CHAPTER 10 Democracy in America, 1815–1840
This chapter concentrates on the last of the three historical processes unleashed by the Revolution that accelerated after the War of
1812—the rise of a vigorous political democracy. Democracy increased as the electorate enlarged with the abolition of property re-
quirements for suffrage in most states. However, women and free blacks were largely excluded from political democracy. Much of the
political debate during the period involved economic issues raised by the market revolution spurred by the War of 1812. Some nation-
al leaders argued that the federal government had a responsibility to ensure American economic development. They favored the
“American System,” a political program for economic development that included a high protective tariff, public-financed transporta-
tion improvements, and a national bank. Others, such as those injured by the Panic of 1819, viewed government involvement in the
economy negatively. Differences also emerged over whether to admit Missouri as a slave state; the two compromises (1820 and 1821)
Congress hammered out to address that issue revealed sectional divisions over slavery. Also, under President Monroe (1817–1825),
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction: Andrew Jackson
A. Jackson embodies the major developments of the era:
1. Market revolution
3. Expansion of slavery
4. Growth of democracy
B. Background
1. As a boy, he served as a courier in the American Revolution.
3. He owned a large plantation with slaves.
C. America’s claim to being oldest democracy
II. The Triumph of Democracy
A. Property and Democracy
1. With regard to freedom, political democracy was intimately connected with the market revolution and territorial
expansion.
2. By 1860, all but one state had eliminated property requirements for voting.
B. The Dorr War
1. Rhode Island had property qualifications for voting in 1841.
2. Because propertyless wage earners (e.g., factory workers) could not vote, the state’s labor movement pushed for reform at
the People’s Convention (October 1841).
a. This extralegal convention adopted a new state constitution that enfranchised all white men.
C. Tocqueville on Democracy
2. Democratic political institutions came to define the nation’s sense of its own identity.
D. The Information Revolution
1. Market revolution and political democracy produced an expansion in the public sphere and an explosion in printing.
a. The penny press emphasized sensationalism, crime stories, and exposés.
b. Newspapers had far reach due to low postal rates.
E. The Limits of Democracy
1. As with the market revolution, women and blacks were barred from full democracy.
a. They were denied based on their alleged natural incapacity.
2. Freedom in the public realm in no way implied freedom in private life.
F. A Racial Democracy
2. Blacks were often portrayed as stereotypes.
4. Voices of Freedom (Primary Source document feature) includes part of the Appeal of Forty Thousand Citizens
G. Race and Class
1. By 1860, blacks could vote in the same way as whites in only five New England states.
3. In effect, race had replaced class as the boundary that separated those American men who were entitled to enjoy political
freedom from those who were not.
III. Nationalism and Its Discontents
A. The American System
1. Fighting to a draw in the War of 1812 led to a burst of national pride.
3. In 1815, President James Madison put forward a blueprint for government-promoted economic development that came to
be known as the American System:
4. President Madison came to believe that a constitutional amendment was necessary for the government to build roads and
canals and vetoed the “internal improvements.”
B. Banks and Money
1. The Second Bank of the United States was a profit-making corporation that served the government.
3. Local banks printed money.
a. The value of paper currency fluctuated wildly.
C. The Panic of 1819
1. The Bank of the United States participated in a speculative fever that swept the country after the War of 1812 ended.
2. Early in 1819, as European demand for American farm products returned to normal levels, the economic bubble burst.
D. The Politics of the Panic
2. The Supreme Court ruled in McCulloch v. Maryland that the Bank of the United States was constitutional.
E. The Missouri Controversy
1. James Monroe’s two terms as president were characterized by the absence of two-party competition (“The Era of Good
Feelings”).
3. Missouri petitioned for statehood in 1819.
a. Debate arose over slavery.
4. The Missouri Compromise was adopted by Congress in 1820.
a. Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave state and, to maintain sectional balance, Maine was admitted as a free
state.
