THE NEW DEMOCRACY
By the year 1824, the West had become a section to be reckoned with by
those who were calculating their chances in the presidential race. Since
the war six Western States had been admitted into the Union. The
population west of the Alleghanies had increased by nearly a million and
a half within a decade. The relative importance of this new section
appears in the census returns. In 1790, less than six per cent of the
total population lived west of the Alleghanies; in 1820, nearly
thirty-two per cent were domiciled in this vast region. In the National
Legislature the West had acquired notable weight. By the apportionment
of 1822, it had forty-seven out of two hundred and thirteen members of
the House; in the Senate, eighteen out of forty-eight. But these figures
do not tell the whole tale. As Professor Turner has well said, rightly
to estimate the weight of Western population we must add the people of
western New York and of the interior counties of Pennsylvania, and of
the trans-Alleghany counties of Virginia, as well as the people of the
back-country of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, North Carolina, and
Georgia. "All of these regions were to be influenced by the ideals of
democratic rule which were springing up in the Mississippi Valley."
[Map: Distribution of Population 1820]
Economic conditions bred a democratic society in the West. What
Gallatin said of Pennsylvania was true of the greater West: "An equal
distribution of property made every individual independent and produced
a true and real equality." The basal characteristic of the West was
individual ownership of land; and the reaction of the sense of
proprietorship upon individual character was the most significant fact
in the history of its population. Intense individualism and rugged
self-reliance were the salient characteristics of the Westerner. So far
as he reflected upon his social relations, he believed in complete
social equality. In numberless instances the pioneer had migrated to
escape the social inequalities and depressing conventions of older
communities; and he was not minded to encourage the reproduction of
these conditions in his new home. "America, then, exhibits in her social
state an extraordinary phenomenon," wrote De Tocqueville in his notable
study of American democracy. "Men are there seen on a greater equality
in point of fortune and intellect, or, in other words, more equal in
their strength, than in any other country of the world, or in any age of
which history has preserved the remembrance."
Life on the frontier, where a man wrestled with the primitive forces of
Nature and conquered by dint of his indomitable will, made the Westerner
perhaps overconfident in his ability to deal with all obstacles in the
way of human achievement and withal somewhat impatient under the
restraints imposed by the more complicated social order in the older
communities to the East. The sweep of the prairies and the wide horizon
lines of the Middle West may have exercised a subtle influence upon
temperament. At all events, the Westerner was buoyant and optimistic,
taking large views of national destiny and of the possibilities of human
achievement in a democracy.
There was danger, indeed, that in cutting loose from the irritating
restraints of the older communities, the people of the West would
sacrifice much of the grace and many of the intellectual and spiritual
refinements of an older civilization. "In this part of the American
continent," observes De Tocqueville, "population has escaped the
influence not only of great names and great wealth, but even of the
natural aristocracy of knowledge and virtue." It seemed to two young New
Englanders who traversed the vast region from the Western Reserve to New
Orleans in 1813, in the interests of missionary societies, that the
people were wrapped in spiritual darkness, "being ignorant, often
vicious, and utterly destitute of Bibles and religious literature." The
General Bible Society of the United States was founded in 1816 to dispel
this irreligious gloom. Within five years this organization and its
numerous auxiliaries had distributed one hundred and forty thousand
Bibles and Testaments through the new States.
Yet the irreligion of the West was painted darker than it really was.
Methodism had struck root where other denominations could not thrive.
Its methods and organization, indeed, were peculiarly adapted to a
people which could not support a settled pastor. "A sect, therefore,
which marked out the region into circuits, put a rider on each and bade
him cover it once a month, preaching here to-day and there to-morrow,
but returning at regular intervals to each community, provided the
largest amount of religious teaching and preaching at the least
expense." The Baptists, too, secured a footing in the new communities
and labored effectively in creating religious ties between the old and
the new sections of the country. In religion as in politics the people
of the West were responsive to emotional appeals. The circuit rider,
with his intense conviction of sin and his equally strong conviction of
salvation through repentance, wrought great crowds in camp meetings into
ecstasies of religious excitement. Odd religious sects and strange
"isms" were to be found in the back-country. At New Harmony on the
Wabash River were the Rappites, a sect of German peasants who came first
to Pennsylvania under their leader George Rapp, and who afterward
returned thither. At Zoar in Ohio was the Separatist community led by
Joseph Baumeler. Shaker societies were formed at many places; and
Mormonism was just beginning its strange history through the revelations
of Joseph Smith in western New York.
