American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

[The break between Jackson and Calhoun]: Wiltse, John C. Calhoun, Ch. 6; Van Deusen, p. 45·

  [Calhoun: “It will … kill him dead”]: quoted in Thomas H. Benton, Thirty Years’ View (D. Appleton, 1856), Vol. 1, p. 219.

  [Freehling on the collapse of Calhoun’s presidential hopes]: Freehling, pp. 226-27.

  [Clay on the fate of liberty throughout the world]: quoted in Schlesinger, Elections, Vol. 1, p. 507.

  [Nomination of Wirt by Anti-Masons]: John P. Kennedy, Memoirs of the Life of William Wirt (Lea and Blanchard, 1850), Vol. 2, pp. 299-315.

  [The authority of Georgia in Cherokee territory]: Worcester v. Georgia (6 Peters 515), in Richard Peters, Reports of Cases Argued and Adjudged in the Supreme Court of the United States (Banks Law Publishing, 1917), Vol. 6, pp. 515-47.

  [Jackson on Worcester v. Georgia]: quoted in Horace Greeley, The American Conflict (Case, 1866), p. 106; Greeley claims that the remark was related to him by Congressman George N. Briggs of Massachusetts.

  [Jackson on preventing liberties from being “crushed by the Bank “]: quoted in Schlesinger, Elections, Vol. 1, p. 499. On the origins of the bank war, see Donald B. Cole, Jacksonian Democracy in New Hampshire, 1800-185i (Harvard University Press, 1970), Ch. 5.

  [Clay and Webster urging Biddle to call for bank recharter]: Daniel Webster to Nicholas Biddle, Dec. 18, 1831, in Wiltse, Papers of Daniel Webster, Vol. 3, p. 139; Eaton, p. 99.

  [Jackson on killing the bank]: Van Buren, Autobiography, p. 625.

  [Jackson’s appeal to the “humble members of society”]: quoted in Schlesinger, Elections, Vol. 1, p. 500. [Remini on Jackson’s stand on issues]: ibid., p. 500.

  [Jackson on the veto working well]: ibid., p. 510.

  [Nullification proclamation]: Richardson, Messages and Papers, Vol. 2, pp. 1203-19.

  [Election of 1832]: Schlesinger, Elections, Vol. 1, p. 574.

  [Reaction of South Carolina extremists to nullification proclamation]: Freehling, pp. 267-78; McDuffie quoted, p. 267.

  [John Randolph on seeing Webster die, “muscle by muscle”]: quoted in Wiltse, John C. Calhoun, p. 194.

  [Contrast between Biddle and Jackson]: James, pp. 250-52.

  [Jackson’s trip through the Northeast to New England]: James, pp. 340-49. [John Quincy Adams on Jackson as a Harvard degree recipient]: quoted in John T. Morse, John Quincy Adams (Houghton Mifflin, 1899), p. 241.

  [Jackson’s reasons for renewing the bank war after his re-election]: Schlesinger, Age of Jackson, p. 98.

  [Jackson’s response to visiting delegations]: ibid., p. 109 ; Bray Hammond, Banks and Politics in America (Princeton University Press, 1957), p. 430.

  [Rogin on Jackson’s fanaticism]: Fathers and Children, Ch. 9.

  [McLane shifted to State Department]: Munroe, Ch. 12.

  [Relationship of Biddle and Webster]: Wiltse, Papers of Daniel Webster, Vol. 3, passim; on the retainer, Webster to Biddle, Dec. 21, 1833, p. 288; [on burning letters]: ibid. and Biddle to Webster, Dec. 25, 1834 (actually 1833), p. 292; [on the need for unity among Webster, Clay and Calhoun]: Biddle to Webster, Dec. 15, 1833, p. 285.

  [Henry Clay’s censure speech against Jackson in the Senate]: Register of Debates, 23rd Congress, 1st session, Dec. 26 and 30, 1833, pp. 58-94; Calvin Colton, ed., The Works of Henry Clay (Henry Clay, 1896), Vol. 5,pp. 576-620.

