The Rise of Democratic Politics

HST 210: The US Experience

Rise of Democratic Politics
Two Changes:

Voting Rights
• property qualifications for voting and
officeholding repealed
• voting by voice  eliminated
• more direct methods of selecting officials
• voter participation skyrocketed.
• By 1840  - 80 percent of adult white males went
to the polls
• While universal white manhood suffrage was
becoming a reality  but restrictions on voting by
African Americans and women remained in
force.
Rise of Democratic Politics cont...

Second Party System

• made possible by an expanded electorate

• replaced the politics of deference to and leadership
by elites.
•  mid-1830s, two national political parties
• professional party managers
• partisan newspapers, speeches, parades, rallies, and
barbecues to mobilize popular support. 
• Our modern political system had been born.
John Quincy Adams
• intellectual
• lacked the political skills and personality necessary
• “chip off the old iceberg.”
• president at time of growing partisan divisions.
• The Republican Party had split:
o National Republicans
o Jacksonian Democrats
• Adams’s advocated  strong federal government and
a high tariff 
• upset slavery interest
• unwilling to adapt to the practical demands of
politics through patronage system
•  Indian policies cost him supporters. 
Andrew Jackson
1828 Election
• “J. Q. Adams who can write” vs. “Andy Jackson
who can fight”
• bitter election
• The Jackson campaign in 1828 was the first to
appeal directly for voter support through a
professional political organization.
• first time in American history that a presidential
election was the focus of public attention
• triumph for political democracy
•  beginning of a new democratic age.
• Jackson convinced many Americans that their
votes mattered.
• remove all obstacles that prevented workers from
earning a greater share of the nation’s wealth.
Indian Policy
• 125,000 Native Americans still lived east of the
Mississippi River. Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw,
and Creek Indians--60,000 strong
• Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. 
• whether these Native American peoples would be
permitted to block white expansion 
• whether the U.S. government and its citizens would
abide by previously made treaties.
• Two strategies:
o Assimilation  
o Indian removal
• Jackson favored removal 
• Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia
• Worcester vs. Georgia
Trail of Tears
• 1831 Choctaw
 
• 1836  Creek
• 1838 Cherokee