Jackson and Federal Power in two minutes
- Jackson claimed to speak for all the people, used the veto freely and relied on the Kitchen Cabinet. Critics called him King Andrew and formed the Whig Party.
- Jackson vetoed the Second Bank's recharter in 1832, calling it a monopoly that favored the rich, and won reelection. He moved federal deposits to state banks, and the Panic of 1837 followed.
- South Carolina, angry over the Tariff of 1828, nullified the tariffs in 1832 on Calhoun's theory. Jackson denounced nullification, Congress passed the Force Bill, and Clay's Compromise Tariff of 1833 lowered rates.
- The Indian Removal Act (1830) authorized trading eastern Native lands for land west of the Mississippi. The government forced the Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw and Cherokee west, and the Seminole fought removal.
- Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) called the Cherokee "domestic dependent nations." Worcester v. Georgia (1832) held Georgia's laws had no force in Cherokee territory, but Jackson did not enforce it.
- A minority of Cherokee signed the Treaty of New Echota in 1835. In 1838–1839 the army forced about 16,000 Cherokee west on the Trail of Tears, and about 4,000 died.
- On the exam: expect questions on federal versus state power, executive power and Native American removal. Compare Jackson's response to South Carolina with his response to Georgia, and connect nullification to secession.
Topic 4.8 key terms
- States' rights
The belief that states, not the national government, have the final say over powers the Constitution does not clearly give to Washington.
- Nullification
Calhoun's doctrine that a state can declare a federal law void inside its own borders. Jackson said no state had that power.
- Nullification Crisis (1832–33)
South Carolina declared the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 void. Jackson answered with a proclamation and the Force Act, and a compromise tariff ended it.
- Worcester v. Georgia (1832)
The Supreme Court ruled that Georgia's laws had no force inside the Cherokee Nation. Georgia ignored the ruling, and Jackson did not enforce it.
- Old Hickory
Jackson's nickname among his Tennessee soldiers. Hickory is a very hard wood, and they meant that he was tough. It stuck for the rest of his life.
- President as voice of the people
Jackson argued that the president, chosen by the whole country, spoke for all the people. Members of Congress, he said, spoke only for their own states and districts.
- Kitchen Cabinet
Jackson's informal advisers, mostly friends and newspaper editors, who had more say than his official cabinet. His critics gave them the name.
- Peggy Eaton affair
A social feud in Jackson's first term. Cabinet wives snubbed Peggy Eaton, and Jackson defended her. It helped push him to replace most of his cabinet in 1831. Also called the Petticoat affair.
- Internal improvements
Roads, canals, bridges and harbors built with government money. Whether Congress could pay for them, and for which ones, was one of the biggest constitutional fights of the 1820s and 1830s.
- American System
Henry Clay's program to bind the country's economy together: a protective tariff, a national bank, and federal money for roads and canals.
- Second Bank of the United States
A privately owned national bank chartered by Congress in 1816. It held federal deposits, moved government money around the country, and issued notes that were accepted nearly everywhere. Its charter ran to 1836.
- Bank veto (1832)
Jackson's rejection of the early recharter of the Second Bank. He attacked it as a monopoly that favored the rich and foreign investors, and claimed the president may judge what is constitutional, even after the Supreme Court had upheld the Bank.
- Tariff of 1828
A protective tax on imported goods, set so high that Southern critics called it the Tariff of Abominations. It shielded Northern manufacturers and raised prices in the South (KC-4.1.I.D).
- Webster–Hayne debate (1830)
A Senate debate over whether the Constitution is a compact of sovereign states or a government of the whole people. Webster argued the latter, and Calhoun's nullification theory rested on the former.
- Proclamation to the People of South Carolina (1832)
Jackson's public reply to nullification: the Union is a government, not a league of states, and no state can annul a federal law. Disunion by armed force, he warned, is treason.
- Compromise Tariff of 1833
Henry Clay's deal: duties above 20% would drop in steps through 1842. It let South Carolina back down without admitting defeat (KC-4.1.I.D).
- Cherokee syllabary
A writing system Sequoyah finished by 1821, with one symbol for each syllable of Cherokee. Thousands of Cherokee learned it within a few years, and it made the Cherokee Phoenix possible.
- Cherokee constitution (1827)
A written frame of government adopted at New Echota: three branches, courts and fixed borders. It said, in the language of American law, that the Cherokee were a nation, not a tribe to be moved.
- Compact of 1802
Georgia gave the United States its western land claims (now Alabama and Mississippi). The United States promised to end Native land claims inside Georgia, peacefully and on reasonable terms, as soon as it could. Georgia later pointed to this promise.
