Posted on 06/08/2011 6:26:35 PM PDT by Mozilla
I figured Andrew Jackson is one the bad guys in history. And I believe people like Glenn Beck hate him. For one thing he was a democrat who help his party gain control that they had for a long time afterward. I figured he was instrumental into ruining the nation into what we have today. I maybe wrong, but I wanted to search him on this website and it seemes every article likes him a lot. How come? Do people like Andrew Jackson like they hate Abe Lincoln? Strange stuff.
Oh, my, you are correct, of course.
On the other hand, if, while this electronic window is open for obtaining actual texts of ancient, late 18th and 19th-Century documents containing the ideas of liberty, perhaps other generations will avail themselves of the opportunity to rediscover and perpetuate those ideas for posterity.
By their heavy-handed approach to governing, wouldn't it be ironic if the overreach of so-called "progressives" may have created an environment conducive to renewed interest in Adam Smith's 1775 conclusions about wealth creation, as well as a curiosity about the revolutionary ideas of liberty which motivated the men of 1776 and 1787 and produced the greatest burst of freedom, opportunity, prosperity and plenty in the history of mankind?
I'm not sure why the fevered speculation in State banks after Jackson dissolved the Central Bank wouldn't have played a factor.
A case could be made that depression could very well have been avoided or at least mitigated had Jackson not dissolved the Bank in favor of his "agricultural republic".
It is, as with anything, a double edged sword. The internet creates vast opportunities to decentralize, but it also creates an opportunity for the right tech-geek to centralize all non-physical-book knowledge!
Well, the case has been attempted, and has failed. There was no “fevered speculation” in state banks-—and by the way, almost all of the state banks wrote petitions SUPPORTING the re-chartering of the BUS, suggesting they hardly wanted it gone so there could be “fevered speculation.” Far from there being “inflation” after 1833, there was deflation. Temin proved this, so did Timberlake, so did my research in Southern Banks from 1804-1836. You are thinking about the “free banking” speculation of the later 1840s, which Hugh Rockoff and Rolnick and Webber proved was entirely the result of extremely badly written state laws, and that once the laws were fixed, the free banks proved very healthy. There was no more banking weakness at all until after the Civil War. As Calomiris and I showed in 1990 on our article on the Panic of 1857, the Panic of 57 was ENTIRELY the result of the instability caused by the Dred Scott decision and had nothing to do with bank weaknesses.
If speculation hadn't been present, Jackson wouldn't have issued his "specie circular" demanding that Federal lands would have to be paid for with gold or silver. This circular was put into play, in fact, because fevered speculation was occurring.
suggesting they hardly wanted it gone so there could be “fevered speculation.”
I'm not saying that all State banks necessarily backed Jackson's policies. Some did...but it was Jackson's agri-business mindset (hearkening back to the rift between Hamilton & Jefferson and the mentalities of North & South) that was the engine that drove the policy reversal which changed what had been laid down in the late 1700's.
Wrong assumption and disproven by all relevant scholarship. Jackson ASSUMED that there was "speculation" and that it was "caused" by paper currency. Neither was true. Just like Obama assumes that all problems today are because rich people have too much money. Again, I've given you the sources. Before you post more on this, you should read Temin, The Jacksonian Economy, accepted by almost every historian as the most accurate assessment of the Bank War; Timberlake, The Origins of Central Banking in the United States; and my Banking in the American South from the Age of Jackson to Reconstruction.
Timberlake also has a number of articles specific to the specie circular, which are cited in all of the above.
Nor are you necessarily correct that "Jackson's agri-business mindset" was driving this. A few people, like Jackson's biographer, Robert Remini, maintain this (he's wrong---and has been disproven by all the other literature, and like Jackson refuses to admit he's wrong. I debated him in a seminar once and he just won't consider real evidence . . . just like a Democrat). Most people, such as Edwin Perkins ("Lost Opportunities for Compromise in the Bank War"---I think that's the title of the article) maintain that Jackson wanted the fight because he feared the BUS as a political enemy; and I argue in “Jacksonian Ideology, Currency Control, and `Central Banking': A Reappraisal,” The Historian that the evidence of Jackson's own plan for a "national bank" that I found---which Remini refuses to acknowledge---alone is good enough to disprove the "agrarian mindset" explanation.
