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Historical Background

Population Density (1790 & 1830)

Eventually, for a time, reason won out. Enough Congressmen were able to put the preservation of the Union above sectional interests to produce the Missouri Compromise of March 1820. It made possible the admittance of Maine as a free State and Missouri as a slave State, but it excluded slavery from the Louisiana Purchase north of 36° 30' and west of Missouri. Still, the issue would not die. Late in 1820 a defiant Missouri Legislature drafted a State constitution that barred free Negroes from the State and thus outraged antislavery members of Congress. The anti-slavery forces had the power to prevent the final admission of Missouri, and so a second Missouri Compromise became necessary. Formulated by Henry Clay of Kentucky, the second compromise passed Congress in March 1821. It provided that Missouri could gain final admission only when her legislature acknowledged that the controversial State constitutional clause did not sanction the right to passage of any law that abridged the rights of U.S. citizens. With qualifications, the legislature finally accepted the limitation in June 1821. In August Missouri became the 24th State.

The Missouri Compromise banished slavery from the forefront of politics for a time, but the issue remained. The Missouri debates sounded to Jefferson like a "fire bell in the night." He feared disunion. But, for the time being, the bonds of nationalism were too strong to yield to the pull of sectionalism. In the 1820's Americans were much more excited about the rise of democracy.

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS AND THE RISE OF THE JACKSONIAN OPPOSITION

By the close of Monroe's second term, 24 years of political supremacy over a steadily dwindling Federalist opposition had severely weakened Democratic-Republican Party discipline. In the presidential election of 1824, it became apparent that the Federalists would not even offer a candidate. In the absence of opposition candidates, no fewer than five second-generation leaders of the party of Jefferson vied to succeed Monroe. Secretary of the Treasury William H. Crawford won the nomination in the "official" party caucus. But various other factions supported their own candidates: John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Andrew Jackson. Before the election, Calhoun withdrew from the presidential race to become the unopposed candidate for Vice President, but the other four candidates remained in the running.

The election was inconclusive. Jackson won 99 electoral votes, a plurality but not the required majority. Adams had 84, Crawford 41, and Clay 37. Because none of the candidates had a majority, it became the responsibility of the House of Representatives, voting by States, to choose the next President from among the top three candidates. A paralytic stroke practically removed Crawford from consideration. The choice was between Jackson and Adams. Henry Clay, by swinging his support to one candidate or the other, could choose the next President. Clay and Adams saw nearly eye-to-eye on domestic matters. Both were ardent nationalists and supporters of high tariffs and Government-financed internal improvements. Clay and Jackson were Western political rivals, and Jackson opposed Clay on the issues of the tariff and internal improvements. Thus, Clay supported Adams, who became President. Subsequently, after Adams appointed Clay as Secretary of State, Jackson's supporters—but not Jackson himself—charged that Clay and Adams had stolen the election from the hero of New Orleans by a "corrupt bargain." Soon after the election, Jackson resigned from the Senate and returned to Tennessee to begin his long campaign for the Presidency in 1828. The troubles of Adams' administration would aid Jackson's bid for the Presidency.

In 1806 Henry Clay, the "Great Compromiser," began a distinguished congressional career. During the War of 1812 he was one of the "War Hawks." From a lithograph by Charles Fenderich. Courtesy, Library of Congress.

President John Quincy Adams tried to be a President above party, but his lack of tact, intraparty warfare, and the fact that his political enemies occupied many governmental positions hampered his effectiveness. Much of the opposition stemmed from Adams' political program, which called for the National Government to take a strong and positive role in domestic affairs. The program helped to bring about a division and realinement of political parties. The Adams-Clay element, calling themselves the National Republicans, would become the Whig Party in 1834; their opponents, the Jacksonians, would keep the name Democratic-Republicans.

In foreign affairs solid accomplishments could be expected of the Adams administration. Adams had long diplomatic experience and an outstanding record as Secretary of State. Yet in two matters where his administration might have achieved striking success, it did not. Negotiations to open the lucrative British West Indian trade to U.S. merchants failed. Adams' proposal that the United States participate in the 1826 Panama Conference of Hemispheric Nations engendered an acrimonious debate. Though Congress reluctantly appointed delegates to the Conference, they did not attend, mainly because of the controversy engendered.