- Indian Removal Act (1830)
Let the president trade land west of the Mississippi for Native land in the East. On paper, moving was voluntary. Jackson signed it on May 28, 1830.
- Domestic dependent nation
Marshall's 1831 term for the Cherokee Nation: a distinct people with its own government, under U.S. protection, but not a foreign state.
- Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831)
The Supreme Court refused to hear the Cherokee's suit against Georgia. The Cherokee were a 'domestic dependent nation,' not a foreign state, so they could not sue in federal court.
- Pet banks
State banks chosen to hold federal money after Jackson pulled it from the Second Bank. Critics said he picked his friends.
- Whig Party
Party formed against Jackson in the 1830s. It backed a national bank, high tariffs, and federal money for roads and canals.
- Specie Circular (1836)
Jackson's Treasury order that large purchases of federal land be paid for in gold or silver, not bank notes.
- Panic of 1837
A financial crash that began when New York's banks stopped paying gold and silver. The depression that followed lasted into the mid-1840s.
- "Log cabin and hard cider" campaign (1840)
The Whigs' 1840 campaign that pictured Harrison as a plain frontier farmer, with parades, songs and slogans.
- Indian removal
The federal policy of moving Native nations from their homelands east of the Mississippi to 'Indian Territory' in the West, authorized by the Indian Removal Act (1830) and carried out by treaty, pressure and force through the 1830s and 1840s.
- Black Hawk War (1832)
A short war in Illinois and Wisconsin after Black Hawk led about a thousand Sauk, Meskwaki and Kickapoo followers back across the Mississippi to land ceded by an 1804 treaty that Black Hawk said its signers had no right to make. It ended at the Bad Axe River in August 1832.
- Second Seminole War (1835–1842)
Seminoles, joined by Black allies who had escaped slavery, resisted removal from Florida for seven years against the U.S. Army. Some Seminoles were never removed.
- Treaty of New Echota (1835)
A treaty signed December 29, 1835, by a minority Cherokee faction (the Treaty Party), not by the Cherokee government. It traded all Cherokee land east of the Mississippi for $5 million and land in Indian Territory. The Senate ratified it by one vote in 1836, and the army used it to remove the Cherokee in 1838.
- Trail of Tears
The forced removal of the Cherokee to Indian Territory in 1838–39, by land and river through the winter. The name is also used for the removals of the other southeastern nations. Thousands died of cold, hunger and disease.
- Cherokee Constitution of 1839
Written at Tahlequah in September 1839, after removal, to join the Cherokee already in Indian Territory with those forced west under one government.
- Executive power
The president's power to enforce laws, veto bills and use force. Jackson used it boldly against nullifiers and the Bank, but not against Georgia.
- Cotton boom
After removal opened Alabama and Mississippi, cotton planting spread across the Deep South and multiplied the demand for enslaved labor.
Transcript
Quotes are from the historical record and name their source. Lines marked Dramatized are reconstructions.
Our Federal Union
April 13, 1830
Key terms: States' rights, Nullification, Nullification Crisis (1832–33), Worcester v. Georgia (1832)
April 13, 1830 Brown's Indian Queen Hotel · Washington
Jefferson's birthday dinner. Twenty-four scheduled toasts, most of them to Jefferson and Virginia. The planners wanted the room to hear states' rights.
Then the President was called on for a toast.
Andrew Jackson
Our Union: it must be preserved.
Secretary of State Martin Van Buren wrote about it later.
Martin Van Buren
I was obliged to stand on my chair to get a distinct view.
Senator Hayne ran to the President and begged him to add one word: Federal. Jackson cheerfully agreed.
Vice President Calhoun answered.
John C. Calhoun
The Union, next to our liberty the most dear.
John C. Calhoun
May we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the States,
John C. Calhoun
and distributing equally the benefit and burden of the Union.
Two toasts, one word. Jackson put the Union first. Calhoun put liberty first.
In 1832, South Carolina defied a federal law. Jackson threatened to send an army. Georgia defied the Supreme Court. Jackson did not enforce its ruling.
The Cherokee Nation paid the difference. So when did Andrew Jackson believe in federal power, and who paid when he didn't?
Old Hickory
1767–1831
Key terms: Old Hickory, President as voice of the people, Kitchen Cabinet, Peggy Eaton affair
Andrew Jackson was born on the Carolina frontier in 1767.
In 1781, at fourteen, Jackson was a British prisoner. He said he refused to clean an officer's boots. The officer slashed him with a sword.
