Name: Age of Jackson: Crash Course US History #14
Uploaded: 2022-06-18T11:15:03.000Z
Duration: 15 min 5 s
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Hi I'm John Green. This is Crash Course U.S. History and today, after last week's bummer on slavery, we turn to a happier topic: the rise of democratization in the U.S.

基礎受動態

This was also known as the Age of Jackson, no Stan, not that Jackson. No, no, Stan, come'on seriously.

No not, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. YES. That Jackson. Andrew Jackson.

...Sorry, I just had to check my collar. Right, so you'll recall that the initial democracy of the United States wasn't terribly democratic—almost all voters were white male land owners.

Mr. Green, Mr. Green. That's just radically unfair.

Exactly, Me from the Past. But, between 1820 and 1850, this started to change.

State legislatures lowered, or else eliminated, the property qualifications for voting, which allowed many more people to vote, so long as they were, you know, both white and male.

Mr. Green, Mr. Green. So, I'd be in, right? Yeah, that seems reasonable.

Yeah, Me from the Past, quick privilege check.

One of the reasons we study history is so that you can learn that people like you are not actually at the center of history, even though, you know, you've been taught that.

But, anyway, the whole idea of owning land as a prerequisite for voting is sort of Jeffersonian—

an individual who works his own land can be truly independent, because he doesn't need to rely upon markets to acquire stuff or, God forbid, wages to give him money with which to buy stuff.

No, he makes his own stuff and he doesn't need anybody...except for slaves and also women to make shoes and clothes and to cook food and also make children.

But, in light of the Market Revolution, the idea of excluding wage workers seemed very outdated.

The idea of excluding women and non-white people, though, still quite popular.

But, this defining characteristic of the Age of Jackson really had very little to do with Andrew Jackson himself because,

by the time he became President in 1829, every state except for North Carolina, Virginia, and Rhode Island had already gotten rid of their property requirements.

In fact, that's probably why he got elected.

Right so you'll recall that America's mostly fake victory in the War of 1812 and the subsequent collapse of the Federalist party ushered in the “Era of Good Feelings”

which was another way of saying that there was basic agreement on most domestic policies.

The American System was a program of economic nationalism built on (1) federally financed internal improvements, like roads and canals, what we would now call “infrastructure”

(2) tariffs, to protect new factories and industries, and (3) a national bank that would replace the First Bank of the United States whose charter expired in 1811.

You'll never guess what we called this second bank, unless you guessed that we called it “The Second Bank of the United States.”

The main supporters of this American System were our old friend John C. Calhoun and our new friend Henry Clay.

Both were Jeffersonian Republicans, which isn't surprising because that was the only political party,

but it's kind of surprising because the American System had nothing to do with the Agrarian Republic that Jefferson had championed.

But whatever, this was the Era of Good Feelings, so we're gonna go with it. By the way, this nationalism also extended to foreign affairs.

After Latin America won its independence from Spain, President Monroe made a speech proposing that Europe shouldn't try to retake colonies in the Western hemisphere.

And if they did, we would, like, do stuff. This so called “Monroe Doctrine” also said that the U.S. would stay out of European wars. Hahahaha that is hilarious!

But, we did live up to the other end of it, you'll remember that when the British came for the Falkland Islands, we were like, “This shall not stand.” Just kidding.

We were like, “Go ahead.” The last Good Feelings era president was John Quincy Adams, who was quite the diplomat and expansionist.

He actually wrote the Monroe Doctrine, for instance. But in fact, it turns out that all feelings were not good. There was significant disagreement over three main issues.

First, many people felt that the federal government shouldn't invest in infrastructure.

Like, James Madison, who'd initially supported those bills, ended up vetoing one of them that included a big spending increase to finance roads and canals.

Now, the roads and canals did get built, but, in the end, most of the financing fell to the states.

There were also big problems with the Second Bank of the United States, which you known is why you can't visit a branch of it these days. But we'll get to that in a minute!

And, lastly, there was the perennial issue of slavery. In this case the problem started, as so many problems do, in Missouri.

So, in 1819 Missouri had enough people in it to become a state, but despite the fact that there were already more than 10,000 slaves there,

a New York congressman, named James Tallmadge, made a motion to prohibit the introduction of further slaves into the proposed state.

It took almost two years to work out the John C. Calhoun storm that blew up after this.

Actually, it took more than that. It took until the end of the Civil War basically.

But in the short run, Missouri was allowed to enter the union as a slave state, while Maine was carved out of Massachusetts to keep the balance of things.

But the Missouri Compromise also said that no state admitted above the 36 30 line of latitude would be allowed to have slaves,

except, of course, for Missouri itself, which as you can see, is well above the line.

Anyway, this solution to westward expansion worked out magnificently provided that you enjoy Civil Wars.

So, Thomas Jefferson, who was by the way was still alive, which gives you some context for how young the nation truly was, wrote that the Missouri Compromise was

“like a fire bell in the night that awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once the death knell of the union.”

