II. ANDREW JACKSON AND THE RISE OF DEMOCRATIC NATIONALISM
Never can I forget the spectacle which presented itself on every side, nor the electrifying moment when the eager, expectant eyes of that vast and motley multitude caught sight of the tall and imposing form of their adored leader, as he came forth between the columns of the portico, the color of the whole mass changed, as if by miracle; all hats were off at once, and the dark tint which usually pervades a mixed map of men was turned, as by a magic wand, into the bright hue of ten thousand upturned and expectant human faces, radiant with sudden joy. The peal of shouting that arose rent the air, and seemed to shake the very ground.
~ Eyewitness account of Andrew Jackson’s First Inauguration
Lion in the White House
Andrew Jackson was a towering figure, not just metaphorically, but literally. No other American since George Washington had a similar stature, imposing figure, and adoration from the public than Andrew Jackson. In fact, it was probably more-so than Washington—who could never break the spell of anti-federalists that he was going to become something akin to a new king George. The “American Lion,” Jackson stood an imposing 6’1”. Scarred from refusing the clean a British officer’s boots back from the Revolution War, and although bitterly opposed to the National Bank and capitalist improvement projects launched by Adams and celebrated by Clay, Jackson had a common connection with Adams and Clay: he loathed the British. While Jackson’s nationalist populism preoccupied his ideology and thinking, considering himself a devotee of Jefferson, he shared with Adams and Clay a belief that North America should be American and freed from British oversight and hegemony.
Never can I forget the spectacle which presented itself on every side, nor the electrifying moment when the eager, expectant eyes of that vast and motley multitude caught sight of the tall and imposing form of their adored leader, as he came forth between the columns of the portico, the color of the whole mass changed, as if by miracle; all hats were off at once, and the dark tint which usually pervades a mixed map of men was turned, as by a magic wand, into the bright hue of ten thousand upturned and expectant human faces, radiant with sudden joy. The peal of shouting that arose rent the air, and seemed to shake the very ground.
~ Eyewitness account of Andrew Jackson’s First Inauguration
Lion in the White House
Whereas Adams and Clay looked to building a strong national economy to rival and overtake Britain, Jackson looked west. He encouraged the “frontier spirit” that would beat the British to controlling the Pacific coast. He envisioned a strong, populist, and militant nation that would be able to weather any challenges the British might pose in seeking to retain control over North America. And Jackson himself certainly wouldn’t have minded a fight with Britain again if it would come to it; he had shocked the British at New Orleans in 1815 in one of Britain’s worst defeats in her military history after all—and was all too willing to do so again if necessary.
Jackson’s loathing of everything British, combined with and his strong base of support in the South and frontier—the emerging Midwest—also left an important mark on the culture of Midwestern politics: Anglophobia. The claimed Anglophilia of Adams, Clay, and Hamilton—as I’ve already asserted—is somewhat misleading. True, all three—as did the rest of the Federalists—seek to emulate the British economic system so as to build a strong and centralized American economy, their emulation of Britain was for anti-British ends ultimately. Only by emulating Britain, would America be able to throw off the chains of Britain in North America. It was very much akin to Thucydides account of how Athens still won the Peloponnesian War despite losing it politically—the Greeks had to become like Athens, so as to defeat Athens.[1] Greece had become the universal Athens, even as Athens, the city, lost politically. In the same long game strategy, America would have to become like Britain, in order to defeat Britain in North America.
This induced into American political culture two strands of political thought how to deal with Britain: one Anglophobic and militantly hostile, and therefore automatically friendly to any enemies of Britain (and generally Germanophile), the other tacitly Anglophile only in the sense that by emulating the British system America would eventually come to overtake it.*
The manner of Jackson’s popularity however, is often confusing, as was his tidal wave into the presidency. Many unwarranted comparisons to Jackson have been made—in part because many commentators cling to Jackson’s strong anti-National Bank position and connection with the American commoner as something of an early anti-elitist populist of sorts. Far from it. Jackson’s popularity among the common class was threefold: Jackson was a famous general who gained notoriety at the Battle of New Orleans, and likely inflated his heroic legend prior to that by emphasizing his anti-British patriotism in the otherwise minor incident of being struck by a British officer when he refused to clean his boot; secondly Jackson’s lineage from cabin to military governor and presidential candidate inspired hope to many Americans of the promise of progress—after all, all the previous presidents had been from the well-established American gentry of the colonial era; and most importantly—although hardly discussed, the economic prosperity of Monroe and Adams created an overflowing of wealth, while it was being concentrated in the hands of bankers and merchants, the rise of the American economy opened the promise that by enfranchisement and progressive equality (even if only among White Americans) the common people could share in the spoils of economic growth.
