Seven Events That Made America America

by Larry Schweikart

  Among these factors reshaping the system, the caucus—a device that dominated the first American party system—lost influence rapidly, especially when it came to nominating the presidential candidates, and was replaced by national nominating conventions.

  Originally, only New Jersey and Delaware had state nominating conventions, but under the second American party system, states adopted the convention process. Along with this came a sharp devolution of power away from state legislatures.29 A second structural change involved the relaxing, or elimination, of property requirements for white males to vote, with most states nearing universal (white) male suffrage by 1810, and by 1826, only Rhode Island, Virginia, and Louisiana had any restrictions on white men voting at all. With more people involved and the state legislators losing influence, there were greater opportunities for ambitious newcomers to become activists. These new activists appeared first at the state political level, as reflected in the fact that elections for state offices had higher turnout than presidential elections.

  A third, socioeconomic change in politics occurred after Andrew Jackson’s election, wherein the old, deferential model of acquiescing to the caucuses’ coronation of candidates simply because they were from an older, elite class was abandoned in favor of ideological selections. Lynn Marshall once described the Whig Party as “stillborn” because even as it embraced the new Jacksonian political structure of patronage, it still relied on candidates drawn from the pools of the established political class.30 Merely adopting the tactics and machinery of the Jacksonian Democrats proved insufficient to win elections on a consistent basis. Ultimately, however, it came down to more than mere machinery. Even the insightful McCormick puzzled over the motivating factors behind political interest, admitting it could “scarcely be comprehended in purely political terms.”31

  Martin Van Buren’s solution for quelling dissension over the slavery issue in the 1820s began with the simple reality of the centrality of the South in national politics. Four of the first six presidents were Virginians; of the fifteen presidents before Abraham Lincoln, six were from Virginia, nine were from the South or the West, and all but the two Adamses were what historian Richard Brown would call “northern men of southern principles.” That is to say, all but two of the first fifteen chief executives actively or passively supported slavery. What endowed the South with such power and national influence? The overwhelming consensus among southern voters about the issue of slavery dampened all other political divisions in the region.32 Van Buren quickly recognized this, noting a “remarkable consistency in the political positions” of southern politicians. New York senator and Van Buren’s friend Rufus King put it more bluntly, saying all Southerners agreed on the need for the “black strap” of slavery.33 Indeed, coalescence around the pivotal principle that only Southerners could act on slavery within the South had shaped the drafting of both the Declaration and the Constitution, and had propelled what was a numerically inferior region into a national majority position through a system of alliances outside the South, particularly with New York, but including Kentucky, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania.

  Ironically enough, trouble began with the demise of the Federalist party. Left without opposition (or a reason to cater to the whims of the South), the dominant Republicans—that is, the Jeffersonian Republicans—lost touch with their southern support. In the process, Brown claimed, “in victory the Republican party had lost its identity—and its usefulness.”34 Others besides Van Buren recognized the opportunity for political realignment caused by the unresponsiveness of the Republicans during the Missouri controversy. John Quincy Adams noted that “here was a new party ready formed,” which he perceived as “terrible to the whole Union, but portentously terrible to the South [by] threatening . . . the emancipation of all their slaves, threatening in its immediate effect that Southern domination which has swayed the Union for the last twenty years.”35 No less than the aging but mighty Sage of Monticello, in his previously noted “fire bell” letter, referred to the Missouri bill as the “knell of the Union.” “It is hushed for the moment,” he wrote, “but this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence.”36 He went on to identify the central issue of any compromise over slavery: “A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper.”37

  Whatever political balance the Missouri Compromise achieved was guaranteed to be short-lived for the reasons already discussed. At the same time, it blunted a growing tendency on the part of most political leaders toward nationalism, or joining the sections together in the “market revolution” of commerce, transportation, manufacturing, and finance. Obscuring the stark differences over slavery, observers of the day and some historians have referred to the “Era of Good Feelings,” at the very time that the ship of state had entered a slow-brewing maelstrom.38 In particular, southern politicians increasingly emphasized the close connection between party and slavery, while in the North this had the effect of “handing the keys to national party success . . . to whatever Northern leader could surmount charges of being pro-Southern and command the necessary northern votes to bring the party to power.”39 Again, in Brown’s simple but accurate summation, the only plausible national candidate was a northern man of southern principles or a Westerner with no particular ties to slavery, but who took no stand against it (hence the ascendance of Westerners such as Jackson and James K. Polk).

  Reaction to the proceedings related to Missouri statehood reflected anything but “good feelings.” One reporter noted that the response in Richmond was as “if affected by all the Volcanic Eruptions of Vesuvius.”40 Nathaniel Macon (of Macon’s Bill No. 2 fame in 1810, which lifted the embargoes on both Britain and France) warned that the Compromise would acknowledge Congress’s right to interfere with, or legislate, slavery. Boxing in slavery, without the prospect of territorial expansion, would leave Southerners “dammed up in a land of slaves” (according to Spencer Roane) and “cooped up on the north” (according to Thomas Ritchie) without a safety valve.41 Nevertheless, the congressional vote in the South was almost evenly split for and against the bill.

