American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  Thus a spectacular national act had catalyzed party conflict in New York State, with powerful implications for national party realignment and competition. Whether Jackson’s act, which immediately transformed 1832 presidential campaign strategy, would have a long-run effect on the American parties as a whole would depend on events also in other states.

  Massachusetts, with its established patrician families and newly arrived Irish, its multitudes of farmers and factory hands and fishermen, its Beacon Hill and Brattle Street Brahmins who looked down on the social-climbing elites up and down the Atlantic seaboard, was almost as variegated as New York. The old commonwealth was developing industrially faster, probably, than any other state. Cotton mills were multiplying; railroads were radiating out from Boston; bankers and merchants were thriving and looking for places to put their money; Yankee captains and missionaries were searching for trade and heathen across the seven seas. If political families and factions were less contentious than in New York; religious groups were perhaps more so, as conservative and radical Unitarians debated each other, and orthodox Congregationalists held their ground against dissenting Baptists, Methodists, and Quakers; and all the Protestant sects closed ranks against the expanding Catholic population.

  Massachusetts resembled New York and other states, however, in its passage from the old elitist politics of deference to the new politics of egalitarian rhetoric and wider political participation. The passage was illustrated by the contrast between Daniel Webster and the Jackson brand of politician. Webster, product of Exeter and Dartmouth, protégé of Boston notables, an admired insider in Beacon Hill society, Senate spokesman first of New England merchants and later of manufacturers, was the quintessential elitist transcending superficial popular favor. The widening of the suffrage and the rising winds of equality helped bring a new breed of politician to the fore.

  David Henshaw was typical. Born not in Federalist Boston but in the hinterland near Worcester, apprenticed to a druggist at sixteen after a meager education in the village academy, he quickly rose in business and politics to become a powerful voice against the political establishment. Rewarded by Jackson with the patronage-rich collectorship of the port of Boston, Henshaw built a party machine not unlike the Albany Regency, especially in its appeal to rural voters outside the Yankee coastal region, and in its use of a party press, including Henshaw’s own paper, the Boston Statesman. A stocky man of medium height and two hundred pounds, Henshaw believed in party leadership, regularity, and loyalty. He was also a conservative, as were many of the early Jackson men in the Commonwealth, but here too Jackson’s bank veto catalyzed state Democrats and produced a swing toward radical rhetoric.

  Massachusetts illustrated how, in a system that sustained party federalism as well as constitutional federalism, state politics refracted back upon national. The experience of Kentucky was quite different, but this frontier state also became part of an overall pattern of the decline of deference, the rise of grass-roots parties, and the complex interrelation of state and national politics.

  Kentucky had seemed particularly vulnerable to boom and bust. All a Kentuckian needed to set up a bank during the post-1812 war years, some said, was a charter and a printing press. Land-hungry pioneers had borrowed from the state banks to buy more acreage; state banks expanded their circulation to meet demand; the newly re-established national bank in Philadelphia undertook its own liberal program of credit expansion, but then suddenly shifted toward contraction. The Panic of 1819 had left Kentucky with dozens of beleaguered state banks that in turn pressed their debtors harshly. Responding to desperate need, the legislature passed measure after measure to help debtors, most notably a “stay” law giving them an extra two years to pay off notes. Indignant creditors, turning to the courts for relief, won from circuit judge James Clark a ruling that a key debtor-relief law was unconstitutional.

  Then followed a battle of Checks and Balances. A committee of the legislature denied the right of the judge to veto a deliberate measure of the government and recommended his removal. This move did not gain the needed two-thirds vote in the legislature. When the court of appeals sustained Clark, the legislature tried to remove the whole court, and failed again. A “relief party” then appealed to the people in the election of 1824. Showing a striking ability to organize a campaign and to engage with the needs and hopes of the voters, rejecting the old politics of deference in favor of mass campaign techniques, the relief party won the governorship and a majority in both houses of the legislature. Once again the reliefers tried to remove the erring judges from office, but could not secure the elusive two-thirds. Finally, arguing that if they could not remove the judges from their seats, they could remove the “seats from the judges,” the relief party in the legislature removed the old court and authorized the governor to appoint a new one.

