The Jackson EraCh 12

New Parties Emerge• The federalist are basically over in the 1810s, but the Democrat-

Republicans were not united. In the election for the 6th president in 1824 the party had four candidates• Andrew Jackson, the war hero from the War of 1812 and Florida, won

the most votes, but since there were four candidates, he didn’t win the majority of states• If this is the case, the Constitution says that the House of

Representatives needs to vote to choose the president• Question: Why the House and not the Senate?

House Chooses the President• Henry Clay, one of the men running for president, teamed up with

John Quincy Adams who was also running. • Clay used his influence to get the House to vote for Adams over

Jackson• Once Adams was elected, he made Clay his Secretary of State• This was known as the “corrupt bargain”

Election of 1828• The Dem-Reps had split into two, the Democrats, who supported

Jackson, and the National Republicans who supported Adams• Jackson= state’s rights, South supported• Adams- strong national government• John C Calhoun was Adam’s vice president and he switched sided to

run with Jackson• Jackson won the election to become the 7th president • His supporters officially named the party the Democratic Party

Expanded Voting Rights• In early America only white landowners could vote• In the 1820s voting was expanded to all white males

Making Government More Democratic• Bureaucracy- a system in which nonelected officials carry laws• When Jackson became president he fired a lot of non elected officials

and put in his supporters• People were fired and said he was acting like a tyrant• A supporter said “to the victor goes the spoils”• This practice is called the spoils system• The democrats also started nominating conventions where party

delegates got together to choose a candidate. It opened more people to the nominating process

Tariffs Debate• In 1828 there was a very high tariff bill passed• In 1828 John C Calhoun, the vice president from the South, said states had the right to

nullify, or cancel a federal law. This was against President Jackson who wanted to preserve the Union and not cause more sectionalism

• Congress passed the Maysville Roads Bill, to build a road in Kentucky. Jackson vetoed it saying the if the road will only benefit one state, then the state has to pay for it not the federal government.

• After a lower tariff was passed, South Caroline passed the Nullification Act, saying it had the right to cancel a federal law like tariffs and threatened to leave (secede) the US

• Jackson asked Congress to pass the Force Bill, a law that allowed the president to send in troops to a state to make sure it followed the law

• South Carolina accepted the tariff law but also nullified the Force BIll

Lesson 2• Five Civilized Tribes- Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Chickasaw, Chocktaw• They lived in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida- civilized because

they were farming communities like Americans• Some Americans did not respect their rights and wanted them to be

moved. They wanted the government to relocate them passed the Mississippi River• Andrew Jackson supported this. He did not like the Natives, he fought

the Seminole in Georgia and Florida

Cherokee versus Georgia• 1830-Indian removal Act-allowed the federal government to pay for

Natives to move west to what is now Oklahoma• The Cherokee in Georgia refused because of a treaty signed with the

government making them a separate country• Georgia didn’t accept it• The Cherokee sued and in the case, Worcester v Georgia, the Supreme

Court Justice John Marshall said the Cherokee were right and they should be able to stay in their homes• Jackson said “John Marshall made his decision…now let him enforce it”.

He went on and forced the Cherokee to leave Georgia

Trail of Tears• 1835 the Cherokee didn’t know what to do, 500 of them signed the Treaty of New

Echota to give up their land by 1938• Others Cherokee, like Chief John Ross send a protest to the US Senate saying those

500 didn’t speak for the 17,000 Cherokee• The Senate approved the treaty by 1 vote• When 1838 came and it was time to move, only 2,000 had already moved. • The new president Martin Van Buren ordered 7,000 troops to move them by force • 15,000 were forced to march from the east all the way to Indian territory in

Oklahoma• ¼ died on the way there from hunger, the weather, diseases• The march was called the Trail of Tears

Resistance and Removal• The Florida Seminoles refused to move• The leader Osceola decided to fight

Seminole Wars• Major Francis Dade marched in 1835 to fight the Seminole • The Seminole defeated Dade in the “Dade Massacre”• Escaped slaves in Florida that joined the Seminoles were called the

Black Seminoles• They feared being taken back to slavery and fought to stay • Between 1835 and 1942 fighting occurred, slowly the Seminole were

moved to the West • By 1858 any remaining Seminoles escaped to the Everglades

Life in the West• The natives had given up 100 million acres of land in return for $68

million and 32 million acres in the Indian Territory• There were tribes in that area before the Trail of Tears, but eventually

they coexisted. They made governments and constitutions, farms, schools.• However, disputes over removal divided tribes for many years

Lesson 3• Jackson disliked the Second Bank of the US started by Clay under

President Monroe in 1816• He didn’t like that it was ran by wealthy bankers who made it hard to

get loans that limited western growth

Bank and the Election of 1832• Senators Henry Clay and Daniel Webster told the head of the Bank,

Nicholas Biddle, to apply for a charter before the election of 1832• They did this because they thought if Jackson tried to veto the charter

then he would lose public support for the election• Jackson said “The bank is trying to kill me, but I will kill it”• Jackson vetoed the bill saying the bank was unconstitutional, going

against the Supreme Court’s decision in 1819 McCulloch v Maryland • The plan backfired and people supported Jackson, Jackson “killed” the

bank and put all the governments money in smaller state banks

Panic of 1837• Martin Van Buren, Jackson’s vice president of his second term, ran for president.

Jackson did not run for a third term• The anti-Jackson leaders and other National Republicans formed a new party, the

Whig party• The Whigs ran with three candidates and hoped to pull another “corrupt bargain”• The Whigs loss the election and Van Buren became the 8th president • Jackson’s victory over the banks led to a panic. Nobody could control state banks.

Some banks started printing a bunch of money. The government stopped accepting them as payment because they loss value• When money losses value, it leads to a depression. People saw their money not

being worth what it use to be

• Van Buren did little to stop the depression. He believe in laissez-faire-a philosophy that government should interfere as little as possible with the economy• However, he created the independent federal treasury in 1840 to put

the governments money somewhere safe and not a bank

Log Cabin Campaign• The Whigs united behind William Henry Harrison, the war hero of the

Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811. He picked John Tyler to be his vice president• Harrison was going up against Van Buren, he was rich but tried to

have people think he was a common man that lived in a log cabin. He wanted to get the common man vote like Jackson• The Democrats said he was a liar and all he did was sit in his log cabin

counting money• The log cabin theme caught on and it became the symbol of

Harrison’s campaigh

• Van Buren suffered with the depression and Harrison won the election of 1840 becoming the 9th president• On the inauguration day, his first day of being president, in 1841,

Harrison made his speech in the cold, He didn’t wear a hat or coat…• He died of pneumonia 32 days later• His vice president Jon Tyler became the 10th president

John Tyler’s presidency• Whig leaders like Daniel Webster and Henry Clay hoped to control

Harrison but once he died they couldn’t control Tyler who was from the South and leaned more Democratic then they wanted• He vetoed bills the Whigs tried to pass, and the Whigs actually kicked

him out of the party• IN 1842 he made the Webster-Ashburton Treaty with Great Britain.

This treaty settled the border between Maine and Canada and set firm boundary from Maine to Minnesota and the Canadian border

1844• The Whigs were all over the place. They voted by region and not as a

party• In the election of 1844 the Democrat James Polk beat John Tyler• The Whigs were only in power for four years• They were able to elect Zachary Taylor in 1848 but he also, died in

office• By this time the Whig party was divided over slavery. The Northern

Whigs left the party to form a new political party- the republican Party