Something I have come to realize. I think it is Washington DC's number one business.
Jackson did the opposite: he used federal taxes to pay off the national debt.
And you can see where people making money from the borrowing and making money from the spending, wouldn't like this.
Things got worse for the cronies under Jackson -- cronies such as Lincoln's hero, Henry Clay, and other big government types:
"Congress did respond favorably, however, to Clay's proposal to renew the charter of the Bank of the United States—only to have President Jackson veto the bill. Flouting a Supreme Court ruling that the government had a constitutional right to establish the bank, the President insisted the bank was unconstitutional. He called it an instrument designed to 'make the rich richer and the potent more powerful' while leaving 'the humble members of society—the farmers, mechanics, and laborers,' subject to government injustice. Clay lashed out at the President, saying he had been guilty of 'perversion of the veto power.... The veto is hardly reconcilable with the genius of representative government.... It is a feature of our government borrowed from a prerogative of the British king.... Ought the opinion of one man overrule that of a legislative body twice deliberately expressed?'"
[Harlow Giles Unger, "Henry Clay: America's Greatest Statesman." De Capo Press, 2015, p.163]
This historical narrative puts a different spin on it:
"The Bank veto of July 10 [1832] is the most important presidential veto in American history. It was a powerful and dramatic polemic, cleverly written to appeal to the great masses of people and to convince them of the truth of its arguments. The President claimed that the Bank enjoyed exclusive privileges that gave it a monopoly of foreign and domestic exchange. Worse, eight millions of its stock were held by foreigners. "By this act the American Republic proposes virtually to make them a present of some millions of dollars," said Jackson — and why should the few, particularly the foreign few, enjoy the special favor of the country? "If our Government," he continued, "must sell monopolies... it is but justice and good policy... to confine our favors to our own fellow citizens, and let each in his turn enjoy an opportunity to profit by our bounty." Over and over, like the intense nationalist he was, Jackson reiterated his concern over this foreign influence within the Bank.
"Then the President [Jackson] turned to the constitutional question involved in the recharter. He noted that [Marshall 's] Supreme Court in McCulloch v. Maryland had judged the Bank constitutional. "To this conclusion I cannot assent," he declared. Elaborating, he announced that the Congress and the President as well as the Court "must each for itself be guided by its own opinion of the Constitution. It is as much the duty of the House of Representatives, of the Senate, and of the President to decide upon the constitutionality of any bill or resolution which may be presented to them for passage or approval as it is of the supreme judges when it may be brought before them for judicial decision. The opinion of the judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the judges, and on that point the President is independent of both. The authority of the Supreme Court must not, therefore, be permitted to control the Congress or the Executive when acting in their legislative capacities, but to have only such influence as the force of their reasoning may deserve." Ever since the writing of this passage Jackson has been unfairly faulted for attempting to make himself co-equal with the courts in determining the constitutionality of Congressional legislation. What he actually said was that no member of the tripartite government can escape his responsibility to consider the constitutionality of all bills and to vote or act as his good judgment dictates. And, in the matter of the Bank now before him, Jackson did not agree with the Supreme Court. Since the Bank recharter was subject to legislative and executive action, he simply claimed the right to think and act as an independent member of the government."
"However, it was at the tail end of the message that Jackson detonated his political bombshell. In a calculated effort to intensify class antagonisms, he said: 'It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society—the farmer, mechanics, and laborers— who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government. There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. In the act before me there seems to be a wide and unnecessary departure from these just principles.'
[Remini, Robert Vincent, "Andrew Jackson and the Bank War: a study in the growth of presidential power." W. W. Norton & Company, 1967, pp.82-83]
In another matter regarding Georgia and the Cherokees, President Jackson also thumbed his nose at the Marshall court:
"In a [Supreme Court] decision that left Georgians demanding secession, [Chief Justice] Marshall ruled the Cherokee Acts of the Georgia legislature"repugnant to the Constitution, laws and treaties of the United States.
"The forcible seizure and abduction of [Samuel A. Worcester], who was residing... by authority of the President of the United States [as postmaster], is also a violation of the acts which authorize the chief magistrate to exercise his authority."
"With that, Marshall ordered Georgia's Cherokee Acts "reversed and annulled."
"All but ordering rebellion against the federal government, Georgia governor Wilson Lumpkin called Marshall's decision "usurpation" and said the state would respond with "the spirit of determined resistance."
"With no means of enforcing their decision, Marshall and the justices were helpless to prevent the collapse of the federal legal system. In Congress southerners voiced support for Georgia with shouts of defiance. Citing Jefferson's Kentucky Resolution, which stated that the Constitution was a compact between the states, South Carolina senator Robert Young Hayne called the Supreme Court decision "oppressive" and raised the banner of state sovereignty.
"The eloquent Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts fired back:
"It is, sir, the people's constitution, the people's government; made for the people, by the people and answerable to the people.... The people... have declared that this Constitution shall be the supreme law.... Who is to judge between the people and the government? ... Shall constitutional questions be left to four and twenty popular bodies, each at liberty to decide for itself, and none bound to respect the decisions of others?"
"Webster ended his defense of the Supreme Court and the Constitution with the stirring words that became a rallying cry across the North and parts of the West:"
"Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable."
"As northern senators cheered, southern senators cried for armed resistance. Facing reelection in a matter of months, President Andrew Jackson declared allegiance to the South by telling New York journalist Horace Greeley, "John Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it."
"The controversy set Henry Clay's political blood aboil, and he set out on a series of public appearances, assailing the Jackson administration for its "injustice" toward the Cherokees and the "deep wound" it inflicted on "the character of the American Republic." He used his attacks on the President to renew his advocacy of the American System, with higher tariffs to protect American-made products from imports and internal improvements to unite the nation with a modern transportation system.
"With public opinion turning against the President in some parts of the country, Congress responded to Clay's appeals by passing an internal improvements bill designed to insult the President. It appropriated federal funds to extend the National Road from Maysville, on the Ohio border in northeastern Kentucky, to Nashville, Tennessee— the President's hometown—via Lexington, Kentucky—Clay's home town. The President vetoed it, insisting that the extension did not qualify for federal funds without a constitutional amendment.
"The presidential veto so outraged Kentuckians that they pressured Clay to run again for the presidency. He agreed, convinced now that the Calhoun-Jackson feud and the defection of Jackson's cabinet and the vice president from the administration had undermined the President's political strength and created a perfect opportunity to topple him from power."
[Unger, pp.157-159]
[Note: I believe James Madison vetoed a similar crony spending bill.]
The problem with unelected lawyers, such as those on the federal courts, is that they, like Lincoln and Clay of old, can find federal powers in the Constitution that no one else can, and some that were specifically rejected during the Convention. That is a pretty neat trick!
It is possible that Jackson threats were misunderstood regarding South Carolina's earlier threats to nullify the tariff. These words are from Jackson's Bank Veto:
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. In the act before me, there seems to be a wide and unnecessary departure from these just principles. Nor is our government to be maintained, or our Union preserved, by invasion of the rights and powers of the several States. In thus attempting to make our general government strong, we make it weak. Its true strength consists in leaving individuals and States, as much as possible, to themselves; in making itself felt, not in its power, but in its beneficence, not in its control, but in its protection, not in binding the States more closely to the center, but leaving each to move unobstructed in its proper orbit."
[The Bank Veto, July 10, 1832, in James Parton, "Life of Andrew Jackson Vol III." 1870, p.409]
It is obvious Jackson was a decentralized and limited government Jeffersonian, with high respect for state sovereignty. I believe he considered the tariff to be constitutional, as long as he didn't waste it on crony projects.
Mr. Kalamata