ELECTION #12. 1832. The NASTY-METER is 5.

QUOTE from an Anti-Jackson headline: "The king upon the throne: The people in the dust."

Jackson was the first president to be born in a log cabin. He looked at himself as the champion of the common man, but his enemies in the 1832 election claimed he was a dictator. By the way, Jackson did pay for the damage to the White House caused by the ANIMAL HOUSE-style antics of his supporters at his inauguration.

The 1832 election would change the political landscape by introducing the first national party conventions. The first party to do so was held by the Antimasons, a party that had sprung up in opposition to such powerful secret societies as the Masons. They were the first to introduce such features as the party platform and rules committee. Their candidate was a guy named William Wirt.

ELECTION #12, 1832. The CANDIDATES.

DEMOCRAT: ANDREW JACKSON. The Democrats met in a hotel saloon in Baltimore in May, 1832, and naturally renominated Jackson. Jackson picked Martin Van Buren as his VP. The Democrats came up with an innovation which declared that the majority of delegates from each state would henceforth designate the single nominee.

NATIONAL-REPUBLICAN: HENRY CLAY. The National-Republicans-soon to start calling themselves the WHIGS-nominated Congressman Henry Clay (and former Secretary of State under John Quincy Adams, do you remember the "Corrupt Bargain".) Former Attorney General John Sergeant was the VP candidate.

(Clay of Kentucky and Jackson of Tennessee had a couple of things in common. First, they hated each other and second, they both had been involved in duels. Clay had fought one against Senator John Randolph, while Jackson had anywhere from two to a hundred or more. (His opponents claimed he had over a hundred.)

The CAMPAIGN in 1832.

The Republicans ran cartoons depicting Jackson as a pig about to be devoured at a barbecue by a ravenous Clay. They also depicted Jackson playing cards with Clay and Wirt - Jackson's cards read "Intrigue," "Corruption," and "Imbecility." He was also depicted as a king with a crown, sceptor and royal robes, stomping on the Constitution and the Bank Charter, under the heading "Born to Command."

The main issue in the campaign was what to do with the Bank of the United States. It had been established by Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury. The purpose of the bank was to accept revenue deposits to fund the national debt and issue paper money. Jackson hated paper money, (he liked coins that clinked in your pocket), he hated the Bank of the U.S. and he especially hated the president of the Bank, Nicholas Biddle, who was a Republican old-money man. Jackson felt the bank was an elitist institution with too much power, one that made "the rich richer and the potent more powerful." (That sounds a little familiar to me as I think of the Wall Street Banks of today.)

When Congress voted to recharter the Bank of the U.S. in 1832 Jackson vetoed it. He moved the money into state-chartered banks. The Republicans attacked Jackson by calling him King Andrew I. They called him "deranged" and attacked him for traveling on Sunday.

But Jackson didn't back down. He called paper money "wretched rag money," He branded Nicholas Biddle as Czar Nick. That is probably the reason Biddle used funds (tax money deposited there by the U.S. government)from the Bank of the U.S. to support Jackson's enemies, including Henry Clay.


The WINNER was ANDREW JACKSON.

Jackson won in a landslide with 701,780 popular votes to 484,205 for Henry Clay. Jackson got 219 electoral votes to 49 for Clay. William Wirt got 7 electoral votes and a guy named Floyd got 11 electoral votes.

JACKSON'S LEGACY.

Andrew Jackson was a wildly popular president. He was widely seen as representing and espousing the cause of the common man. He set out to reform government; one of his goals was to reduce the national debt, which he did. He also issued the Nullification Proclamation in 1832, reaffirming the states were forbidden to nullify federal laws.

The biggest negative in his eight year presidency was the Indian Removal Act, passed by Congress in 1830. What it did was authorize the forcible removal of various Indian tribes to lands west of the Mississippi River. From 1835 t0 1838, the Creek and Cherokee are moved west along the "Trail of Tears" and nearly one-quarter of them die along the way from drought, cold, and disease. The Black Hawk War of 1832, in Illinois, was another effort to push tribes westward. It was precipitated when the Sauk and Fox tribes left the Iowa Territory to return to Illinois. They were attacked and defeated by the US army and militia.(I believe Abraham Lincoln fought in this war.)

Jackson had a hell of a temper and he could be cold, unbending, and given to fits of rage. Often times his opponents would give into him because they were afraid of his temper. In many ways, he was a hollow man without his beloved Rachel who had died of a heart attack shortly before his first inauguration in March of 1829.