By the end of 1781, his mother and both brothers were dead. He was an orphan.
In Tennessee, Jackson became a lawyer and a judge. And he fought duels.
In 1806, Charles Dickinson shot Jackson in the chest. Jackson stayed standing, aimed, and killed him. The bullet stayed near his heart for life.
The Creek War and New Orleans made him a hero. His soldiers called him Old Hickory.
Jackson was also a cotton planter. At the Hermitage he enslaved about a hundred people.
Jackson thought the president, alone, spoke for all the people. He leaned on friends and newspaper editors his critics called the Kitchen Cabinet.
John Eaton, the secretary of war, married Peggy, an innkeeper's daughter. The vice president's wife, Floride Calhoun, led the cabinet wives in shunning her.
Rachel Jackson had died weeks before his inauguration. He blamed the gossip about her. On September 10, 1829, he held a cabinet meeting about Peggy Eaton's reputation.
Secretary of State Martin Van Buren was a widower, with no wife to object. He was charming to Peggy Eaton. Jackson noticed.
By spring 1831, Jackson had replaced nearly his whole cabinet.
Jackson had also learned that Vice President Calhoun once wanted him censured for invading Florida in 1818. Calhoun was out. Van Buren was the heir.
And Jackson had a favorite presidential power.
The Monster
1830–1832
Key terms: Internal improvements, American System, Second Bank of the United States, Bank veto (1832)
May 1830. Congress voted money for a road from Maysville to Lexington, Kentucky. Sixty miles, all inside Henry Clay's home state. Jackson vetoed it.
A road inside one state, Jackson said, was local, not national. He still signed money for the National Road, which crossed several states.
Clay wanted federal roads and canals, a high tariff and a national bank. He called it the American System.
The biggest fight was over the Bank. The Second Bank of the United States held the government's money, with about 25 branches.
Its president, Nicholas Biddle, wrote poems and adored ancient Greece. Its Philadelphia headquarters was modeled on the Parthenon.
It did real work. Its notes were good anywhere in the country. Sending state banks' notes home for gold kept them from printing too much.
To Jackson, it was a monster: a private company, run from Philadelphia, with power over everyone's money. Some of its owners were British.
The charter ran to 1836, but Clay and Webster urged Biddle to ask early, in the election year. The plan: make Jackson choose, with the voters watching.
Congress passed the charter. Van Buren, home from London, found Jackson ill in bed. Van Buren remembered a calm vow: the Bank was trying to kill him, but he would kill it.
A week later, Jackson vetoed it.
Andrew Jackson
It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes.
Nicholas Biddle
It has all the fury of a chained panther biting the bars of his cage.
Biddle was sure voters would recoil, so the Bank printed tens of thousands of copies.
The voters read it. Jackson won 219 electoral votes. Clay won 49.
Jackson's side drew the fight like this.
With no national bank to check them, state banks multiplied and printed more money. Remember that in 1837.
Meanwhile, South Carolina had found a weapon of its own.
Abominations
1828–1833
Key terms: Tariff of 1828, Nullification, Webster–Hayne debate (1830), Proclamation to the People of South Carolina (1832), Compromise Tariff of 1833
In 1828 Congress passed the highest tariff the country had seen. Southern critics named it the Tariff of Abominations.
It protected Northern mills and ironworks. South Carolina sold cotton abroad and paid higher prices for almost everything it bought.
Vice President John C. Calhoun wrote South Carolina's answer and left his name off it.
A state, he argued, could declare a federal law void inside its borders.
In January 1830, Senator Robert Hayne argued that states could judge federal laws. Calhoun presided.
Daniel Webster answered for two days.
Daniel Webster
Liberty and Union, now and for ever, one and inseparable!
Schoolchildren memorized that line.
That April came Jackson's toast. Now you know what it meant.
John C. Calhoun
I consider the Tariff act as the occasion, rather than the real cause of the present unhappy state of things.
He meant slavery. If Washington could overrule South Carolina on tariffs, it might someday overrule it on slavery.
A South Carolina convention declared the tariffs null and void. After February 1, no federal duties would be collected there.
Jackson sent warships to Charleston harbor and reinforced its forts.
Jackson wrote to South Carolina's people.
Andrew Jackson
Disunion, by armed force, is treason. Are you really ready to incur its guilt?
Calhoun resigned as vice president, the first ever to do so. He took a Senate seat to defend South Carolina.
Jackson asked Congress for power to use the army. Then Henry Clay, the tariff's champion, offered a compromise.
Jackson signed both bills the same day. One gave him the army. The other let South Carolina back down.