The intellectual horizon of the Western world was necessarily limited.
Absorbed in the stern struggle for existence, the people had no leisure
and no heart to enjoy the finer aspects of life. Education was a luxury
which only the prosperous might possess. The purpose to make elementary
education a public charge developed tardily. Outside of New England,
indeed, a public school system did not exist. Throughout the older
portions of the West the traveler might find academies and so-called
colleges, but none supported at public expense. The State of Indiana,
it is true, entered the Union with a constitution which made it the duty
of the legislature to provide, as soon as circumstances permitted, "for
a general system of education, ascending in a regular gradation from
township schools to a State University, wherein tuition shall be gratis,
and equally open to all." But years passed before circumstances
permitted the realization of this ideal. Meantime, the prosperous
planters of the Southwest employed tutors for their children, and the
well-to-do farmers of the Northwest paid tuition for their boys at
academies. But young Abraham Lincoln had to teach himself Euclid and to
cipher on the back of a wooden shovel, by the flickering embers of a
log-cabin fire.
The new Commonwealths entered the Union as self-confessed democracies.
In all the States formed after the War of 1812, with one exception,
property qualifications such as prevailed in the older States were swept
away and the right to vote was accorded to every adult white male. In
Mississippi alone there was the additional qualification that a voter
should be enrolled in the militia or have paid a state or county tax.
Everywhere, too, the principle was accepted that representation should
be based upon population and not upon property. The men who framed these
new constitutions believed that they were establishing the rule of the
people. It was, indeed, unthinkable that, believing themselves equal in
all other respects, they should not accept the principle of political
equality and popular sovereignty.
There is evidence in these new constitutions, however, that the people
placed less reliance in their legislative bodies than did the people of
the Revolutionary era. Instead of general grants of legislative power,
there are specific prohibitions and positive injunctions. Important
limitations are imposed upon the form and mode of legislation. It is
clear, too, that fear of an over-strong executive had given way to a
belief in the necessity of having a stronger countervailing influence,
capable of checking the legislative. Everywhere the governor was made
elective directly by the people and given the veto power. The conviction
was often expressed in constitutional conventions that the governor was
peculiarly the representative of the people, a popular tribune who would
protect them against the indiscretions of their legislative
representatives. The extension of the elective principle to all
important offices was accompanied also by a general conviction that life
tenure of office is undemocratic. "Rotation in office," said Andrew
Jackson, voicing a popular feeling, "is a cardinal principle of
democracy."
The spirit of Western democracy leavened also the older States. The
people of Maine, breaking away from Massachusetts and her ancient
ideals, boldly declared for manhood suffrage in their new constitution.
Connecticut adopted a constitution in 1818 to replace the old charter,
and dissolved the old union of Church and State by declaring that no
preference should be given by law to any Christian sect or mode of
worship. At the same time Connecticut extended the suffrage to all who
served in the militia or paid a state tax. New York in the constitution
of 1821 and Massachusetts by a constitutional amendment in the same
year abandoned the old property qualifications for voting.
In both Massachusetts and New York, conservative men like Chancellor
Kent and Daniel Webster frankly avowed their apprehensions of universal
suffrage. "The tendency of universal suffrage," said Kent in the New
York convention, "is to jeopardize the rights of property, and the
principles of liberty." He held society to be an association for the
protection of property as well as of life, "and the individual who
contributes only one cent to the common stock ought not to have the same
power and influence in directing the property concerns of the
partnership as he who contributes his thousands."
The democratic movement affected not only the formal organization of
State Governments, but also the machinery and methods of political
parties. In the Northern States there was increasing dissatisfaction
with the practice of nominating candidates for office by legislative
caucus. The rank and file of the parties were no longer willing to
submit blindly to the dictation of leaders. In deference to party voters
in districts which were not represented by men of their political faith,
the leaders of the respective parties now found it expedient to summon
special delegates to their party conclaves, in order to give a more
truly representative character to the organization of party. The
legislative caucus, in short, gave way to the mixed caucus.
[Map: States Admitted to the Union between 1812 and 1821]
But the old vice remained. The selection of candidates for office was
still made by those who had no mandate to act for the party except in
a legislative capacity. If the voters of the party were in truth the
source of authority within the party, then a means had to be devised of
ascertaining their will. The democratic principle, in short, had to be
applied to party. In response to this feeling, mass meetings and
irregular conventions were held; but these methods of securing an
expression of party opinion were only transitional. Indeed, so long as
the means of communication were defective, popular gatherings were
necessarily poorly attended. The next step in the democratization of
party organization could only be taken when the barriers of space were
overcome by the application of the steam engine to transportation. The
nominating delegate convention waited on the development of
transportation.