What are your thoughts about Hamilton?
I think he gets a bad rap. Read Chernow for a good view. In my book, “What Would the Founders Say?” I show that Hamilton did NOT advocate a lot of debt, but rather he developed a way that the U.S. could develop good credit by paying its existing debt. I think AH is badly misunderstood by conservatives. Yes, he favored tariffs but only to protect two industries that he saw as necessary to national defense, iron and textiles. We have no record of him supporting high tariffs in general, or in non-defense sectors.
I do too. Too many favor Jefferson's view IMO over Hamilton's and it makes me uncomfortable; I see dangerous shades of that thinking today as well. I wasn't aware that Ron Chernow had written a book on Hamilton and I will have to look that up. Thanks.
Jackson's certainly purported to be agri-business, but according to you his views were quite the opposite. Interesting.
Jefferson PROFESSED “small government,” and indeed paid off a lot of the debt (thanks to the structures and policies Hamilton put in place), but let’s not forget that he fought the nation’s first foreign war (Barbary Wars) without a declaration of war, and using the frigates built by Adams; that he proposed a MASSIVE “roads and bridges” program that was double the size of the entire federal budget (it was no enacted by Congress, but was built by the private sector). He did downsize the army, which proved a mistake in the War of 1812. So TJ gets credit for being a “limited government” guy when in fact John Adams was probably far more limited in what he actually did.
That being said, Burr created the first real campaign organizations. He was a master of GOTV activities.
Yes. too bad such shrewdness, a la Bill Clinton, couldn’t be put to better use.
I have to disagree with your belief that Clay was capable of stopping Nullification in South Carolina. South Carolina was finally stopped in March 1833; and Clay’s Compromise tariff wrongly gets a lot of credit for this. Known as the compromise tariff of 1833, many historians believe this is what ended the crisis. This helped, but it only worked with the passage also, of Jackson’s Force Bill, which gave the president the ability to put down insurrections in states. That Jackson as president already had precedent for doing this, and yet still sought congressional approval, is testament to his shrewdness. Further support for this is found in the fact that Jackson had already offered a lower tariff to South Carolina than Clay’s....which they refused. This of course was before the Nullification Proclamation; and this document, with national acclaim it garnered, is a major reason South Carolina finally backed down.....and Henry Clay was most certainly not capable of envisioning the Union as Jackson does in this proclamation.
Also, Jackson’s military background and his notorious hot headed nature (which, as president, this latter characteristic was used for effect more than anything) led many in South Carolina to believe Jackson would come to the Palmetto state with Federal troops. People were afraid of Jackson, and while his correspondence reveals no desire to go down to the state and make war, he certainly made South Carolinians feel it was a possibility.
Jackson’s Nullification Proclamation is what stopped Nullification in 1833; and in 1861, Lincoln will look to this document for inspiration in his struggle. Clay was incapable of concieving of a nation were secession was impossible. Had Clay been President, the federal government at that time would have lost the Nullification debate, and the county would have been much different.
Also, Jackson being a southerner, and a known decentralist, made his beliefs in the Nullification Proclamation easier to believe as genuine all over the country, and made South Carolinians seem small and petty. Adams would have had a harder time because he was a northerner, and very pro-tariff.
Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote a long, worshipful, award-winning book about Jackson which barely mention the Cherokee and the Trail of Tears. For that reason alone (though it's more Arthur's fault than Andrew's), I'd be inclined to judge Jackson harshly.
All matters of “what if,” since Clay never got close to the White House. I think he was hard-headed enough that he would have done what was necessary.
Tis true....and he was hard headed. Personally I believe he was too much of a politician to have done the right thing in such a sectional crisis as the Nullification crisis. I don’t think Clay would have done something which would have hurt him politically.
