Transcript Jackson vs. the BUS

In what ways did the emerging
sectional conflicts within the
United States manifest
themselves in the election of
Andrew Jackson and the
domestic policies of the nation
in the years 1828-1837?
NULLIFICATION DEBATES
• 1828 - Tariff of “Abominations”
• 1831- Peggy Eaton Affair
• 1832 - Calhoun resigns as VP
– Tariff reduced by 10% - SC still furious
– “Nullies” take over SC legislature and declare
Tariff “null and void.”
– SC makes military preparations
– Jackson prepares a military force
• 1833- Clay negotiates a compromise tariff to
reduce by 10% over 8 years
• 1833- Congress passes Force Bill
Who “won” the
Nullification Debate?
Did the “appeasement”
of South Carolina
DELAY or ENCOURAGE
secession?
Jackson vs. the B.U.S.
• Jackson and the West oppose the Bank of the
United States (BUS)
• Clay attempts to humiliate Jackson in the 1832
elections by re-chartering the BUS early
• Jackson vetoes the Bank and declares it
unconstitutional (contra McCulloch v MD)
• Sectionalism b/w East and West deepens
•
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http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/cph/3g10000/3g12000/3g12900/3g12983r.jpg
Why did Jackson and the West
oppose the BUS?
(see pg. 277)
Was there any basis to the
charges against the BUS and
Biddle?
http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/cph/3b00000/3b03000/3b03000/3b03074r.jpg
President Jackson's Veto Message Regarding the Bank of the
United States; July 10, 1832
VETO MESSAGE.
WASHINGTON, July 10, 1832. To the Senate. (EXCERPT)
By documents submitted to Congress at the present session it appears that
on the 1st of January, 1832, of the twenty-eight millions of private stock in
the corporation, $8,405,500 were held by foreigners, mostly of Great
Britain. The amount of stock held in the nine Western and Southwestern
States is $140,200, and in the four Southern States is $5,623,100, and in
the Middle and Eastern States is about $13,522,000. The profits of the
bank in 1831, as shown in a statement to Congress, were about
$3,455,598; of this there accrued in the nine western States about
$1,640,048; in the four Southern States about $352,507, and in the Middle
and Eastern States about $1,463,041. As little stock is held in the West, it
is obvious that the debt of the people in that section to the bank is
principally a debt to the Eastern and foreign stockholders; that the interest
they pay upon it is carried into the Eastern States and into Europe, and that
it is a burden upon their industry and a drain of their currency, which no
country can bear without inconvenience and occasional distress.
The BUS
PRO
• Restrained the
“Wildcat” banks
• Issued sound money
• Made sound loans
available
• Safe depository for
federal money
CON
• Controlling of other
banks
• Monopoly
• Held vast influence in
Congress
• Bribed/paid
newspapers
• Favored Eastern
interests
ELECTION
OF 1832
The war on the Bank
• Jackson pulls federal $ out of the BUS
• Federal $ put in “pet banks” in friendly states
• Biddle retaliates by calling in loans to other
banks
• “Biddle’s Panic” hits 1836
• Jackson issues Specie Circular
• All of the above precipitates crash in Western
economy
http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/cph/3a00000/3a05000/3a05300/3a05357r.jpg
The Emergence of the Whigs
• Whig party a coalition of forces, first united
in censure of Jackson
– Clay and National Republicans
– Webster and New England ex-Federalists
– States-rights southerners
– Anti-Masonic party
• Whigs defended activist government in
economics, enforcement of “decency”
The Election of 1836
The Rise and Fall of Van Buren
• Martin Van Buren was Jackson’s
handpicked successor
• Term began with Panic of 1837
• Panic caused more by complex changes
in global economy than Jackson’s fiscal
policy
• Laissez-faire philosophy prevented Van
Buren from helping to solve the problems
of economic distress
The Rise and Fall of Van Buren
• Whigs fully organized by 1840
• Whig candidate William Henry Harrison
–
–
Image built of a common man who had been
born in a log cabin
Running mate John Tyler chosen to attract
votes from states-rights Democrats
• Harrison and Tyler beat Van Buren
because their revival of the American
system seemed like a good response
Heyday of the Second
Party System
• Election of 1840 marked rise of permanent
two-party system in the U.S.
• Whigs and Democrats evenly divided
the electorate for next two decades.
• Parties offered voters a clear choice
–
–
Whigs supported a “positive liberal state”:
government should support and protect
industries that help economic growth
Democrats supported “negative liberal state”:
government should not interfere in economy
Heyday of the Second
Party System
• Whigs
– Industrialists, merchants, successful farmers,
more likely Protestant
• Democrats
– Small farmers, manufacturing, more likely
Catholic
De Tocqueville’s Wisdom
• Alexis de Tocqueville praised most
aspects of American democracy
• Warned of future disaster if white males
refused to extend liberty to women, African
Americans, and Indians
Five Civilized Tribes
• 1790-1830: US population increases 3x to
13 million
• 125,000 N. Americans live east of
Mississippi
• Cherokees, Seminoles, Creeks, Choctaws
and Chickasaws attempt to co-exist (AKA
“Five Civilized tribes”)
• Cherokees create constitution, written
language (Sequoyah)
• Some Cherokees run plantations with slaves
Removal of Native Americans
• Southeastern tribes: Cherokee, Choctaw, Seminole,
Creek and Chickasaw form the “Five Civilized tribes”.
