A School History of the United States

by John Bach McMaster

POLITICS FROM 1824 TO 1845

%325. New Political Institutions.%—Of the political leaders of Washington's time few were left in 1825. The men who then conducted affairs had almost all been born since the Revolution, or were children at the time.[1] The same is true of the mass of the people. They too had been born since the Revolution, and, growing up under different conditions, held ideas very different from the men who went before them. They were more democratic and much less aristocratic, more humane, more practical. They abolished the old and cruel punishments, such as branding the cheeks and foreheads of criminals with letters, cutting off their ears, putting them in the pillory and the stocks; they partly abolished imprisonment for debt; they established free schools, reformatories, asylums, and penitentiaries. They amended their state constitutions or made new ones, and extended the right to vote, and introduced new political institutions, some of which were of doubtful value, but are still used.

[Footnote 1: John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson were born in 1767; Henry Clay, in 1777; John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, Martin Van Buren, and Thomas H. Benton, in 1782.]

%326. Political Proscription; the Gerrymander.%—One of these was the custom of turning men out of public office because they did not belong to the party in power, or did not "work" for the election of the successful candidate. As early as 1792 this vicious practice was in use in Pennsylvania, and a few years later was introduced in New York by De Witt Clinton. Jefferson resorted to it when he became President, but it was not till 1820 that it was firmly established by Congress. In that year William H. Crawford, who was Secretary of the Treasury and a presidential candidate, secured the passage of a "tenure of office" act, limiting the term of collectors of revenue, and a host of other officials, to four years, and thus made the appointments to these places rewards for political service.

Another institution dating from this time is the gerrymander. In 1812, when Elbridge Gerry was the Republican governor of Massachusetts, his party, finding that at the next election they would lose the governorship and the House of Representatives, decided to hold the Senate by marking out new senatorial districts. In doing this they drew the lines in such wise that districts where there were large Federalist majorities were cut in two, and the parts annexed to other districts, where there were yet larger Republican majorities.

[Illustration]

The story is told that a map of the Essex senatorial district was hanging on the office wall of the editor of the Columbian Centinel, when a famous artist named Stuart entered. Struck by the peculiar outline of the towns forming the district, he added a head, wings, and claws with his pencil, and turning to the editor, said: "There, that will do for a salamander." "Better say a Gerrymander," returned the editor, alluding to Elbridge Gerry, the Republican governor who had signed the districting act. However this may be, it is certain that the name "gerrymander" was applied to the odious law in the columns of the Centinel, that it came rapidly into use, and has remained in our political nomenclature ever since. Indeed, a huge cut of the monster was prepared, and the next year was scattered as a broadside over the commonwealth, and so aroused the people that in the spring of 1813, despite the gerrymander, the Federalists recovered control of the Senate, and repealed the law. But the example was set, and was quickly imitated in New Jersey, New York, and Maryland. This established the institution, and it has been used over and over again to this day.

%327. The Third-term Tradition.%—Another political custom which had grown to have the force of law was that of never electing a President to three terms. There is nothing in the Constitution to prevent a President serving any number of terms; but, as we have seen, when Washington finished his second he declined another, and when Jefferson (in 1807-1808) was asked by the legislatures of several states to accept a third term, he declined, and very seriously advised the people never to elect any man President more than twice.[1] The example so set was followed by Madison and Monroe and had thus by 1824 become an established usage.

[Footnote 1: McMaster's With the Fathers, pp. 64-70.]

%328. New Political Issues.%—The most important change of all was the rise of new political issues. We have seen how the financial questions which divided the people in 1790-1792 and gave rise to the Federalist and Republican parties, were replaced during the wars between England and France by the question, "Shall the United States be neutral?" It was not until the end of our second war with Great Britain that we were again free to attend to our home affairs.