1830’s: the Jacksonian Reformation
The President Who Made Popular Vote Part of the Democratic Process
The presidential election of 1828 brought a great victory for Andrew Jackson. Not only did he get almost 70 percent of the votes cast in the electoral college, popular participation in the election soared to an unheard of 60 percent. This more than doubled the turnout in 1824; Jackson clearly headed a sweeping political movement. His central message remained largely the same from the previous election, but had grown in intensity. Jackson warned that the nation had been corrupted by "SPECIAL PRIVILEGE," characterized especially by the policies of the Second Bank of the United States. The proper road to reform, according to Jackson, lay in an absolute acceptance of majority rule as expressed through the democratic process.
Beyond that Jackson’s popularity rested on his popular persona, born into poverty, to temperamental, even as a child to not be cast out of the education his mother had devoted all of her resources to secure; but then legendary accession becoming “successful” as a Tennessee planter; and of course his historic “military” success that began as an enlisted soldier during the American revolution, his campaigns against the Indians, and the perception that his victory in New Orleans was somehow responsible for America’s second war against England. But it was more than just that. His strong personality that attempted to stomp other’s into inferiorness actually made him even more transformative popular. A gentlemen who acknowledged his own bullying, proclaiming to the individualistic streak of Americans made him the ideal candidate to transform American politics into its second age. He was seen as a successful commoner who would also stand up for the little guy. But the reality was he cared little for other people. Instead of the continuous litigation of Donald Trump; Jackson fought a continuous battle to remove Indians from any lands Americans might want, to call out that the best resolution was total genocide of their race. He continually encouraged the expansion of slavery, and, unlike Jefferson who was equally thin-skinned, Jackson was quite willing to duel politically instead of attempt to stick a knife in them by devious political tricks.
Jackson's election marked a new direction in American politics. He was the first westerner elected president, indeed, the first president from a state other than Virginia or Massachusetts. He boldly proclaimed himself to be the "CHAMPION OF THE COMMON MAN" and believed that their interests were ignored by the aggressive national economic plans of Clay and Adams. More than this, however, when Martin Van Buren followed Jackson as president, it indicated that the Jacksonian movement had long-term significance that would outlast his own charismatic leadership. The democratic-republicans of Jefferson were no longer the Republican party for short, but the Democratic party, period, unhyphenated, and the party that was (supposedly) opposed to all elitism.Van Buren, perhaps even more than Jackson, helped to create the new Democratic party that centered upon three chief qualities closely linked to Jacksonian Democracy. First, it declared itself to be the party of ordinary farmers and workers. Second, it opposed the special privileges of economic elites. Third, to offer affordable western land to ordinary white Americans, Natives needed to be forced further westward, if not eliminated altogether. The Whig party soon arose to challenge the Democrats with a different policy platform and vision for the nation. Whigs' favored active federalism for economic improvement as the best route to sustained prosperity. Thus, the Whig-Democrat political contest was in large part a disagreement about the early Industrial Revolution. Whigs defended economic development's broad benefits, while Democrats stressed the new forms of dependence that it created. These fiercely partisan campaigns would be waged until the 1850’s. Although the founders would have been astounded by the new shape of the nation during Jackson's presidency, just as Jackson himself had served in the American Revolution, the values of the revolutionary warriors helped form his and their sense of the world. The ideals of the Revolution had, of course, been altered by the new conditions of the early nineteenth century and would continue to be reworked over time. Economic, religious, and geographic changes had all reshaped the nation in fundamental ways and Jackson and his political allies would popularize the concept of the “mob”, or the non-elitist vision of government that its original makers (excepting a few like Gouverneur Morris, James Madison, and on his better days, perhaps Ben Franklin.) had thought would create a society of the rabble in charge of the mansion. And of course while in the white house, Jackson was accused of being a participant in the rabble by his behavior.
On the one hand it was an authentic democratic movement that contained a principled egalitarian thrust, but this powerful social critique was always cast for the benefit of white men. This tragic mix of egalitarianism, masculine privilege, and racial prejudice remains a central quality of American life that has begun rearing its head to regain those privileges the oft-endorsed policies of the present day Republicans. With little in common with the first era of republicans or with the progressive republican heydey ushered in by Theodore Roosevelt, or with the more modern republicanism of Robert Taft to Robert Dole; voices like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley (who do have an ideology) are striving to move us to return to the Jacksonian “elitism of the common man”. Of course that very elitism is controversial as a nostalgic for an era of the bygone white male only Jacksonianism that was principled on white male superiority who was supposedly the “common man”. Unfortunately, the common man didn’t really prosper in the days when Jacksoniansm was first ushered into the American consciousness, it did little to actually bring the supposed common man into the ruling class. Its greatest introduction was the idea of popular government, but the authors who led the ideology were themselves among the upper echelons and used their popular movement as a method to increase their control over that popular elite.
