Key Terms:

1. corrupt bargain: alleged deal between presidential candidates John Q. Adams and Henry Clay to throw the election, to be decided by the house of representatives, in Adam's favor

2. spoils system: the practice of a successful political party giving public office to its supporters

3. Trail of Tears: forced march of fifteen hundred cherokee indians from their Georgia and Alabama homes to Indian territory; some four thousand Cherokee died in the journey

4. Bank War: the political struggle that developed over the issue of rechartering the Second Bank of the United States during the Andrew Jackson administration

5. pet banks: popular term for pro-Jackson state banks that received the bulk of federal deposits when Andrew Jackson moved to dismantle the bank of the united states in 1833

6. Alamo: a mission in San Antonio, Texas that was used as a fort during the Texas revolution

7. Goliad: city in Texas where defeated American volunteers threw down their arms during the Lone Star Rebellion.

8. Force Bill: passed by congress alongside the compromise tariff; it authorized the president to use the military to collect federal tariff duties

9. Anti-Masonic party: first founded in New York, it gained considerable influence in New England and the mid Atlantic during the 1832 election, campaigning against the politically influential masonic order, a secret society. anti-masons opposed Andrew Jackson, a mason, and drew much of their support from evangelical protestants

10. Indian Removal Act: provided for the general resettlement of Native Americans from east of the Mississippi River to lands west

Section Summaries

Section 1: The “Corrupt Bargain” of 1824

• James Monroe finished his final presidential term.
• Four new candidates were up for president: John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, William H. Crawford, and Andrew Jackson.
• It was a battle of the Republicans.
• Jackson won the popular vote but did not have enough electoral votes to win automatically.
• The House of Representatives chose John Quincy Adams as the next president in 1825.
• Many Jacksonians began a protest but did not change the outcome of the election.

Section 2: A Yankee Misfit in the White House

• Adams was not well liked and gained respect by demanding it from those who worked for him.
• There were many mixed emotions about whether he was a good president or not.
• Many people did not like the corrupt bargains that he was letting take place, where other wished that he would cause a few more to take place.
• Any good that Adams tried to make happen was frowned upon by the public.

Section 3: Going “Whole Hog” for Jackson in 1828

• Andrew Jackson began his presidential campaign the day that he lost to Adams, and had his campaign roaring for the next four years.
• Some of the major rally cries for Jackson were: “Bargain and Corruption,” “Huzza for Jackson,” and “All Hail Old Hickory.”
• Jacksonian praised Jackson as a hero, whereas they denounced Adams and made him look like a bad guy.
• When the election of 1828 came around the parties were getting out of hand going into the candidates families’ personal lives.
• Jackson won the election of 1828.

Section 4: "Old Hickory" as President

• In Jackson’s past, he struggled from many illnesses and diseases and he loved to fight instead of learn.
• He soon learned to turn that love of fighting into love of writing about it.
• He was the second president without a college education.
• Jacksonian became more popular than Jeffersonian.

Section 5: The Spoils System

• Jackson defended the spoils system for his image.
• “Every man is as good as his neighbor, perhaps equally better.”
• Getting rid of Washington’s perfectly good system began some scandals.
• Using the spoils system cemented the loyalty of claims over geographical and economic classes.

Section 6: The Tricky "Tariff of Abominations"

• Tariff issues had been some of Adam’s biggest struggles, and Jackson now understood the pressure.
• An insane tariff was passed in 1828 labelling Jackson as a political “Hot Potato.”
• Many places were having a rough time economically, therefore they used the tariff as there scapegoat.
• Many states began to protest against the tariffs. John C. Calhoun even wrote a pamphlet over it called The South Carolina Explosion

Section 7: "Nullies" in South Carolina

• In Jackson's first term the "nullies" tried to muster the necessary two-thirds vote for nullification in the South Carolina legislature.
• Nullifies and Unionists clashed head-on in the state election of 1832.
• The compromise Tariff of 1833 finally went through Congress.
• Neither Jackson not the "nullies" won a clear-cut victory in 1833.

Section 8: The Trail of Tears

• Jackson's Democrats were committed to western expansion, but this meant there would probably be confrontation with the current inhabitants of the land.
• $20,000 was appropriated for the promotion of literacy and agricultural and vocational instruction among the Indians.
• Jackson's policy led to the forced uprooting of more than 100,000 Indians.
• The Black Hawk War occur ed in 1832.

