Cobbs-Hoffman Elizabeth, Blum Edward J., Gjerde Jon. Major Problems in American History, Volume I, 3 edition (ENG)

Administration to call the attention of Congress to the practicability of organizing

an institution combining all its advantages and obviating these objections. I sincerely

regret that in the act before me I can perceive none of those modifications of the

bank charter which are necessary, in my opinion, to make it compatible with jus-

tice, with sound policy, or with the Constitution of our country.

The present corporate body … enjoys an exclusive privilege of banking under

the authority of the General Government, a monopoly of its favor and support,

and, as a necessary consequence, almost a monopoly of the foreign and domestic

exchange. The powers, privileges, and favors bestowed upon it in the original

charter, by increasing the value of the stock far above its par value, operated as a

gratuity of many millions to the stockholders….

It is not our own citizens only who are to receive the bounty of our Gov-

ernment. More than eight millions of the stock of this bank are held by foreigners.

By this act the American Republic proposes virtually to make them a present of

some millions of dollars. For these gratuities to foreigners and to some of our own

opulent citizens the act secures no equivalent whatever….

But this act does not permit competition in the purchase of this monopoly.

It seems to be predicated on the erroneous idea that the present stockholders

have a prescriptive right not only to the favor but to the bounty of Government.

It appears that more than a fourth part of the stock is held by foreigners and the

residue is held by a few hundred of our own citizens, chiefly of the richest class.

For their benefit does this act exclude the whole American people from compe-

tition in the purchase of this monopoly and dispose of it for many millions less

than it is worth….

It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of

government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist un-

der every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not

be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven

and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally

entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these nat-

ural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclu-

sive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the

humble members of society—the farmers, mechanics, and laborers—who have

neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right

to complain of the injustice of their Government. There are no necessary evils in

government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal

protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and

the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. In the act

before me there seems to be a wide and unnecessary departure from these just

principles….

Experience should teach us wisdom. Most of the difficulties our Govern-

ment now encounters and most of the dangers which impend over our Union

have sprung from an abandonment of the legitimate objects of Government by

our national legislation, and the adoption of such principles as are embodied in

this act. Many of our rich men have not been content with equal protection and

equal benefits, but have besought us to make them richer by act of Congress.

NATIONALISM, SECTIONALISM, AND EXPANSIONISM IN THE AGE OF JACKSON 273

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By attempting to gratify their desires we have in the results of our legislation

arrayed section against section, interest against interest, and man against man, in

a fearful commotion which threatens to shake the foundations of our Union. It is

time to pause in our career to review our principles, and if possible revive that

devoted patriotism and spirit of compromise which distinguished the sages of the

Revolution and the fathers of our Union.

6. Lieutenant-Colonel José Enrique de la Peña

Defends Mexico’s Actions Against the Texans, 1836

The insults lavished upon the nation as represented by the customs officials and

commanders of military detachments, the disregard for laws, and the attitudes

with which the colonists looked upon those who had given them a country

were more than sufficient causes to justify war on our part. They were the

aggressors and we the attacked, they the ingrates, we the benefactors. When

they were in want we had given them sustenance, yet as soon as they gained

strength they used it to destroy us.

The neglect, the apathy, or, even more, the criminal indifference with which

all [Mexican] governments without exception have watched over the national

interests; the failure to enforce the colonization laws; the lack of sympathy with

which the colonists had been regarded and the loyalty that these still had for their

native country; these things led us into these circumstances. Because of all this, war

was inevitable, for between war and dishonor there was no doubt as to the

choice….