South Carolina's convention repealed its nullification of the tariffs. Then, to have the last word, it nullified the Force Bill.
Jackson had stood up for federal law against a state. Now go to Georgia.
The Cherokee Nation
1821–1831
Key terms: Cherokee syllabary, Cherokee constitution (1827), Compact of 1802, Indian Removal Act (1830)
While Washington argued about a tariff, Georgia wanted something else. About 16,000 Cherokee lived here, on land United States treaties had promised them.
A silversmith named Sequoyah couldn't read English, so he invented a way to write Cherokee. Eighty-six symbols, one for each syllable. Within years, thousands were reading it.
They built a capital at New Echota. In 1827 they adopted a constitution with a legislature, courts and a principal chief.
In 1828 they started a newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, in English and Cherokee.
Some wealthy Cherokee, like wealthy Georgians, enslaved Black people. The new constitution barred people of African descent from voting.
In 1802 Georgia gave the United States its western lands. In return, Washington promised to end Native land claims inside Georgia, peacefully, when it could. Twenty-six years later, Georgia was still waiting.
Then, in 1829, gold turned up on Cherokee land. Thousands of miners rushed in. That December, Georgia declared Cherokee laws void and said state law would rule the Nation.
Jackson backed Georgia. He told Congress:
Andrew Jackson
This emigration should be voluntary…
Andrew Jackson
…if they remain within the limits of the States they must be subject to their laws.
In the Senate, Theodore Frelinghuysen of New Jersey spoke against removal.
Theodore Frelinghuysen
Do the obligations of justice change with the color of the skin?
The House passed the Indian Removal Act by five votes. Davy Crockett of Tennessee voted no. He lost his next election.
The Cherokee had an answer ready. They'd been building it for years.
They didn't take up arms. They hired William Wirt, a former attorney general of the United States, and sued.
Fell Still Born
1830–1833
Key terms: Domestic dependent nation, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), Worcester v. Georgia (1832), States' rights
In 1831 the Cherokee sued Georgia in the Supreme Court. Marshall called them “domestic dependent nations.”
John Marshall
Their relation to the United States resembles that of a ward to his guardian.
Not a foreign nation. So they couldn't sue.
Georgia hanged a Cherokee man, Corn Tassel, in December 1830. The Supreme Court had agreed to review his case.
Georgia required white residents of the Cherokee Nation to get a state license. The missionary Samuel Worcester refused.
He got four years at hard labor.
The Court ruled for Worcester.
John Marshall
The Cherokee nation, then, is a distinct community, occupying its own territory,
John Marshall
with boundaries accurately described, in which the laws of Georgia can have no force.
In New Echota, the Cherokee rejoiced. Georgia ignored the ruling.
Andrew Jackson
The decision of the supreme court has fell still born,
Andrew Jackson
and they find that it cannot coerce Georgia to yield to its mandate.
You may have heard Jackson say, “John Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it.”
John Marshall has made his decision: now let him enforce it!
It first appeared in print in 1864. Historians doubt he said it.
The letter is better evidence. The Court never ordered him to act.
South Carolina defied a federal law, and Jackson sent warships. Georgia defied the Supreme Court, and Jackson did nothing.
With South Carolina nullifying, Jackson wanted no second fight. In January 1833, Worcester dropped his case and Georgia freed him.
Georgia cut Cherokee land into lots and gave them away by lottery.
In 1835, John Ross came home to find Georgians living in his house. A lottery had given it away.
The Cherokee had won in court. It didn't matter.
King Andrew
1833–1841
Key terms: Pet banks, Whig Party, Specie Circular (1836), Panic of 1837, "Log cabin and hard cider" campaign (1840)
Back in Washington, Jackson wasn't finished with the Bank.
In 1833 he decided to starve it before its charter ran out. He ordered the government's money moved into state banks.
His first Treasury secretary said no and got moved. The next said no and got fired. The third, Roger Taney, said yes.
Biddle hit back. He tightened credit across the country, on purpose.
Nicholas Biddle
Nothing but the evidence of suffering abroad will produce any effect in Congress.
In the Senate, Henry Clay named the danger.
Henry Clay
…the concentration of all power in the hands of one man.
In March 1834 the Senate censured the President, 26 to 20. It is the only time the Senate has ever done that.
His enemies became the Whigs, named for the English party that opposed kings. Whigs wanted a national bank, high tariffs and federal roads. Democrats didn't.
Their name for Jackson was King Andrew. And they printed this.
Jackson answered the Senate himself.