  Throughout the process, Van Buren had his eye on higher political office, as well as on a watered-down view of republican liberty based, supposedly, in small government.42 He similarly fretted about the corrupting power of money in the political process, which he saw as less pervasive in the South. He might have simply kept trying to refurbish the Old Republicans had the election of 1824 not taken such an odd turn, with the election of John Quincy Adams under the murky aspersions of a “Corrupt Bargain” with Henry Clay. That election killed “King Caucus,” which had “acquired the stigma of aristocracy,” sweeping away the last impediment to a new national political party that would, as he noted, combine the “planters of the South with the plain Republicans of the north.”43

  But the conundrum facing the architect of such a party was how to simultaneously join the slave South and the increasingly anti-slave North, and Van Buren hit upon the only solution. How could he redraw the old party lines? Since any new party could not embrace either the northern or southern position, it had to identify a more powerful incentive than the ideology of pro- or anti-slavery, to substitute “party principles for personal preferences .”44 During a tour of western New York, Van Buren’s answer became obvious; he would appeal to economic self-interest to supersede ideology. He would substitute specific rewards bestowed on individuals through jobs in either the party or the government for broader economic interests accrued through support of, or opposition to, slavery. Put bluntly, a dollar today in the hands of a party loyalist would trump potentially higher but uncertain returns in the future. One unnamed opponent marveled at the scheme: “the perfection of Mr. Van Buren’s party discipline,” he said, was that “the wires [of] political machinery [were] attached to strings in every county.”45 A Van Buren ally, newspaper editor Duff Green, wro
te that “party is everything.”46 For example, as Van Buren returned to run for governor of New York, the Regency perfected the practice of handing out clerkships and sheriff positions. It was as governor, where he wielded the ability to directly appoint friends, that Van Buren finally made the connection between spoils, party discipline, and a national party agenda.

  By 1826, Van Buren had identified Andrew Jackson as a safe Westerner whom he could support for president in two years. “If Gen Jackson & his friends,” Van Buren wrote, “will put his election on old party grounds, preserve the old systems, avoid if not condemn the practices of the last campaign we can by adding his personal popularity to the yet remaining force of old party feeling, not only succeed in electing him but our success when achieved will be worth something.”47 The new organization soon became known as the “Jacksonian Democrats” or, more commonly, merely “Democrats.”

  The scheme was both shocking in its simplicity and repellent in its characterization of American selfishness. But in theory, at least, it seemed to overcome sectionalism. More remarkably, a few years later, when the Whigs emerged as a national competitor to the Democrats, they operated under the same assumption that men could be bought. Cloaking their application of patronage in more patriotic terms, the Whigs and their “American System” promised to improve the well-being of all through a system of tariffs, internal improvements, and a national bank. Such a program, they promised, would bind the nation together in a web of commerce. However elevated the rhetoric, at its most basic level, the American System constituted only a broader dispersion of spoils. The key, however, was that both parties avoided slavery and the central issues of the day and ran for office on the assumption that principles were for sale. The tariff, in particular, constituted direct federal funds targeted to the vote-rich northern textile regions and, not surprisingly, next to slavery the tariff became one of the most divisive antebellum issues. “Internal improvements” was often a code phrase for specific investments in river towns, coastal cities, or railroad lines that benefited targeted groups of voters.

  The structure of the new party, which built on the organization of the old, employed a division of national, state, county, district, ward, and precinct divisions of the electorate, assigning to each level a partisan director charged with getting out the vote. Electoral success was then rewarded with promotions, in which ward captains became district directors, and so on, until all possible job holders in the party organization were appointed to paid government positions. For example, Van Buren, as New York governor, moved his longtime supporter William Marcy to the state supreme court, then slipped Albany mayor Charles Dudley into Van Buren’s old Senate seat. But these were only two examples of the across-the-board process of handing out positions to customs collectors, sheriffs, county clerks, and hundreds of other plum political jobs. Since the total number of government jobs remained small, however, the bureaucracy grew slowly—a few thousand new jobs per every state and general election—concealing the corrosive dynamic at work. So to make up the difference, Governor Van Buren quickly got approval for a new Bank Safety Fund bill that would reward his financial supporters and had the New York City health commissioner ship $8,000 a year to the Society for Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents, another well-cloaked political sop.48

  A prime example of the spoils system at the national level, the Post Office accounted for more jobs than any other government office or agency, including the U.S. Army! By the 1830s, there were over 8,700 postal positions in the United States. This amounted to three-quarters of the entire federal civilian workforce, making postmaster general the most plum appointment in government outside of secretary of state. (It’s difficult today to think that individuals once actually aspired to be postmaster general as a life’s ambition!) The postmaster general had the political appointment power for all postal workers in the era before the civil service exam. Thus, depending on the outcome of an election, one might see a completely new postman (virtually no women worked for the Post Office at the time) every four years. Moreover, with post offices in every state, the postmaster general had unmatched national patronage powers.

