Andrew Jackson: The Champion Of The Common Man

Shortly after the American Revolution, the United States entered an era of profound economic and social change that was dominated first by the Market Revolution and subsequently by Andrew Jackson’s skillful use of the power of the presidency to crack down on capitalist exploitation. Jackson’s first biographer, James Parton, however, describes the legacy of the seventh President’s administration as one fraught with controversy, “Andrew Jackson was a patriot, and a traitor. He was the greatest of generals, and wholly ignorant of the art of war. He was the most candid of men, and capable of the profoundest dissimulation. He was a democratic autocrat, an urbane savage, an atrocious saint.” Many people argue that Jackson, having turned the federal

Despite the fact that America’s economy was heavily influenced by government interference and favoritism under John Quincy Adams and the American System, by 1832 Andrew Jackson, the Champion of the Common Man, jeopardized his political security in the interest of both preserving every man’s right to opportunity and upholding a nonpartisan economy. We can draw insight from Jackson’s disgust for banks, or rather for any act of government that gives a special advantage to one group over another. In Jackson’s letter to Congress justifying his Bank Veto Message, he argues, “when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages... make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society… have a right to complain of the injustices of their government.” In the preceding months, Jackson was in the midst of his presidential campaign for reelection when his opponents put political pressure on him by fast tracking the Bank Bill. Jackson, however, remained steadfast in his belief that the proposed bank was unconstitutional and thus he vetoed the bill. Not surprisingly, Jackson became the object of political slander. In his reply to Jackson’s veto, Daniel Webster complains, “[This message] raises a cry that liberty is in danger, at the very moment when it puts forth claims to powers heretofore unknown and unheard of. It effects alarm for public freedom, when nothing endangers that freedom so much as its own unparalleled pretenses.” In other words, Webster proposed that through Jackson’s overuse of the veto, he was not only holding congress hostage, but also subverting democracy. On the contrary, the establishment of Jacksonian Democracy expanded the liberties of the common