President of All the People 251and merchants. In this sense he was profoundly
democratic. He believed in equality of opportunity,
distrusted entrenched status of every sort, and
rejected no free American because of humble origins
or inadequate education.
The Spoils System
Jackson took office with the firm intention of pun-
ishing the “vile wretches” who had attacked him so
viciously during the campaign. (Rachel Jackson
died shortly after the election, and her devoted
husband was convinced that the indignities heaped
on her by Adams partisans had hastened her
decline.) The new concept of political office as a
reward for victory seemed to justify a houseclean-
ing in Washington. Henry Clay captured the fears
of anti-Jackson government workers. “Among the
official corps here there is the greatest solicitude
and apprehension,” he said. “The members of it
feel something like the inhabitants of Cairo when
the plague breaks out; no one knows who is next to
encounter the stroke of death.”
Eager for the “spoils,” an army of politicians
invaded Washington. Such invasions were customary,
for the principle of filling offices with one’s partisans
was almost as old as the republic. However, the long
lapse of time since the last real political shift, and the
recent untypical example of John Quincy Adams, who
rarely removed or appointed anyone for political rea-
sons, made Jackson’s policy appear revolutionary. His
removals were not entirely unjustified, for many gov-
ernment workers had grown senile and others cor-
rupt. A number of officials were found to be short in
their accounts; a few were hopeless drunks. Jackson
was determined to root out the thieves. Even Adams
admitted that some of those Jackson dismissed
deserved their fate.
Aside from going along with the spoils system
and eliminating crooks and incompetents, Jackson
advanced another reason for turning experienced
government employees out of their jobs: the princi-
ple of rotation. “No man has any more intrinsic right
to official station than another,” he said. Those who
hold government jobs for a long time “are apt to
acquire a habit of looking with indifference upon the
public interests and of tolerating conduct from which
an unpracticed man would revolt.” By “rotating”
jobholders periodically, more citizens could partici-
pate in the tasks of government, and the danger of
creating an entrenched bureaucracy would be elimi-
nated. The problem was that the constant replacing
of trained workers by novices was not likely to
increase the efficiency of the government. Jackson’s
response to this argument was typical: “The duties of
all public officers are... so plain and simple that
men of intelligence may readily qualify themselves for
their performance.”
Contempt for expert knowledge and the belief
that ordinary Americans can do anything they set their
minds to became fundamental tenets of Jacksonian
democracy. To apply them to present-day government
would be to court disaster, but in the early nineteenth
century it was not so preposterous, because the role
that government played in American life was simple
and nontechnical.
Furthermore, Jackson did not practice what he
preached. By and large his top appointees were any-
thing but common men. A majority came from the
same social and intellectual elite as those they
replaced. He did not try to rotate civil servants in the
War and Navy Departments, where to do so might
have been harmful. In general, he left pretty much
alone what a modern administrator would call middle
management, the backbone of every organization.
Nevertheless, the spoilsmen roamed the capital in
force during the spring of 1829, seeking, as the forth-
right Jackson said, “a tit to suck the treasury pap.”
Their philosophy was well summarized by a New
Yorker: “No d—d rascal who made use of his office...
for the purpose of keeping Mr. Adams in, and Genl.
Jackson out of power is entitled to the least lenity or
mercy.... Whether or not I shall get anything in the
general scramble for plunder, remains to be proven,
but I rather guess I shall.”
Jackson,First Annual Message to Congress
atmyhistorylab.comPresident of All the People
President Jackson was not cynical about the spoils sys-
tem. As a strong man who intuitively sought to increase
his authority, the idea of making government workers
dependent on him made excellent sense. His opponents
had pictured him as a simple soldier fronting for a rapa-
cious band of politicians, but he soon proved he would
exercise his authority directly. Except for Martin Van
Buren, the secretary of state, his Cabinet was not distin-
guished, and he did not rely on it for advice. He turned
instead to an informal “Kitchen Cabinet,” which con-
sisted of the influential Van Buren and a few close
friends. But these men were advisers, not directors;
Jackson was clearly master of his own administration.
More than any earlier president, he conceived of
himself as the direct representative of all the people and
therefore the embodiment of national power. From
Washington to John Quincy Adams, his predecessors
together had vetoed only nine bills, all on the ground
that they believed the measures unconstitutional.
Jackson vetoed a dozen, some simply because he
thought the legislation inexpedient. Yet he had no ambi-
tion to expand the scope of federal authority at theReadtheDocument