  Jacksonian Leadership

  [The Whig party]: Eber M. Carroll, Origins of the Whig Party (Duke University Press, 1925); see also studies of state and sectional origins.

  [Edward Everett]: Edward Everett Papers, Box 2, 1819-27, Massachusetts Historical Society.

  [Drafting of Webster]: Sydney Nathans, Daniel Webster and Jacksonian Democracy (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), pp. 91-92.

  [Jackson’s threats to Hugh Lawson White]: Dumas Malone, ed., Dictionary of American Biography (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936), Vol. 10, p. 106.

  [Seward on Van Buren]: New York Evening Post, Nov. 2, 1836, quoted in Schlesinger, Age of Jackson, p. 214.

  [Election of 1836]: Schlesinger, Elections, Vol. 1, p. 640.

  [Pomper on 1836 as a “converting election”]: Gerald M. Pomper, Elections in America (Dodd, Mead, 1968), pp. 112-13.

  [Schlesinger on “the living relations” between leader and followers]: Age of Jackson, p. 215.

  [Van Buren and his administration]: James C. Curtis, The Fox at Bay (University Press of Kentucky, 1970); Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795-1848 (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1876), Vols. 9-10; and other works cited previously in this chapter.

  [British ministers report on public reaction to the panic]: quoted in Curtis, p. 73.

  [Jacksonian finance]: John M. McFaul, The Politics of Jacksonian Finance (Cornell University Press, 1972); Curtis; Hammond; Walter B. Smith, Economic Aspects of the Second Bank of the United States (Harvard University Press, 1953).

  [Cambreleng on the Independent Treasury bill]: Cambreleng to Van Buren, Nov. 18, 1837, quoted in Van Deusen, p. 126.

  [Webster statements]: Congressional Globe, 25th Congress, 1st session, Sept. 28, 1837, Appendix, p. 169; ibid., 25th Congress, 2nd session, Jan. 31, 1838, Appendix, p. 606.

  [Pickens on northern banking and southern slavery]: ibid, 25th Congress, 1st session, Oct. 10, 1837, Vol. 5: Appendix, p. 178, quoted in Curtis, p. 106.

  [Clay on “symptoms of despotism”]: Senate speech of Dec. 26 and 30, 1833, in Colton, Vol. 5, p. 620.

  [Jackson’s veto record]: Richard M. Pious, The American Presidency (Basic Books, 1979), p. 207; William M. Goldsmith, The Growth of Presidential Power (Chelsea House, 1974), Vol. 1, pp. 329-31.

  [Historians’ evaluation of Jackson]: Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Paths to the Present (Macmillan, 1949), Ch. 5; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., “Our Presidents: A Rating by 75 Historians,” The New York Times Magazine (July 29, 1962), p. 12.

  [Hawthorne on Jackson]: quoted in Clinton Rossiter, The American Presidency (Harcourt, Brace, 1956), p. 150.

  [Controversy among historians over Jacksonianism]: Pessen, Jacksonian America, pp. 384-93; see also Marvin Meyers, The Jacksonian Persuasion (Stanford University Press, 1957), pp. 2-3; McFaul, Ch. 1; Charles G. Sellers, Jr., “Andrew Jackson versus the Historians,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 44, No. 4 (March 1958), pp. 615-34.

  [Van Buren’s strategy of directly mobilizing followers]: Notebook, Martin Van Buren Papers, Library of Congress, cited in Schlesinger, Age of Jackson, p. 51.

  [Kendall on business power limiting man’s freedom ]: quoted in Schlesinger, Age of Jackson, p. 319, from the Washington Globe, Sept. 24, 1840.

  [Jackson’s philosophy as reflected in his veto of the recharter bill]: quoted in Richard Höf-stadter, The American Political Tradition (Alfred A. Knopf, 1948), p. 62.

