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. W. G. Brown's Andrew Jackson; 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; MacDonald's Documents. Maps. Mac Coun's Historical Geography; Hart's Epoch Maps, Nos. 7, 8, 11. Bibliography. - Channing and Hart, Guide to American History, $$ 56 a, 56 b (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; Hapgood's Daniel Webster. 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 The election Significance of Jackson's election. 271. Significance of Jackson's Election. of Andrew Jackson to the chief magistracy marked the Andrew close of the second great epoch in the history of the United States. He 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 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. In the Indian wars of that period, and in the War of 1812, he led his men to victory. In every way Jackson was a fitting representative of frontier life, which now for the first time took a leading position in national affairs in combination with Eastern political leaders who saw no other way to the possession of power. Popular 272. Theory of Popular Sovereignty. The Jacksonian sovereignty. 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,― Benton of Missouri, Van 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 possi Jackson's policy. |