343. The Meaning of Jackson’s Election.—Andrew Jackson was the first man of plain birth and breeding to sit in the White House. Born on the border between the two Carolinas, he had early made his way to Tennessee and there had risen to leadership through his strength of character and his possession of all the manly qualities most held in repute by the pioneer settlers. The democratic voters gave him whatever political or military offices he wanted, and were thoroughly satisfied with the effective way he discharged his duties. When Indians or British threatened the South or Southwest, he was the man to whom the general government had to turn, and his constant success made him a popular hero throughout the Union. Thus, in reputation as well as in character, he became more than a mere Tennesseean; he became a representative American. He was not a trained statesman, and his opinions on many important subjects were little more than prejudices. But he was thoroughly honest and fearless and precisely the sort of leader fitted to enlist the sympathy and admiration of the democracy. It is true that he could have done little without his shrewd political friends, and that he was likely to be partly their tool. It is true, also, that with all the virtues of the backwoodsmen, he had some of their vices, notably that of vindictiveness. But when all allowances are made, he was a great man, thoroughly representative of the new electorate.

344. The New Democracy.—The new type of politicians controlling the country was but an index of a new electorate. In the East the downfall of the Federalists and the constant extensions of the suffrage had created a party of “the people,” which would have had little chance of making its wishes law under the rÉgime of Washington, or even of Jefferson. But it hailed in Jackson a leader after its own heart. In the West, where aristocracy was practically unknown, no other party had ever existed, and the young communities had long chafed under the conservative methods of the East, which advanced one Secretary of State after another to the Presidential chair. In the South the planters still controlled affairs, but they treated the democracy with consideration, and directed, rather than thwarted, its energies. Of course, in developing this new political force, the teachings of Jefferson and his school had had much influence; but the growth and spread of population, the increase of territory, the development of means of communication, and the opening up of new industries had been more effective. Jefferson had wanted to have the people recognized as the source of power, but he wished to have educated men use the power thus obtained. He thought, moreover, that tyranny would be averted if these picked men represented localities, or states, which would be jealous of their rights, and not the nation at large, which would not be thus jealous. The new democracy, on the other hand, while suspicious of strong government, was national in its sympathies, rather than local, as was soon proved by Jackson. The lately formed states of the West, being all younger than the Union, many of them creations by that Union out of national territory, had less state pride than the older commonwealths which had formed the Union. The new conditions of trade were, moreover, somewhat obliterating state lines in the North and East by inducing travel and correspondence on the part of business men. Thus the local democracy represented by Jefferson was being more and more confined to the South, but it kept up an alliance with the national and more radical democracy represented by Jackson down to the Civil War. Manhood suffrage, dependence of office holders upon the wishes of the electorate, and other principles of the Jacksonian democracy have become the political heritage of Americans, regardless of party.

345. Changes among the People.—The new democracy was strong and honest, but very ignorant. It was controlled by clever politicians, who used the machinery of caucus, primary election, and nominating conventions, and also introduced the ideas of the supreme virtue of party fealty, and of the propriety of distributing the spoils of office to the victors in each successive election. In other words, men were being taught to distrust their individual judgment and to trust that of their party. These ideas were held in all honesty, and few persons had time to consider whither they would lead. Few saw that party loyalty was taking the place of patriotism, that desire for the gains of office was supplanting the spirit of patriotic self-sacrifice. The country had grown tremendously in area, in population, and in wealth. Steamers were running in every direction, and railroads were soon to be built. Religious and educational lethargy had been shaken, and new ideas were in the air. National democracy, with its theories of the right of all to aspire to office, and its businesslike way of rewarding its successful supporters, was itself, therefore, a part of a great transformation of three-fourths of the American people.

PROGRESS OF THE NATION.

346. Growth of the Nation.—It is difficult to realize the extent of this transformation. In 1789 Spain hemmed us in to the South and West and the British had not abandoned fortresses that belonged to us in the Northwest. Just beyond the Alleghanies the Indians were still a menace. Forty years later our domain stretched far beyond the Mississippi, Spain had yielded Florida, and Great Britain respected our rights. The Seminoles in Florida, and other tribes in the far West, were still to give trouble, but everywhere the wigwam was retreating before the log cabin. A generation before, the Atlantic seaboard had dominated the country in population, education, and wealth. Now the West was, not indeed the equal of the East, but a formidable rival. Since the War of 1812, the migration to Northwest and Southwest had been marvelous. The people seemed determined to fill up their more than two million square miles of territory. Emigrants from Europe had not begun to come over in great numbers, but American families were large and always ready to move to a favorable locality, especially from rugged New England to the fertile West. Improved roads, canals, and steamboats facilitated the movement of population, but even in the South, where roads were bad, enterprising families moved by thousands from Virginia and the Carolinas into Alabama and Mississippi, which with their rich lands invited the cotton planter and his slaves. Under these circumstances it is no wonder that by 1830 the population of the country had reached nearly thirteen millions, and that eleven new states had been added to the old thirteen.

