Page 263 - American Stories, A History of the United States

The campaign of 1828 actually began with Adams’s election in 1824. Rallying
10.1 around the charge of a corrupt bargain between Adams and Clay, Jackson’s supporters
began to organize on the state and local level with an eye to reversing the outcome of the
election. By late 1827, virtually every county and important town or city in the nation
10.2 had a Jackson committee. Influential state or regional leaders who had supported other
candidates in 1824 now created a formidable coalition behind the Tennessean.
The most significant of these were Vice President John Calhoun of South Carolina,

10.3 who spoke for the militant states’ rights sentiment of the South; Senator Martin Van
Buren, who dominated New York politics through the political machine known as the
Albany Regency; and two Kentucky editors, Francis P. Blair and Amos Kendall, who
mobilized opposition in the West to Henry Clay and his “American System,” which
10.4
advocated government encouragement of economic development through protective
tariffs and federally funded internal improvements. As they prepared for 1828, these
leaders and their local followers laid the foundations for the first modern American
political party—the Democrats. That the Democratic party was founded to promote
the cause of a particular presidential candidate revealed a central characteristic of
the emerging two-party system. From this time on, according to historian Richard P.
McCormick, national parties existed primarily “to engage in a contest for the presi-
dency.” Without this great prize, there would have been less incentive to create national
organizations out of the parties and factions developing in the several states.
The election of 1828 saw the birth of a new era of mass democracy. The mighty
effort for Jackson featured such electioneering techniques as huge public rallies, torch-
light parades, and lavish barbecues or picnics that the candidate’s supporters paid for.
Many historians believe that the massive turnout at such events during much of the rest
of the nineteenth century revealed a deeper popular engagement with politics than at
other times in American history. But others have argued that it may merely have showed
that politicians had learned that entertainment and treats could lure people to the polls.
Personalities and mudslinging dominated the campaign. The Democratic press
and a legion of pamphleteers viciously attacked Adams and praised “Old Hickory,” as
Jackson was called. Adams’s supporters responded in kind; they even accused Jackson’s
wife, Rachel, of bigamy and adultery because she had unwittingly married Jackson
before being officially divorced from her first husband. The Democrats then came up
with the utterly false charge that Adams’s wife was born out of wedlock.
What gave Jacksonians the edge was their portrayal of Jackson as an authentic
man of the people, despite his wealth in land and slaves. His backwoods upbringing,
record as a military hero and Indian fighter, and even lack of education were touted
as evidence that he was a true representative of the common people, especially the
plain folk of the South and the West. Adams, according to Democrats, was the exact
opposite—an overeducated aristocrat, more at home in the salon and the study than
among plain people. Nature’s nobleman was pitted against the aloof New England
intellectual. Adams never had a chance.
Jackson won by a popular vote margin of 150,000 and by more than two to one in
the electoral college. But outside the Deep South, voters divided fairly evenly. Adams,
in fact, won a majority of the electoral vote in the North. (See Map 10.1.) Furthermore,
Jackson’s mandate was unclear. Most of the politicians in his camp favored states’
rights and limited government against the nationalism of Adams and Clay, but Jackson
himself had never taken a clear public stand on such issues as banks, tariffs, and inter-
nal improvements. He did, however, support removing Indians from the Gulf states, a
key to his immense popularity in that region.
Jackson was one of the most forceful and domineering American presidents. His
most striking traits were an indomitable will, an intolerance of opposition, and a prickly
pride that would not permit him to forgive or forget an insult or supposed act of betrayal.
It is sometimes hard to determine whether principle or personal spite motivated his polit-
ical actions. As a young man on the frontier, he had learned to fight his own battles. Vio-
lent in temper and action, he fought duels and battled the British, Spanish, and Indians
with a zeal his critics found excessive. He was tough and resourceful, but he lacked the
230 flexibility successful politicians usually show. Yet he generally got what he wanted.