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AP®︎/College US History
Course: AP®︎/College US History > Unit 4
Lesson 7: Jackson and federal power- Jacksonian Democracy - background and introduction
- Jacksonian Democracy - the "corrupt bargain" and the election of 1824
- Jacksonian Democracy - mudslinging and the election of 1828
- Jacksonian Democracy - spoils system, Bank War, and Trail of Tears
- The presidency of Andrew Jackson
- The Nullification crisis
- Jackson and federal power
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Jacksonian Democracy - background and introduction
The emergence of Jacksonian democracy in the early 19th century marked the birth of modern American political culture. Prior to this period, American politics was dominated by a few aristocratic families. Jacksonian democracy, however, introduced practices such as the two-party system and the spoils system, and expanded voting rights to all white males.
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- Why was Jackson allowed to be president when the electoral collage said no and why was John Quincy Adams president due to that same reason(6 votes)
- The way the Electoral College works is, for a candidate to win, they must get the majority of electoral votes. At the time of the 1824 Presidential Election, the number of votes to win was 131. Although Andrew Jackson got the highest number of votes, he only won 99 electoral votes. Due to there not being a definitive winner, the election was passed on to the House of Representatives, who voted for John Quincy Adams. This established John Quincy Adams as the 6th American president. In the election of 1828, Jackson won a majority of electoral votes, establishing him as the 7th American president.(0 votes)
- Who was Jackson supporting and giving more of a say in politics?(3 votes)
- Jackson was all about Jackson, himself. He used others to get himself to where he was, and to keep himself there.(2 votes)
- What sort of policies would the enfranchised few have feared that the "tyrannical majority" or "mob" would have implemented?(3 votes)
- The ruling elite could very well have feared the decisions of the "lower classes" may have resulted in decisions that went against their vested interests.
For example what if "the commoners" decided that rich people should be taxed at a higher level than less affluent people or that slavery should be abolished? Those outcomes would certainly threaten the socio-economic standing of the people in power and since they were in power they took care to protect their own self-interest.
This concept is also known as "The Golden Rule": those that have the gold make the rules. Funny how that works...(0 votes)
- why were woman always looked down to?(1 vote)
- Women and minorities were exploited and subjugated by the ruling elite white male property owners who retained all the power. And as the saying goes, "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely".(4 votes)
- what is the spoils system?(4 votes)
- there is another video in the series that explains it. the link is right here : https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/the-early-republic/age-of-jackson/v/jacksonian-democracy-part-4(1 vote)
- What is a political machine?(2 votes)
- A well funded section of a political party that funds the campaigns of certain individuals.(1 vote)
- what is a political machine?(2 votes)
- In the area of politics, a "machine" is an organization of people working together in a coordinated way to bring out a particular result.(2 votes)
- why did white man have the right to vote but not the black man and women.(1 vote)
- Black slaves were considered more like property than people and even when black men and women were free they still were looked down upon.(4 votes)
- At, Kim mentions that many states had laws that restricted the "...franchise" to land owners. I imagine that this means the "vote", but where does this word come from and does it's definition in any way differ from that of voting? 3:59(2 votes)
- The word 'franchise' has two definitions. One definition is the right to vote, the other definition is a franchise such as a the production of commercialization granted by the government with a copyright.(2 votes)
- so why would they not want people to vote(1 vote)
- They were afraid if women, slaves or people of lower class would vote because they didn't want so many people voting and ones that were uneducated because voting for bad candidates that would make the country downfall.(2 votes)
Video transcript
- [Instructor] When we talk about the big social movements of the early 19th century in the United States, you can't deny that the emergence of Jacksonian democracy is one of the most influential aspects of
early 19th century culture, so what was Jacksonian democracy and why do we care so much about it? Well, I wanna make the
argument to you that Jacksonian democracy was really the birth of modern American political culture. By that, I mean that during this time, lots of practices emerged
that are still with us today. For example, the two party system. The spoils system. Even some aspects of
American political character that are still with us today
emerged in this time period and by that, I mean the kinds of traits that we like to see in our politicians to consider them electable. So in this series on Jacksonian democracy, I'm gonna take you on a journey from the earlier American political culture, some of the major changes that came about in the Jacksonian period, and then just discuss some of the ways that this still influences us today. All right, so if Jacksonian democracy was a new thing, what came before it? Well, in the very early era
of American political life and I'm talking here from
approximately 1790 to about 1820, American politics was very aristocratic. There were a couple of families that tended to dominate politics. The Adams family, for example. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and these men were kind
of considered to be, maybe a higher character of man. They were the quintessential
citizens of a republic and along with that came a certain amount of wealth and status and education. In between George Washington
and Andrew Jackson, every single person
who served as president had a college degree. Many of them were Virginians and particularly Virginian planters. You see a lot of Virginians and a lot of people from Massachusetts in the first couple of
years of the republic. Many of them kind of shared a concern that there could be too much
democracy, shall we say, that even though the United
States was a democracy, many of the founders of the United States worried about the tyranny of the majority, the tyranny of the mob, that they had set up this
democratic experiment where many people could vote, but they were afraid of having
just too many people voting 'cause they looked down on lower classes of society in that time period. They worried that if you didn't
have a stake in the country, usually shown by property ownership, either in terms of land
or in terms of wealth, then you wouldn't have
the proper investment in the fate of the nation in order to make a rational decision about what sort of policies should be enacted. So in the early years
of the United States, many states had voting laws that restricted the franchise to just propertied men. So really, a quite small
proportion of the overall populous of the United States could vote. Interestingly, this actually meant that in some northern states,
both free people of color, free black men and women could vote because they met the requirements
for property ownership, but in the early 1800s, 1810s, these ideals of democracy
began to catch on more and more among the common people and as new states joined The
Union, like Ohio and Illinois, they came in with state constitutions, saying that all white
male citizens could vote, regardless of whether or not they owned property or they paid taxes. So in this time period,
white male citizenship became associated with voting and some of the other
states began to rewrite their state constitutions
to grant the vote to all white males and it
probably won't surprise you that when they rewrote those laws, they managed to take
out the little loophole for free people of color and women with certain amounts of property. So by the end of this
period, in the 1850s, all property requirements for
voting had been eliminated and any white male above the age of 21 in the United States had the right to vote and we'll get to what that meant for American politics in the next video.