Much the same popular hostility was directed against the congressional
caucus. Candidates for the presidential nomination were not blind to
this movement, and for the most part they sought other means of
promoting their chances. Monroe had hardly entered upon his second term
when state legislative caucuses began to nominate favorite sons. In
1821, the legislature of South Carolina put forward the name of William
Lowndes, and upon his death named John C. Calhoun as its candidate for
the Presidency. In 1822, the legislature of Tennessee presented the name
of Andrew Jackson, "the soldier, the statesman, the honest man," to the
consideration of the people of the United States. In the same year
Republican members of the legislature of Kentucky recommended Henry Clay
"as a suitable person to succeed James Monroe as President." A "joint
meeting of the Republican members of the Massachusetts legislature and
of Republican delegates from the various towns of the Commonwealth not
represented in the legislature" nominated John Quincy Adams for the
Presidency in January, 1823. And finally, illustrative of the varied
methods in use and of the strange vicissitudes of politics at this time,
a public gathering or mass meeting at Fredericksburg, Virginia, in
March, 1824, nominated Adams for President and Jackson for
Vice-President.
A series of resolutions passed by the legislature of Tennessee in 1823
called attention in no uncertain language to the shortcomings of the
congressional caucus and called for its overthrow. A canvass of the
members of Congress showed that one hundred and eighty-one out of two
hundred and sixty-one believed a caucus inexpedient at this time.
Nevertheless, the minority, acting in Crawford's interest, took their
courage in both hands and held a caucus on February 14, 1824. Sixty-four
out of sixty-eight votes were cast for William H. Crawford, who thus
became by all precedents the "regular" candidate of the Republican
party. This nomination and the indorsement of Jackson by the Republicans
of Pennsylvania spoiled Calhoun's chances. In the spring of 1824, he
allied himself with the Jackson faction by accepting the nomination for
Vice-President at the hands of a state nominating convention at
Harrisburg, which had put Jackson at the head of the ticket.
Such issues as were discoverable in the presidential contest of 1824
were formulated in the debates in Congress during the early part of the
year. As the country recovered from financial depression, the question
of internal improvements again forged to the front. In 1822, a bill to
authorize the collection of tolls on the Cumberland Road had been vetoed
by the President. In an elaborate essay Monroe set forth his views on
the constitutional aspects of a policy of internal improvements.
Congress might appropriate money, he admitted, but it might not
undertake the actual construction of national works nor assume
jurisdiction over them. For the moment the drift toward a larger
participation of the National Government in internal improvements was
stayed. Two years later, however, Congress authorized the President to
institute surveys for such roads and canals as he believed to be needed
for commerce and military defense. The vote on this bill shows that the
source of opposition to internal improvements was chiefly in the
Northeast, in Virginia, and in the Carolinas. The West and Southwest,
with Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey, were a unit in support of
the general survey.
No one pleaded more eloquently for a larger conception of the functions
of the National Government than Clay. No one voiced the aspirations of
his section more faithfully. He called the attention of his hearers to
provisions made for coast surveys and lighthouses on the Atlantic
seaboard and deplored the neglect of the great interior of the country.
"A new world has come into being since the Constitution was adopted," he
exclaimed. "Are the narrow, limited necessities of the old thirteen
States, of, indeed, parts only of the old thirteen States as they
existed at the formation of the present Constitution, forever to remain
the rule of its interpretation?" Of the other presidential candidates,
Jackson voted in the Senate for the general survey bill; and Adams left
no doubt in the public mind that he did not reflect the narrow views of
his section on this issue. Crawford felt the constitutional scruples
which were everywhere being voiced in the South, and followed the old
expedient of advocating a constitutional amendment to sanction national
internal improvements.
The Tariff Act of 1824 also entered somewhat into the presidential
campaign. The failure of the protectionists to secure a higher tariff in
1820 had been followed by other efforts to secure congressional action;
but none succeeded until Clay was again elected Speaker of the House and
thrust the matter into the foreground of discussion. Clay dwelt
eloquently upon the loss of the foreign market for agricultural products
and upon the consequent widespread distress. To his mind the remedy was
the establishment of an American market by fostering manufactures. That
such a policy would involve a clash of sectional interests, he did not
deny; but he believed that "reconciliation by mutual concessions" could
be effected and a genuine "American system" be brought into existence.
