermore free any slave children as soon as they reach the age of 25 in Missouri in the future at this point the Republican party in America broke apart and it mostly split along along sectional lines based off of this question concerning Missouri most northern Republican members of Congress very much supported restricting the practice of slavery in Missouri but Southern Republicans vehemently oppose those restri restrictions so in 1820 the very next year a compromise was eventually reached that would allow Missouri to adopt a state constitution without any restrictions on slavery and at the same time that Missouri became a new slave state the state of Maine which would prohibit slavery would be added to the Union as a free state in order to maintain a delicate sectional balance between free states and slave states in America's Congress the thing is is that there was exactly an equal amount of slave owning States and free states in Congress at this time and as long as there were equal numbers of slave owning States and free states in Congress that guaranteed that proslavery or anti-slavery groups could not dominate Congress they would be evenly balanced and furthermore slavery would be prohibited in the future in all remaining territory of the Louisiana purchase land to the north of the latitude line 3630 so you can actually see the red line on the map at the southern border of the new state of Missouri which now is the brand new line of demarcation which separates the parts of America where slavery will be allowed and the parts of America in the future where slavery will not be allowed but the Missouri Compromise showed that sectional divisions over the westward expansion of slavery could seriously endanger the continuation of the Federal Union in the future the domination of the Office of the President by people from slave owning Virginia ever since the founding of the nation with one exception at this point the exception of John Adams who was from the state of Massachusetts consistently reinforced many Northerners since that southern slave owners were unfairly dominating National politics and those Northerners knew that in the future if more slave states would be added to the United States that would mean even more political power for the slave owning South in Congress the crisis over whether or not Missouri should be admitted as a new state made white Southerners furthermore realize that from here on out they were a political minority group within the US rapid population growth in the northern states of America had recently started to reduce Southern representation in the House of Representatives to just slightly over 40% in recent years the South ended up starting to see itself as increasingly isolated from the feelings of the rest of the nation and spoiler alert this contentious issue will get worse and it will eventually end up sparking America's Civil War but for the time being things are relatively quiet and a compromise has been reached for the time being in terms of international Affairs in 1819 Spain ended up giving Florida to the United States and then established the boundary between the Louisiana territory in the west and the Spanish Southwest that still they were claiming as part of their empire but between the years 1810 and 1822 Spain's Latin American colonies started to rise up in rebellion and began establishing their own independent nations including Mexico Venezuela Ecuador and Peru just to name a few in fact by the time we get to the year 1825 Spain's once all-encompassing Empire in the Western Hemisphere now only contained the island of Cuba and the island of Puerto Rico and The American Nation generally sympathized with all of these Republican revolutions whenever they popped up in Latin America and the United States was usually the very first nation to recognize these newly independent governments in Latin America John Quincy Adams who was the son of the second President John Adams but also was President Monroe's Secretary of State he very much feared that at some point in the future Spain might try to regain some of its former colonies in the Western Hemisphere and so in the year 1823 Quincy Adams drafted a speech for the president that ultimately came to be known as the Monroe Doctrine in this speech which was given in front of Congress in December of 1823 President James Monroe officially declared that from here on out the Americas are quote henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European power end quote essentially this document stated that the United United States of America would actively oppose any future attempts by European nations if they tried to colonized space in the Americas but in return for Europe staying out of the Affairs of the Americas the United States promised that it would not interfere with the internal affairs of the European continent and that America is very much going to do everything in its power to prevent European nations from trying to interfere in the new Latin American countries that it usually recognized this Doctrine essentially assumed that the old world and the new world were two completely separate political and diplomatic system but the Monroe doctrin also claimed for the United States the role of being the dominant power over all others in the Western Hemisphere now John Quincy Adams also originally meant to secure any kind of trade or Commerce in the Western Hemisphere for the United States of America as opposed to say British interests but that part was ultimately cut from the final draft of the Monroe Doctrine in the year 1820 President Monroe was reelected to the office of President one more time the Federalist Party at this point was simply too weak to even run a candidate against him so essentially American voters in the 1820 presidential election had one choice and that choice was James Monroe but in the time between 1820 and the next presidential election in 1824 the only remaining political party in America the Republican party ended up dividing itself into factions usually along north south sectional lines so in 1824 we have four candidates who were all supposedly running as members of the Republican Party who were compe heating for the Office of the President of those four candidates only one candidate Andrew Jackson who was famous for his military victories in the War of 1812 had anything resembling Nationwide support the other candidates John Quincy Adams from the state of Massachusetts William Crawford from Georgia and Henry Clay of Kentucky found most of their support in this election from the regions from which they came now h clay ran on a platform composed of providing subsidies federally funded internal improvements programs and maintaining very high tariffs that ultimately expanded the American system Andrew Jackson on the other hand opted to take absolutely no public stand on any of the issues of the day which actually turned out to be an enormous asset to his candidacy overall and Andrew Jackson was very popular Andrew Jackson was seen as a quote unquote self-made man he was born in the southern back country he lacked any kind of formal education or inherited wealth and he didn't have any family connections to power either Andrew Jackson himself had personally carved out a career for himself by teaching himself the law and working as a lawyer and eventually becoming a plantation owner in the frontier regions of Tennessee and then on top of all of that he then won national Fame as the hero of the Battle of New Orleans for America in the War of 1812 Jackson's political image was that of an anti-elitist champion of the common everyday American man and thus Andrew Jackson