Introduction

As Andrew Jackson made his way east from Tennessee in early 1829 he looked out on a different world than that seen by the presidential traveler in chapter 8. National markets and economic expansion now linked farmers as well as urban residents to an international economy having little in common with the ideals of Crevecoeur. Americans, responding to the commercial forces transforming society, came to think differently about the role of government. In place of the revolutionary generation, a raucous new political system had begun to emerge, dominated by Jackson and reflected in the new democratic culture he personified. As citizens searched for ways to accommodate increasing tensions they came to define equality as equality of opportunity. Brash, self-confident, and unashamedly racist, they insisted that government must safeguard this ideology -- but, not for everyone. In an era when new national parties united most Americans, conflicting forces still excluded women, African and Native Americans. 

Chapter 11 Web activities center on Jackson as a symbol of the new democratic culture and its contradictions. Additional research links encourage you to pursue other topics associated with two decades of remarkable change in American life. 

Web Activities

1. When Andrew Jackson traveled from his home, the Hermitage, to the White House, he was the first elected president from west of the Appalachians. He was to become the only president for which an era, the Age of Jackson, was named. Study the image above.  How does this image differ from the illustration in chapter 8? Describe the people in the crowd gathered to welcome Jackson. What was Jackson's appeal to them? Was the attraction based on his political philosophy, his new political style, or both?

• Who at the Red Eagle Tavern did not vote for Jackson? Read The First Roughshod President: The American Franchise.  What changes in the franchise made Jackson's claim that he was the people's representative possible? Was he? 
• View an artist's version of inaugural events. Go to By Popular Demand: Portraits of the Presidents and First Ladies, scroll down to "Jackson," select "Inauguration, 1828."  Magnify "The President's Levee, or all Creation going on." Why did the event horrify old Federalists?
• Read Jackson's first inaugural address, delivered in March, 1829, for clues to what he might have said to the audiences that greeted him during his journey and at the White House. What are his views on the "rights of the separate states" and "management of the public revenue"? What policy does he "desire to observe toward the Indian tribes"? Does the address offer any hint of the great confrontations on states rights, the bank, or Indian removal, to come? 
• Nine months later Jackson reported the State of the Nation to Congress. Scroll through the document to read sections on the "modification of the tariff," "State sovereignty," "the ulterior destiny of the Indian tribes," "the charter of the Bank of the United States"? How do Jackson's positions on each reflect the views of "the Common Man"? 

2.  In the 1830s Andrew Jackson not only dominated American politics, he became an important symbol of the new democratic culture. The only American president for which an era -- "The Age of Jackson" -- is named, Jackson championed the common man, strengthened the office of the presidency, and reshaped the nation's political system. Was Jackson's insistence that he reflected the best interests of the people accurate? How did Jackson's understanding of politics prompt his actions in the nullification crisis and his decision to destroy the Second Bank of the United States? Follow links to investigate these issues. 

• Andrew Jackson "Champion of the Kingly Commons" suggests that Jackson symbolized his time because he represented the ideology of an entire generation. Follow the links to Society, Image, and Rhetoric. Be sure to look closely at the images. 
• Study the primary documents on nullification and the bank. How does John C. Calhoun frame his argument? What language does Jackson use to persuade Americans to reject Calhoun's position? How does the President's rhetoric and views on states rights in nullification change in his bank veto message?
• South Carolina Ordinance of Nullification, November 24, 1832  
• President Jackson's Proclamation Regarding Nullification, December 10, 1832 (scroll down almost to the end and begin reading at "I have urged you")
• Andrew Jackson, Bank Veto Message, June 10, 1832  
• Go to The Second American Party System and the Tariff. Read the entries for 1828 to 1833 to trace how the tariff became, instead of a source of funding, a point of contention between regions.
• Andrew Jackson and the Bank War provides a twelve part analysis.
• Go to Treasures of Congress Exhibit: Conflict with the Executive the Bank War, magnify the "King Andrew the First" cartoon. Compare this cartoon with the one in your text on page 351. How did Jackson's iconic status serve him during the crisis over Nullification and the bank war?

3.  The emergence of democracy in America was accompanied by an intensifying racism. The demand for prime cotton land and slaves fostered new attitudes toward Indian people and increased the pace of removal. Discrimination and hostility toward free African Americans sharpened. What do you think is the relationship between an increase in racism and an era associated with rise of democracy? Did Jackson's Indian removal policy have broad public support? Study the map on page 342 of your text. Why was there greater urgency for the removal of southern tribes than northern? Find answers at these links.