  The postal system had another function besides its role in delivering spoils. Early in American history, a Faustian pact had been sealed between newspapers and “exchanges,” in which postal law permitted printers to exchange their papers without postage through the mail.49 This policy, first codified in 1758 by Benjamin Franklin and William Hunter, deputy postmaster general for the American colonies, locked together the Post Office and the early newspapers in a relationship that would dramatically reshape the way Americans read. Since the postal system shipped newspapers for only a fraction of the cost of transporting them, a strong incentive arose to print—and mail—more newspapers. Between 1800 and 1840, the number of newspapers shipped through the mail rose from just under two million to almost 40 million. If the newspapers had paid the same postage rate as other publications, their transmission costs would have been seven hundred times higher. By the 1830s, the number of news-related items equaled the number of letters that passed through an average post office.50 The mastheads of these publications—from the Richmond Whig to the Arkansas Democrat—stated the obvious: these were partisan papers, and by the 1830s, partisan propaganda constituted almost half of all postal deliveries. An even more ominous trend developed in which editor Thomas Ritchie “used postmasters as intelligence agents to check up on subscribers who did not pick up the Richmond Enquirer . . . ,” turning the postmaster into a highly paid political snitch.51

  Originally, the news network consisted of a channel of communication that went out from the printers in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, or Baltimore to secondary cities such as Albany, Hartford, or New Haven, before then penetrating the hinterland around Philadelphia and Baltimore. Eventually, cities on postal routes farther inland, such as Cincinnati or Detroit, would receive the news. At each step of the journey, local papers were free to “cut and paste” from the original source, thus standardizing information as it was transmitted inland.52

  During the colonial and revolutionary periods, “news” consisted of mostly local events, although a few overtly partisan papers existed. The National Gazette, edited by Philip Freneau, opposed George Washington and the Federalists, as did the anti-Federalist Aurora, while the National Intelligencer supported the administration. The Intelligencer received a government contract for reprinting the speeches of members of Congress, which constituted a monopoly contract, persuading many of the members to hold up publication of their remarks until they, or the party, could alter them. Once again, Van Buren perceived an opportunity, viewing the newspapers as the perfect propaganda instruments to take the message of his new party to the citizens—by the 1858 Senate race between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, Douglas mailed more than 350,000 news clippings containing his speeches back to Illinois. Papers had to be faithful to the party’s ideology (which is to say, lack of ideology), meaning they—like other organization loyalists—would be procured with cash.

  As historian Robert Remini contended, this constituted “perhaps the single most important accomplishment” of the Jacksonians—the “creation of a vast, nationwide newspaper system” that supported their ideology.53 The Jacksonians blatantly established their own party organs, such as Duff Green’s Washington-based United States Telegraph (1826), by lending the editor the money to start the paper. Green obediently repaid his political masters with pro-Jackson editorials and obligingly turned out a special extra paper during the 1828 election with a circulation of forty thousand.54 He also played Johnny Appleseed to the Jacksonian news nexus, helping to set up other Jacksonian papers around the country. Defenders of Green point to the fact that he was “struggling financially” and thus could not possibly have been “on the take,” but in fact he relied on increasing sales to distant subscribers, and like all other papers of the era, his fell victim to the reluctance of subscribers to actually pay for the paper.55 So the evidence suggests that Gre
en was every bit as partisan as his accusers have claimed and that he was likely just a poor businessman.

  Printing profits, for example, averaged 40 percent a year during one ten-year stretch, and an official paper could be charged tremendous lithographing, printing, and engraving fees.56 The motto of the United States Telegraph, “Power Is Always Stealing from the Many to the Few,” seems an apt description of what Green and his friends were doing. Not only did he receive official party monies, but Jacksonian loyalists endorsed Green’s personal notes and funneled “soft money” to him on a regular basis, but without this steady flow of funds, the paper never could have survived on its subscriptions. Indeed, as more Democratic papers proliferated, and as Whig papers rose in opposition, almost none made money aside from the political cash infusions they received.

  Surprisingly, Green himself recognized the dangers of a politicized press. In 1826, he wrote that “it is in vain to talk of a free press when the favor of power is essential to the support of editors, and the money of the people, by passing through the hands of the Executive, is made to operate as a bribe against liberty. . . . if liberty shall ever expire in our country, it will die of the poisonous draught of corrupt patronage.”57 Nor was Green alone in his concerns. The same Richmond Enquirer editor Thomas Ritchie, who used postmasters as political spies, worried about “showering patronage too much on Editors of newspapers and on Members of Congress, and the rights of the people themselves are exposed to imminent danger.”58 Of course, with patronage dollars flowing in, such concerns tended to be fleeting. Francis Preston Blair’s paper the Congressional Globe, supported initially by the State Department to publish session laws, perhaps even exceeded Green’s Telegraph in its loyalty to the party. The Globe functioned solely as an organ of the Jackson administration, and Blair’s attitude on any given current issues was “determined by Jackson’s stand on them.”59 Indeed, the Globe served as the political handbook for the party, printing marching orders for other editors around the country to follow.