[Map: House Vote on Tariff Bill April 16, 1824]
The tariff bill presented in 1824 was avowedly a protective measure.
Among lesser changes, increased duties were proposed on iron, lead,
wool, hemp, cotton bagging, and cotton and woolen goods. At once
the clash of sectional interests began. New England shippers protested
against the duty on hemp, which they needed for cordage; and Southern
planters made common cause with them on this item, because the cheap
bagging which they used for baling their cotton was made of coarse hemp.
For the same reason the maritime sections of New England opposed the
duty on iron. For precisely opposite reasons, Kentucky clamored for the
protection of her hemp-growers, and Pennsylvania, for the protection of
her iron-workers. It was well understood that the cotton industry was
established and needed no protection; nevertheless, the minimum duty on
cotton fabrics was raised. The increased duty on woolens, however, was
offset by an increased duty on raw wool, so that the woolen
manufacturers profited little by the change of rate. A proposal to apply
to woolens the minimum principle which had been extended to cottons in
1816 was defeated by the opposition of the South. Any increase in the
cost of cheap woolen goods was bound to enhance the cost of clothing the
slaves. On the other hand, the representatives of the great
grain-growing and farming States of New York, New Jersey, and
Pennsylvania, together with the States of the Ohio Valley, were almost
unanimously in favor of the proposed bill. When the bill came to a vote
in the House on April 16, 1824, only nine of the combined ninety-five
votes of these sections were cast in the negative. Equally emphatic was
the protest of the South and Southwest: only six out of seventy-six
Representatives favored the bill. New England by its divided vote
revealed the internal conflict between the commercial and manufacturing
interests. The bill passed both houses of Congress by small majorities
and received the signature of the President.
Of the presidential candidates, only one spoke with uncertain sound on
the tariff issue. Clay was the outspoken advocate of a far-reaching
American system; Adams thought the tariff of 1824 a fair compromise;
Jackson, properly coached by his intimates, put himself on record as a
supporter of a protective policy to create a home market; only Crawford,
representative of the peculiar interests of the South and candidate for
Northern support, felt the impossibility of harmonizing the conflicting
interests of his followers by a clear-cut and explicit utterance on the
tariff.
With so many candidates in the field, it was difficult to forecast the
outcome of the presidential campaign. Even if there had been a
pronounced popular drift toward any candidate, the result would have
remained in doubt until the six States which still gave the choice of
electors to their legislatures had completed the complicated electoral
process. There was a strong likelihood, however, that the election would
go to the House of Representatives. As the choice would then be confined
to the three candidates having the highest vote, there was not a little
bargaining in the States where the legislatures chose the electors. The
completed returns gave Jackson 99 electoral votes; Adams, 84; Crawford,
41; and Clay, 37. Calhoun was elected Vice-President by more than two
thirds of the electoral vote. The House, therefore, as wiseacres had
foretold, was called upon for the second time to decide a contested
presidential election.
The position of Clay was one of unenviable distinction and power. He
could not be elected President, but he could, it was believed, determine
which of his rivals should have the coveted office. His own State
favored Jackson as a second choice; but Clay wrote to a friend that he
could not consider the killing of twenty-five hundred Englishmen at New
Orleans proved the fitness of Jackson for the chief civil magistracy.
Crawford was personally less objectionable to Clay; but he had suffered
a paralytic stroke and his health was precarious. Besides, Crawford had
opposed some of the policies which Clay had most at heart. For years
Clay had been a bitter opponent of Adams; yet after all was said, he was
bound to admit that his interests would be best served by an alliance
with this stiff-necked New Englander. At an early date, therefore, he
determined to throw his support to Adams.
For weeks the capital was enveloped in an atmosphere of intrigue. Clay
was courted by all factions. The possibility of securing his support was
a standing temptation to wire-pullers. Even Adams wrote in his diary,
"_Incedo super ignes_" (I walk over fires). When Clay announced
positively, on January 24, that he and his friends would support Adams,
a storm of passionate denunciation broke upon him. An anonymous letter
appeared in a Philadelphia newspaper, charging that friends of Adams had
offered Clay the Secretaryship of State in return for his support, and
that friends of Clay had reported the offer to friends of Jackson, with
the intimation that Clay would support the general on similar terms.
