During the Age of Jackson (1824-40), politics became more democratic, the power of the presidency increased, America became more optimistic regarding human progress, and sectionalism supplanted nationalism.

I. Democracy and the common man

A. The rise of the common man as a participant in the political process

1. White manhood suffrage

2. Most public offices -- especially in the West -- are elective

3. Written ballot

4. More educated population

5. National and state nominating conventions

B. Women, African Americans, and Native Americans do not benefit from political reforms

II. The power of the presidency increased

A. Election of 1824 and the presidency of John Quincy Adams

1. Sectional candidates cannot achieve an electoral majority

2. The House chooses a president

3. The "Corrupt Bargain"

4. A nationalist program defeated

B. Andrew Jackson and the emergence of the democratic party

1. Heirs to Jeffersonian republicans

a) Support expansion

b) Economic and political freedom for free white men

c) Attack privilege and monopoly

d) Opposed to protective tariff

e) Suspicious of rapid social and economic change

2. Power base in rural South and West as well as among some urban Northern workers

3. Increased power of presidency as seen by:

a) "Spoils system"

b) Refusal to renew charter for Second Bank of the United States

(1) Removal of Biddle

(2) Specie Circular

c) Indian removal

d) Supremacy of the Union [Nullification Crisis]

e) Use of the veto [Maysville Road]

4. Avoids slavery question whenever possible

C. Presidency of Martin Van Buren

1. Independent Treasury System

2. Panic of 1837

3. Defeated by Whig Wme. Henry Harrison in 1840

D. The Whigs 1830-1854 founded by Henry Clay and others opposed to policies of Jackson

1. Heirs to federalists

a) Favor a strong national government

b) Support for Clay's American System

c) Defenders of Second Bank of the United States

d) Supporters of education and social reform -- including Temperance (but not at the national level)

e) Favor protective tariff

2. Power base in Northeast, Northwest, and Southern planters/urban merchants

3. Avoid slavery question whenever possible

III. American Optimism Seen in Reform Impulse

A. America as "City on a Hill"

1. "And we Americans are the peculiar, chosen people -- the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world." -- Herman Melville

2. Optimism regarding progress and human perfectibility by individuals

B. Romanticism and Transcendentalism

C. Reform in education

1. Horace Mann in Massachusetts

a) Common school education for all

b) Creation of normal school system

2. Technical schools (e.g., RPI)

3. Women's colleges (e.g.. Mt. Holyoke)

D. Humanitarian reform

1. Dorothea Dix -- humanitarian treatment of prison inmates and the insane

2. Gaudelette -- programs for the deaf

3. Samuel Gridley Howe-Thomas H. Perkins School (Braille)

4. Temperance

5. Utopian communities (e.g., Brook Farm, New Harmony, Fruitlands)

E. Second Great Awakening (Charles G. Finney)

1. Puritan concept of "original sin" abandoned

2. Stresses a democratic evangelical Christianity

3. Close ties with Temperance Movement

F. Dark side of reform

1. Anti-Catholicism

2. Anti-Mormonism

3. Anti-immigrant sentiment

G. Evolving role of women

1. The "cult of domesticity"

a) Purpose in life to marry and bear children (Catherine Beecher's Treatise on Domestic Economy)

b) Believed to be physically and mentally weaker than men

c) Prone to hysteria

2. Expanding legal rights -- primarily in North and West

a) Right to own and inherit property

b) Divorce under some circumstances

c) Guardianship of children

3. Education

a) Compulsory common school education -- primarily in North and West

b)College available for some (Mt. Holyoke, Oberlin)

c) Normal schools

4. Employment opportunities

a) Working-class women in factories (e.g., Lowell Mill girls)

b) Working-class women -- including African-Americans -- in domestic service

c) Middle-class women in teaching

d) A few women will make their way into the professions (e.g., Maria Mitchell, Elizabeth Blackwell)

5. Women's Rights Movement

a) Spearheaded by middle-class women (e.g., Stanton, Anthony, Mott)

b) Seneca Falls, 1848 -- Declaration of Grievances

c) Achieving the right to vote

d) Significant number involved in reform movements of the period

IV. Sectionalism Supplants Nationalism

A. Tariff issues

1. Tariff of Abominations

2. Nullification Crisis

B. Texas statehood

C. Slavery

1. "Gag Rule"

2. Abolition

a) American Colonization Society, 1817 (founded by Madison, Monroe, Marshall)

b) Nat Turner's Rebellion, 1831

c) William Lloyd Garrison publishes Liberator, 1831

d) David Walker, Appeal to Colored Citizens, 1829

3. Sectional tensions reflected in the antislavery Liberty Party

More...

• Curriculum Unit: The Age of Jackson
• II. Primary-Source Documents
• III. Categorization and Synthesizing Strategies for Unit Review
• IV. Evaluation Options
• V. Past DBQs and FRQs Based on the Age of Jackson

See also...

• AP United States History Course Home Page
• Teachers' Resources