CHAPTER 29
THE REIGN OF ANDREW JACKSON, 1829-1837
Jackson's early career.
His "kitchen cabinet".
301. General Jackson.--Born in the backwoods of Carolina, Jackson had early crossed the Alleghanies and settled in Tennessee. Whenever trouble came to the Western people, whenever there was need of a stout heart and an iron will, Jackson was at the front. He always did his duty. He always did his duty well. Honest and sincere, he believed in himself and he believed in the American people. As President he led the people in one of the stormiest periods in our history. Able men gathered about him. But he relied chiefly on the advice of a few friends who smoked their pipes with him and formed his "kitchen cabinet." He seldom called a regular cabinet meeting. When he did call one, it was often merely to tell the members what he had decided to do.
Party machines.
The Spoils System.
302. The Spoils System.--Among the able men who had fought the election for Jackson were Van Buren and Marcy of New York and Buchanan of Pennsylvania. They had built up strong party machines in their states. For they "saw nothing wrong in the principle that to the victors belong the spoils of victory." So they rewarded their party workers with offices--when they won. The Spoils System was now begun in the national government. Those who had worked for Jackson rushed to Washington. The hotels and boarding-houses could not hold them. Some of them camped out in the parks and public squares of the capital. Removals now went merrily on. Rotation in office was the cry. Before long Jackson removed nearly one thousand officeholders and appointed political partisans in their places.
The North and the South. McMaster, 301-304.
303. The North and the South.--The South was now a great cotton-producing region. This cotton was grown by negro slaves. The North was now a great manufacturing and commercial region. It was also a great agricultural region. But the labor in the mills, fields, and ships of the North was all free white labor. So the United States was really split into two sections: one devoted to slavery and to a few great staples, as cotton; the other devoted to free white labor and to industries of many kinds.
The South and the tariff, 1829.
Calhoun's "Exposition."
304. The Political Situation, 1829.--The South was growing richer all the time; but the North was growing richer a great deal faster than was the South. Calhoun and other Southern men thought that this difference in the rate of progress was due to the protective system. In 1828 Congress had passed a tariff that was so bad that it was called the Tariff of Abominations (p. 231). The Southerners could not prevent its passage. But Calhoun wrote an "Exposition" of the constitutional doctrines in the case. This paper was adopted by the legislature of South Carolina as giving its ideas. In this paper Calhoun declared that the Constitution of the United States was a compact. Each state was a sovereign state and could annul any law passed by Congress. The protective system was unjust and unequal in operation. It would bring "poverty and utter desolation to the South." The tariff act should be annulled by South Carolina and by other Southern states.