kind of expected to win this presidential campaign but even though Andrew Jackson did receive the overall largest tally of the popular vote and carried Electoral College support in every single region of the United States except for New England none of the four candidates overall ended up receiving a 51% majority of Electoral College votes and so as the Constitution stipulates if there's ever any kind of uncertainty in the Electoral College the presidential election at this point was thrown to the House of Representatives and in the House of Representatives the vote basically came down to two people two cand candidates John Quincy Adams or Andrew Jackson running in dead last place and thus potenti essentially eliminated from the competition Henry Clay at this point used his influence to convince other members of the House of Representatives to support and elect John Quincy Adams as America's next president because clay believed that John Quincy Adams would best promote his American system if he got into office and in the end the House of Representatives ended up choosing not Andrew Jackson but John Quincy Adams as America's next president immediately Andrew Jackson was Furious and he ended up calling this twist in the election a corrupt bargain indicating or suggesting that John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay had made some sort of secret nefarious back room deal to hand the presidency over to John Quincy Adams and as it turns out Andrew Jackson might have been on to something because one of the very first things that newly elected President John Quincy Adams did when he came to the office of President is that he immediately named Henry Clay as America's Secretary of State a very envied position in the president's cabinet the corrupt bargain though also ended up laying the basis for the emergence of a new Democratic party that would form behind Andrew Jackson's candidacy in the next election in 1828 the loose Alliance around John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay on the other hand started to form the basic outline of the opposition political party known as the wig party which will start to take shape in the 1830s so America is going to go from having the Federalists and the Republicans to the Federalist Party dropping out of existence and the Republican Party shattering into two brand new political parties the Democrats which supported Andrew Jackson and the wigs who will support folks like Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams in the future John Quincy Adams is actually the first American president that we have a photograph of there's a picture of him there on this slide and just to tell you a little bit more about the man himself John Quincy Adams came from a very privileged background born as the son of a former US President John Adams his father and John Quincy Adams had lots of experience as a diplomat and as a senator in the US Congress despite his generally uncharismatic nature John Quincy Adams was deeply strongly nationalist in his political beliefs John Quincy Adams very much supported the American system of government sponsored Economic Development and John Quincy Adams if you'll remember was the original author of the Monroe Doctrine Adams was very much wanting to increase American Commerce and power throughout the Western Hemisphere and he hoped that someday the United States would eventually come to incorporate the land mass of Canada Cuba and maybe even parts of the new nation of Mexico as well at some point in the future John Quincy Adams as it turns out had a much larger view of federal power than many other people at the same time Adams thought that the federal government should and could and must direct and sponsor internal improvements programs such as building Road and Canal systems he also wanted the government to start passing laws to try to promote American agriculture manufacturing the Arts and he also wanted to establish a new National University and a Naval Academy too in a time when many American people believed that government power threatened individual liberty John Adams actually argued that Liberty is power but these kinds of ideas horrified Believers in strict construction who very much wanted a limited role for the federal government and as a result of President John Quincy Adams's personal feelings Congress actually ended up approving of very few of his programs in his his four years in office in spite of his dramatic defeat in the 1824 presidential election Andrew Jackson's popularity across the country started to grow immensely his defeat in 1824 was actually something of a blessing and disguise you might say all of the wheeling and dealing especially in the so-called corrupt bargain that ended up giving John Quincy Adams the Office of the President was typically viewed by most American people as very shady and deeply corrupt the American people did not like what went down in the 1824 election the image of Andrew Jackson on the other hand started to become an image of an innocent victim of deep-seated government corruption and in the aftermath of the 1824 election the American voting public seemed to love him even more in the meantime though President John Quincy Adams's attempts to pass legislation to try to make America economically powerful by pushing for a strong activist federal government that would promote economic growth social advancement and scientific progress didn't really blend with what most American people wanted in fact very little of John Quincy Adams's programs ever even passed through Congress and his highly nationalistic vision of The American Nation actually ended up driving a lot of his political opponents directly into Andrew Jackson's camp for example southern plantation owners in particular were very afraid that John Quincy Adams who remember was only the second president ever in US history besides his own father to have never owned even one slave in his whole entire life Southerners were very much afraid that John Quincy Adams might eventually use his Federal power against the practice of slavery people living out in the western territories were always very suspicious of politics that happened back on the east coast and perhaps most importantly in the state of New York a massive Jackson supporter a man named Martin Van Bean had managed to build a tightly highly disciplined statun political machine that threw all of its support behind Andrew Jackson and against John Quincy Adams from here on out Andrew Jackson's campaign had been organized by Martin van berren and his 1828 presidential campaign started the day after John Quincy Adams took office so for the next four years Andrew Jackson and his cohorts are going to constantly work on trying to get Jackson elected in the next presidential election and state level leaders like Martin Van Beren in New York ended up organizing the first Nationwide presidential campaign that relied heavily on mass mobilization tactics for example Jackson's political committees would try to reach out to voters all across America by going out walking through neighborhoods knocking on doors handing out party pamphlets handing out mass-produced Trinkets and buttons that sometimes had a picture or a slogan that was centered around Andrew Jackson on it and the party also started to lavishly entertain anyone who was willing to listen to their political Spiel John Quincy Adams though on the other hand tried to Rally together any kind of opposition against Andrew Jackson who claimed to be dedicated to individual liberty states rights and a limited federal government John Quincy Adams on the other hand typified an older style of