[Mr. Poinsett]

I have not read your material, so I’m going to read this article, and I’m going to read your chapter concerning Van Buren’s creation of a national political party in seven events that changed america. And after that, I’ll get back to you! My MA was on Jackson and the Nullification Crisis; my knowledge of the Bank war is decent, and my knowledge of Jackson historiography is really good, but not necessarily on the bank war. After I’ve read, I’ll let you know what I think.

By your last post, are you suggesting that Van Buren was more of a creator of the Democratic Party than Jackson himself?

[LS]

Absolutely VB was THE creator. See Richard Brown's seminal article, "The Missouri Crisis, . . . " forget the rest of the title, but I cite it in all my work. VB gave it a dry run in 1824, but didn't have the right guy. But he did have the right system. The party structure he created guaranteed that after that, government would grow (even faster) with every election because you gave away jobs ("spoils, patronage") to get elected. When a rival party (the Whigs) came on the scene, they could only compete in the same way, hence the "bidding" got even more intense.

As I show in the book chapter, the Pendleton Act, designed to "reform" this, really made it worse because after the PA, pols could no longer give away a few thousand jobs to supporters, they now had to promise huge blocs worth of jobs (ethanol subsidies, gay rights, whatever) to different groups of people to get out the vote.