  [Jacksonians and the North-South axis]: Richard H. Brown, “The Missouri Crisis, Slavery, and the Politics of Jacksonianism,” South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. 65 (1966), pp. 55-72.

  [Hartz on the parties as wildly swinging boxers]: Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (Harcourt, Brace, 1955). p. 90.

  [Van Buren on those who had wrought great changes in the world]: Van Buren Papers, quoted in Schlesinger, Age of Jackson, p. 51.

  10. PARTIES: THE PEOPLE’S CONSTITUTION

  [Dickens on his Britannia stateroom]: Charles Dickens, American Notes (Chapman and Hall, 1891), p. 5.

  [Dickens on Boston and on New York City harbor]: ibid., pp. 23, 64-65.

  [Dickens on “slavery, spittoons, and senators”]: Dickens to Charles Sumner, March 13, 1842, quoted in Norman and Jeanne Mackenzie, Dickens: A Life (Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 120.

  [Dickens on Congress]: American Notes, p. 98.

  [Dickens on slavery and the Declaration of independence]: ibid., p. 97.

  [Dickens on Cincinnati]: quoted in Norman and Jeanne MacKenzie, p. 123.

  [Dickens on western cities]: American Notes, pp. 131, 137, 140.

  [Dickens’ quotations from advertisemen
ts for runaway slaves]: ibid., pp. 184-85.

  [Dickens on the general character of the American people]: ibid., pp. l93-94.

  [Pessen’s summary of Europeans’ collective portrait of Americans]: Edward Pessen, Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics (Dorsey Press. 1969), p. 34.

  [Tocqueville]: Jacob Peter Mayer, Alexis de Tocqueville: A Biographical Essay in Political Science (Viking Press, 1940); George Wilson Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont in America (Oxford University Press, 1938).

  Equality: The Jacksonian Demos

  [The plight of the destitute and the debtors]: Pessen, p. 48. [Distribution of wealth]: Daniel E. Diamond and John D. Guilfoil, United States Economic History (General Learning Press, 1973). p. 82; Herman E. Krooss, American Economic Development (Prentice-Hall, 1955), p. 24.

  [Tocqueville on equality of conditions]: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (Alfred A. Knopf, 1960), Henry Reeve Text, Phillips Bradley, ed., Vol. 1, p. 3.

  [Tocqueville’s underestimation of the beginnings of industrialization and urbanization]: Irving M. Zeiilin, Liberty, Equality, and Revolution in Alexis de Tocqueville (Little, Brown, 1971), pp. 12, 58.

  [Commager on everyday social equality ]: Henry Steele Commager, The American Mind (Yale University Press, 1950), p. 14.

  [Tocqueville on self respecting servants]: Tocqueville, Vol. 2, p. 183.

  [John Quincy Adams to Tocqueville on legal equality]: quoted in Pessen, p. 50.

  [Richard Wade on class lines in western cities]: quoted in ibid., p. 53.

  [Caste system in the Tombs]: Dickens, American Notes, p. 68.

  [American classes]: of the “revisionist” literature on stratification, see esp. Lloyd A. Fallers, Inequality (University of Chicago Press, 1973).

  [Tocqueville on Americans as born equal]: quoted in Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (Harcourt, Brace, 1955), p. i.

  [Tocqueville on American abundance]: quoted in David M. Potter, People of Plenty (University of Chicago Press, 1954), p. 92.

  [Tocqueville on most rich men as having formerly been poor]: quoted in Pessen, p. 51.

  [Tocqueville’s belief that unadulterated democracy ruled in America]: Zeitlin, p. 11.

  [Tocqueville on “Gods will” about more equality]: Tocqueville to M. Stoffels (Paris), Feb. 21, 1835, quoted in Tocqueville, Vol. 1, p. xx.

  [Tocqueville on egalitarianism, majority rule, leveling, etc.]: ibid., Vol. 1, Chs. 15, 16; Vol. 2, passim.

  [Tocqueville on great parties, ambition, and leadership]: ibid., Vol. 1, pp. 174 ff.; Vol. 2, p. 247.