On the 17th of February the commander in chief had proclaimed to the

army: “Comrades in arms,” he said, “our most sacred duties have brought us to

these uninhabited lands and demand our engaging in combat against a rabble of

wretched adventurers to whom our authorities have unwisely given benefits that

even Mexicans did not enjoy, and who have taken possession of this vast and

fertile area, convinced that our own unfortunate internal divisions have rendered

us incapable of defending our soil. Wretches! Soon will they become aware of

their folly! Soldiers, our comrades have been shamefully sacrificed at Anáhuac,

Goliad, and Béjar, and you are those destined to punish these murderers. My

friends: we will march as long as the interests of the nation that we serve

demand. The claimants to the acres of Texas land will soon know to their sorrow

that their reinforcements from New Orleans, Mobile, Boston, New York, and other

points north, whence they should never have come, are insignificant, and that

Mexicans, generous by nature, will not leave unpunished affronts resulting in injury

or discredit to their country, regardless of who the aggressors may be.”

This address was received enthusiastically, but the army needed no incite-

ment; knowing that it was about to engage in the defense of the country and

to avenge less fortunate comrades was enough for its ardor to become as great

José Enrique de la Peña, With Santa Anna in Texas: A Personal Narrative of the Revolution, trans. Carmen Perry (College

Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1975), 4–5, 40–52.

274 MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN HISTORY

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as the noble and just cause it was about to defend…. For their part, the enemy

leaders had addressed their own men in terms not unlike those of our com-

mander. They said that we were a bunch of mercenaries, blind instruments of

tyranny; that without any right we were about to invade their territory; that

we would bring desolation and death to their peaceful homes and would seize

their possessions; that we were savage men who would rape their women,

decapitate their children, destroy everything, and render into ashes the fruits of

their industry and their efforts. Unfortunately they did partially foresee what

would happen, but they also committed atrocities that we did not commit, and

in this rivalry of evil and extermination, I do not dare to venture who had the

ignominious advantage, they or we! …

When our commander in chief haughtily rejected the agreement that the

enemy had proposed, [the Alamo’s Commander, William B.] Travis became in-

furiated at the contemptible manner in which he had been treated and, expect-

ing no honorable way of salvation, chose the path that strong souls choose in

crisis, that of dying with honor, and selected the Alamo for his grave.…

Our commander became more furious when he saw that the enemy resisted

the idea of surrender. He believed as others did that the fame and honor of the

army were compromised the longer the enemy lived.… In fact, it was necessary

only to await the artillery’s arrival at Béjar for these to surrender; undoubtedly

they could not have resisted for many hours the destruction and imposing fire

from twenty cannon….

Among the defenders there were thirty or more colonists; the rest were pi-

rates, used to defying danger and to disdaining death, and who for that reason

fought courageously; their courage, to my way of thinking, merited them the

mercy for which, toward the last, some of them pleaded; others not knowing

the language, were unable to do so…. The order had been given to spare no

one but the women and this was carried out, but such carnage was useless and

had we prevented it, we would have saved much blood on our part….

This scene of extermination went on for an hour before the curtain of death

covered and ended it: shortly after six in the morning it was all finished.

7. Michel Chevelier, a French Visitor,

Marvels at the Pageantry of Politics, 1839

But this entry of the hickory [that is, the entrance of Andrew Jackson] was but a

bymatter compared with the procession I witnessed in New York. It was in the

night after the closing of the polls, when victory had pronounced in favour of

the democratic party…. The procession was nearly a mile long; the democrats

marched in good order to the glare of torches; the banners were more numerous

than I had ever seen them in any religious festival; all were in transparency, on

account of the darkness. On some were inscribed the names of the democratic

Michel Chevelier, Society, Manners, and Politics in the United States (Boston: Weeks, Jordan and Company, 1839),

318–319.