When the friends of Jackson spurned these overtures, Clay sold out to
Adams. With quite unnecessary heat Clay branded the author of this
letter as "a base and infamous calumniator, a dastard, and a liar." His
first instinct was to challenge the author whoever he might be; but when
Representative George Kremer, an odd character who was chiefly
conspicuous by reason of the leopard-skin coat which he wore avowed
himself the writer of the offensive letter, Clay wisely concluded not to
make himself ridiculous by an affair of honor with this Gil Blas. He
demanded a congressional investigation instead.
While this investigation of the alleged bargain between Adams and Clay
was pending, the House proceeded to the election of a President. On the
first ballot, Adams received the votes of thirteen States, while Jackson
was the choice of seven States, and Crawford of four. New England, New
York, Louisiana, Maryland, and the States of the Northwest, except
Indiana, supported Adams. Combined with these were now Missouri and
Kentucky, which had voted for Clay. Jackson received the votes of the
Southwest, together with those of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Indiana, and
South Carolina. Crawford was supported by Georgia, North Carolina,
Virginia, and Delaware. Two days later the President-elect announced
that he had invited Henry Clay to be his Secretary of State. After some
hesitation, Clay accepted the post.
[Map: The Presidential Election of 1824]
The cry of corruption is a recurrent note in the history of
democracies. The American democracy is no exception. With most of the
charges of corruption, the historian has little concern; but the bargain
and corruption cry of 1825 has a historical significance. The falsity of
the charge against Clay has been proved as nearly as a negative can be.
Adams may not have been above the uncongenial task of soliciting votes,
but he kept safely within the moral domain which his conscience marked
out. The motive which governed his appointment of Clay as Secretary of
State is stated frankly in a letter to Monroe, two days after the
election by the House. He considered the appointment "due to his talents
and services to the western section of the Union, whence he comes, and
to the confidence in me manifested by their delegations." Upon one
individual these considerations made no impression: Andrew Jackson left
the capital with wrath in his soul. He felt that he had been defrauded
by a corrupt bargain. From this time on his hand was against Clay,--that
"Judas of the West," as he afterward called him,--who had conspired to
"impair the pure principles of our republican institutions" and to
"prostrate that fundamental maxim which maintains the supremacy of the
people's will."
Years after the events of 1824-25, the belief of Jackson that the will
of the people had been defeated found classic expression in Thomas H.
Benton's _Thirty Years' View of Congress_. What Benton termed "the Demos
Krateo principle" was thoroughly in accord with the spirit of the new
democracy, but it rested upon an entire misunderstanding of the
Constitution. A direct popular election of the President was never
contemplated by the framers of the Constitution. It is impossible to
find in either the letter or the spirit of the Constitution any
justification for the view that the House of Representatives is bound to
elect the candidate having the highest popular vote.
What the will of the people really was in the presidential election of
1824 is by no means clear. Even in those States where presidential
electors were chosen by popular vote, Jackson received less than half of
the popular vote; and in many of these States the actual vote fell far
below the potential. In Massachusetts, where 66,000 votes had been cast
for governor the year before, only 37,000 voters took the trouble to
vote for President. In Pennsylvania, which boasted of a population of
over a million, less than 48,000 voted in 1824. Moreover, the six States
which chose the presidential electors through their legislatures,
contained one fourth of the population of the country. One fact,
however, stands out with unmistakable clearness,--and it did not escape
politicians like Van Buren, of New York, who had their fingers on the
pulse of the people,--this martial hero from out of the West had an
unprecedented vote-getting capacity. It were well to observe the Western
horizon more intently.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The best description of the political characteristics of American
society in this period is given by Alexis de Tocqueville,
_Democracy in America_ (2 vols., trans., 1862). F. J. Turner has
pointed out the importance of the West in the development of the
nation in several studies, notably: "The Significance of the
Frontier in American History" (American Historical Association,
_Report_, 1893); "The Problem of the West" (_Atlantic Monthly_,
vol. 78); "Contributions of the West to American Democracy"
(_Atlantic Monthly_, vol. 91). The political development of the
South is set forth with great thoroughness by U. B. Phillips,
_Georgia and State Rights_ (American Historical Association,
_Report_, 1901); W. A. Schaper, _Sectionalism and Representation
in South Carolina_ (_ibid._, 1900); and C. H. Ambler,
_Sectionalism in Virginia from 1776 to 1861_ (1910). Important
aspects of the tariff are discussed in Edward Stanwood's _American
Tariff Controversies in the Nineteenth Century_ (2 vols., 1903),
and in C. W. Wright's _Wool-Growing and the Tariff_ (1910).