Andrew Jackson: Common Man or Common Scoundrel

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Warren Winter                                                                                     3/23/04

US History I Honors

Andrew Jackson: Common Man or Common Scoundrel

His military exploits in New Orleans embellishing his public image, Andrew Jackson entered the political sphere in 1824 on his appeal as a national hero. Following his loss of the election of 1824, Jackson used pragmatic campaign tactics and rhetoric infused with popular ideology in order to undergird his image with a base of newly prominent common support. Jackson appears on different levels as both a common man, a self-made man without government-granted privilege, and a “common scoundrel,” a calculative, self-serving manipulator of the masses. In his demagogic rhetoric, Jackson touts himself as the archetypal common man; in his actions, Jackson instead proves a common scoundrel by capitalizing on popular support for his personal ends.

Jackson’s political ascendancy must be framed within the democratic trends emerging in the early 19th century. As the rising frontier society acquired a democratic and egalitarian character, the number of voters waxed with the removal of property qualifications. Between 1812 and 1821, six new western states granted universal suffrage for white males; between 1810 and 1821, four eastern states significantly reduced property qualifications for voters. “As poor farmers and workers gained the ballot, there developed a type of politician…the technician of mass leadership, the caterer to mass sentiment” (Hofstadter 65). The growing demise of the use of caucuses for presidential nominations and the expansion of suffrage emphasized for politicians the need to attract the support of the common man.

The uncurbed speculation, expansion, and wildcat banking of the economic boom following the War of 1812 produced the panic of 1819, another factor of the new democratic temperament. Widespread foreclosures resulting from the panic effected, as John C. Calhoun noted in 1820, “a general mass of disaffection to the Government…ready to seize upon any event and looking out anywhere for a leader” (Hofstadter 67). Disaffected workers and yeomen, especially in the South and the West, faulted bankers for the land repossession. The second Bank of the United States (BUS) symbolized to the masses all the privileged monopolies in the country. Pressured by local banks, state legislatures began heavily taxing the BUS, as seen in the Supreme Court case McCullough vs. Maryland. In The American Political Tradition, Richard Hofstadter asserts, “For the first time many Americans thought of politics as having an intimate relation to their welfare” (67). Andrew Jackson capitalized upon this ideological relation growing in the newly enfranchised middle-class and upon its demand for a leader to direct the mass of estrangement.

The election of 1824 was the first to largely shun the Congressional caucus as a means of presidential nomination. With the exception of William H. Crawford, the candidates were nominated by meetings of state legislatures: John Quincy Adams by Massachusetts, Henry Clay by Kentucky, and Andrew Jackson by Tennessee. The candidates’ personalities took importance over their issues: The press portrayed Clay as a gambling drunk, Adams as “slovenly dressed,” Crawford as the product of “King Caucus,” and Jackson as a murderer of soldiers. Jackson won in popular votes triple the support (43.1%) received by either Crawford (13.1%) or Clay (13.2%) and 12.6% more than Adams; in addition, he won 99 electoral votes over Adams’s 84 votes. Under the provisions of the 12th Amendment, the election moved to the House of Representatives because no candidate had the majority of the electoral college. Later becoming the Secretary of State under Adams, Clay lent his support to Adams and lost Jackson the election. “Jackson himself was easily persuaded that Clay and Adams had been guilty of a ‘corrupt bargain’ and determined to retake from Adams what he felt was rightfully his” (Hofstadter 70). Jackson hastily began his campaign for the following election.

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Jackson’s campaign strategy was smearing Adams’s image, reciprocally embellishing his own, and fluidly adapting his image to the varying constituencies throughout his national tour. Jackson pilloried Adams as an aristocrat favoring special interests, the “Judas of the West” who had obtained office through a “corrupt bargain.” “A series of demagogic charges about Adams’s alleged monarchist, aristocratic, and bureaucratic prejudices served the Jackson managers for issues” (Hofstadter 71). Shrewdly drawing attention as the due alternative, Jackson compounded to his image of heroism a new semblance of economic humility. By his early adulthood, Jackson had in actuality “[consolidated] his position among the ...

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