NATIONALISM, SECTIONALISM, AND EXPANSIONISM IN THE AGE OF JACKSON

275

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societies or sections; Democratic young men of the ninth or eleventh ward; others bore

imprecations against the Bank of the United States; Nick Biddle and Old Nick

here figured largely, and formed the pendant of our libera nos a malo. Then

came portraits of General Jackson afoot and on horseback; there was one in the

uniform of a general, and another in the person of the Tennessee farmer, with

the famous hickory cane in his hand. Those of Washington and Jefferson, sur-

rounded with democratic mottoes, were mingled with emblems in all tastes and

of all colours. Among these figured an eagle, not a painting, but a real live eagle,

tied by the legs, surrounded by a wreath of leaves, and hoisted upon a pole, after

the manner of the Roman standards. The imperial bird was carried by a stout

sailor, more pleased than ever was a sergeant permitted to hold one of the strings

of the canopy, in a catholic ceremony. From further than the eye could reach,

came marching on the democrats. I was struck with the resemblance of their air

to the train that escorts the viaticum in Mexico or Puebla. The American

standard-bearers were as grave as the Mexican Indians who bore the sacred

tapers. The democratic procession, also, like the Catholic procession, had its halt-

ing places; it stopped before the houses of the Jackson men to fill the air with

cheers, and halted at the doors of the leaders of the Opposition, to give three,

six, or nine groans. If these scenes were to find a painter, they would be admired

at a distance, not less than the triumphs and sacrificial pomps, which the ancients

have left us delineated in marble and brass; for they are not mere grotesques after

the manner of Rembrandt, they belong to history, they partake of the grand;

they are the episodes of a wondrous epic which will bequeath a lasting memory

to posterity; that of the coming of democracy.

8. John L. O’Sullivan, a Democratic Newspaperman,

Defines “Manifest Destiny,” 1845

Texas is now ours. Already, before these words are written, her Convention has

undoubtedly ratified the acceptance, by her Congress, of our proffered invitation

into the Union; and made the requisite changes in her already republican form of

constitution to adapt it to its future federal relations. Her star and her stripe may

already be said to have taken their place in the glorious blazon of our common

nationality; and the sweep of our eagle’s wing already includes within its circuit

the wide extent of her fair and fertile land….

Why, were other reasoning wanting, in favor of now elevating this question

of the reception of Texas into the Union, out of the lower region of our past

party dissensions, up to its proper level of a high and broad nationality, it surely is

to be found, found abundantly, in the manner in which other nations have

undertaken to intrude themselves into it, between us and the proper parties to

the case, in a spirit of hostile interference against us, for the avowed object of

thwarting our policy and hampering our power, limiting our greatness and

John L. O’Sullivan, editorial on Manifest Destiny and Texas Annexation, United States Magazine and Democratic Review,

October 1837.

276 MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN HISTORY

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checking the fulfilment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent

allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying

millions. This we have seen done by England, our old rival and enemy; and by

France, strangely coupled with her against us….

It is wholly untrue, and unjust to ourselves, the pretence that the Annex-

ation has been a measure of spoliation, unrightful and unrighteous—of military

conquest under forms of peace and law—of territorial aggrandizement at the

expense of justice, and justice due by a double sanctity to the weak…. If Texas

became peopled with an American population, it was by no contrivance of our

government, but on the express invitation of that of Mexico herself; accompa-

nied with such guaranties of State independence, and the maintenance of a fed-

eral system analogous to our own, as constituted a compact fully justifying the

strongest measures of redress on the part of those afterwards deceived in this

guaranty, and sought to be enslaved under the yoke imposed by its violation.

She was released, rightfully and absolutely released, from all Mexican allegiance,

or duty of cohesion to the Mexican political body, by the acts and fault of

Mexico herself, and Mexico alone. There never was a clearer case. It was not

revolution; it was resistance to revolution….

Nor is there any just foundation for the charge that Annexation is a great

pro-slavery measure—calculated to increase and perpetuate that institution. Slav-

ery had nothing to do with it. Opinions were and are greatly divided, both at

the North and South, as to the influence to be exerted by it on Slavery and the

Slave States….

California will, probably, next fall away from the loose adhesion which, in

such a country as Mexico, holds a remote province in a slight equivocal kind of

dependence on the metropolis. Imbecile and distracted, Mexico never can exert

any real governmental authority over such a country…. Already the advance

guard of the irresistible army of Anglo-Saxon emigration has begun to pour

down upon it, armed with the plough and the rifle, and marking its trail with

schools and colleges, courts and representative halls, mills and meeting-houses.