American politics in which wealthy Elites kind of expected to rule the country but it was Martin Van Beren who was born the son of poor Dutch immigrant Tavern Keepers who eventually came to represent the new era of American politics just like Andrew Jackson and in this new era ordinary men could actually Rise Up Lift themselves up and eventually become political party managers and professionals and eventually wield immense power if they put in enough hard work and dedic ation people like Martin Van Beren believed that political parties and party competition were not just legitimate that they were actually good for the health of the American Republic by checking against the power of administrations and offering the American voter a choice in the ballot box van berren also believed that political parties would end up supressing or tamping down sectional differences by bringing together supporters and candidates from all across the country on a common platform and Ben Bern was also very alarmed by the rising sectionalism that had recently been inspired by the slavery question in the Missouri debates and he hoped that he might be able to resurrect the old Jeffersonian Era alliance between southern plantation owners and Northern farmers and urban workers behind the new Democratic Party by the time the year 182 rolls around Martin Van Beren had managed to create a very vibrant Democratic party that embodied this old Alliance and then by using new techniques to try to mobilize Mass voter turnout Martin Van Beren ended up helping elect Andrew Jackson as America's next president in a huge overwhelming victory over John Quincy Adams as it turns out the presidential election of 1828 focused more on the candidates person personalities and not the real political issues as a result of this Andrew Jackson ended up carrying the Electoral College votes of every single state to the South and the west of Pennsylvania in the 1828 election and voter turnout this year at this particular election was at the all-time high of 55% of the eligible voting population actually showing up on Election Day and casting a vote for one of the candidates John Quincy Adams unfortunately as you can tell by this electoral college map on this slide only found support in his home region of New England but Andrew Jackson's appeal ended up being strongest amongst ordinary American people who valued their own local Independence and who felt threatened by outside centers of power like what John Quincy Adams had come to represent President Andrew Jackson was a man of immense contradictions for example he was not very well or formally educated at all but he was a very eloquent speaker he championed the cause of the common American man but did everything in his power to actively exclude Native Americans and African-Americans from American democracy he rose from very modest Origins to eventually become a fabulously wealthy man and a slave owner in the state of Tennessee Jackson also deeply disliked banking institutions he hated the idea of paper money and he deeply disliked a lot of the results of the recent Market Revolution he was also a strong nationalist who ultimately believed that states and not the federal government should have ultimate sovereignty and thus should govern for the most part in America he also opposed any Federal intervention in the American economy or any interference in people's private lives as well the Jacksonian Democratic party at first didn't really have a particular political platform aside from working hard to remove Native Americans from the Southeastern portions of America into areas to the west of the Mississippi River Andrew Jackson's first term as president was otherwise mostly notable for the amount of political infighting that ended up happening in those years Jackson though appeared to stand for the Common Man against wealth and privilege Jackson also gave off the image that everyday regular American people could pursue their own individual vision of Liberty in America completely free from any kind of federal government intervention and Andrew Jackson started off his first term as president by publicly proclaiming that he would reform the political appointment process for federal government office holders Jackson insisted that federal jobs actually required no particular expertise or training and so he proposed to rotate in andout a series of honest hardworking citizens in and out of certain political offices within the federal government but in the end what Jackson really did was he gave out to many of his supporters very important jobs in the federal government for no other reason than they had helped him get to the office of president in the first place but in general this system kind of presented as more open and Democratic to most American observers by the time of Andrew Jackson's presidency though American politics was already a mass activity engaging thousands of Americans constantly and penetrating into all spheres of American Life politics had become a mass spectacle with gigantic party meetings party newspapers and newsletters parades to try to get candidates elected and very celebrated political oration as a kind of form of entertainment large national conventions started to replace smaller Congressional caucuses when it came to nominating political candidates from here on out and political parties and their Urban political machines ended up just handing out and dispensing patronage to their supporters in the forms of government jobs financial assistance and all kinds of other benefits Andrew Jackson himself actually introduced what he called the spoil system to the American government in which with every new presidential Administration previously appointed officials will be fired and then replaced with the new president's party appointees this system of everyone leaving when one president leaves the White House and then the new president bringing in his own completely new staff came to be known ultimately as the spoil system so when Andrew Jackson publicly railed and ranted against what he called economic privilege what he really had in mind most often was Henry Clay's American system for president Jackson and his Democratic party the American system would only benefit very few people in America and actually heavily favored Northern over Southern interests and so he proclaimed that he would destroy the American system but before we move on as an interesting little bit of trivia for everyone um in a story which kind of highlights the open nature of De of Andrew Jackson's presidency and his appeal to the common people let me tell you a story so in 1828 a New York Dairy Farmer decided to send President Andrew Jackson a pretty interesting congratulation gift for winning the presidency that gift was a massive 1,400 lb wheel of cheese but Andrew Jackson didn't eat the cheese right away and Jackson's giant cheese wheel lived and then aged and rotted essentially in the Boyer of the White House for about 2 years without any kind of refrigeration getting crustier and molder as time went on but then finally in 1837 Andrew Jackson actually invited the American public to freely enjoy and share his Giant Wheel of gross old cheese now when it was rumored that the president was offering this I Don't Know sample of free cheese the event actually ended up being so crowded that people who could not fit through the front doors of the White House actually started breaking and climbing in through the windows just to get a chance to hack at this giant wheel of disgusting old cheese but it only ended up taking 2 hours for the whole entire 1,400 lb wheel of cheese to be completely devoured but the