Jackson was elected to his first term just after the 50th anniversary of the declaration of independence, and the death of the two men that had by then (and would remain so) become the most well known of that national independence movement, Adams and Jefferson. In 1776 the population that existed to try to gain independence was around 2.6 million. The 1830 census totaled the population to be 12.8 million, and that in itself was an increase of 33% since the prior census of 1820.
The expansionist paper note issuance led to a chaotic money situation, with different notes from different banks trading at different discounts. As a result, many argued for creation of a second national bank (the first one had ceased operation when its twenty-year charter expired in 1811). The Second Bank of the United States was chartered with a primary goal to create a uniform national currency by printing paper money convertible into specie. But the Bank undermined its own credibility by accepting IOUs for capital, and it did little to rein in the expansionist money policies of the state banks. It even contributed to the monetary expansion, particularly in its western branches. But the loose monetary and credit policies that spurred investment in transportation infrastructure, such as turnpike construction and shipbuilding, and in agriculture-based real estate helped the bankers and speculators while investors, merchants, and farmers took on debt, those investments were initially profitable, driven by the demand for cotton in the British mills, as well as the demand for wheat across Europe. Due to the need for transport to deliver the goods to market, specie payments had resumed by 1817, if only on a nominal basis, from the state banks. By 1819 the economic growth post the war of 1812 and the uncontrolled speculation permitted by the second bank set the stage for the Jacksonian era.
Matthew Carey, a Philadelphia economist, estimated that 3 million people, one-third of the nation's population, were adversely affected by the panic. In 1820, John C. Calhoun commented: "There has been within these two years an immense revolution of fortunes in every part of the Union; enormous numbers of persons utterly ruined; multitudes in deep distress." The panic unleashed a storm of popular protest. Many debtors agitated for "stay laws" to provide relief from debts as well as the abolition of debtors' prisons. Manufacturing interests called for increased protection from foreign imports, but a growing number of southerners believed that high protective tariffs, which raised the cost of imported goods and reduced the flow of international trade, were the root of their troubles. Many people clamored for a reduction in the cost of government and pressed for sharp reductions in federal and state budgets. Others, particularly in the South and West, blamed the panic on the nation's banks and particularly the tight-money policies of the Second Bank of the United States. This led to the idea supported by Jackson, that the economic solution was giving the democratic powers to his “common man” and when that movement failed to place him on the presidential throne in ‘24, a groundswell to make the electoral college accountable to the popular vote swept throughout most of the states.
Jackson himself had been caught by the 1819 panic and suffered (some say) near economic collapse by speculating in land that’s price fell drastically when the the value of the land he had speculated in became worthless. Some have claimed Jackson’s war with second bank was because he nearly lost everything and therefore he became embittered and anti-bank. But if you read Jackson’s veto message to congress when he refused to reauthorize the bank that was clearly not the case. Jackson was against the centralization of banking and against the government’s subsidizing certain elements of the economy. He felt, as Geroge Mason had fifty years prior, that the success of a government lied within the local economic sectors of the economy and intersectional trade could never accede the sectional economy. I refer everyone o Jackson’s veto message.
The message is one of the best economical documents from my perspective, that America has produced and if he were not just such a bigot on every other issue I would rank him as one of our best presidents. Certainly he enamored the populace of his time and were I of that generation I believe might have fallen under the spells he cast over the country. We would not have another American president for eighty years who would appeal to widespread economic policy that would be seen as pro the “little man” and would willingly challenge the established economic powers that existed at that time. But the debate on monetary policy and the role banks play in the deflation-inflation cycle still rages today. And still today we see the credit-minority receive the benefits of inflation and minus the typical “scapegoat” at each downturn, gain the prosperity for future control by receiving bailouts (dare we call it welfare for corporations?) to end deflated economies while the ‘little guy” (which usually means the working and middle classes as well as farmers, are left to carry the collapsal brunt.) Jackson’s idea if the economy depended on the sectional economies there would be greater overall economic stability and if the government did not support the large banks and large capital enterprises the economy would not fall prey to being speculated upon.While Jackson, like most in his day, saw the sectional divide between north-south-west regional economies; the regions did have other economic citizens beyond just the moneyed sectional leaders that controlled the regional economic interests, nevertheless the moneyed powers in the three regions had, by the time of Jackson’s election and the rise of popular sovereignty already fractured the union, It festered for another thirty-two years until it exploded into the divisions being unable to continue under one government in 1860. Unfortunately the victorious “unionists” were unable to rebuild a consensus for that union that had resulted in the constitution summer. Since 1828 America has been at war with itself over its own economic policies. The biggest failure of the American democratic experiment has been its nationalization of the economy that has usurped authority of people’s democratic interest to the authority of the national economy.
