Page 261 - American Stories, A History of the United States

Skillful and farsighted politicians—such as Martin Van Buren in New York—
10.1 began in the 1820s to build stable statewide political organizations out of what had
been loosely organized factions. Before the rise of effective national parties, politicians
created true party organizations on the state level by dispensing government jobs to
10.2 friends and supporters and attacking rivals as enemies of popular aspirations. Earlier
politicians had regarded parties as a threat to republican virtue and had embraced
them only as a temporary expedient, but Van Buren regarded a permanent two-party

10.3 system as essential to democratic government. In his opinion, parties restricted the
temptation to abuse power, a tendency deeply planted in the human heart. The major
breakthrough in American political thought during the 1820s and 1830s was the idea
of a “loyal opposition,” ready to capitalize politically on the mistakes or excesses of the
10.4
“ins” without denying the ins’ right to act the same way when they became the “outs.”
Changes in the method of nominating and electing a president fostered the
growth of a national two-party system. By 1828, voters rather than state legislatures
were choosing presidential electors in all but two of the twenty-four states. The new
need to mobilize grassroots voters behind particular candidates required national
organization. Coalitions of state parties that could agree on a single standard-bearer
evolved into the great national parties of the Jacksonian era—the Democrats and
the Whigs. When national nominating conventions appeared in 1831, representative
party assemblies, not congressional caucuses or ad hoc political alliances, selected
presidential candidates.
New political institutions and practices encouraged popular interest and partici-
Quick Check pation. In the presidential election of 1824, less than 27 percent of adult white males
What changed during the 1820s and voted. From 1828 to 1836, 55 percent did. Then it shot up to 78 percent in 1840—the
1830s in the way politicians were first election in which two fully organized national parties each nominated a single
elected to public office?
candidate and campaigned in every state in the Union.

economic issues
Economic questions dominated politics in the 1820s and 1830s. The Panic of 1819
and the subsequent depression heightened popular interest in government economic
policy. No one really knew how to solve the problems of a market economy that went
through cycles of boom and bust, but many still thought they had the answer. Some,
especially small farmers, favored a return to a simpler and more “honest” economy
without banks, paper money, and the easy credit that encouraged speculation. Oth-
ers, particularly emerging entrepreneurs, saw salvation in government aid and pro-
tection for venture capital. Entrepreneurs appealed to state governments for charters
that granted special privileges to banks, transportation enterprises, and manufacturing
corporations. The economic distress of the early 1820s fostered the rapid growth of
state-level political activity and organizations that foreshadowed the rise of national
parties organized around economic programs.
Party disputes involved more than the direct economic concerns of particular
interest groups. They also reflected the republican ideology that feared conspiracy
against American liberty and equality. Whenever any group appeared to be exerting
decisive influence over public policy, its opponents were quick to charge that group’s
members with corruption and the unscrupulous pursuit of power.
The notion that the American experiment was fragile, constantly threatened by
power-hungry conspirators, took two principal forms. Jacksonians believed that “the
money power” endangered the survival of republicanism; their opponents feared that
populist politicians like Jackson himself—“rabble-rousers”—would gull the elector-
ate into ratifying high-handed and tyrannical actions contrary to the nation’s true
interests.
The role of the federal government concerned both sides. Should it foster eco-
nomic growth, as the National Republicans and later the Whigs contended, or should
it simply attempt to destroy what Jacksonians decried as “special privilege” or “corpo-
rate monopoly”? Almost everyone favored equality of opportunity. The question was
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