5. Henry Clay engineered a second Missouri Compromise to deal with Missouri’s barring of free blacks (1821), which the
state largely ignored.
F. The Slavery Question
2. The Missouri debate highlighted that the westward expansion of slavery was a passionate topic that eventually proved to
be hazardous to national unity.
IV. Nation, Section, and Party
A. The United States and the Latin American Wars of Independence
1. Between 1810 and 1822, Spain’s Latin American colonies rose in rebellion and established a series of independent
2. In 1822, the Monroe administration became the first government to extend diplomatic recognition to the new Latin
American republics.
4. These wars of independence lasted longer and were more destructive.
a. It was difficult to achieve economic development.
B. The Monroe Doctrine
1. Fearing that Spain would try to regain its colonies, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams drafted the Monroe Doctrine.
a. There would be no new European colonization of the New World.
C. The Election of 1824
1. Andrew Jackson was the only candidate in the 1824 election to have national appeal.
2. None of the four candidates received a majority of the electoral votes.
3. Clay’s “corrupt bargain” gave Adams the White House.
D. The Nationalism of John Quincy Adams
1. John Quincy Adams enjoyed one of the most distinguished pre-presidential careers of any American president.
2. Adams had a clear vision of national greatness.
E. “Liberty Is Power”
2. His plans alarmed many, and his vision would not be fulfilled until the twentieth century.
F. Martin Van Buren and the Democratic Party
1. Adams’s political rivals emphasized:
2. Martin Van Buren viewed political party competition as a necessary and positive influence to achieve national unity.
3. He hoped to reconstruct the Jeffersonian political alliance.
G. The Election of 1828
2. Andrew Jackson ran against John Quincy Adams in 1828’s scurrilous campaign.
3. A far higher percentage of the eligible electorate voted in 1828 than before, and Jackson won a resounding victory.
V. The Age of Jackson
A. The Party System
2. Politics had become a spectacle.
4. National conventions chose candidates.
5. Jackson’s Kitchen Cabinet was an informal group of advisers.
a. Most were newspaper editors.
B. Democrats and Whigs
2. Democrats were alarmed by the widening gap between social classes.
a. Democrats favored no government intervention in the economy.
3. Whigs supported government promotion of economic development through the American System.
C. Public and Private Freedom
1. The party battles of the Jacksonian era reflected the clash between public and private definitions of American freedom and
their relationship to governmental power.
2. Democrats supported a weak federal government, championing individual and states’ rights.
a. Reduced expenditures
D. Politics and Morality
2. Whigs believed that a strong federal government was necessary to promote liberty.
3. Whigs argued that government should promote morality to foster the welfare of the people.
E. South Carolina and Nullification
1. Jackson’s first term was dominated by a battle to uphold the supremacy of federal over state law.
a. Tariff of 1828
F. Calhoun’s Political Theory
1. John C. Calhoun emerged as the leading theorist of nullification.
a. Exposition and Protest
2. Daniel Webster argued that the people, not the states, created the Constitution.
G. The Nullification Crisis
2. Jackson considered nullification an act of disunion.
3. When South Carolina nullified the tariff in 1832, Jackson responded with the Force Act.
H. Indian Removal
1. The expansion of cotton and slavery led to forced relocation of Indians.
2. The law marked a repudiation of the Jeffersonian idea that civilized Indians could be assimilated into the American
population.
I. The Supreme Court and the Indians
1. The Cherokees went to court to protect their rights.
a. Cherokee Nation v. Georgia
2. John Ross led the Cherokee resistance.
3. The Seminoles in Florida fought a war against removal (1835–1842).
a. Three thousand were forced to move, and a small amount remained.
4. William Apess appealed for harmony between white Americans and Indians.
VI. The Bank War and After
A. Biddle’s Bank
2. Jackson distrusted bankers as “nonproducers.”
4. Using language resonating with popular values, Jackson vetoed a bill to renew the bank’s charter.
5. Jackson enhanced the role of the presidency as he claimed to be representing the people.
B. Pet Banks and the Economy
1. Both soft-money advocates (associated with state banks) and hard–money advocates supported Jackson’s veto.
3. Partly because the Bank of the United States had lost the ability to regulate the currency effectively, prices rose
dramatically while real wages declined.
