Andrew Jackson: The People’s President and the Rise of Populism

The first popularly elected president saw himself as the champion of the “common man” who set out to expand Americans’ access to the nation’s democratic process. Andrew Jackson’s problem often lay not with his intent but with his uneven and usually controversial execution, leaving in doubt the legacy he and his supporters worked so hard to cultivate.

According to one of the 20th century’s most celebrated American historians, James Morgan, Andrew Jackson’s presidency deserves to be called the third American Revolution. According to his book Our Presidents (1969, 3rd Edition, p. 63), the first revolution in 1776 left the country under colonial aristocracy’s rule; the Jeffersonian revolution of 1800 brought to the political discourse the masses’ opinions, but it would be the Jacksonian revolution of 1828 that changed Jefferson’s party’s values and name from Republican to Democrat. The Jackson era “threw open to all citizens the doors of the Government, and admitted Tom, Dick, and Harry indiscriminately to the sacred precincts of public honor and political power.”

The change began much earlier than Jackson, and some may argue that it was what brought the self-made man into office. He built upon the principle of liberated democracy—freedom from the clutches of the wealthy (mostly Northern and Eastern) elites. The new West’s strength gave the Tennessee man his voting base and set the path for the first Westerner not from the original 13 states to reach the White House.

Historian David S. Muzzey pointed out in Our Country (1943, p. 288) that by 1828, nine of the twenty-four states of the Union lay west of the Allegheny Mountains and contained more than one-third of the country’s 12,600,000 inhabitants. Due to the new states’ liberal suffrage laws and constitutions, initially intended to instigate Western expansion, the common folk were now granted political rights of which their forefathers only dreamed.

Coupled with the growing working class in the East Coast’s manufacturing and industrialization boom that emerged from the War of 1812 and the relaxation of property requirements for voting as more men and women entered factory jobs instead of agriculture, the commoners had more political say than ever. All they needed was a champion.

Andrew Jackson’s role in the transition from the caucus to the convention system is complex. The former emerged in the late 1700s as the nation’s first official method of selecting party candidates for presidential office. Because early American political parties were not regulated and were mainly informal organizations, congressmen often met outside formal duties to discuss and pick candidates for the executive office. By 1800, this caucus process had become more formalized as the congressional caucus was now dominated by party elites and those in power on Capitol Hill who essentially picked the nominees from their respective parties.

The same caucus system was already in decline in the 1820s. It was criticized for excluding the broader electorate when calls for the convention system, more favored among the disenfranchised white voters, were first heard. Under the proposed system, local and state party delegates could participate in the nomination procedures—democratizing the election process.

The failed 1824 election that galvanized Jackson’s support and the future president’s exploitation of the public’s anger toward the caucus for his political gain only further popularized the calls for a more democratic convention system. More of a spark to an ongoing issue than its cause, the catalyst for change was the tumultuous presidential election in which all four candidates ran on the same Republican ticket.

Jackson won the popular vote but failed to secure a majority in the Electoral College, throwing the election to the House of Representatives, which, through the undemocratic caucus system involving members of Congress from the same party meeting in private to nominate their presidential candidate, elected John Quincy Adams.

The controversial outcome, dubbed in the press by Jackson’s allies as a “corrupt bargain,” led to widespread discontent and public disillusionment with the caucus. Four years later, in 1828, Jackson and his followers, comprised of those who saw the wealthy elites stripping them of their constitutional democratic rights and who, like the Tennessee man himself, came from humble beginnings, mobilized a grassroots presidential campaign, a first of its kind.

The populist movement that Jackson joined and then embraced came out of the new West, where pioneer communities abandoned the differences in social rank. Through new suffrage laws that allowed uneducated men of the frontier to vote for the first time, their voice and opinion were worth as much as any aristocrat, merchant, or planter from the East. The Northern labor class, Southern tenants, and small farmers, whose voting rights were often restricted in favor of property-owning white males, felt excluded from political participation awarded to their Western brethren. Yet, they felt connected to them through their shared view of the federal government as composed of and favoring elites.

Through economic manipulation favoring the wealthy planters, bankers, and merchants, Washington DC’s powerful elites ensured that the commoners, the somehow lesser Americans, could never amass enough money and social prestige to have an equal say in the economy and politics. Loans were denied, and taxes and tariffs were raised to protect the industry and the wealthy planters—all while the “common man” suffered.

It was an “us versus them” mentality that Jackson had now seized upon. Born in 1767 in the Waxhaws region of the Carolinas, Andrew Jackson’s early life, like that of many of his followers, was shaped by hardship. Orphaned at a young age, the young man sought solace in the US military during the American Revolution. He rose to national prominence as the leader of the Tennessee militia who beat the British at the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812. Jackson entered politics using this newfound national platform, serving in the House of Representatives and Senate.

The same Washington elites that had disfranchised and suppressed economic opportunities from the “common man” had also wronged Jackson. The self-made man from Tennessee, who toiled the soil and worked his way up from under the clutches of the corrupt politicians, would now become the masses’ champion—the leader of farmers, artisans, laborers, and all others who felt alienated from the established political order.

Jackson’s use of popular campaigning to sell his image as a self-made man solidified his position as a transformative figure in American politics and spelled the end of the caucus system. Jackson’s campaign embraced mass mobilization techniques such as rallies and parades to drum up support and excitement, galvanizing his base while pressuring political elites to consider public opinion in their decision-making process for the first time. Posters, pamphlets, and leaflets spread the Democratic leader’s message from the Allegheny Mountains to the streets of New York City; all full of slogans and imagery designed to appeal to the emotions of voters who believed they were being wronged by those in power.

When it was all said and done and Jackson had won his election, the caucus system was all but obsolete. By the next election in 1832, all major parties, including Jackson’s Democratic Party, had held their first national conventions to select the person to represent them on the ticket come November.