cheese though it might physically be gone would actually Linger on in the white house for years in terms of its smell in fact the wife of the very next person to live in the White House is known to have constantly complained about having to always air out the rooms and air out the drapes in the White House to try to end up getting rid of that nasty cheese stink that still lingered in the white house foyer for years to come but the people of Washington DC in the aftermath of President Jackson's offer of a free lunch one day very much loved president Jackson for things like his offer of having a go at that giant wheel of cheese which is actually depicted in the picture on the bottom left of this slide American politics in the age of Andrew Jackson tended to concern issues associated with changes wrought by the market Revolution and tensions between National and sectional loyalties throughout the country political debate tended to center around arguments over Banks tariffs paper currency internal improvements and the balance of power between national and local authorities the market Revolution actually ended up shaping many party positions at the time for example the Democrats tended to be very alarmed by the growing gap between the social classes in America and they started to warn that so-called nonproducers people like Bankers merchants and investment operators who at the end of the day could not physically basically show you anything that they had produced after a Long Day's Work were ultimately using their connections with the federal government to enhance their own personal wealth usually to the disadvantage of so-called producers people who could physically show you what they worked on at the end of a day's work people like farmers who could point to the field that they plowed or the Harvest that they had collected Craftsmen and Artisans who could show you the table and chairs that they built at the end of the day and General laborers who could show you what they helped to build or dig or construct during that day the Democrats wanted government to avoid interfering with the economy and to avoid giving special favors to economic interest groups without any government interference in the Open Marketplace it was felt ordinary American people would be able to fairly compete against each other in an otherwise self regulating market and in this situation it was felt that the most meritorious the hardest workers would ultimately end up succeeding people who supported the Democratic party tended to be upcoming businessmen and Farmers also Urban workers who might not be rich right now but who hoped at some point in the future to eventually become rich and Powerful but the opposing party that formed the wig party had a very different idea ideology wig ideology Blended economic social and spiritual reform movements into one unified message trying to uplift The American Nation the wig party very much supported the American system and they believed that a protective tariff A Massive Internal improvements program and a new National Bank could develop the kind of economy and end up spreading the kind of prosperity for all classes of people in America if it was properly fostered wigs insisted that Congress should be the ultimate Center of power in the federal government and not the Office of the President much of wig reforming impulse was ultimately directed against non-english-speaking Catholic immigrants those were the people who the wig party felt most needed to be taught a lesson in self-control and disciplined work habits in the future the wig party had its strongest level of support in the area of the Northeast that stretched from New England all the way over to the Great Lakes area which happened to be the most industrialized and modernized region of the nation at that time the people who supported the wig party were mostly wealthy bankers and businessmen who supported the wig program as did farmers who lived near navigable Rivers canals and other existing waterways and who were thus tied into the overall commercial Marketplace while many slave owners did end up supporting the Democratic party who believed that State's rights would ultimately protect the institution of slavery in the future some of the wealthiest and largest southern plantation owners actually ended up voting for the wigs recurrent party battles of the Jacksonian era reflected a lot of conflict between so-called public and private definitions of American freedom and what those definitions relationship was to overall government power to members of the democratic party Liberty was viewed as a private entitlement that would best be protected by local governments and would ultimately be threatened by a powerful national government under President Jackson the national government's overall power did decrease on purpose weak Federal power Democrats felt would ensure private freedom and states rights in the future so Democrats under President Jackson worked very hard to reduce government spending they lowered the Tariff rate they ended up killing off the bank of the United States and then refused any kind of Federal Aid or support for internal improvements programs States in this case thus ended up replacing the federal government as the main economic actors of this time and it was left in the hands of state and local governments to do things like planning Road and Canal construction and states were left to Charter their own individual Banks and other corporations and businesses Democrats also thought that individual morality was a totally personal and private concern and Democrats opposed any attempts to try to impose any sort of uniform moral Vision on American Society like Temperance laws that would ban or restrict the sale and consumption of alcohol or so-called Sabbath laws that would ban businesses from being open on Sundays this was actually one reason why Irish and German immigrants tended to overwhelmingly vote for the Democratic party because they agreed with those ideas Democrats also supported policies that allegedly enhanced the so-called free agency of individual citizens leaving individual people completely free to make their own decisions and to pursue their own self-interests wigs on the other hand had a completely different ideology wigs believed that power and Liberty actually reinforced each other they thought that a powerful energetic federal government actually enhanced individual freedom and they also thought that Liberty in America required a thoroughly prosperous but deeply moral American Nation the government would create the conditions for future Economic Development and thus would end up producing widespread prosperity for people of all classes in all regions of the nation like the older Federalist Party that came before them wealthy supporters of the wig party tended to see Society in America as a hierarchy of different social classes but very much unlike the older federalist party wigs believed that class status was not fixed in place individual people through hard work could potentially rise up in rank in society and subsequently on the other hand if you were born into a wealthy family but you were not a moral or hardworking person you could fall down the socioeconomic level ladder and become a poor working class person all through your own fault wigs also believed that the Federal ederal government could and very much should intervene in people's private lives in order to guarantee that all citizens acted as free devout moral agents and thus the wig party supported things like school systems Temperance laws and Sabbath laws as well even though he claimed to be dedicated to the idea of