Andrew Jackson
The President is the direct representative of the American people, but the Secretaries are not.
In 1837 Jackson's allies took over the Senate and expunged the censure. The clerk drew black lines around it in the journal.
In 1835 a Charleston mob burned antislavery pamphlets taken from the mail. Jackson asked Congress to ban them from the Southern mail. Congress refused.
State banks lent freely, and people borrowed to buy Western land. Much of it had been taken from Native nations.
To cool the boom, Jackson's Treasury demanded gold or silver for large land purchases.
On May 10, 1837, New York's banks stopped paying out gold and silver. A depression followed. British interest rates and falling cotton prices helped cause it too.
The blame landed on Jackson's chosen successor, Martin Van Buren. The Whigs called him Martin Van Ruin.
A Democratic paper sneered at the new Whig candidate, William Henry Harrison. Give him hard cider and a pension, it said, and he'll stay in his log cabin.
The Whigs made the cabin and the cider barrel his symbols. Harrison was born on a Virginia plantation.
Harrison won, and died a month into his term. His successor, John Tyler, vetoed the Whigs' new national bank. Twice.
Removal
1830–1839
Key terms: Indian removal, Black Hawk War (1832), Second Seminole War (1835–1842), Treaty of New Echota (1835), Trail of Tears
In the 1830s the United States moved most Native nations east of the Mississippi to the West. Tens of thousands of people.
The Choctaw went first. In 1831 a young Frenchman watched some of them cross the Mississippi.
Alexis de Tocqueville
No cry, no sob was heard amongst the assembled crowd; all were silent.
Some fought. In 1832 the Sauk leader Black Hawk led about a thousand people back across the Mississippi. Soldiers chased them north. At the Bad Axe River, they fired on people trying to cross.
Black Hawk surrendered that August.
Black Hawk
Black-hawk is an Indian. He has done nothing for which an Indian ought to be ashamed.
In Florida, Seminoles and Black allies, many of them escaped from slavery, fought the army for seven years. Osceola was seized under a flag of truce. He died a prisoner at Fort Moultrie, in Charleston harbor.
The Creek were forced out in 1836, some of the men in chains. The Chickasaw followed in 1837.
The Cherokee divided. Most stood with John Ross and would not sell. Major Ridge, his son John and Elias Boudinot thought removal could not be stopped. They wanted the best terms they could get.
In December 1835, at New Echota, that group signed away all Cherokee land east of the Mississippi for five million dollars. A few hundred Cherokee came. The elected government did not sign.
The Senate ratified the treaty by a single vote. John Ross wrote to Congress.
John Ross
We are denationalized; we are disfranchised. We are deprived of membership in the human family!
In May 1838 the army came for the Cherokee who had stayed. That was most of the nation. Soldiers under General Winfield Scott marched families into stockades.
Hundreds died in the camps that summer. Ross won permission for the Cherokee to lead their own removal. Thirteen groups set out.
In January 1839, a traveler from Maine met a Cherokee column on a road in Kentucky.
A traveler from Maine
…even aged females, apparently nearly ready to drop into the grave, were traveling with heavy burdens attached to the back… with no covering for the feet except what nature had given them.
Enslaved Black people, held by Cherokee families, were taken west too. John Ross's wife, Quatie, died on the way. A month before, President Van Buren told Congress:
Martin Van Buren
…their removal has been principally under the conduct of their own chiefs, and they have emigrated without any apparent reluctance.
About 16,000 Cherokee were forced west. Thousands died in the stockades and on the road. The usual estimate is four thousand.
Who Paid
1839 and after
Key terms: Cherokee Constitution of 1839, Executive power, Worcester v. Georgia (1832), Cotton boom, States' rights
In June 1839, Cherokee men who blamed the treaty killed three of its signers. Major Ridge. John Ridge. Elias Boudinot.
That September, at Tahlequah, the Cherokee wrote a new constitution, for one nation again. The land was gone. The Nation was not.
South Carolina got a lower tariff. Georgia got the land. The Cherokee Nation paid.
Jackson used federal power on nullifiers, on the Bank, and on abolitionist mail. Against Georgia, he wouldn't. He wanted what Georgia wanted.
His defenders drew a hero. They're right that he faced down nullification. His critics drew a king. They're right about the Court and the Cherokee.
The Cherokee Nation's capital is still Tahlequah. Its newspaper is the Cherokee Phoenix again.
Removal emptied the land. Cotton filled it, and enslaved people grew the cotton.
And Calhoun's idea, that a state could say no, didn't die in 1833. In 1861, eleven states used it to leave.