• To begin the activity, view  New Perspectives on the West timeline to provide context on Indian removal. After entering click on "Events". Select the decade 1830 - 1840 and follow events. Compare this chronology with a narrative account The United States in the Jackson Era.  How does treatment of events in the west differ on each site? 
• Next read an excerpt from "Mobilizing Women, Anticipating Abolition: The Struggle against Indian Removal in the 1830s" by Mary Hershberger, Journal of American History, June 1999 (full text available at your library). Hersberger's examination of the first national women's petition campaign argues that not only was public opposition to removal intense, Jackson had not anticipated how difficult securing Congressional passage for the Indian Removal Act would be. According to Hersberger which segments of society opposed removal and why? Which regions of the country? What two rationales for removal did Jackson offer?
• Examine the two Supreme Court decisions against Jackson's position, decisions he ignored.
• Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 1831 
• Worcester v. Georgia, 1832
• Follow the removal process through these links:
• Extract from Andrew Jackson's Seventh Annual Message to Congress, December 7, 1835 
• Treaty of New Echota, December 29, 1835
• Major General Winfield Scott's Address to the Cherokee Nation, May 10, 1838 
• The Trail of Tears, 1838-39 
• How did free African Americans experience discrimination in the Jackson era? Read pages 343-346 in Nation of Nations 4e. According to Free Blacks in the Antebellum Period how did free African Americans faced with such hostility participate in American society? Compare the documents on this site with those at Blackface Minstrelsy 1830-1852 (follow the first two links). Read the last two paragraphs in Recreation, Alexis de Tocqueville's observations on attending the theater and a quadroon ball. Do you agree with the statement "The power of racism in Jacksonian America stemmed at least in part, from the fact that equality remained part of the nation's creed while it steadily receded as a social reality" (346).

4.  Finally, what do you think Jackson's Impact and Legacy was? For the President's own point of view read the State of the Nation section in his "Farewell Address." Counterpoint (337-338), asks "How Democratic Was Jacksonian Democracy"? Do you agree that, "Politicians' self-proclaimed identity with the people was more symbolic than real"? Or, do you think "Jacksonian Democracy" was real, and "reflected public opinion rather than the wishes of the elites"? What evidence did you find in the Web sites you visited to support your answer?

Additional Research Links

Before and After Jackson

• John Quincy Adams: The Diplomat President is a good biography, see especially the section on the elections of 1828.
• Less than two years after losing his bid for reelection to Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams won a landslide election to the U.S. House of Representatives. See John Quincy Adams' Congressional Career, an essay by Casey Olson.
• Martin Van Buren: The Political Party President was a skilled politician and party organizer, but took office as the nation entered a depression. 
• The American Currency Exhibit at the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, suggests problems Americans had during the "Free Banking Era" that followed Andrew Jackson's destruction of the Second Bank of the United States.

The Jacksonian Party System

• The American Whig Party ~  two sections, one on background another on the party's collapse, includes internal links to key figures. 
• A short biography of Henry Clay, Whig leader, is maintained by Ashland: The Henry Clay Estate. The site also has links to other primary and secondary source material on Clay and a digital image of Clay's will.
• William H. Harrison: The "Log Cabin" Campaign President, was one of two Whig Party candidates to be elected president. The 1840 Campaign is considered the first modern campaign in American history. Visit American Votes: Presidential Campaign Memorabilia at the Duke University Special Collections Library and click on the "Log Cabin and Hard Cider" campaign of 1840 to see why. 

Democratic Culture

• The Democracy in America de Tocqueville project (introduced in chapter 10) by American Studies Students at the University of Virginia provides insights on American life in 1830s and includes both primary and secondary materials. Go to Everyday Life and view sections on "Housing," "Domestic Life," and "Work."
• Two online supplementsto Daily Lives: Clothing and Fashion, 330-331, are Fashion, and Godey's Lady's Book, January, 1850. Sarah Josepha Hale edited the Lady's Book for over forty years. Read Amy Condra Peters' article Godey's Lady's Book and Sarah Josepha Hale: Making Female Education Fashionable, The Student Historical Journal, Loyola University, 1992-93. 

<a onClick="window.open('/olcweb/cgi/pluginpop.cgi?it=jpg::::/sites/dl/free/0073385468/236985/davidglobe2.jpg','popWin', 'width=90,height=112,resizable,scrollbars');" href="#"><img valign="absmiddle" height="16" width="16" border="0" src="/olcweb/styles/shared/linkicons/image.gif"> (3.0K)</a>

Male Suffrage in Europe and Latin America

• Universal manhood suffrage came gradually in Europe and the new Latin American republics. See the franchise terms of the English 1832 Reform Act.
• On the Continent the democratic revolutions of 1848 led to the Belgian Electoral Law and in 1824 the Constitution of the Mexican United States granted broad suffrage.
• In The Process of Mexican Independence (American Historical Review, February, 2000), second section, Virginia Guedea examines the expansion of the franchise in New Spain and the relationship of that process with the political events transforming Spain as well (full text available at your library).