Sectional antagonism, Jefferson wrote, "is hushed, indeed, for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper." John Quincy Adams agreed. The Missouri crisis, he wrote, is only the "title page to a great tragic volume.” The nation was leery of a national bank with seemingly endless power to manipulate the money supply and the Second National Bank of the United States was attacked by both the expansionists and the sound money opponents. It was during this period that future President Andrew Jackson shaped his anti-Bank views in Tennessee while his future hard-money arm in the Senate, Thomas Hart Benton (Old Bullion), shaped his views in Missouri, two of the hardest-hit states, of the 1819-1823 panic. The debate over central banking, and the concern over deflation and inflation, continue two hundred years later. But Jackson’ veto of the bank reauthorization was not enough in itself to reunite the divisive sectionalism, especially after Tariff of Abominations bill authored by Martin Van Buren wit a great deal of input from vice-president at the time, John C. Calhoun. As we wrote it our last article, the idea was to write a tariff bill so onerous it would fail to pass. Once again today, we have seen the same sort of legislative manipulation for over thirty years that has climaxed itself with a dystopian crisis that has led to people having little or no faith in the government or much belief that the possibilities of government being curative for the economic interests of America. John Boehner has said that some of his colleagues were “legislative terrorists” and indeed I feel many are. But the actions of all terrorism is to create a disparate breakdown of all norms. Even supposing that their was a great defeat for the destructive disabling assembly, without urgent governmental redirection towards addressing the needs of all members of the society of the economy, the terrorism against the non-functioning unification of the nationalized economy will continue. Terrorism is created by the feelings that lead to those feeling displaced and it is those feelings that anchor the needs for displacement of the existing authorities.
It is of very little consequence to call the “maga movement” authoritarian when the followers of the movement feel their lives are being authoritatively minimalized. I have read recent reports that there are five “groups” of voters, but only two parties. I might tend to believe there are many more than five “groups” of voters, but the point is that voters are not facing an “unprecedented” attack upon democracy and must choose one party that is functional and the other that is not. What the voters are facing is of course non-representation that addresses all the differing voter interests. And it is not that we “need two functioning political parties” but that we need as many political parties as their are political interests and needs. The two party system is a caricature of a democracy that gives voice to all of the differing needs. Jackson recognized that need—but his accomplishment was to umbrellize multiple interests who recognized their own regional needs that jackson spoke about, back into a common singularity of a political party that could not shelter everyone beneath that singular umbrella. Both parties today are offering the same options of inclusiveness (believe it or not) by attempting to appeal to the differing interests to come stand beneath the singular shelter. But those shelters are themselves overcrowded and non-representative of the interests they are trying to gather within their bosoms.
The result is not an authoritarian versus a democratic party. The result is a party offering the unsatisfactory status quo as the alternative to a party of terrorist tendencies to breakdown the status quo because it has not satisfied the needs of the most. Winning an election against those wanting to break the “democratic” government does not succeed if the consequences that have many who feel the democracy is no ore representative or fulfilling of them than the Gazans feel the Israeli government is for the, than the apartheid government of the South Africa was seen to support its citizens, than the Irish Catholics believed they were being trimmed into inferiority and reduced from governmental intercourse by the Protestants. Or as black Americans felt during Jim Crow(which still remains as an unlegal quarantined subjection that still frequently remains in the behavioral parlance and practice within America).
It is of little use to use to say hate is on the rise, one party doesn’t want to govern, or that America is on the brink of authoritarianism if the solution is only to condemn the hate, ridicule the party as non-functional, or be dismayed by the rise of authoritarianism as if it is doing such will make everyone flee into the embracing arms of the “rational” party. “Hate” exists when the arms of embracement cast one out of those arms as soon as the hug ends. Authoritarianism is attractive only when the existing authorities have denied influential commerce and appear authoritarian to those who have been denied equitable representation. And the republican party today is probably more functional because its purpose is to break itself free from what we think of as the functioning government.