states rights over the federal government Andrew Jackson's first term as president definitely saw huge efforts to uphold federal government Supremacy over state governments for example after the first protective Tariff of the Year 1816 was passed through Congress interest rates increased in 1824 and then ended up jumping to about 50% of a tariff rate for all imported products in the year 1828 by a law that was popularly known in the south as the Tariff of Abominations Southern cotton Growers particularly objected to a high tariff rate because they felt that the Tariff actually hurt them disproportionately negatively while their cotton processes did not become cheaper since farmers in the South had to import a lot of their farming Machinery from places like Europe they alone would end up having to pay inordinately high tariff rates just to do basic simple business growing cotton so believing that the Tariff ultimately was created to punish Southern consumers in order to benefit Northern industry interests the state of South Carolina's legislature actually ended up threatening to completely nullify the tariffs collection within the bounds of that state essentially South Carolina dared to declare the tariff law completely null and void void in South Carolina South Carolina though it should be noted had a much higher percentage of slaves living there than any other state in the Union and South Carolina was completely ruled over by an oligarchic elite of a small handful of huge plantation owners and these people were terrified of the recent Missouri controversy and they did not like the idea of the federal government growing in power in the future future so the question then became can any individual State simply set aside any federal law that it doesn't want to impose Andrew Jackson's Vice President John C Calhoun from South Carolina said yes absolutely and he ended up developing a theory of nullification in this Theory Calhoun argued that individual states had been the entities that created the national government in in the first place and thus each individual state government should retain the power and the right to prevent the enforcement of any federal law within its borders that seemed to overstep the powers given to the federal government by the Constitution Calhoun essentially argued that a state government if it was acting through a popularly elected government did have the Sovereign power to declare any Act of the federal government to be null and void but immediately after stating this theory of nullification and threatening to use it against the Tariff political opponents to the theory of nullification immediately popped up opponents such as Congressman Daniel Webster argued that it was the people of America not the states that had at first created the Constitution and the federal government as well and according to these folks the idea of null ification was ultimately illegal unconstitutional and treasonous in the midst of this crisis with Calhoun's approval a South Carolina State Convention held in late 1832 ended up declaring null and void the Tariff laws of both 1828 and 1832 now no other Southern State actually threatened to nullify the Tariff law and Calhoun's theory of nullification did offer the American South a potential political philosophy that it could use in the future if and when sectionalism between North and South intensified Calhoun actually argued that his nullification Theory did not threaten to tear the union apart but actually would preserve the Union by allowing unique diverse different states throughout the country to preserve their own personal internal interests while while still remaining a part of the overall Federal Union but in the consideration of President Jackson however the theory of nullification basically equaled disunion so in response to the announcement of the Nullification of the Tariff laws in South Carolina President Andrew Jackson ended up persuading Congress to authorize him as the president to use military force to collect the Tariff in the state of South Carolina over South Carolina's objections and when South Carolina realized that the US Army could potentially invade the state the supporters of nullification immediately started to back down but not before they openly and publicly denounced President Andrew Jackson to avoid the nation splitting into war at this point Congressman Henry Clay along with John C Calhoun came together and created a compromise tariff law in 1833 that did significantly reduce tariff duties and as a result of this South Carolina rescinded its nullification law so in the end President Andrew Jackson ended up establishing the principle of national government Supremacy over state governments even though that's not what he originally intended to set out to do Andrew Jackson who was supposed to be ultimately dedicated to the rights of state governments and a limited federal government at this point had actually ended up defending the power of the federal government and the idea of the Union as a nation against states rights by dramatically affirming his right to use Force military force against an individual state in defense of maintaining the union of the United States President Jackson unfortunately for his cause ended up driving a lot of Sou plantation owners out of the democratic party for the time being in fact John C Calhoun abandoned the Democratic party and President Andrew Jackson and immediately ran over to the wig party and people like Henry Clay and Daniel Webster where the wig party was United mostly by their opposition and hatred for anything that Andrew Jackson stood for but Andrew Jackson's nationalism and his deep commitment to National sovereignty also showed through in his approach to Native American policy at the time in the American South Cotton's spread introduced scores of land hungry white settlers into areas where so-called Civilized Tribes such as the Cherokee the Chaka and the creek had for Generations already begun practicing white ways including the practice of slavery about 120 25,000 Native American people still lived in the portions of America to the east of the Mississippi River when Andrew Jackson became president Native Americans were living on and holding on to land that white American settlers wanted for themselves alone and as white American settlers started to move west they increasingly came in direct conflict with various Native American tribes especially the Cherokee the creek the chock to the chickasaws and the simol but in the year 1830 Andrew Jackson secured the passage of a law known as the Indian Removal Act which called for the immediate forced removal of tens of thousands of Native Americans from the Southeastern portions of the United States this law repudiated the old Jeffersonian notion that Native American people could and would someday be thoroughly integrated and assimilated into white American culture Andrew Jackson did not at all believe in negotiating with Native Americans and Congress ended up passing the Indian Removal Act but did not provide for any federal funds to protect Native American people who were now told to immediately move to reservation lands president Jackson strongly advised Native American people to immediately immigrate Beyond beyond the Mississippi River for years at this point the Cherokee people living in Georgia had very much attempted to assimilate with white American culture the Cherokee Nation was by this point a rather prosperous Society of small independent farmers and they even had their own school system and newspapers in Georgia almost every member of the Cherokee Nation spoke English and some Cherokee Farmers even