By all other metrics, Andrew Jackson was the first American president popularly chosen. According to Morgan (p. 64), “His was the first presidential election to arouse the interest of the multitude, the people in nearly every village setting up a hickory pole and around it a rallying to the support of ‘Old Hickory (Jackson’s nickname).’”

Jeph J. Story, a justice of the Supreme Court during Jackson’s time in office, stated that during the presidential inauguration, “the reign of king mob seemed triumphant,” with “crowds of all sorts of people, from the highest and most polished down to the most vulgar and gross in the nation.”

Just as shocking as it was for Washingtonians of the time to have who they saw as an uncultured, Western backwoods man who did not belong in the ruling class now stand in the nation’s capital, the former general’s supporters also saw in him a reflection of themselves. If Jackson could reach the highest levels of American politics, perhaps so could they. Jackson fervently believed this, firing many of his predecessor’s appointees and replacing them with those faithful to his party, regardless of qualifications. Thus, the federal government promoted a spoils system (granting political jobs based on party loyalty) because, according to Jackson, the government jobs were “so plain and simple” that they could easily be rotated at will and given to supporters.

While previous presidents viewed themselves as “executives” carrying out the will and the laws of Congress, the primary representative body of the American people, Jackson took a different approach. He was the people’s choice, selected by individuals from all over the United States, unlike congress members who only represented various geographical and social regions.

Muzzey put it best when he posited that Jackson considered his own will to be the will of the American people, where they had chosen him to be their spokesman (p. 292). “He liked to think of himself as a Roman tribute, the officer elected by the masses of plebeians to sit by the door of the aristocratic Senate and shoot his veto of laws injurious to the interests of the commoners.”

Jackson employed the veto twelve times, doubling all previous presidents’ total number combined. While the president’s detractors accused him of acting like a king, Jackson’s supporters saw him as a champion of the people, taking on powerful interests. In retrospect, the seventh president expanded the power of the executive beyond what it was likely ever intended to be, in turn, setting a precedent for future presidents to use the veto more frequently as a tool of political leverage.

According to the new president, whose patriotism and character were beyond reproach, the United States was paramount to everything else, and only a strong Federal government could protect the people’s true will. When Vice President John C. Calhoun of South Carolina threatened to nullify new federal tariffs on foreign goods because they would harm his state’s foreign cotton trade, Jackson threatened South Carolina with military occupation through the passage of the 1833 Force Bill. Jackson’s stance against nullification showcased not only the American president’s new status but also reinforced the principle of federal supremacy over states’ rights.

Arguably, the defining and most controversial aspect of Andrew Jackson’s presidency was his policy toward Native Americans, marked by the forceful approach to their removal. In line with championing the cause of the “common man” and democracy, the Tennessean reasoned that removing Native Americans from their lands opened vast tracts of land for white settlers, expanding the electorate and potential democratic participation. Yet, this expansion of democracy came at a tremendous human cost, regardless of Jackson himself calling the forced removal during his time in office a “benevolent policy… steadily pursued for nearly thirty years… approaching to a happy consummation.”

Jackson’s policy fell under the umbrella of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which granted the president the right to negotiate with Native American tribes for their ancestral lands in exchange for territory west of the Mississippi. The reality was far grimmer. When tribes resisted, the Jackson and later Van Buren administrations forced their relocation at gunpoint and with terrible consequences, as with the latter president’s forced displacement of 60,000 people to newly designated Indian reserves, which would come to be known as the Trail of Tears. To this day, history books point out the hypocrisy of the forced displacement of Native American tribes, which undermined the principles of self-government and individual rights, the cornerstones of the very democracy Jackson championed.

War on the Bank

Another controversial use of Jackson’s presidential authority came in 1832 when he vetoed the bill to recharter the Second Bank of the United States. The president envisioned a more democratic economy, which assisted and not hindered the common man’s pursuit of participatory democracy. Recognizing that those with access to wealth and status transcended mere voting rights to hold positions in government, Jackson attempted to free the national bank from the clutches of the wealthy elites and provide easier access to its funds for the commoners who could then use them to better their economic, social, and hence political positions in their local, then state and federal governments.

The president saw the wealthy elite controlling the bank and manipulating the economy to their advantage at the expense of ordinary citizens when denying them the loans needed to improve the lower class’ economic situation. In contrast, their wealthy and politically powerful counterparts grew in influence through easily accessible loans. According to Jackson, the federally chartered bank undermined individual states’ sovereignty and ability to regulate their economies. A decentralized banking system would foster competition, leading to lower interest rates, better services to the public, and a more localized and personalized banking experience favorable to commoners.

In 1832, Congress passed a bill to renew the bank’s charter, but Jackson vetoed it based on unconstitutionality. Following his reelection in 1832, the president followed this up by ordering the withdrawal of all government funds from the bank and depositing them in state-run banks. As with all other vetoes, his supporters reveled in having a champion in the White House as his critics accused him of abusing presidential power. Ironically, the actions led to the failure of the national banking system, economic instability, and the financial Panic of 1837, after Jackson had already left office.

The presidency of Andrew Jackson has left a deeply contested legacy. Often hailed as the champion of the “common man” and the first president to emerge from humble origins through a truly grassroots populist movement, the Tennessean shifted American politics away from the elites and toward a more participatory democracy. Yet, this democratic revolution and expansion was far from universal. While the white commoner had expanded suffrage and undeniably broadened political access, the Jacksonian Era saw the rights of Native Americans, African Americans, and women severely curtailed, whether by omission from the democratic process or, as with the former, direct action.

Jackson’s presidency began a trend, which, while controversial, continues to this day, of an assertive executive branch, a president who, for most American people, is the embodiment of the American Federal Government, for better or for worse.