Jackson offered Americans an expansion of democratic appellation and at the same consolidated those appellations behind a shield that such was enough for unity. What I see is needed is to now throw away the shield and end the influence of party-rule. People can still join “political clubs” but they shouldn’t stand for influence (and election) as candidates of those clubs. And we need for the government that is to be able to recognize that their clubs are viewed as authoritarian, each by the other. Representation has to be reframed from minority-majority governments to a multitude of coalition building minorities. Representatives can’t be representative of their constituency if a lawyer is “elected” to represent ninety-nine percent of his constituents are not themselves lawyers. Maybe instead of redistricting areas in some sort of geographically drawn maps, and states having certain amounts of representatives based on population; we should look at the constituency profession and age. What if the senate were age-based and different age groups voted for candidates by their percentage of the population. And maybe the house needs to select their candidates by the professions. If there are only to be 435 representatives, then perhaps they should be selected by determining the percentage of the population that is within each of the categories of professions, or the income levels could be used as a measuring stick, or some other measurement that reflects the percentages of populations. The selection process needs to be redefined from representing swaths of state populations to giving voice to the differing categories of personal economic interests.
You know who would become the least represented? The upper echelon of “billionaires” who over control the electoral processes and defeat democratic principles. You know who would be most represented? The various classifications of society–in whatever method we tend would be the most methodological approach—that feel they are being left out of the process. And then these voters would most likely to vote for someone that actually represents them and less likely to select someone like MTG who doesn’t represent anyone except the feelings of those who don’t feel they are being represented. A union is highly unlikely to select Jamie Dimon or Jeff Bezos to be the president of their union and Chase probably won’t select Anthony Gil ( a plummer in Sparks, Nv.) to be their CEO, nor is it likely Amazon will select Liz Shuler (CIO-AFL president) to run Amazon. Why therefore do voters only cast votes for candidates who have no connection with their interests?
Another thing I feel we should consider is removing the selected representatives from being a “profession” in itself. We might take a page from many a state government and have the legislature come into session for only a month or two and pay them a per diem when they participate, or letting the voting group that selects them negotiate what that group wishes to pay its representative(s). But a part-time government would not have time for frivolity, they would come into session and be forced to work quickly and accomplish everything proficiently. There would be no time for the frivolities of investigating nonsense or holding up passing budget when tomorrow they won't be there.
Well those are suggestions–not necessarily answers. But if the Democratic Party wants to see itself as the alternative to what it calls the dysfunctional Republican movement towards following Trump and authoritarianism. People don’t follow Trump just because he’s big (& overweight) and used to fire people on TV; they follow him because he is full of grievances and they feel they have been aggrieved. Of course Trump’s grievances are not seemingly their grievances which he more than likely won’t address–but he has felt grieved from a government that often tried to hold him to account (long before his more recent affairs) and his followers feel aggrieved that the government has never addressed their concerns. So they are as anti that government as is the one who speaks to their feelings of a government that has been against them.
But if there is really a desire to not fall into an “autocracy” then the democrats have to offer a program to de-autocrize the government, to offer reforms that can galvanize the participants of this country by Jacksonizing the popularity of making the country more democratic and this will be accomplished only by presenting a program as anti the status quo as the current republican anti-ists. You know everyone I know who voted for Trump in 2016 were supporting Bernie Sanders throughout the campaign season until the Democrats gave the nomination to Clinton. Many of those same people had supported Barack Obama as the alternative hope to the perception of the failed democratic status quo. Way back in 1984, the Democrats chose the status quo (Mondale) against the radical alternative (Jesse Jackson) and I thought then Jackson had a much likelier chance to offer a version of government that would be seen as a greater reply to Reaganism.
The grievance against democracy that is leading away from democratic government is because that government is non perceived democratic. Not because people don’t choose to be in a democratic but because they don’t feel that the democratic government is representing them; they feel left out of its democracy and they feel that the status quo is not democratic. You won’t convince an autocratic choice is a wrong choice unless we offer a much greater perception of democracy.
The perceptions and the needs will continually remain in flux and unless democracy becomes aware that in order to continually remain it has to do contemporaneously and evolve season after season both by continually reforming the processes of increased democratic sharing of authority and power but by maintaining a constant desire for democracy by reforming its processes. From the view of the Trump follower it is not a choice between autocratic Trump vs. democracy; it is a choice between hoping one’s grievances will be met vs. the autocracy of the status quo that has created the grievances.