owned slaves even more so trying to adapt to White standards of living in the state of Georgia at the time but when the Cherokee People tried to declare sovereignty over the land that they lived on the Georgia state legislature stepped in and officially annuled all Cherokee laws and stripped the Cherokee Nation and Cherokee People of any legal rights that they had up until that point from that from there on out the state of Georgia next legally defined all I Native American people simply as tenants who happened to be living on land that rightfully belonged to white people and to the state of Georgia the Georgia legislature effectively stripped the Cherokee people living in that state of all of their rights and Alabama and Mississippi soon ended up following in Georgia's footsteps when it came to actively denying rights to Native American people in those States the Cherokee Nation did try to appeal directly to the Supreme Court asking for the court to protect the land that that they owned in Georgia and other southern states which had actually been guaranteed to the Cherokee People in a stack of treaties that had been signed with the American federal government in the past but In 1832 the Supreme Court announced its decision that Native American people did not in fact own any land in America but were actually redefined as nomadic peoples who only had a temporary right of occupancy a subsequent Supreme Court decision further defined Native American people as Wards of the federal government who therefore did not have full rights as American citizens but were also not to be considered members of independent nations that were Sovereign from state governments a subsequent Supreme Court decision did momentarily seem to slightly reverse this last judgment giving Native American nations a separate unique political identity that could only be dealt with by the federal government and not state governments but at this point President Andrew Jackson refused to enforce the last decision passed down by the Supreme Court and thus ordered the state of Georgia to immediately expel its Cherokee population with help from the federal government which now sent military troops down into Georgia to to forcibly remove any remaining Native Americans and all other tribes from that region in the 1830s the Native American people in those areas were immediately forced to move to territories in the west that had vastly inferior land and thousands of Native American people ended up dying on the way to that Western reservation land on top of that no Federal Protection or resources were provided for the Native American people as they started to be violently harassed into leaving the Southeastern portion of the US by white settlers who were very eager to take over the land that native people were living on at the time ultimately president Jackson did end up deploying the US Army but only to round up and force Native American people at the point of a rifle to move who had refused to comply with the government's orders up until this point so as a result of these events the Cherokee the Chaka the creek and the Chickasaw peoples began to leave the Eastern United States and so many of these Native American people died as they walked from Southeastern America into the area that we nowadays know as Oklahoma that the Cherokee people still to this day C call the immense loss of life from exposure to the cold starvation and disease along the way the quote unquote Trail of Tears and any Native American tribes that even slightly tried to resist move moving were immediately attacked the very last remnant of Native American resistance in the old Northwest up around the Great Lakes came to an end in 1832 when federal troops and local militia groups violently suppressed the sock and fox Native American people in an event known as Blackhawks War over 500 Native American men women and children died in this incident and all remaining survivors were immediately forced into the territory marked as quote unquote Indian lands on this map down in the State of Florida the simol people tried to resist their removal for seven years by fighting an ultimately costly Guerilla war against American troops in that region but eventually they too ended up succumbing by the time we get into the 1840s Native Americans had all but disappeared as any kind of visible presence in the eastern states of the United States of America but perhaps the most significant political fight of the whole entire Jacksonian era was Andrew Jackson's personal campaign against the bank of the United States which to many American people represent presented some of the hopes but a lot of the anxieties that had been generated by the recent Market Revolution president Jackson opposed the bank both for purely personal reasons and because he tended to associate the bank of the United States with privilege and a powerful national government while the growth of banking had indeed spurred some economic development recently many American people deeply distrusted bankers and categorized them as So-Cal called non-producers who contributed nothing of tangible value to the nation's real wealth and as people who profited off of the hard work and labor of others Banks also had the unfortunate tendency at this time to overissue paper money and the subsequent deterioration and value of that paper money reduced the real wages of workers all throughout America president Jackson and many other like-minded people now began to think that so-called hard money and when I say hard money I mean literally gold and silver nuggets and coins that hard money was the only honest and good form of currency so in the year 1832 the bank of the United States unexpectedly asked to have its Charter renewed not just early but they asked for a 20year extension this time around the fact that the bank asked for an extension for so long at such an early Point alarmed a lot of Democratic party members President Andrew Jackson immediately felt that something suspicious was most likely happening at this point like many westerners in America president Jackson inherently distrusted the operations of bank managers and to their credit the bank of the United States was actually LED at this time in history by a man named Nicholas bid Nicholas bid was a man with very pretentious aristocratic Tendencies and he was also a man who liked to regularly go around and brag all throughout Washington DC that he alone controlled all of America's economy and could make or break the American economy in the snap of his fingers In 1832 it was actually biddle's allies that managed to persuade Congress to extend the banks Charter for another 20 years even though the banks Charter wasn't set to expire until 1836 President Andrew Jackson interpreted all of this activity as political blackmail because Jackson deeply believed that people like Nicholas bidd behind the bank of the United States would use their massive monetary resources to try to defeat him when he ran for re-election In 1832 if president Jackson tried to stop that Charter extension but president Andrew Jackson did end up stepping up and vetoing the extension of the bank of the United States Charter and his veto message ended up resonating with popular values at the time president Jackson then stated that Congress should have never been able to create an institution with so much power and so much economic privilege that was ultimately completely unaccountable to the American voting public exclusive privileges like the early extension of the banks Charter ended up widening the gap between wealthy and humble simple Farmers mechanics and laborers all throughout America whom