  Out of the crisis and conflict in Kentucky had arisen a whole new leadership cadre, headed by Amos Kendall and Francis Blair. An editor, slaveholder, and conservative Republican, Kendall had been cool to debt-relief measures, but later he changed his mind, especially when he had to borrow $1,500 from his old friend Henry Clay and several thousands more from his new friend Martin Van Buren. Once enlisted in the debtors’ cause, Kendall became its fiery leader. He pilloried the “court” party as a pack of conspirators and speculators, directed his appeals straight to the dirt farmers and the “common man”—and got chased in his editorial offices by an anti-relief lawyer brandishing a hickory stick. He and Blair also denounced high tariffs and federal improvements, thus widening the breach with their mentor Henry Clay.

  The election year of 1828 brought Kendall his supreme opportunity to link up with Jackson. Bypassing the local elite, whose political power was based on a system of self-perpetuating county courts that controlled local appointments, he set up a central committee in Louisville to call for a state convention that would agree on a statewide ticket of Jackson electors. He organized mass meetings of Jackson voters who would meet in local conventions, as well as local committees headed by county and district leaders who reported to state committees.

  Kendall, in short, built an integrated mass party in order to outflank the political dominance of the gentry. Where his own party following was inadequate he built alliances with Old Court men. It was only natural that, as the architect of Jackson’s big victory in Clay’s own state, Kendall would move to Washington and join his new mentor. And it was only natural that this fiery editorialist, who had won political influence by demagogic appeals to the common man, should make Jackson’s bank recharter veto message a political arrow that flew straight to the emotional heart of the electorate.

  Behind all the sound and fury in Kentucky politics, historians have found a rational grass-roots demand for economic relief and change, a popular urge for meaningful democratic participation in politics, strong “social and economic aspiration burning in the hearts of Kentuckians.” Although Jackson would fail to carry Kentucky against native son Clay in 1832, the politics of the state had been changed for good, with an organized, competitive two-party system replacing the oligarchical politics of deference. Like Kentucky, each of the other states was unique but virtually all were forced to move toward Jacksonian democracy. And all the states, as they sent to Washington politicians like Henshaw and Kendall and a host of enterprising senators and congressmen, were helping to shape a new national political system, even while they were being shaped by it.

  MAJORITIES: THE FLOWERING OF THE PARTIES

  How and why Americans shaped a national party system—how they framed their second, or “people’s,” constitution—is one of the most complex and perplexing developments in American history. The storyteller would surely prefer to recount the wonderful tale of the great men who met in Philadelphia in 1787 and struck off their constitution in one glorious summer than to follow the labyrinthine process by which little-known men built parties in many places over a long period of time. Then, too, historians disagree about the nature of this party buildi
ng, even though—or perhaps because—exceptionally talented scholars have pursued their historical studies in the Jeffersonian-Jacksonian period of party formation. They differ over basic questions of causation—whether the direction and shape that parties took during the first fifty years of the national existence was a product mainly of ideological forces, economic factors, intellectual effort, political calculation, institutional changes, chance, or interplay among some or all of these variables.

  In exploring these causes it would be well to keep in mind that no economic development or institutional change or “great idea” in itself directly builds a political party. Transportation improvements, for example, helped make it easier for widely dispersed men to come together in party conventions, but no improved stagecoach or locomotive built parties. Party “as such is a product of human ingenuity and not simply a natural growth,” in William Chambers’ words. “It must be built by the efforts of skilled political craftsmen, including major leaders at the center and hundreds or thousands of lesser leaders in outlying localities, who must at least know that they are devising co-ordinated means to their immediate ends, although they may not be wholly aware of the fact that they are shaping a party in the process.” Those who built parties were neither the celebrities of the age nor local nobodies; party did not emerge as a result of mass action at the grass roots. Parties were formed by leaders experimenting with new ways of gaining office and power.

