200 Jackson, Andrew Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, rose to national prominence as a hero of the War of 1812 improvements to aid in the movement of troops and goods, a revenue tariff with protective elements, and, most important, a Second Bank of the United States to replace the Federalist’s First Bank, which the Democratic-Republicans had gleefully allowed to die just five years previously For a short period after the war, a sense of optimism prevailed, as the leaders of the country began to come together in a common vision of the public good That optimism was punctured by the panic of 1819 As the ripples from the panic made their way across America, questions arose as to its source For many Americans, a properly working political economy would have no panics; therefore, a panic signaled a failure of that political economy, generally the result of the political system giving to some person, or group of persons, special privileges Their eyes rested on the Second Bank of the United States, to whom many privileges of doing business, including limited liability and the issuance of money, had been given by the U.S Congress The sense of many on the periphery of society that some kind of cabal was controlling the government and privileging the few at the expense of the many was reinforced by the perception that those in Congress exercised unwarranted power in the selection of the president via the congressional caucus The caucus system would take a hit in 1824, nominating William Crawford of Georgia Among the other candidates were John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay, obvious congressional insiders, but outsiders coalesced around Jackson’s candidacy Jackson won a plurality of both the popular and electoral votes, but since no candidate won an electoral majority, presidential selection returned to Congress’s hands Congress chose Adams as president, and Adams’s selection of Clay as his secretary of state caused Jackson’s supporters to suspect a “corrupt bargain.” For four years, Jackson’s supporters seethed, and, in 1828, elected Jackson the clear winner In the minds of his supporters, Jackson represented the triumph of the common man; the political races in which he ran certainly drew much greater participation in the political life of the nation Since the American Revolution, more and more states had eliminated property qualifications for voting Still, as late as 1824, a number of states did not even poll for the presidency but left selection of electors to their state legislatures In states that did poll, these November elections were generally held separately from state and local campaigns, and voter turnout was often substantially lower—until the Jacksonian era, when both presidential and local elections began to attract more than 90 percent of eligible voters in some states THREE MAJOR ISSUES OF JACKSON’S PRESIDENCY Jackson’s personal belief that he was the instrument of the people emerged from this popular support and played a significant role in shaping his positions on the three major issues that defined his presidency: Indian removal, the nullification crisis, and the Bank war Indian removal involved the relocation of a number of Native American nations from their lands east of the Mississippi to land in Indian Territory, primarily the modern state of Oklahoma The plan for removal far predated Jackson, as Thomas Jefferson believed such removal would be necessary to buy time for these nations to become “civilized,” when they would then be assimilated into European-American society Rather than move farther west, many of these nations attempted to remain on their lands and resist outright assimilation efforts, even while taking on many European-American ways Their failure to move west angered a racist electorate,