Jacksonian Democracy, the National Republicans, and the American System

This is my third in a sub-series detailing Southern Whiggery. See the sidebar for earlier posts. 

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In his singular study Whig Party in the South (1913), historian Arthur Charles Cole outlined five stages of development of the Party in the South from its birth in the 1830s to its demise after its disappointing performance in the 1852 election. First and foremost, Cole stated unequivocally that the Whigs evolved from a disaffected group of Jacksonians turned anti-Jacksonians, the direct result of Andrew Jackson’s reaction to John C. Calhoon’s Nullification of the Tariff of 1832. Though not “nullifiers” per se—indeed, most of these men adamantly opposed the concept as well as Calhoun’s tactic—these state-rights leaders abandoned the Jackson camp in the wake of Jackson’s threatened military action against the state of South Carolina. Their numbers reflected a fair proportion of the South’s planting class. Briefly, for the sake of future reference, the other four stages were the Southern Whigs’ acceptance of Clay’s American System, realized by the year 1844; after 1844, a period of cautious interaction with their Northern counterparts, the result of the slavery issue; a growing rift between not only Southern and Northern Whigs, but increased distrust by the Party’s Southern constituents given the Northern faction’s reaction to abolitionism, making the Party an unfit champion for Southern interests; the demise of the National Party following the disastrous election of 1852; and an attempt to revive the Party on the part of the South until the War Between the States swept all pretense aside. I argue that there is yet another stage, that being during Reconstruction and Redemption.  

In my last post I referenced Henry Clay’s need for a cause strong enough to wrest the hearts and minds of the American people from the popular Andrew Jackson. Two highly charged issues, one the National Bank, the second the Nullification Crisis—the two intricately linked by the American System—partially filled Clay’s need. 

The American System, so named by its chief partisan, Clay, and the very essence of the National Republican platform, was a government-assisted economic program the roots of which go back to our first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton. Nationalistic in concept, it is characterized by:

(1) a high protective tariff, initially put into effect to protect burgeoning American industry...

Okay, belay that. Initially it was put into place, with Southern support, in 1816 to protect and strengthen this young nation’s security against Britain following the War of 1812. Lasting peace with mother England arrived in the short-term, then came the argument to protect America’s infant manufacturers. Try as those manufacturers could to deny it [okay, this is me talking], their infant could remain an infant only so long, so the pro-tariff argument again morphed, this time into the protection of “American labor” [yeah, right, more like those who employed the labor]. The Tariff of 1816 didn’t go away; in fact, tariffs kept getting more protective.

(2) A national bank supported by investments from the Federal government and private investors, its purpose to stabilize the currency and reign in risky state banks; and

(3) Federal subsidies for internal improvements, primarily roads and canals meant to link the nation and foster industry as well as security.  

They all sound great, don’t they? We have them today and much, much more. One problem, though: such programs can’t be managed (then as now) without centralization. Popular in New England and Pennsylvania and even the Midwest where industry/manufacturing blossomed, The American System was out of sync with the Founder’s federalism. Strict constructionists/state righters, residing mostly in the South, knew it. State righters, astute victims of the protective tariff, understood the reason the Founders went to the lengths they did in framing the Constitution to prevent such shenanigans, and were aware of the Anti-Federalists pre-ratification warnings as to why the Constitution wouldn’t. This brings us back full circle to the Old-Jeffersonian concerns about the nation’s direction in the wake of the War of 1812. The American System opened the door to Federal interference in the states as well as to political corruption. It was, as those old Jeffersonians of the day repeatedly warned, a looming threat to our [now] long-lost Federal Republic. 

The matter of the Second National Bank, key to the American System, can be divided into two events, one being Jackson’s veto of its re-charter in 1832 followed one year later by his removal of government deposits from the Bank. Event one, I will relate here. Though an obvious attack on the American System, Jackson’s veto was within his purview and constitutional; the removal of the deposits, far more egregious, I will detail in a future post.  

Riding high on the wave of good feeling that accompanied Jackson’s re-election in 1832 and very much aware that Andrew Jackson was no friend of the National Bank, Nicholas Biddle, the Bank’s president, decided the time was favorable to present the Bank’s re-charter to the president, despite the charter’s not expiring for another two years. Considering the popularity of the bank in the Northeast and among the rich planters in many Southern states, Biddle was certain Jackson would not dare veto the measure whereas two years down the road he might. Henry Clay, a bitter foe of Jackson, and Daniel Webster of Massachusetts encouraged Biddle’s decision for early re-charter because they were certain Jackson would veto it, and they were desperate for any conflict that might decrease Jackson’s popularity with the people. Given Jackson’s antagonism to the banking elite, Clay considered the man and his administration a threat to the American System.  

As Clay and Webster anticipated, Jackson declared the Bank outside the scope of national authority and unconstitutional. He vetoed the bill, foiling Biddle. In North Carolina, W. R. Hinton, a Jackson elector, ceased to back Jackson after the veto, but despite protests such as that presented by Hinton and others belonging to the wealthy banking elite, Jackson had foiled Clay and Webster as well. The common folk, regarding the bank a corrupt engine of aristocratic privilege, did not protest the veto, and the National Republicans did not have the votes to override it. The National Republicans had lost the National Bank, a serious blow to the “American System,” and they had nothing to show for it.  