A depiction of the wild scenes in front of the White House during the arrival of Andrew Jackson for his inaugural address. Jackson was among the most popular presidents in history and was universally reverred as one of America's best presidents until of late. Today, his legacy is now more strongly defended by "conservatives" than liberals, whereas in the past, the reverse was true. Jackson was seen as the progressive step forward in the expansion of democracy and equality (liberal reading) while being scorned as a simpleton and tyrant (conservative reading). Now, Jackson is viewed as a populist and anti-elitist commoner fighting for the working man (conservative reading) while destroying the lives of Native Americans and turning a blind eye to the plight of slaves and ignorning the early suffrage movement (liberal reading).
That is, Jackson’s populism was a quasi-distributist and democratic nationalism. In Jackson, the common people saw a warrior who would bring them onto the ship of economic success. Jackson was not a crusading Robin Hood like a later president, William Jennings Bryan, who railed against the banks, gold standard, and the elite moneyed interests of New York and Boston and sought to give to the poor and needy. Rather, Jackson was seen as the medium by which the poor and toiling laborers could enter the ship of prosperity and reap the rewards for themselves because of democratic expansion. By becoming enfranchised into the American system, Jackson supporters believed that the coffers of national wealth would be extended to them, rather than contained singularly in the hands of coastal elites.
This hope fueled a rise in Manifest Destiny, the belief that America was destined to rule over North America. Westward expansion, economic growth, and universal White male suffrage swept Jackson into the White House in a tidal wave of optimism and hope that the toiling masses too, could partake in success—not a wave of retribution and resentment by which Jackson would strike the heavy hand of vengeance over the perceived oppressors of the American underclass. The enthusiasm and wild love of Jackson was a natural cannonball ripe to explode. This cannot be understated. What drove Jacksonian democracy was the want to be part of the American system, not alienation from the system. It was the remnants of the Federalist elites, now the Whigs, who wanted to keep the plebeian vermin from entering the ship that they believed they had built.
Jackson was also commoner who reached the top of American society. Jackson was a strong proponent of democracy, something that the common American deeply believed in as the most virtuous of all governments that was also ordained and blessed by God. (Jackson was a devout Presbyterian.) This was unique, insofar that he also tapped into the Second Great Awakening. Methodist and Baptist revivalists who often called for the expansion of democracy as contingent upon Christian/Protestant revival. Jackson openly indulged in his public piety, much to the delight of his voting base. One could say, in a way then, he was also the first “Evangelical” president right as the Second Great Awakening and the Methodist and Baptist revivals of the south and frontier brought forth a new age of American Protestantism: personalist, democratic, and belief that political activity (since democracy was God’s chosen form of government) was a reflection of one’s piety. Whereas Jefferson, on his deathbed, foolishly proclaimed that all Americans would die Unitarian, Jackson was riding the new ecstatic wave of revivalism of the people who were his natural supporters: the rugged frontiersman, yeoman farmer, and laboring craftsman.
Furthermore, much is made of his spoils system. While Jackson considered government run by elites from inheritance a bad thing, and ultimately anti-democratic, Jackson surrounded himself with well-educated individuals who would impart to him advice on important matters that Jackson himself felt ill-equipped to deal with. In this sense, he nevertheless agreed with Hamilton that the educated, technocratic, and policy-minded elites were natural fits for governance—he just equally believed that there should be greater democratic inclusion and equality in this process; which he embodied, by pushing out the Old Guard and bringing in the New Guard so to speak.
A depiction of the industrious and independent yeoman farmer. Yeoman farmers were the favored people of Jefferson and Jackson, both of whom believed the independent and hard-working spirit of the farmer installed in him strong democratic virtues and impeccable character. In stark contrast to them were the merchant bankers and financiers, who were loyal only to money and greed and therefore a threat to democracy and republican virtue in the eyes of Jefferson and Jackson.