  [ Workingmen’s politics]: Walter Hugins, Jacksonian Democracy and the Working Class (Stanford University Press, 1960); Nathan Fine, Labor and Farmer Parties in the United States, 1828-1928 (Rand School of Social Science, 1928); Pessen, pp. 191-215.

  [Question of employer as a “working man”]: quoted in Pessen, p. 210.

  [Radical leaders]: J. R. Pole, The Pursuit of Equality in American History (University of California Press, 1978), Ch. 5; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Jackson (Little, Brown, 1945), passim; Hugins, passim; Dumas Malone, ed., Dictionary of American Biography (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936).

  [Walt Whitman on Frances Wright]: quoted in Schlesinger, Age of Jackson, p. 181

  [Wright as “Red Harlot”]: New York Courier and Enquirer, quoted in Schlesinger, Age of Jackson, p. 182.

  [Samuel Clesson Allen on the “natural limit of production”]: quoted in ibid., p. 153.

  [Robert Rantoul]: Marvin Meyers, The Jacksonian Persuasion (Stanford University Press, 1957) Ch. 10.

  [The jackass as voter]: story told by a delegate to the Massachusetts constitutional convention, 1853, cited in James MacGregor Burns and Jack Walter Peltason, Government By the People, 2nd ed. (Prentice-Hall, 1954), p 251.

  [Blackstone on property qualifications]: quoted in Chilton Williamson, American Suffrage from Property to Democracy, 1760-1860 (Princeton University Press, 1960), p. 11.

  [Pessen on the suffrage situation before the Jacksonian era]: Pessen, p. 155.

  [James Kent and the conservative rearguard action against the “tyranny of numbers ”]: John T. Horton, James Kent: A Study in Conservatism, 1763-1847 (Appleton-Century, 1939), pp. 256-57.

  [Randolph on “King Numbers”]: Robert Dawidoff, The Education of John Randolph (W. W. Norton, 1979), p. 276.

  [The Dorr Rebellion]: Arthur M. Mowry, The Dorr War (Preston & Rounds, 1901); Williamson, Ch. 13.

  [First issue of Liberator]: John L. Thomas, The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison (Little, Brown, 1963), p. 128.

  [Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society denounces Constitution]: quoted in Russel B. Nye, William Lloyd Garrison and the Humanitarian Reformers, Oscar Handlin, ed. (Little, Brown, 1955), p. 143.

  [Weld on abolitionism]: quoted in Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition (Alfred A. Knopf, 1948), p. 144.

  [Frances Wright’s experiment in emancipation]: Cecilia Helena Payne-Gaposchkin, “The Nashoba Plan for Removing the Evil of Slavery: Letters of Frances and Camilla Wright, 1820-1829,” Harvard Library Bulletin, Vol. 23, No. 3 (July 1975), and No. 4 (October 1975). See also William Randall Waterman, “Frances Wright,” Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law, Vol. 115, No. 1 (Columbia University Press, 1924), pp. 92-133.

  State Politics: Seedbed of Party

  [Pre- and post-Revolutionary New York State politics]: Patricia U. Bonomi, A Factious People (Columbia University Press, 1971); Carl Lotus Becker, The History of Political Parties in the Province of New York, 1760-1776. (University of Wisconsin Press, 1960); Alfred F. Young, The Democratic Republicans of New York: The Origins, 1763-1797 (University of North Carolina Press, 1967).

  [The rapid rise of De Witt Clinton]: quotation from Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. 2, p. 221; see also, on Clinton, Dixon Ryan Fox, The Decline of Aristocracy in the Politics of New York (Columbia University Press, 1919).

  [New York State party development]: Michael Wallace, “Changing Concepts of Party in the United States: New York, 1815-1828,” American Historical Review, Vol. 7, No. 2 (December 1968), pp. 453-91. See, in general, Edward Pessen, “Reflections on New York and Its Recent Historians,” New-York Historical Society Quarterly, Vol. 63, No. 2 (April 1979), pp. 145-56; John W. Taylor Papers, New-York Historical Society.