On the subject of the National Republicans’ economic agenda, the American System was about to receive yet another challenge.  

An introduction to the Nullification Crisis next time and thanks for reading,

Charlsie

The Whigs, An Introduction to the Series

This post introduces a series dealing with the Southern Whigs. 

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At this juncture, I’m taking a detour from the main narrative on Alcorn to address an important aspect of Reconstruction that is, I’ve come to believe, less a thread woven into the story’s fabric than it is the material basic to the weave. I refer to the Southern Whigs. My objectives in this brief series are to provide the reader with the evolution of the Whig Party and its role in the South and to identify the Southern Whig’s role during Reconstruction, which is my ultimate purpose for this adjunct. For a detailed history of the Whig Party, I refer the reader to Michael Holt’s The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party and to Arthur Charles Cole’s The Whig Party in the South. Holt’s book is a monster, weighing in at 985 pages in the paperback, and that does not include the notes, but the work is an essential reference for those interested in the subject. Cole’s 1911 doctoral dissertation (it was published in 1913 and is now in the public domain) remains the definitive history of the Whig Party in the South.

The American Whig Party emerged from a split between the Madisonian-leaning, Federalist-infiltrated National Republicans and the Old Republicans, the latter being the primary branch of the Jeffersonian Republican Party. The National Republicans represented the monied, industrial, and banking interests of the Northeast, adhering to government promotion of a national economic program, more in line with the old Federalist doctrines, tempered by kinder/gentler “Madisonism.” The Old Republicans, truer in spirit to our third president, represented the populist, democratic ideals of the common man in the South and West who believed less government computed to greater individual liberty. Jeffersonian Republicans had despised Federalists back in the day of Alexander Hamilton and John Adams and were appalled by this growing faction within the old party. 

During the eight years of Andrew Jackson’s presidency (1829-1837), men from both factions of the Jeffersonian Republicans and from all sections of the country embraced the Whig Party in opposition to an overreaching executive, a factor that took primacy over the conflicting interests of the participating allies. In the end, some twenty years later, these conflicting interests proved a greater (negative) impact on the Whig Party than the anti-Jacksonian cause that had given birth to it. These conflicts, which resulted in its demise, were inherent to the Whig Party from its inception. As far as I’m concerned, these issues, which dealt, fundamentally, with the role of the national government and the role of the states in the Federal system were major disconnects. I will delve deeper into the highpoints in upcoming posts, and I will do so more to focus on the principles and evolution of the Southern Whig and his growing estrangement from his Northern fellows than to narrate the history of the party. For now, suffice it to say that Southern Whigs, like all things Southern, were a different breed from their Northern counterparts. I’d go so far as to suggest the only true Whigs were the Southern ones and the Northern ones were really Federalists in drag, but as my faithful readers know, I am prejudiced in my opinions; furthermore, I’m a far cry from being an expert on Whigs.

In reading histories of that long-ago war, one often reads/hears the term “unionist” bandied about in reference to some Southerners. More often than not, its antecedent is a Southern Whig, but this allusion demands clarification. Southern Whigs, though they idolized Henry Clay and espoused the “principles” of the Whig Party (or what they perceived the principles of the Whig Party to be), did indeed love the “Union”, but not as the inviolable entity Daniel Webster claimed  to have predated the states—that is New England hogwash. Southern Whigs adhered to the Union for the safety and stability it afforded them under the Constitution in the routine conduct of their business and daily lives. If you’ll recall, one of Alcorn’s primary reasons for accepting the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 was because kowtowing was the means by which Mississippi could re-enter the nation, get her representation back in Congress, receive the protection provided by the Constitution, and divest herself of the Yankee contagion—okay, those last are my words.  

Southern Whigs were the largest and wealthiest group of slave-owners in the South. During the antebellum years, they often dominated politics in North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Louisiana, and they had healthy pluralities in a number of other Southern states. During the twenty-odd years spanning the party’s existence, Whigs represented thirty percent (roughly one-third) of the voters and members of the legislature in Mississippi. As a group, these men opposed secession both in theory and in fact, but when the Democratic fire-eaters won out and war came, the Whigs backed their states and their region with money, with arms, and with their blood. For those who do not realize it, opposition to secession and opposition to slavery are two different things, just as being a unionist does not mean being “pro-North,” but rather expresses a preference for the status quo. Drawing such simplistic parallels is worthy only of non-thinking adherents to the modern mainstream’s revision of Civil War history. When the choice finally had to be made, the vast majority of Southern Whigs never questioned where their loyalties lay. Oh, yes, Whigs always questioned Democrats, and they questioned the wisdom of Jefferson Davis, but not out of love for Lincoln or Union or a belief in freedom for the black man. Those particular questions sprang from love for the South and the principles of our Founders’ Republic and the very real danger now threatening their way of life. Perhaps Southern Whigs never belonged in the Whig Party any more than their states belonged in a Federal union perverted by Northern economic interests.  

Next time a more detailed look at the embryonic Whig Party and the rise of the Southern Whig.

Thanks for reading,  

Charlsie