  The first parties were largely networks of leaders, mostly notables. Born and bred in the old politics of colonial days, the political leaders of the 1790s still operated in a system of deference to established notables, of family “connections” and influence, of limited participation by “average” farmers, workers, and clerks, even less involvement by women, and none at all by black slaves and white paupers. How was it that leaders who embodied and personified the politics of elitism and deference could themselves be instruments for change? The answer lay in sharply growing issue conflicts that raised the political consciousness of millions of Americans. As long as Americans were broadly agreed about national policy, as they were during most of Washington’s presidential years, political competition was muted. Strong sentiments for or against Jefferson and Adams, and the burning issues over relations with the French and the British—issues that evoked powerful feelings and memories and loyalties—acted as catalysts cutting across regional and local attachments. The national Federalist and Republican parties were born out of this kind of conflict, which took on a new intensity with the War of 1812.

  During this period Americans had national parties but not a national party system. Presidents, senators, and representatives typically acted and talked like good Federalists or good Republicans. The press was highly partisan. Congressional Republicans, at least, were well organized in their caucus. A few states had developed party organizations. But all this did not make a system: Parties were not generally seen as legitimate. Party leaders in office did not recognize the legitimacy of opposition parties. Party organization in most states was rudimentary. While many activists were highly partisan, settled party conviction and commitment among the electorate were limited to a few places in a few states. One could detect a “party in office,” in short, but only a feeble party organization nationwide, and limited party affiliation among the electorate. And linkages that might make for strong and persisting structures—integrated national-state-local machinery, unified electoral and organizational effort, strong and stable party memberships—were rudimentary or absent.

  As dramatic conflict over national issues declined following the War of l812, so did the central role of national party leadership and organization. With the Federalist party almost dead outside New England, and with the Republican party reduced to state and factional in-fighting, Monroe’s presidency was a time of heightened factional dispute but blurred party division. Party was left in the care, sometimes benign and sometimes casual, of the states. National party unity and organization fell into disarray.

  The congressional caucus for nominating Presidents and Vice-Presidents—potentially the most powerful agency of national party power—both fostered and reflected this disarray. The caucus had started as early as 1792, when some Republican congressmen, after taking soundings in the states, met in Philadelphia to choose George Clinton to run against Vice-President John Adams. The Republicans held no caucus in 1796 because Jefferson was the unquestioned choice. Four years later, forty-three senators and representatives meeting at Marache’s boardinghouse again agreed that Jefferson was pre-eminently their man, and formally endorsed Burr for Vice-President. The congressional caucus of 1804 routinely endorsed President Jefferson and substituted Clinton for Burr. In l808, when the Republicans chose Madison overwhelmingly over Monroe, at least the caucus had a decision to make, but in 1812 its re-endorsement of Madison was unanimous. The 1816 caucus was actually a contest, with Monroe besting Crawford in a relatively close vote, but hardly a fifth of the members even showed up at the 1820 caucus. In 1824 the caucus was unable to perform its most essential function of uniting support behind one candidate. The Federalists had had even less success with a congressional caucus.

  The reign of “King Caucus” had been brief, its rule weak. It died during the period of consensual, partyless government under Monroe. Only a pervasive conflict could create the conditions of raised political consciousness within which party competition could flourish, and that conflict came with the nomination and election of Adams in 1824, as a result of intense opposition to him, the apparent deal against Jackson, and the growing and divisive influence of Old Hickory first as candidate, then as the tribune of the common man, and finally as the opponent of Biddle.