A population will soon be in actual occupation of California, over which it will

be idle for Mexico to dream of dominion. They will necessarily become inde-

pendent. All this without agency of our government, without responsibility of

our people—in the natural flow of events, the spontaneous working of princi-

ples, and the adaptation of the tendencies and wants of the human race to the

elemental circumstances in the midst of which they find themselves placed.

9. Walter Colton, a Californian, Describes

the Excitement of the Gold Rush, 1848

Tuesday, June 20. [1848] My messenger sent to the mines, has returned with

specimens of the gold; he dismounted in a sea of upturned faces. As he drew

Walter Colton, Three Years in California (New York: A. S. Barnes and Co., 1850; reprinted, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford

University Press, 1949), 246–249, 252–253.

NATIONALISM, SECTIONALISM, AND EXPANSIONISM IN THE AGE OF JACKSON

277

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forth the yellow lumps from his pockets, and passed them around among the

eager crowd, the doubts, which had lingered till now, fled…. All were off for

the mines, some on horses, some on carts, and some on crutches, and one went

in a litter. An American woman, who had recently established a boarding-house

here, pulled up stakes, and was off before her lodgers had even time to pay their

bills. Debtors ran, of course. I have only a community of women left, and a gang

of prisoners, with here and there a soldier, who will give his captain the slip at

the first chance. I don’t blame the fellow a whit; seven dollars a month, while

others are making two or three hundred a day! that is too much for human

nature to stand….

Tuesday, July 18. Another bag of gold from the mines, and another spasm in

the community. It was brought down by a sailor from Yuba river, and contains a

hundred and thirty-six ounces. It is the most beautiful gold that has appeared in

the market; it looks like the yellow scales of the dolphin, passing through his

rainbow hues at death. My carpenters, at work on the school-house, on seeing

it, threw down their saws and planes, shouldered their picks and are off for the

Yuba. Three seamen ran from the Warren, forfeiting their four years’ pay; and a

whole platoon of soldiers from the fort left only their colors behind. One old

woman declared she would never again break an egg or kill a chicken, without

examining yolk and gizzard….

Thursday, Aug. 16. F our citizens of Monterey are just in from the gold

mines on Feather River, where they worked in company with three others.

They employed about thirty wild Indians, who are attached to the rancho

owned by one of the party. They worked precisely seven weeks and three

days, and have divided seventy-six thousand e ight hundred an d forty-four

dollars,—nearly eleven thousand dollars to each. Make a dot there, and let

me introduce a man, well known to me, who has worked on the Yuba river

sixty-four days, and brought back, as the result of his individual labor, five

thousand three hundred and fifty-six dolla rs…. Make another dot there, and

let m e introduce a w oman, of S onoranian birth , who has worked in the dry

diggings forty-six days, and brought bac k two thousand one hundred and

twenty-five doll ars. Is not this enough t o make a man throw down his leger

and shoul der a pick?…

Tuesday, Aug. 28. The gold mines have upset all social and domestic arrange-

ments in Monterey; the master has become his own servant, and the servant his

own lord. The millionaire is obliged to groom his own horse, and roll his wheel-

barrow; and the hidalgo—in whose veins flow the blood of all the Cortes—to

clean his own boots! Here is lady L——, who has lived here seventeen years,

the pride and ornament of the place, with a broomstick in her jewelled hand!

ESSAYS

Historians have long wondered what the celebrations of the “common man” and

“democracy,” the revelry in public parades and political campaigns, and the high

rates of voter turnout in elections really meant to American society and politics.

278 MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN HISTORY

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Whereas some scholars have argued that these facts illustrate a first step in the

development of a civic democracy, others focus on the less appealing aspects.