Adams' domestic policy was even less successful. In his First Annual Message to Congress, Adams proposed that the Government participate in building roads and canals. He called for a national astronomical observatory and a national university. He asked for funds to send explorers into the unknown areas of the West and Pacific Northwest. He appealed for Federal aid to literature and the arts and sciences and recommended legislation to encourage agriculture and industry. He called for the creation of a Department of the Interior. To many, especially Southern advocates of States rights, the Adams program seemed too sweeping and not sufficiently cognizant of each State's right to work out its own destiny.

Little of Adams' legislative program became law. Of that which did, the irony of two instances is striking. Adams favored a protective tariff, but the Jacksonians did not. In 1828 antiadministration Congressmen helped to pass a tariff act that openly discriminated against Southern planters—a much stronger measure than Adams had recommended. The bill was a political device. If Adams vetoed it, he would defeat a portion of his own legislative program. If he signed it, he would give the Jacksonians a major issue in the presidential campaign of 1828. Adams signed it, and the "Tariff of Abominations" became a Jacksonian rallying cry and an inspiration for Calhoun's famous "South Carolina Exposition and Protest," a trenchant defense of States rights.

Adams' handling of Indian relations further estranged him from the South and West. In showing concern for Indian rights by refusing to adhere to a patently unfair treaty with the Creek Indians, he offended land-hungry westerners and southerners. His threat to use military force to keep Georgia settlers from taking advantage of the repudiated treaty angered States rights proponents.

Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson. His victories at Horseshoe Bend and New Orleans brought him national popularity and helped him become President. From an engraving by James B. Longacre, after a painting by Thomas Sully. Courtesy, Library of Congress.

Federal participation in the building of roads and canals was another important facet of the National Republican program. After much opposition, Congress passed a bill to aid Maryland, various municipalities, and private investors in financing the construction of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. On July 4, 1828, Adams journeyed several miles up the Potomac River from Washington to turn the first spade of earth for the joint Federal, State, and local project. The success of the canal might have proved the wisdom of Adams' policy of national financing of internal improvements. But the canal never reached Pittsburgh, its projected terminus, and Adams' policy of direct Federal aid for roads, canals, and railroads was to be set aside. Private individuals and the States would finance such projects after the rise of Jackson and "democracy."

The presidential campaign of 1828 was one of the most heated in history. The opposing candidates were the incumbent Adams and Andrew Jackson. The issues were the tariff, financing of internal improvements, the national bank, and States rights. But personalities played the major role. In an appeal for mass support, Jacksonian publicists and stump speakers emphasized Old Hickory's military exploits and his identification with the West and the frontier. They characterized him as the champion of the common man against the patrician Adams, the "corrupt bargainer," and his Eastern backers. Adams' supporters retorted in kind. They attacked Jackson as an uncouth and dangerous frontier savage whose election would bring the reign of the mob. But Jackson won. He had 647,231 popular votes, and Adams 509,097.

The South, the West, New York, and Pennsylvania supported Jackson. Western farmers, Southern planters, and Eastern city mechanics, tradesmen, and small farmers had backed him strongly. His election was a landmark in the political evolution and national growth of the United States. He was the first President from the West and the first from a State other than the Original Thirteen. Jackson was no "common man," ??? nor a frontier barbarian. He had been a soldier, a lawyer, a Governor of Tennessee, and a U.S. Senator. He was a rich and successful planter and slaveowner who had a fine estate, the Hermitage. Reserved and formal at large gatherings, he was warm and sympathetic with family and friends. Scholars still debate whether his political philosophy was radical and forward-looking or conservative and rooted in the past. But multitudes of common men, voting in a presidential election for the first time in 1828, chose Jackson—the symbol of the new political democracy. It did not spring up overnight. It was the product of the gradual rise of a democratic and humanitarian faith in response to changed ideas and conditions. In part it reflected Jeffersonian ideals; in part it recognized social realities of the 1820's.