CHAPTER X THE NATIONAL DEMOCRACY, 1829-1844 Books for Consultation General Readings. --- Johnston's American Politics, 109-148; Wilson's Division and Reunion, 22-146; Schouler's United States, III, 507-529, IV, 1–31. Special Accounts. - Sumner's Andrew Jackson (S. S.); Von Holst's Calhoun (S. S.); Lodge's Webster (S. S.); Schurz's Clay (S. S.); Morse's J. Q. Adams (S. S.); Schouler's United States; *Greeley's American Conflict; Clarke's Anti-Slavery Days; Morse's Lincoln (S. S.); Goodell's Slavery; Taussig's Tariff History; Larned's History for Ready Reference; Wilson's Presidents. Larger biographies of the leading statesmen, Guide, § 25. Sources. American History Leaflets; Old South Leaflets; Benton's Abridgment and Thirty Years' View; J. Q. Adams's Diary; Williams's Statesman's Manual; Johnston's American Orations; Stedman and Hutchinson, American Literature. Writings of the leading statesmen, Guide, §§ 32, 33. - Maps. Mac Coun's Historical Geography; Hart's Epoch Maps, Bibliography. Channing and Hart, Guide to American History, $$ 56 a, 56b (General Readings), §§ 180-189 (Topics and References). Illustrative Material. — *Cooley's Michigan (A. C.); *Scharf's Maryland (A. C.); *Von Holst's Constitutional History; Quincy's Figures of the Past; Cooper's Notions of the Americans; Kemble's Recollections of a Girlhood; McCulloch's Men and Measures; Parton's Jackson; Trollope's Manners of the Americans; Wise's Seven Decades; *Gouge's Money and Banking; Olmsted's Cotton Kingdom; Garrisons' Life of Garrison; Roosevelt's Winning of the West; Hale's Stories of Inventions; Hubert's Inventors. Seba Smith's Life and Letters of Major Jack Downing; Lucy Larcom's A New England Girlhood; Longstreet's Georgia Scenes; Hildreth's The Slave; Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance. THE NATIONAL DEMOCRACY, 1829-1844 271. Significance of Jackson's Election. The election Significance of Jackson's of Andrew Jackson to the chief magistracy marked the election. Andrew Popular sovereignty. close of the second great epoch in the political history of the United States, the emergence of the nation from the colonial stage, and the founding of a democracy on the basis of nationalism; in industrial history, too, it marked the ending of one economic period and the beginning of another. General Jackson, the new ruler, was in some respects a typical man of the people. Born in the Carolina backwoods, he passed his boyhood amid the alarms and hostile encounters of the Revolutionary War. He then made his way over the mountains to the newer Carolina, which rapidly developed and was admitted to the Union as the state of Tennessee in 1796. Picking up a few scraps of legal knowledge, he became ostensibly a lawyer; but it was as a military man that he made his mark. Without fear, with boundless energy, and with a faith in his own judgment and good intentions scarcely ever surpassed, Jackson proved himself to be a born leader of men in time of stress. the Indian wars of that period, and in the War of 1812, he led his men to victory. Himself absolutely honest, he was easily imposed upon by designing men to whom honesty was an unknown quantity. In short, in his rugged appearance and assertive temper, Jackson was a fitting representative of frontier life, which now for the first time assumed an authoritative position in combination with Eastern political elements that saw no other way to the possession of power. In 272. Theory of Popular Sovereignty. The Jacksonian theory of political existence, like the Jeffersonian doctrine, rested on the rights of the individual, but there the resemblance ceased. Jefferson had aimed at the formation of local democracies, the state being the unit of political action; Jackson and those behind him believed in the existence and in the building up of a national democracy. He was the administrator of a group of strong political leaders, whose methods one must detest, while admiring their theories. Of such were Benton of Missouri,. Van Jackson's policy. Buren of New York, Taney of Maryland, and Edward Livingston of Louisiana, but of the New York Livingston stock. They believed with Jackson, or, more likely, Jackson believed with them, that the Constitution should be strictly construed, at least as far as all ordinary functions of the government were concerned. "The reign of Andrew Jackson," as the eight years of his presidency has been picturesquely termed, was a period of strictly constitutional despotism. Internal improvements were put ruthlessly to one side, the United States Bank was ruined, and protection was lessened as much as could possibly be done without losing the support of the West and North. Jefferson himself, in his strict construction days, before he had tasted the sweets of power, could not have asked for more. But there was one great difference: Jackson and his friends believed the people of the United States to be a nation, and believed in the government of the United States by the people. This led them to some strange interpretations of the Constitution, far removed from their principles of strict construction. For instance, they maintained that in electing Adams in 1825, the House of Representatives had refused to give the presidency to the man who was "entitled" to it by the voices of a majority of the voters. But the "sovereignty of the people," which was invoked on that occasion and on all occasions of strain, as in the contest with the bank, was not in the Constitution. That instrument, on the contrary, had provided the means for thwarting the will of the people by the interposition of the electoral college in presidential elections and by the check exercised by the Senate in legislative business. This contrariety in theory in interpretation of the Constitution naturally brought about many crises in Jackson's "reign," when, in obedience to the will of the people, he sought to compel the instruments created by the Constitution to join with him in enforcing a strict construction of that document. It was, however, a most important day for the United States and for the American people when the forces of democracy |