Historical arguments in the second group are wide-ranging, from a condemna-

tion of politics in this period as a democracy for white men only, to a focus on

the excesses of the raucous celebrations in the period. The following two essays

touch on this last argument. Although Mary P. Ryan, Professor emeritus at the

University of California, Berkeley, remains mindful of the inequalities of the

period, she focuses on the democracy in the streets, which was as chaotic as it

was colorful. But these celebrations, she contends, represent a public democracy

that we rarely see today. In contrast, Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin,

both of whom teach at Cornell University, consider antebellum politics to be an

expression of a “rude republic.” Many Americans, they contend, were turned off

by politics because of its boisterousness. Although they might honor the American

republic, these historians conclude, people in the United States in this period did

not honor American politics.

Antebellum Politics as Raucous Democracy

MARY P. RYAN

In April 1834 a crowd gathered at Castle Garden in New York for “a day of

general rejoicing.” This festival, which brought an estimated 24,000 New Yorkers

to a civic landmark on the tip of Manhattan Island, was the culmination of three

days of boisterous activity on the city streets. The day before, two competing

parades had clogged the downtown thoroughfares. The first formed when an

open meeting of 20,000 adjourned into a procession and “rigged up a beautiful

little frigate in complete order and named it the Constitution. As this moveable

political symbol passed down Wall Street it met up with a second procession and

engaged in a mock naval battle with a vessel called Veto. A special kind of public

ritual was in process. These were partisan processions staged by Whigs and

Jacksonians in the course of an electoral campaign. The meetings, processions,

and drama continued until about 10

P.M. on the third day of the voting, when

some 15,000 souls gathered on Wall Street to learn the final tally of votes.”

… Much of what is known as Jacksonian democracy was acted out on the

same principles as the everyday sociability and holiday conviviality of the city.

The meeting of October 1835 that launched the radical democratic politics of

the Loco-Foco wing of the Jacksonian movement was recorded in the press as

follows: “After the adoption of the revolutions a motion was carried that the

meeting adjourn to the street in front of the Hall and form a procession with

their antimonopoly Banners, Flags, etc., which was accordingly carried—and

some thousands of the meeting bearing torches, candles, etc., marched up the

Bowery cheering their Democratic citizens on the way.” By the end of the

From Mary P. Ryan, Civic Wars: Democracy and Public Life in the American City During the Nineteenth Century, pp. 94–96,

California Press.

NATIONALISM, SECTIONALISM, AND EXPANSIONISM IN THE AGE OF JACKSON

279

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1840s the enthusiasm had spread across the land. Whigs and Jacksonians locked

horns in New Orleans as early as 1837, and in the 1849 municipal election the

Democrats marched “through some of the principle [sic ] streets with a profusion

of June torches, making a splendid display. The principle feature of the proces-

sion was an artificial chicken cock of gigantic dimensions, triumphantly born

aloft, and which attracted universal attention.” When San Franciscans elected

their first mayor in 1850, their festivities included a band stationed on the bal-

cony above the Plaza and a parade of carts pulled by teams of horses, adorned

with flags and banners, and carrying voters to the polls. And this was just a pri-

mary election. The final polling featured a dashing equestrian display in the Plaza

by one Captain Bryant, who carried off the office of sheriff. The Democrats also

pitched a tent in the Plaza and named it “Tammany Hall.” One of the first

things that the forty-niners hastily unpacked on arrival in California were these

rites of representation: ward meetings, parades, partisan loyalties.

Such public displays indicate that city people defined themselves not just

according to … social groupings … but by th e political status of citizen and

by a range of partisan affil iations. Political campaigns were yet another example

of the immense potential for associated activity in urban public space: They

were staged, like civic ceremonies, in places such as Wall Street, the Plaza,

“the principle streets of the cit y.” But there was more at stake in these partisan

gatherings than in [other] aspects of civic culture.… First of all, these partisan

public events were a dir ect exercise of political citizenship and brought into

play the doctrine of popular sovereignty, a title to rights, and a token of power.