  In what institutional form this rising political conflict and election competition would be expressed became the crucial question in the 1830s. The nation’s politics might have reverted to the “King of the Rock,” “Winner Take All” politics of earlier years—the elitist politics of faction, personal following, closed caucus, the politics of family influence, social class, economic elitism. Profound changes in the foundations of American politics, however, made such a reversion impossible. The egalitarian issues posed, by Jefferson and Jackson had permeated the electorate and immensely raised its political consciousness. The widening of the suffrage in the states, along with other measures of democratization, had expanded the number and broadened the class membership of voters that candidates had to attract. The very feel and aroma of politics had changed, with the new hucksterism and vote cadging, the decline of the gentry and of deference, the rise of the political professional who made politics his life and his living, the proliferation of patronage jobs, the profusion of small caucuses, conventions, election rallies, political parades and picnics and paraphernalia. All this amounted, in Richard McCormick’s words, to a “hidden revolution” in the political environment.

  This hidden revolution was intellectual, too—an upheaval in leaders’ concepts of the role of faction, interest, party. The framers of the “Constitution” abhorred the ideas underlying the second, or people’s, constitution—government by parties—as tending toward faction, turbulence, selfishness. Consciously or not, they wrote a constitution that would pulverize and crush parties. Even in founding the Republican party Jefferson would not recognize the legitimacy of party opposition. It took hundreds of men, working at the state and local grass-roots of politics, to repudiate the anti-party doctrine of the Framers, whom they otherwise revered. They built their state and local parties against the prevailing elitist thought of the day.

  One man stood out in his conceptualizing of the “party constitution”—Martin Van Buren. The “red fox of Kinderhook” may have been sly and slippery in some of his political machinations, but intellectually he was a hedgehog, in Archilochus’ terms as interpreted by Isaiah Berlin. Van Buren had one big idea, the concept of what party was and could be. Although lacking clear philosophical guidelines, he developed his ideas on a kind of ad hoc, day-to-day basis. In later year
s he fleshed out his views, just as the Framers did about the Constitution in their retirements, but as early as 1827 Van Buren was arguing that a general convention would be better than the congressional caucus to concentrate the anti-Adams vote. He maintained that a convention would lead to the “substantial reorganization of the Old Republican Party,” substitute “party principles” for “personal preference,” and strengthen Republicanism in New England and the Republican political coalition between North and South.

  Ultimately Van Buren developed virtually an ideology of party as the essence of a democracy of liberty and virtue. In a most hedgehog-like fashion, he broadened his party concept in arguing that free competitive parties were essential to the public interest, inseparable from free government, necessary to prevent abuse of private power, and conducive to the moral discipline of institutional loyalty and personal self-restraint. He believed parties must pursue high principle as well as low patronage, must compete vigorously with one another, must generate a clash of platforms as well as personalities. Above all—the highest test of a believer in the second constitution—he not only accepted but welcomed the idea of a continuing, responsible, and legitimated opposition. If earlier the “fundamental cause for the failure to create a national organization was intellectual,” in James Chase’s words, the critical factor in the later formation of a national party system was also conceptual and intellectual.

  The creation of the presidential nominating convention provided the keystone for the party arch. Here again New York and other states had experimented with ways of moving party nominations out of the relatively small and unrepresentative legislative caucuses into conclaves of delegates chosen in state and local meetings. By the mid-1830s state conventions were well established in the central states and in Ohio and Kentucky; conventions for local nominations were widely employed in New England; they were, however, slow to be established in most of the South. After the Anti-Masons experimented with the first presidential nominating convention in 1831, in Baltimore, the Democrats staged their own the next year in the same city for the renomination of President Jackson, and for the nomination—appropriately—of Martin Van Buren for Vice-President. This convention pioneered in adopting the two-thirds rule for nominations, and in agreeing to a non-binding unit rule that allowed a majority of delegates from a state to cast the entire vote of the state. These rules, little considered at the time, would become critical to the Democrats in later years. The Whigs, emerging out of the National Republican party that had held its national convention in 1831, were forced to adopt the presidential convention as a permanent fixture.