Andrew Jackson claimed to personally defend in the end this Bank war against the bank of the United States did end up allowing Andrew Jackson to enhance the power of the Office of the President in fact Andrew Jackson was the very first American President to to use his veto power as a major weapon throughout his terms in office and he was also the very first American President to directly address the American voting public and not addressing the heads of congressional committees Andrew Jackson's reelection in the 1832 presidential contest against the wig candidate Henry Clay basically ended up guaranteeing the destruction of the bank of the United States States so Andrew Jackson ended up vetoing the bank of the United States's application for a massive Charter extension in the end members of Congress did try to override his veto but at that point president Jackson started to appeal directly to the American people claiming to work as their Champion against the deeply corrupt banking aristocracy of the bank of the United States and thus Congress in the aftermath of this statement was unable to overcome the president's veto with a 2third majority vote so at this point president Jackson ended up winning the so-called Bank War but president Jackson was very upset that Congress had tried to override his veto and next Andrew Jackson set out to completely destroy the bank of the United States even before its original charter was set to expire president Jackson destroyed the bank by immediately withdrawing all of the federal government's funds from the bank of the United States and once the bank was drained of almost every cent of its money the bank was then reduced to trying to establish itself as a private banking corporation at this point the bank of the United States was basically dead it wasn't going to last much longer at all so president Jackson wanting to destroy the bank of the United States before it's 1836 Charter was over went ahead and removed all of that money from the bank of the United States but he then had a conundrum as to where to now store the federal government's money where would all of the American government's money go now what specific Banks would hold on to all of this cash political and personal connections as it turns out often times determined exactly which so-called pet Bank Banks ended up getting federal funds in the end Andrew Jackson chose to redeposit the money of the federal government in a whole different variety of several local and state level Banks but political critics immediately decried this activity by claiming that President Jackson was only putting money into certain so-called pet Banks where bank managers had Direct political connections to Andrew Jackson's political CR ionies then the American economy began to overheat in Andrew Jackson's second term as president without any federal government deposit money the bank of the United States immediately lost its ability to regulate State banking activities and without anyone watching over their activities state level Banks started to issue Stacks and stacks more and more paper currency and distributed it all throughout America America in the hopes of trying to stimulate economic development but in reality because those State Banks started producing and printing so much paper money without any gold or silver to back up their worth the value of Bank notes in circulation in America skyrocketed from just $10 million in circulation in America in 1833 to about $150 million just four years later in 1837 as a result of this massive flood of new paper money into the American Marketplace it was an economic disaster across the country prices for products Rose the value of real wages earned by workers precipitously declined and the only people who seemed to be making money were unscrupulous investors and speculators in previous years demand and prices for federal land out in the West began to soar but eventually the speculative bubble in land investment burst the federal government ended up selling about 20 million acres of land out in the West in the year 1836 that was about 10 times the amount of land that the government had sold back in 1830 and to make matters worse almost all of that land had been paid for using the now worthless paper money which had a very questionable value you in the end so to try to combat this problem before it got worse in July of 1836 president Jackson ended up issuing a law known as the species circular which mandated that in the future from here on out any land buying of land from the federal government payments had to be made in hard currency only essentially you could not use American paper money to buy land from the government the government did not accept the value of American paper money and would only take gold and silver in exchange for land out in the west so at this point the American government publicly was saying that it did not trust the value of paper money in circulation in the country and as if that wasn't bad enough simultaneously when the value of paper money was dropping precipitously British Banks began to demand that American businesses who owed them money pay their loans back using hard currency only and then a recession started in Great Britain and that ended up dropping British demand for americanmade products and especially for American grown cotton so combined together all of these different events ended up causing a straightup economic crisis known as the panic of 1837 which was then almost immediately followed up by a financial depression that lasted all the way until 1843 All Over America businesses failed workers lost their jobs farmers and other investors lost access to land that they depended on for their livelihoods individual state governments that tried to take up Economic Development projects ultimately ended up defaulting on the debts that they owed to contractors and workers as well at this point president Jackson and Democratic party attacks on the bank of the United States started to be blamed as the ultimate cause of the panic in the first place the Democratic party's political opponents at this point began to coales and come together as the wig party at this point claiming that Andrew Jackson's destruction of the bank of the United States and his unwise monetary policies had ultimately undermined the business confidence and had led to the panic of 1837 but fortunately for Andrew Jackson unfortunately for the rest of the nation Andrew Jackson was out of office by the time this ended up turning into the panic of 1837 Andrew Jackson's second term as president ended in 1836 and in 1837 Martin vanban was the new American president and President Van Beren would be the one who ultimately ended up having to pay the political price for the destruction of the bank of the United States so again the new president starting in 1836 was Andrew Jackson's Old right-hand man and Lieutenant Martin Van beran who represented the hard money anti- banking wing of the democratic party in particular the Democratic party had so politicized the bank issue and as such were expected by the American people to take the blame and responsibility for problems caused by the ending of the bank of the United States but as it turns out President Martin Van berren couldn't really offer a good tangible solution to the problem but he did try to find a way out of the situation at the time by making a final definitive clean break between the government and the banking industry in 1837 President Martin Van Beren came out with a plan who that was called The Independent Treasury System by which from here on out the federal government would not have any banks at all the treasury