Chapter 13

The election of 1824 featured four candidates. Andrew Jackson won the most popular and electoral votes but not a majority, so under the Twelfth Amendment the choice fell to the House of Representatives.

Speaker Henry Clay, who had finished last, threw his support to John Quincy Adams, who was then elected. When Adams promptly named Clay his secretary of state, Jackson's furious supporters denounced a "corrupt bargain."

Adams, a brilliant but chilly statesman, had an unhappy presidency. His nationalist proposals for roads, canals, and a national university alarmed states'-rights advocates, and his supporters were hounded by Jacksonians preparing for revenge in 1828.

The bitter election of 1828 swept Andrew Jackson — "Old Hickory," the hero of New Orleans — into office on a wave of popular support. His victory reflected the rise of universal white male suffrage and a new age of the "common man."

Jackson rewarded his followers with government jobs under the spoils system ("to the victor belong the spoils"), which he defended as democratic rotation in office even as it bred corruption.

His raucous inauguration, mobbed by ordinary citizens, symbolized a democratic revolution — power seemed to be shifting from the elite to the masses.

The high Tariff of 1828 — branded the "Tariff of Abominations" by southerners — enraged South Carolina, which believed protective tariffs enriched the North at the South's expense.

Vice President John C. Calhoun secretly argued that a state could nullify a federal law it deemed unconstitutional. In 1832 South Carolina declared the tariff null and void and threatened to secede.

Jackson responded firmly: he got Congress to pass a Force Bill authorizing the use of the army, while Henry Clay engineered a Compromise Tariff of 1833 that gradually lowered rates. Both sides claimed victory, but the crisis exposed the dangerous power of the states'-rights doctrine.

Jackson distrusted the Second Bank of the United States as a "monster" that served the wealthy few. When bank president Nicholas Biddle sought an early recharter in 1832, Jackson vetoed it in a ringing message denouncing privilege and monopoly.

Reelected in 1832, Jackson moved to kill the Bank by withdrawing federal deposits and placing them in state "pet banks." Critics mocked his sweeping use of executive power by portraying him as "King Andrew the First."

The resulting flood of unstable paper money and rampant land speculation led Jackson to issue the Specie Circular (1836), requiring public lands to be bought with hard money — a step that helped trigger the Panic of 1837 after he left office.

Jackson pushed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, forcing the eastern tribes to relocate west of the Mississippi. The "Five Civilized Tribes" — including the Cherokee, who had adopted many white ways — were the main targets.

The Cherokee fought back in court, and in Worcester v. Georgia (1832) Chief Justice Marshall ruled in their favor. But Jackson refused to enforce the decision, reportedly saying, "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it."

In 1838 the U.S. Army drove some 15,000 Cherokee westward along the Trail of Tears, a brutal forced march on which roughly a quarter of them died from disease, cold, and hunger.

Americans had streamed into Mexican Texas, led by settlers like Stephen Austin. Friction over slavery, religion, and self-rule led to revolt when the dictator Santa Anna tried to tighten control.

In 1836 Santa Anna's army wiped out the Texan defenders of the Alamo and massacred prisoners at Goliad. But weeks later, Sam Houston surprised and crushed the Mexican army at the Battle of San Jacinto, capturing Santa Anna and winning Texan independence.

Texas became an independent "Lone Star Republic" and sought annexation to the United States — but northern fears of adding another slave state kept it out of the Union for nearly a decade.