C. The Panic of 1837
1. By 1836, the American government required gold or silver for payments for land purchases and the Bank of England
required the same for American creditors.
3. States amended their constitutions, prohibiting legislatures from borrowing money, issuing corporate charters, and buying
stock in private enterprises.
D. Van Buren in Office
1. Martin Van Buren approved the Independent Treasury to deal with the crisis.
2. The Independent Treasury split the Democratic Party.
E. The Election of 1840
2. Harrison was promoted as the “log cabin” candidate.
a. His running mate was John Tyler.
F. His Accidency
1. Harrison died a month after taking office.
2. Tyler vetoed measures to enact the American System.
SUGGESTED DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
• Discuss how, during the Age of Jackson, politics became a spectacle.
• Describe how Andrew Jackson embodied the prevailing mood of America. What did Americans see in his life and character that
made him so popular?
• Discuss the ways liberty and freedom were used to justify the removal of the Indians in the 1830s. How did opponents of Indian
removal use liberty and freedom?
• How did the nullification crisis illustrate the divide between North and South? Compare the significance of the nullification crisis
with the Missouri Compromise.
SUPPLEMENTAL WEB AND VISUAL RESOURCES
Andrew Jackson
The Hermitage
Eastern Indian Wars
Indian Removal
Missouri Compromise
The Panic of 1819
The Trail of Tears
Episode 3 of the acclaimed PBS American Experience series (“Trail of Tears: We Shall Remain—America through Native Eyes”) examines the
Cherokees adapting American white customs and then challenging their removal through the courts. It is available for streaming on Films on De-
mand and as a DVD at public and college libraries.
VOTE: The Machinery of Democracy
This Flash Interactive Exhibition from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History explores how ballots and voting sys-
tems have evolved over the years.
SUPPLEMENTAL PRINT RESOURCES
Anderson, Gary Clayton. The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land, 1820–1875. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press,
2005.
Brands, H. W. The Money Men: Capitalism, Democracy, and the Hundred Years’ War over the American Dollar. New York: W. W. Norton & Com-
pany, 2006.
Ellis, Richard E. The Union at Risk: Jacksonian Democracy, States’ Rights and the Nullification Crisis. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Feller, Daniel. “Politics and Society: Toward a Jacksonian Synthesis.” Journal of the Early Republic 10, no. 2 (1990): 135–161.
———. The Jacksonian Promise: America, 1815–1840. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.
Fitz, Caitlin. Our Sister Republics: The United States in an Age of American Revolutions. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2016.
Forbes, Robert Pierce. The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath: Slavery and the Meaning of America. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North
Carolina Press, 2007.
INTERACTIVE INSTRUCTOR ACTIVITIES
1. Andrew Jackson: States’ Rights Man or Nationalist?
Andrew Jackson: Good, Evil & The Presidency
Bank Veto Message
A. Group Activity:
Break the students into three groups, with each taking a key issue. Group One will examine the Bank of the United States and Jackson’s veto.
Group Two will look at the protective tariff and nullification crisis. Group Three will examine the removal of the Five Civilized Tribes.
Each group should answer the following questions:
1. With regard to your issue, what was Jackson’s role? Who were his adversaries?
B. Discussion Activities:
After listening to each group answer the first two questions, discuss the following questions as a class:
2. The Struggle of Free Black People for Civil Rights
Form the class into a convention of free black people, men and women, who have met to discuss the decline of political rights in the northern
states during the 1830s. Ask each student to write down the problems and opportunities encompassing free blacks during the era. As the students
write out their ideas, place on the screen an image of free black people before the Civil War. One website to consider using is from the Smith-
sonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Then reconvene the class and ask the following questions:
1. What challenges did African-American free black people face during the early 1800s?