• Develop formal govt., language, courts, and
newspapers.
• Sequoya invents written language.
• Planters and Miners push for removal to get Indian
lands
• Jackson passes Indian Removal Act of 1830
• Cherokee resist removal and sue Georgia in Supreme
Court, Worcester v. Georgia, 1832 and win their case.
• Pres. Jackson and later Pres. Van Buren ignore
http://intertribal.net/NAT/Cherokee/WebPgCC1/Original.htm
Who was “civilized,”
and who was “savage”?
•
•
•
•
•
1829: gold discovered on Cherokee lands
Georgia legislature appropriates Cherokee lands
Cherokees appeal to US Supreme Court
Court upholds Cherokee claims and rights
Jackson refuses to enforce the Court’s order;
“John Marshall has made his decision; now let
him enforce it.”
• 1829: Jackson orders the forced removal of the
Five tribes to reservations west of the
Mississippi.
Indian Removal
Trail of Tears
“In 1838 and 1839, as part of Andrew Jackson's
Indian removal policy, the Cherokee nation was
forced to give up its lands east of the Mississippi
River and to migrate to an area in present-day
Oklahoma. The Cherokee people called this
journey the "Trail of Tears," because of its
devastating effects. The migrants faced hunger,
disease, and exhaustion on the forced march.
Over 4,000 out of 15,000 of the Cherokees died.”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h1567.html
Cherokee letter protesting the Treaty of New Etocha
Chief John Ross, "To the Senate and House of Representatives"
Red Clay Council Ground, Cherokee Nation, September 28, 1836]
By the stipulations of this instrument, we are despoiled of our
private possessions, the indefeasible property of individuals. We are
stripped of every attribute of freedom and eligibility for legal selfdefence. Our property may be plundered before our eyes; violence may
be committed on our persons; even our lives may be taken away, and
there is none to regard our complaints. We are denationalized; we are
disfranchised. We are deprived of membership in the human family! We
have neither land nor home, nor resting place that can be called our
own. And this is effected by the provisions of a compact which assumes
the venerated, the sacred appellation of treaty.
We are overwhelmed! Our hearts are sickened, our utterance is
paralized, when we reflect on the condition in which we are placed, by
the audacious practices of unprincipled men, who have managed their
stratagems with so much dexterity as to impose on the Government of
the United States, in the face of our earnest, solemn, and reiterated
25% of the Cherokees die on the “Trail of Tears” of
cold, disease, and starvation.
•
Andrew Jackson's Second Annual Message
What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a
few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns,
and prosperous farms embellished with all the improvements which art can
devise or industry execute, occupied by more than 12,000,000 happy
people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization and religion?
Can it be cruel in this Government when, by events which it can not control,
the Indian is made discontented in his ancient home to purchase his lands,
to give him a new and extensive territory, to pay the expense of his removal,
and support him a year in his new abode? How many thousands of our own
people would gladly embrace the opportunity of removing to the West on
such conditions! If the offers made to the Indians were extended to them,
they would be hailed with gratitude and joy.
And is it supposed that the wandering savage has a stronger attachment to
his home than the settled, civilized Christian? Is it more afflicting to him to
leave the graves of his fathers than it is to our brothers and children? Rightly
considered, the policy of the General Government toward the red man is not
only liberal, but generous. He is unwilling to submit to the laws of the States
and mingle with their population. To save him from this alternative, or
perhaps utter annihilation, the General Government kindly offers him a new
home, and proposes to pay the whole expense of his removal and
settlement.
Howard Zinn
A People’s History of the United States
“Jackson's instructions to an army major sent to talk to the Choctaws and
Cherokees put it this way:
Say to my reel Choctaw children, and my Chickasaw children to listen-my
white children of Mississippi have extended their law over their country. .. .
Where they now are, say to them, their father cannot prevent them from
being subject to the laws of the state of Mississippi. . .. The general
government will be obliged to sustain the States in the exercise of their right.
Say to the chiefs and warriors that I am their friend, that I wish to act as their
friend but they must, by removing from the limits of the States of Mississippi
and Alabama and by being settled on the lands I offer them, put it in my
power to be such-There, beyond the limits of any State, in possession of
land of their own, which they shall possess as long as Grass grows or
water runs. I am and will protect them and be their friend and father.”
(italics mine)
1832: Black Hawk War
• Chief Black Hawk leads
Sauk and Fox nations as
they fight US expansion
in Illinois.
• Sauk and Fox forced west
of the Mississippi.
• Gen. Winfield Scott leads
US forces.
• A young Abe Lincoln is in
the militia.
http://www.co.kane.il.us/History/section03.ht
Settlers and Native
Americans
The Election of 1836