Section 9: The Bank of War

• Jackson did not trust many banks, which caused many of his "followers" to not trust them as well.
• He did not like it because the Bank of the United States acted as another branch of government.
• The Bank War began because Daniel Webster and Henry Clay tried to pass a bill to renew the Bank of the United States charter.
• Henry Clay used Jackson's hate of banks for his presidential race against him in the next election.

Section 10: "Old Hickory" Wallops Clay in 1832

• "Jackson Forever: Go the Whole Hog."
• A third party entered the presidential race for the first time: the Anti-Masonic party.
• The Anti-Masonic party was also anti-Jackson due to his political beliefs, even though Jackson is a born and raised Mason.
• Jackson won with an electoral vote of 219 to 49

Section 11: Burying Biddle's Bank

• The Bank of the United States was due to expire in 1836.
• In 1833 Jackson decided to bury the bank for good by removing federal deposits from its vaults, so that Biddle wouldn't manipulate it.
• The death of the Bank of the United States left a financial vacuum in the American economy.
• "Wildcat currency became so unreliable that Jackson issued a Specie Circular.

Section 12: The Birth of the Whigs

• The Whig party contained many diverse elements.
• The hatred of Jackson and his "executive usurpation" was its only apparent cement in its formative days.
• Whigs thought of themselves as conservatives, yet they were progressive in their support of active government programs and reforms.
• The Whigs claimed to be the defenders of the common man and declared the Democrats the party of cronyism and corruption.

Section 13: The Election of 1836

• Martin Van Buren was chosen by Jackson for "appointment" as his successor in 1836.
• Jackson rigged the nomination convention and rammed his favorite down the throats of the delegates.
• The Whigs could not nominate a single presidential candidate.
• Van Buren won the election by popular vote, 765,483-739,795.

Section 14: Big Woes for the "Little Magician"

• Martin Van Buren was the first president to be born under the American flag.
• He had resentment towards many Democrats, "bastard politicians".
• Van Buren's four years had an excessive amount of toil and trouble.
• Jackson bequeathed to Van Buren the makings of the searing depression.

Section 15: Depression Doldrums and the Independent Treasury

• The panic of the 1837 was a symptom of the financial sickness of the times.
• Failures of wheat crops, ravaged by the Hessian fly, made the distress even worse.
• American banks collapsed by the hundreds, including some "pet banks."
• Van Buren tried to apply vintage Jacksonian medicine to the economy through his controversial "Divorce Bill."

Section 16: Gone to Texas

• Americans continued to covet the vast expanse of Texas, which the United States had abandoned to Spain when acquiring Florida in 1819.
• Hardy Texas pioneers remained Americans at heart, resenting the trammels imposed by a "foreign" government.
• Sam Houston was a distinguished latecomer, leader, and ex-governor of Tennessee.
• In 1835, Santa Anna wiped out all local rights and started the raise an army to suppress the upstart of Texans.

Section 17: The Lone Star Rebellion

• In 1836 the Texans declared their independence and named Sam Houston commander in chief.
• Sam Houston wiped out nearly two hundred pugnacious Texans at the Alamo.
• These events put the U.S. government in a difficult situation.
• Many Texans remained slaveholders.

Section 18: Log Cabins and Hard Cider of 1840

• Martin Van Buren was renominated by the Democrats in 1840.
• The Whigs decided to nominate William Henry Harrison.
• Harrison was nearly sixty-eight when the campaign ended.
• Harrison won with a close margin of 1,274,624-1,127,781.

Section 19: Politics for the People

• The election of 1840 demonstrated two major changes in American politics since the Era of Good Feelings.
• Most high political offices continued t be filled by "leading citizens."
• The common man was at last moving to the center of the national political stage.
• Instead of the old divine rights of kings, America was now bowing to the divine right of the people.

Section 20: The Two-Party System

• The second dramatic change resulting from the 1840 election was the formation of a two-party system.
• Democrats clung to states' rights and federal restraint in social and economic affairs as their basic doctrines.
• The two parties were set apart by their real differences of philosophy and policy.
• When the two-party system began to creak in the 1850's, the Union was mortally imperiled.