Jackson and federal power
A more assertive chief executive
Andrew Jackson represented a substantially different and new approach to both campaigning and governing. While George Washington had also risen to prominence due to his successful military leadership, his public persona was reserved and circumspect, a stark contrast from Jackson’s reputation for controversy and conflict. During the course of Jackson’s two terms as president, he further burnished his reputation by battling his political opposition, potentially enemies, vetoed more bills than his 6 predecessors combined and left an indelible impression on both his contemporaries and future generations.
Spoils system
Politicians have long been vilified for favoritism and rewarding their supporters with jobs and contracts, with many critics asserting that the recipients were and/or are unqualified and undeserving. When Thomas Jefferson became president, many Federalists worried that he would immediately fire or dismiss them from their jobs and appoint loyal Republicans to replace them. Jackson appointed more Democratic supporters to the expanding roster of federal jobs, with his supporters defending these practices more openly than previous presidents. In 1832, when Jackson appointed Martin Van Buren, soon to be Jackson’s vice president, and later president after Jackson, to be Minister to the United Kingdom, the highest diplomatic title then used by the United States, amidst accusations of favoritism, Senator William Marcy defended Jackson’s decision by (in)famously asserting that “to the victor goes the spoils.” Unfortunately for those who reviled the spoils system and the frequent use of political patronage, it would take 50 years for significant civil service reforms to be enacted.
Nullification crisis
An enduring legacy of Jackson’s presidency, one later cited by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, emerged from his insistence on states acceding to federal law, even when Jackson disagreed with the law; please note, though, that Jackson was equally willing to support states’ rights when he believed that doing so would more effectively advance his own political goals and what he considered to be the greater needs of the country.
Southern states had long criticized the imposition of high import tariffs by northern and western politicians as harming southern cotton exports and inflating the prices of desired goods. In 1828, Congress enacted a higher tariff, soon to be labeled the tariff of abominations by many southerners; southern opposition, particularly in South Carolina, reached its boiling point in 1832, when Jackson was seeking reelection, when the state government of South Carolina, supported by John C. Calhoun, a native South Carolinian and then Jackson’s first vice president, argued that it was not bound by federal law and would refuse to collect tariff duties at the port of Charleston. Jackson intimated that he would send federal troops to ensure the collection of these tariff duties and South Carolina ultimately backed away from its position of nullification of federal law and collected the tariff duties. Calhoun resigned as vice president and quickly emerged as a powerful senator from South Carolina. The tariff was eventually reduced but the prospect of federal-state confrontation only grew over the next 28 years.
Killing the monster
Opposition to the federal government chartering and maintaining a national bank first arose in 1790 when Thomas Jefferson and James Madison publicly opposed Alexander Hamilton’s plan for the First National Bank of the United States. While Hamilton ultimately secured support from Jefferson and Madison for the bank by promising his support for the national capital being situated on the border of Virginia, as president, the First National Bank of the United States was terminated after the vote for rechartering failed by 1 vote during Madison’s first term as president. With the United States government severely financially hamstrung during the War of 1812, support for chartering a Second National Bank of the United States culminated in 1816 with a 20-year charter approved by Congress.
Democratic criticisms of the leadership of the Second National Bank and the bank president Nicholas Biddle mirrored then Republican criticisms of the First National Bank, namely that Biddle favored political allies in northern states and banks at the expense of southern and western political and banking interests. Then Senator Henry Clay, seeking a key political advantage in the presidential campaign of 1832, sought to force Jackson’s hand on the bank’s rechartering by advancing an early bill. Jackson vetoed the bank rechartering bill, setting in motion a prolonged political fight over the American financial system. Jackson framed his veto as a defense of the American people and opposition to the favoritism and corruption that he associated with Biddle.
President Andrew Jackson, Bank Veto Message, 1832
While Nicholas Biddle often provided greater lending support to emerging industrial and banking interests, Jackson was equally prone to favoring political supporters and southern economic interests. Over the next few years, Biddle and Jackson waged an increasingly belligerent public and private campaign over the fate of the Second National Bank, with Jackson ultimately prevailing by removing all federal deposits from the Second National Bank and depositing them into politically friendly state banks which were unregulated and frequently collapsed in the Panic of 1837. The United States does not have an official national bank today but the Federal Reserve System (FED), created in the early 1900s as a response to the Panic of 1907, functions largely like a national, or central, bank.
Indian removal
Andrew Jackson’s legacy will likely forever be tarnished by his advocacy of Indian removal, the policy of forcibly relocating Native Americans west of the Mississippi River and rewarding southern and western white settlers with these expropriated lands. Jackson was by no means unique in his advocacy of Indian removal; John Quincy Adams, often considered the closest to an abolitionist president, denounced Native Americans as president. Indeed, Jackson was largely continuing policies that had begun under George Washington and had been further advanced by Thomas Jefferson, but the unprecedented pace and scope of Indian removal under Jackson rapidly transformed the American southeast, and in many ways the country. Furthermore, Jackson openly contravened and defied Supreme Court rulings, including Worcester v. Georgia, to hasten the forced removal of Native American nations, including the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee/Creek, and Seminole. These forced removals of Native Americans from their lands in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee and the accompanying deaths and misery became known as the Trail of Tears.