Eventually, almost. But in the short term, it did mean the rise of political parties.

So, America was becoming more democratic, but if there was only one political party, that democratic spirit had nowhere to go.

Fortunately, there was a tiny little magician named Martin Van Buren.

They really did call him the “Little Magician,” by the way. Also “The red fox of Kinderhook,” but we remember him as the worst-haired president.

So, despite having been President of the United States, Van Buren is arguably more important for having invented the Democratic Party.

He was first to realize that national political parties could be a good thing.

So, I mentioned that Martin Van Buren was known as the “Little Magician, and I know this sounds a little bit silly, but I think it's telling.

You see, Van Buren was only the second American president with a well-used nickname.

And the first was his immediate predecessor, Andrew Jackson, or Old Hickory.

Why does this matter? Well when you're actually having to campaign for office, as all presidential candidates did after the election of 1828,

and you're trying to appeal to the newly enfranchised “common man” what better way to seem like a regular guy than to have a nickname?

I mean, if you think this is crazy, just think of the nicknames of some some of our most popular presidents. “Honest Abe,” “The Bull Moose,” “The Gipper.”

Even our lesser known presidents had nicknames.

“Young Hickory,” “Handsome Frank;” “Old Rough and Ready,” “Big Steve.”

James Buchanan, and I am not making this up, was “Old Public Functionary.”

Who're you gonna vote for? Oh, I think the “Old Public Functionary.” He seems competent.

As it happens, he wasn't. So, by now you're probably wondering, where does Andrew Jackson fit into all of this?

When we last caught up with Jackson, he was winning the battle of New Orleans shortly after the end of the War of 1812.

He continued his bellicose ways, fighting Indians in Florida, although he was not actually authorized to do so, and became so popular from all of his Indian killing that he decided to run for president in 1824.

The election of 1824 was very close. And it went to the House, where John Quincy Adams was eventually declared the winner.

And Jackson denounced this as “a corrupt bargain.”

So, in 1828, Jackson ran a much more negative campaign—one of campaign slogans was “Vote for Andrew Jackson who can fight, not John Quincy Adams who can write.”

Adams' supporters responded by arguing that having a literate president wasn't such a bad thing and also by accusing Jackson of being a murderer, which given his frequent habit of dueling and massacring, he sort of was.

So as you can see, the quality of discourse in American political campaigns has come a long way. Anyway, Jackson won.

Jackson ran as the champion of the common man and in a way he was. I mean, he had little formal schooling and in some ways he was the archetypal self made man.

Jackson's policies defined the new Democratic party, which had formerly been known as the Jeffersonian Democratic Republicans.

So who were these new Democrats? Well generally, they tended to be lower to middle class men, usually farmers, who were suspicious of the widening gap between the rich and the poor that was one of the results of the Market Revolution.

And they were particularly worried about bankers, merchants and speculators, who seemed to be getting rich without actually producing anything.

Stop me if any of this sounds familiar. This vision probably would have carried the day except a new party arose in response to Jackson's election: the Whigs.

No, Stan, the Whigs. Yes. The American Whigs took their name from the English Whigs, who were opposed to absolute monarchy.

And the American Whigs felt that Andrew Jackson was grabbing so much power for the executive branch that he was turning himself into “King Andrew.”

So, the Whigs were big supporters of the American System and its active federal government.

Their greatest support was in the Northeast, especially from businessmen and bankers who benefitted from those tariffs and the stability provided by a national bank.

And they also thought the government should promote moral character because that was necessary for a person to act as a truly independent citizen.

So Jackson's policies must have been pretty egregious for them to spawn an entire new political party.

What did he actually do as president? Well, let's go to the Thought Bubble.

Let's start with Nullification. So, in 1828, Congress passed the Tariff of 1828 because they were not yet in the habit of marketing their bills via naming them with funny acronyms.

Jackson supported this in spite of the fact that it benefitted manufacturers.

The tariff raised prices on imported manufactured goods made of wool and iron,

which enraged South Carolina because they'd put all their money into slavery and none into industry.

Unlike northerners, who could avoid the higher prices by manufacturing sweaters and pants and such at home,

South Carolinians would have to pay more.

They were so angry at this “Tariff of Abominations” that the South Carolina legislature threatened to nullify it.

Jackson didn't take kindly to this affront to federal power, but South Carolina persisted, and when Congress passed a new tariff in 1832–

one that actually lowered the duties -- the Palmetto State's government nullified it.

Jackson responded by getting Congress to pass the Force Act, which authorized him to use the army and navy to collect taxes.

A full blown crisis was averted when Congress passed a new tariff in 1833 and South Carolina relented.

This smelled a bit of dictatorship – armed tax collectors and all – and helped to cement Jackson's reputation as a tyrant, at least among the Whigs.

And then we have the Native Americans, much of Jackson's reputation there was based on killing them,

so it's no surprise that he supported southern states' efforts to appropriate Indian lands and make the Indians move.

This support was formalized in the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which Jackson supported.

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Age of Jackson: Crash Course US History #14

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