347. Material and Moral Progress.—Perhaps the greatest change that had taken place in America was the increased mental and moral energy displayed by its inhabitants. The people were still provincial, but they were no longer sluggish. The War of 1812 had developed their national spirit; their own growth in population, and their acquisitions of territory, out of which wealth in all forms could be easily extracted, had developed their desire to prosper. They were no longer content slowly to grow moderately rich. They fostered manufactures and commerce and agriculture. They became a nation of inventors, and, what was more important, they developed a capacity for pure science which made the name of America honored throughout the world. Out of their midst sprang essayists and novelists and poets who interpreted their life to them. There was a notable growth of the religious spirit; temperance and other reforms were agitated; more attention was paid to education; public charities of all kinds received popular support. Nor were minor things overlooked. Men of all classes began to strive to provide household comforts for their families. Travel was made more comfortable. Good hotels began to replace bad inns. Urban life did not attract country people as it does now, but the towns had grown and prospered. New York was in 1830 a city of two hundred thousand inhabitants. Philadelphia was not far behind. Cincinnati had grown from a mere village to a town of nearly twenty-five thousand people. Throughout the North, East, and West, therefore, the watchword was “Development.” Even in the South, which was rendered conservative and sluggish by the presence of slavery, there were not wanting proofs that many energetic men would like to imitate their more fortunate brothers of other sections. Like the rest of the country, the South hoped for great things from her future railroads and canals, but her industrial future was still far in the distance.

348. Political Conditions.—Although the East and North led the rest of the country in manufacturing and commerce, and although the West was developing agriculture to a great degree, political power had not passed to them as completely as a casual observer might have perhaps expected. The South might be conservative, but it had an immense source of wealth in its cotton; and buying, as it did, many supplies from the North, it was a customer not to be offended. Hence many Northern politicians opposed Southern schemes less violently than they would otherwise have done, and hence the South seemed to have disproportionate power at Washington. Besides, Southern planters had more leisure to think of politics than busier citizens elsewhere, and their emotional temperaments naturally inclined them to political leadership. But they were being more and more outnumbered every year in the House of Representatives, and the Missouri Controversy had shown them how increasingly difficult it would be to keep the Senate balanced between free and slave states. In view of their perilous position, they naturally became all the more domineering and haughty in their demands. This, however, roused the temper of the other sections. Wealthy New England had time and means to develop the philanthropic spirit, and an anti-slavery movement was sure to follow. The Northwest, settled largely by New Englanders, would take this movement up, although hampered by the presence of Southern immigrants in Indiana and Illinois. It was impossible either for the descendants of the Puritans or for the hardy pioneers to tolerate long the domination of an aristocracy based on slavery.

349. The New West.—The Western man, especially, living in his log cabin, pursuing the primitive unconventional life of a farmer, could not sympathize with an aristocracy that did not work with its hands, and must sympathize with slaves that did. The graces of Southern social life counted for little with Puritan or pioneer, and when the fight was begun the moral enthusiasm of the one, and the shrewd sense, plain morality, and superb energy of the other, would insure the victory for freedom. The election of Jackson, who, although partly a Southerner, was more a Westerner, meant, therefore, not merely the triumph of a new democracy, but that the center of political power had crossed the Alleghanies, and that the control which the South had exercised over the Union from the first was passing to stronger hands.

350. Changes in New England.—In New England, also, the spirit of understanding which had long existed with the South on account partly of trade connections, partly of the English homogeneity common to both sections, was rapidly passing away. The old New England of farmers and sailors was now becoming more and more a country of manufacturers and artisans. The old Puritan leaven still fermented,—not as formerly, within the churches, the power of which had conspicuously declined, but in new forms of philanthropy, philosophy, and literature. New England had always been a power in the intellectual life of the nation, but from 1830 to 1860 this power was vastly increased. From her midst came abolitionists like Garrison^[151] and others shortly to be mentioned. In Webster she had the greatest of orators and of exponents of the national idea. In Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) she had a teacher of high morality and a philosopher who, if vague, like his fellow-members of the school known as Transcendental, possessed, nevertheless, an inspiring personality. In the elder William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) and Theodore Parker^[152] she had clergymen whose influence was felt far beyond their section. In Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) she had the sweetest and most popular of native poets; and in John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892), a sturdy poet-champion of human liberty. James Russell Lowell (1819–1891), too, was a young son of Massachusetts who, as poet and critic, was to do good work for the nation. All these great men were, more or less, forces to be counted against the continued dominance of the South in politics. With the exception of Webster they were not politicians, but they were thinkers who taught others to think. Against them the South, even with the poet and story writer, Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), could set no such galaxy of genius, save in the sphere of politics; and with the exception of Calhoun, the Southern statesmen of the new generation were inferior to those of the old. Nor were the Middle states, rich and populous though they were, capable of competing with New England as a factor in the nation’s life. Able politicians and editors were coming to the front, and there were some authors of great power, such as James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) and Washington Irving (1783–1859), but none capable of supplying such civic inspiration as writers like Emerson and Whittier. William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) might be counted in this connection, for he did his main work in New York, but he was New England born. In short, it may be fairly said that New England represented for the generation before the Civil War the progressive, moral sense of the nation in the great question of freedom versus slavery; for that portion of the West which served the cause of liberty was settled chiefly by New England people. Curiously enough, the greatest imaginative genius that New England produced, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864), the romancer, took little interest in the burning question of the day.