250 Chapter 9 Jacksonian Democracy
at the White House, but the old puritan may have
been equally, if unconsciously, motivated by shame at
tactics he had countenanced during the campaign.
Jackson felt vindication, not shame, but in any case,
deep personal feelings were uppermost in everyone’s
mind at the formal changing of the guard. The real
issues, however, remained. Andrew Jackson would
now have to deal with them.
The Jacksonian Appeal
Although Jackson’s supporters liked to cast him as
the political heir of Jefferson, he was in many ways
like the conservative Washington: a soldier first, an
inveterate speculator in western lands, the owner of a
fine plantation and of many slaves, a man with few
intellectual interests, and only sketchily educated.
Nor was Jackson quite the rough-hewn frontier
character he sometimes seemed. True, he could not
spell (again, like Washington), he possessed the unsa-
vory habits of the tobacco chewer, and he had a vio-
lent temper. But his manners and lifestyle were those
of a southern planter. “I have always felt that he was a
perfect savage,” Grace Fletcher Webster, wife of
Senator Daniel Webster, explained. “But,” she added,
“his manners are very mild and gentlemanly.”
Jackson’s judgment was intuitive yet usually sound;
his frequent rages were often feigned, designed to
accomplish some carefully thought-out purpose.
Once, after scattering a delegation of protesters with
an exhibition of wrath, he turned to an observer and
said impishly, “They thought I was mad.”
Whatever his personal convictions, Jackson stood
as the symbol for a new, democratically oriented gener-
ation. That he was both a great hero and in many ways
a most extraordinary person helps explain his mass
appeal. He had defeated a mighty British army and
killed many Indians, but he acted on hunches and not
always consistently, shouted and pounded his fist when
angry, put loyalty to old comrades above efficiency
when making appointments, and distrusted “aristo-
crats” and all special privilege. Perhaps he was rich, per-
haps conservative, but he was a man of the people,
born in a frontier cabin, and familiar with the problems
of the average citizen.
Jackson epitomized many American ideals. He
was intensely patriotic, generous to a fault, natural and
democratic in manner (at home alike in the forest and
in the ballroom of a fine mansion). He admired good
horseflesh and beautiful women, yet no sterner moral-
ist ever lived; he was a fighter, a relentless foe, but also
a gentleman of sorts. That some special providence
watched over him (as over the United States)
appeared beyond argument to those who had fol-
lowed his career. He seemed, in short, both an average
and an ideal American—one the people could identify
with and still revere.
For these reasons Jackson drew support from
every section and every social class: western farmers
and southern planters, urban workers and bankers,Andrew Jackson as president.1828
Jacksonian Democratic (Jackson)
National Republican (J.Q. Adams)
Territories
The Rise of the Second American Party System, 1828Jackson’s
enormous turnout in 1828 heralded a new era in mass political
participation. In the past, Federalists tended to take New England,
and Democrats, the South. But in 1832 Jackson shattered his
fragmented opposition.