The problem that Jackson suffered was the smug intellectualism of men like John Quincy Adams, and also Henry Clay, and the rest of the Whigs. The Whigs, not the Jacksonian Democrats, embodied Jeffersonian Democracy’s important tenet of public education and schooling. Jefferson believed that only an educated population could sustain democracy. The Whigs, likewise, were ardent champions of education. Jackson and the Democrats, by contrast, weren’t. Education tied people down, settled them, and moved them into the direction of finance and capitalism. The gritty agrarianism of frontier, and the laborite ethos of the “dignity of labor” drove Americans westward to expand from sea to sea; something Jackson embraced as inherent to the doctrine of Manifest Destiny. Like Augustine’s pilgrimage, the restless soul of the laborer, and the restless soul of the laborer alone, would bring forth the democratic kingdom of god on the North American continent. The Whigs, it should be said, also endorsed education as a tool of elitism—the best and brightest, the “natural aristocrats” of Hamilton’s vision, could better and more easily be identified in the education system which also privileged meritocratic advancement. Adams and other Whigs, therefore, looked down upon Jackson as an imbecile and intellectual midget. Jackson needed well-educated people around him, not because he understood that such people were the natural leaders of political communities, but Jackson was too inept himself to oversee the annals of government and political stewardship. Whether this was true is beyond the point, Adams and various other Whigs, like Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, believed it to be true.
The bitter smugness from Adams became so intense, that neither man reconciled with the other—even when on their deathbeds. Jackson was aware of the thoughts of Adams, Clay, and the Whigs toward him. He reciprocated his belief that their entitled inheritance kept them from understanding the aspirations of the common farmer and laborer, of which Jackson claimed to understand and embody in his politics and policies.
Jackson made use of the popular press too. Many newspaper were strong supporters of his presidency. He helped supporters start new newspapers that were sympathetic to him. Likewise, he championed political clubs and debate clubs as suffrage expanded under his presidency. Jackson, for as ignorant as his opponents claimed, was a thousand years ahead of them in establishing political infrastructure. While textbooks tell us that the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans and Hamiltonian Federalists were America’s first political parties, that too could be misleading if we think of party as having a centralized leadership, contingent smaller organizations dedicated to their political election, and local clubs that spread the party’s ideology. It was Jackson’s Democrats who first embodied all of this, a national organization, state organizations, local organizations, city and town clubs, debate halls, and voter registration drives. Jackson’s opponents merely coalesced in Congress in opposition to Jackson because of their hatred for the man, Jackson responded by laying the foundations of the first modern political party in response.
A painting of General Andrew Jackson, now the seventh President of the United States. His legacy was immense and wide reaching. Many historians often call the period between 1828-1848 as the "Age of Jackson." The most important legacy of Jackson's presidency was the expansion of democratic suffrage (granted, only to White Americans) and the westward expansion of the United States. In representing the sharp break between the limited republic of the "Founding Fathers," some historians consider Andrew Jackson the true founding father of modern democratic America.
[1] Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, I 71.3, VII 21.3-4; 36.2-4; 37.1; 40.2; 55.
*This historically happened in 1940, during Destroyers for Bases and Lend Lease, in which Roosevelt and the New Dealers stipulated American help only if Britain would dismantle her preferential trading network (Imperial Preference) with her colonies and transfer all Western Hemisphere military installations to America. One of the major efforts by Secretary of State Cordell Hull was pressuring Canada to abandon “Imperial Preference” and prefer trade with the United States between 1935-1940, both as means to combat the Depression but also fulfill this long desired American quest of expelling British influence from North America.
SUGGESTED READING
Nathan Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity
Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It
Jon Meacham, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House
Robert Remini, Andrew Jackson and The Life of Andrew Jackson, vols. 1-3 and The Jacksonian Era
Arthur Schlesinger, The Age of Jackson
Nathan Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity
Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It
Jon Meacham, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House
Robert Remini, Andrew Jackson and The Life of Andrew Jackson, vols. 1-3 and The Jacksonian Era
Arthur Schlesinger, The Age of Jackson
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