  [The Albany Regency]: Robert V. Remini, “The Albany Regency,” New York History, Vol. 39, No. 4 (October 1958), pp. 341-55; A. C. Flagg Papers, Columbia University Library and New York Public Library; Charles H. Ruggles, Papers, New York Public Library.

  [Submission to party by the Advocate’s Mordecai Noah]: Wallace, pp. 464-65, quoted at p. 465.

  [The “martyrs’ “banquet]: ibid., p. 465.

  [Close association of Regency families]: quotation from James Gordon Bennett, in Remini, pp. 350-51.

  [Regency leaders’ conception of political party]: Wallace, pp. 481-91, Throop quoted at p. 488.

  [Regency conservatism]: Lee Benson, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy (Princeton University Press, 1961), pp. 30, 39, 66.

  [Benson on the Regency strategy]: quoted in ibid., p. 55.

  [Early Massachusetts state politics]: Van Beck Hall, Politics Without Parties (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972); Paul Goodman, The Democratic-Republicans (Harvard University Press, 1964); manuscript sources: Massachusetts Historical Society; Boston Public Library; Widener Library, Harvard University; Library of Congress.

  [Aspects of political transition of Massachusetts]: Arthur B. Darling, “Jacksonian Democracy in Massachusetts, 1824-1848,” American Historical Review, Vol. 29, No. 2 (January 1924), pp. 271-87; Pessen, Jacksonian America, pp. 238-40.

  [David Henshaw]: Schlesinger, Age of Jackson, pp. 146-47; Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. 8, pp. 562-63.

  [Kentucky political developments]: Lynn L. Marshall, “The Genesis of Grass-roots Democracy in Kentucky,” Mid-America, Vol. 47, No. 4 (October 1965), pp. 269-87; Thomas B. Jones, “New Thoughts on an Old Theme,” Register of t
he Kentucky Historical Society, Vol. 69, No. 4 (October 1971), pp. 293-312; Billie J. Hardin, “Amos Kendall and the 1824 Relief Controversy,” ibid., Vol, 64, No. 3 (July 1966), pp. 196-208; Duff Green Papers, Nicholas Trist Papers, Library of Congress.

  [Historians on rational, popular demands and aspirations in Kentucky]: Marshall, pp. 273, 284, quoted at p. 284.

  On party development in the South as a whole, see Burton W. Folsom II, “Party Formation and Development in Jacksonian America: the Old South,” Journal of American Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3 (December 1973). pp. 217-29.

  Majorities: The Flowering of the Parties

  [Chambers on the building of parties]: William Nisbet Chambers, Political Parties in a New Nation (Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 49.

  [Role and decline of deference in early politics]: Ronald P. Formisano, “Deferential-Participant Politics: The Early Republic’s Political Culture, 1789-1840,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 68, No. 2 (June 1974), pp. 473-87.

  [“Party in office” as distinguished from national party organization and affiliation among the electorate]: Frank J. Sorauf, “Political-Parties and Political Analysis,” in William Nisbet Chambers and Waller Dean Burnham, eds., The American Party Systems (Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 33-55, esp. pp. 37-38.

  [The congressional caucus]: Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., “The Ascendance and Demise of the Congressional Caucus, 1800-1824,” paper prepared for conference, “The American Constitutional System Under Strong and Weak Parties,” sponsored by Project 87 (Washington, D.C.), April 27-28, 1979, pp. 1-36 (typescript).

  [McCormick on the “hidden revolution ” ]: Richard P. McCormick, The Second American Party System (University of North Carolina Press, 1966), p. 343.

  [Intellectual attitudes toward the party system]: Richard Hofstadter, The Idea of a Party System (University of California Press, 1969); see also Austin Ranney, The Doctrine of Responsible Party Government (University of Illinois Press, 1962).

  [Berlin on Archilochus’ hedgehog]: Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox (Simon and Schuster, 1970).