Era of Jacksonian Democracy

The purpose of this research is to show that the era of Jacksonian democracy, roughly the period 1825-1835, not only encompassed the values of its Whig predecessors but also reorganized and redefined those values in ways that directly shaped and prepared America, perhaps unwittingly, for the arrival of the present-day polyarchical pluralist system. But it was, in fact, no accident, as William Chambers explains:

The shapers of the American nation had provided lessons for a second generation of party leaders. They had shown what parties could be, and had marked the way toward a renewed American Party System which could sustain broad representation, mass participation and popular choice in a functioning political democracy.

Americans of this time were experiencing life in a rapidly changing world, convinced that the future would inevitably be better than past or present. Alexis de Tocqueville described the period as follows:

A man builds a house in which to spend his old age, and he sells it before the roof is on; he plants a garden, and lets it just as the trees are coming into bearing; he brings a field into tillage, and leaves other men to gather the crop, . . . he settles in a place, which he soon afterward leaves, to carry his changeable longings elsewhere.

As David Lindsey suggests, "the middle third of the 19th century proved to be the heyday of the entrepreneur." When Jackson entered politics, the United States extended only to the Mississippi River;

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. Jackson proved victorious, winning re-election over Clay in 1832. Then he established a new national bank of deposit in Washington, D.C., decided that state banks might be better used for deposits of federal money, especially since they were run by Jacksonians, and claimed, "I have chained it, the Monster must perish." This economic stance was firmly rooted in his political beliefs, which gave rise to an intellectual movement from which "many of the essential elements of Modern American democracy emerged." Fundamentally, Jackson "epitomized the spirit of hoi polloi democracy" and a belief in the rights and ability of the individual "even more broadly and deeply than Jefferson and the Republicans had." Both this Puritan belief that individuals were good in the state of nature and the emphasis on the divine right of Natural Law led Jackson to his belief in government based on majority and consent. "The people are the sovereign power," he said, "and . . . they have the right to alter and amend their system of government when a majority wills it, as a majority have the right to rule." This "Jeffersonian conception of government and Democracy" no doubt led to his support for popularly elected nominating conventions

Category: History - E