would now conduct its business only using gold and silver coins and the government would store all of its specii which is just another word for gold and silver in a series of regional vaults and warehouses from here on out the treasury Department was directly under federal government control but only in the year 1840 did Congress actually approve of the idea of the Independent Treasury which then completely separated the functions of the American national government from the banking industry and so in the end the bank War combined with the Nullification Crisis ended up shaking loose a lot of Democrats who still supported the idea of the bank of the United States and many southern states rights adherence from the original iteration of the first Jacksonian Democratic party and as it turns out President Martin Van Beren was not nearly as popular as Andrew Jackson had been and by the time the year 1840 rolled around the wig party had managed to master a lot of the political techniques that the Democrats had used previously to mobilize and energize their voting base the wigs also successfully borrowed another old democratic party strategy by choosing and then recasting a popular wartime hero as their candidate this time around the wig party chose William Henry Harrison not Andrew Jackson as their candidate and started to promote him as coming from a basic humble simple American background and William Henry Harrison did have a common touch that directly appealed to many American voters at the time William Henry Harrison was some someone that we've talked about before he had been the victor of the infamous Battle of Tipico against tumsa and tens quwa at the start of the War of 1812 and he also was the hero of several battles of the War of 1812 as well William Henry Harrison though didn't really have any political platform to speak of whatsoever but the wigs were successful in portraying Harrison as a common regular American man who grew up in a L cabin and like to drink beer and cider instead of the much more pretentious aristocratic wine and whiskey the wig party ticket was then geographically balanced by selecting as William Henry Harrison's running mate a guy named John Tyler a staunch states rights Democrat who had originally come from Virginia who had only very recently left the Democratic party and join the wigs particularly after the Nullification Crisis van Beren in 1840 was represented as corrupt and elitist he was actually called Martin Van ruin and he was portrayed as a man who squandered public money on effeminate luxuries and as a man who was only concerned with the spoils and perks of his powerful political office as it turns out the wig party ended up selling their presidential candidate a whole lot better than the Democrats sold van Beren and with a new record voter turnout of over 80% of eligible voters casting a vote that year William Henry Harrison ended up winning a sweeping victory in 1840 but that wasn't the end of the good news for the wigs because not only did the wigs now have a president in the White House the wig party also gained control of both houses of Congress now all of this sounds like a huge resounding victory for the wig party but unfortunately for them it's not going to last very long because refusing to wear a heavier winter coat to his outdoor inaugural address which was actually held outside in the freezing driving sleet and rain so that he could maintain his tough manly image as a candidate President William Henry Harrison ended up speaking in one of the longest in fact the longest inauguration P thus far in American history for over an hour in the freezing rain and wouldn't you know William Henry Harrison ended up Contracting pneumonia and died just 30 days later and with William Henry Harrison dying that meant that automatically John Tyler became America's next president through a huge accident in fact some people began to address John Tyler as his accidency instead of his presidency now the thing to remember here is that John Tyler had only very recently come over to the wig party up until this point in history John Tyler had been a staunch supporter of the democratic party when the wig majority in Congress attempted to enact the American system into law at this point President John Tyler immediately seemed to revert back to his Democratic roots and he ended up vetoing every single measure when it crossed his desk for approval including vetoing a new National Bank and vetoing a higher tariff rate in the future in absolute disgust at this particular turn of events though every single member of John Tyler's cabinet immediately resigned and the wig party even publicly repudiated him at this point John Tyler had no support from any kind of organized political party and thus he didn't really get very much done over the course of the next four years it seemed to be that in this new age of Jacksonian style democracy presidents could not effectively rule without the continued support of their political parties and with President John Tyler he actually ended up accomplishing very very little in his four years in office um before we move on I have another little bit of fun trivia for all of you John Tyler was America's 10th President we are currently on our 46th potentially going into our 47th president John Tyler was 10th so President John Tyler the 10th President of America still has one grandson that is still alive today you might be wondering how is that possible well this is because in America in the in the 19th century wealthy men who were widowers whose first wives had died did indeed end up marrying much younger women when they were rather old and late in life and John Tyler got married to a young lady when he was in his 80s and he ended up fing a huge number of children John Tyler over the course of his life ended up fathering 15 children more than any other American president and seven of those 15 children were born to president Tyler's second wife who was 30 years younger than President Tyler John Tyler's 13th child a guy named lion Garder ER had himself three kids with his own second wife who was actually 13 years younger than he was when those kids were born of the children that lion Gardener Tyler had with his second wife one of those kids a man named Harrison ruffen Tyler who was born in 1928 is still alive to this day now another fun bit of information about President Tyler um eventually John Tyler became very deeply involved in pro-slavery politics in the state of Virginia in the immediate runup to the American Civil War and thus when John Tyler died in the year 1862 right smack in the midst of the American Civil War he ended up being buried in a Confederate Cemetery in Richmond Virginia John Tyler's death was the only one in presidential history not to be officially recognized and mourned in Washington DC at the time because of his at the time staunch Alliance to the Confederate States of America he was eventually buried as a hero to the new Confederate Nation when he died and so accordingly at John Tyler's funeral the coffin of the 10th President of the United States of America was actually draped with a Confederate flag and so John Tyler still to this day Remains the only American president ever laid to rest under a flag that was not the flag of the United States of America now in the next chapter we are going to look at the unique peculiar institution that starts to develop and grow even more than it ever had before in the South the institution of slavery and we will inspect many of its elements in the hopes of trying to understand just how the American Civil War which was fought over this particular institution came to be