Jackson’s Nullification Proclamation did hurt him politically. It’s message of a perpetual Union, claiming secession is treason, was damaging to the Democratic party, and to Jackson’s reputation as a “states rights’” man. As a matter if fact when one of Jackson’s aides asked him to remove some statements in the proclamation that stated secession was treason....Jackson stated: “Those are my words, and I will not have them removed or striked out.” Some actually thought the nation was experiencing a political revolution with Jackson and the likes of Daniel Webster actually agreeing on where soverignty truly resided in the U.S.
Believing Clay could have put down Nullification successfully is a “what if.” Jackson proved he could do what was necessary, wheras during the Crisis Clay was too concerned with working with Calhoun to end the crisis in such a way as to make Jackson look impotent.
Whatever, Jackson, for the most part, was a “big gubment” guy, and not much to recommend him in my book. The early FDR.
No, he was not for big government. He vetoed several acts from congress designed to build roads etc. in the country. Moreover, most knew him as a states rights’ politician,someone against a larger federal government, or as we might say today, a big government advocate. The only thing he did do, which can be considered a win for big government was the Nullification Proclamation. And at the time it was a good thing because secession and nullification needed to be refuted. Moreover, he is the only president to ever pay off the national debt. Big government people don’t pay off debt. What makes you think he was a big government adovacte?
He was certainly not an early FDR. Jackson would never have advocated federal aid programs like the New Deal. FDR admired Jackson, but the two men were very different.
Disagree entirely. A veto is NOT a “small government” act. Quite the contrary, in the antebellum world, which had a Whig view of the legislature, a veto was viewed as a big-government activist executive act. He overrode the USSC on the Cherokees; he tasked his SecTreas to create a new GOVERNMENT bank (not the mostly private BUS); he tried to outlaw all private small bank notes. He killed the mostly private BUS. Everything Jackson did increased the power of the federal government. The budget in real and per capita terms grew under Jackson, at times quite rapidly. He used the Post Office as his own fiefdom to control state politics, and expanded the Post Office. He was FDR writ small.
I can understand how one could make the case for the veto to be designated as an example of federal power expansion through the executive. Certainly the legislature in the U.S. was seen in the Whig interpretation as a barrier to tyrannical authority in one person.
However, in Jackson’s case, the Maysville Road veto for example, was used to thwart big government, at least to Jackson and other decentralists. In the Cherokee case, I think most folks, especially in today’s society, believe the Supreme Court to be the ultimate moral authority. This of course is wrong. I cannot defend Jackson’s refusal to enforce the Worchester v. Georgia decision, except to say his inaction may have been guided in some way to avoid Georgia siding with the Nullifiers in South Carolina.
I would argue that allowing the Supreme Court to be the final say on any arguement is big goverment. There are checks and balances, and Presidents can, have, and should when necessary, ignore the Supreme Court’s decisions. As at least two cases can show, the Dred Scott case and Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court can be very immoral and wrong on occasion.
I don’t think his overiding the Supreme Court on the Cherokee case was an example of big government; however it was a black mark on his record.
He didn’t just try to outlaw bank notes, but all paper currency period. This would allow for almost no uniform currency, which I would deem very anti-big government.
The BUS wasn’t totally private, it was created by the government. I won’t argue the post office situation with you. He actually made it illegal to send abolitionist material through the mail.
Lastly, how do you pay off the national debt, and grow the budget at the same time?
I still don’t see the FDR comparison. I really can’t imagine Jackson using the federal government to create programs designed to create temporary jobs. I also can’t imagine him spending the country into a deficit to do so....when as president, he was fiscally the exact opposite of this. Jackson might have defined the power of executive in a way that frightened Whig minded individuals in the antebellum period, but he didn’t abuse his power, and he wasn’t a spend thrift.
FDR admired Jackson for the man’s style of presidency. If you want to see where our current government became a bloated, disfunctional, money eating machine....FDR is the beginning.
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