With his treasured (exclusively male) franchise, the citizen became an actual

participant in self-government. Second, when sovereign citizens came together

for ex pressly political reasons, they did something more than dis play their cul-

tural differences; they acknowledged and acted on their inte rdependency and

agreed implicitly to work tog ether to achieve some things, however circum-

scribed, that could not be trusted to chance, the market, or individual effort.

Third, [this] political cul ture… put urban heterogeneity to an extreme and de-

cisive test. A par tisan election placed different o pinions in open com petition: It

was a declarati on of civic war. A participant at the foundin g meeting o f the

Loco-Focos proudly described the event as “a struggle of gladiators on the plat-

form around the chair;—the loudest vociferations are heard, and Tammany

trembles with intestine war.”

The contentious urban politics of the Jacksonian era was also, as Tocqueville

had divined, a major stimulant to the frenetic formation of voluntary associations

during the antebellum period. “In all the countries where political associations

are prohibited, civil associations are rare. It is hardly probable that this is the

result of accident; but the inference should rather be, that there is a natural and

perhaps a necessary connection between these two kinds of association.” Political

events in New York, New Orleans, and San Francisco between 1825 and 1850

lend support to Tocqueville’s inference. In fact the precise distinctions between

politics, government, and more general urban associations are often difficult to

determine. Antebellum citizenship was most always exercised in association

with one’s fellows: To the pioneers of antebellum democracy, the sacred civic

280 MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN HISTORY

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act was not a private exercise of conscience or the individual practice of intellect

but, in the words of the Loco-Focos, “speechifying and resolutions at political

meetings.”…

Democratizing the Public

Public meetings were part cause and part effect of a major campaign to dissolve

the bonds of deference that wove through republican institutions and to build

democratic procedures. As of 1820 democracy was a relatively limited compo-

nent of municipal government. The municipal charter of New York, for exam-

ple, entrusted the public good to a common council that was composed of and

elected by propertied citizens. Elected council members in turn rarely consulted

with the citizenry, before or after they entered office. The passage from deferen-

tial republicanism to “pure democracy” was gradual but ultimately decisive. In

1821 the city of New York removed most all property restrictions on the fran-

chise (making a pointed exception for those of African descent). The same

reform was accomplished in New Orleans when a statewide constitutional con-

vention met in 1845. City charters and state constitutions alike were rewritten to

bind legislators closer to the electorate….

The purport of these reforms was to invest governmental legitimacy in rep-

resentative procedures, whose advances in the 1830s and 1840s tell a familiar

story: Elections became the critical act of a republican polity; the Jacksonians

masterminded techniques of persuading voters; and electoral contests became a

standoff between two principal party organizations. But neither the institution

of representative government nor the creation of two parties was sufficient to

create what the Loco-Focos would call pure democracy. That political ideal

also reordered the relationships between voters and office holders, and among

fellow citizens. Deference gave way to participation and converted harmony

into opposition, which was the trademark of a public meeting.

Face-to-face congregations in public space were the most caustic solvents of

the barrier between electors and office holders. As early as 1827, when the press

had just begun addressing local issues, some public assemblages were defying the

etiquette of deference. The New York Evening Post embraced direct democracy

along with the party of Jackson in this account of a November rally: “The num-

ber who attended the late Jackson meeting in the park were so numerous and

unprecedented…. Jackson is the favorite of the people.” A Democratic meeting

on March 28, 1834, illustrates the forward momentum of popular politics: It was

called “The Great Meeting of the People—Triumphant Expression of Public

Opinions.” At about the same time the democratization of political institutions

became a matter of debate in the Louisiana constitutional convention and moved

candidates for office in New Orleans to announce themselves forthrightly as

“Friendly to Popular Rights.” Already in 1834 the Bee extolled the spirit that

animated the Democratic public meetings of that era as “the power of the Peo-

ple when they declare their will.”…

It was through the circuit of the public meetings, furthermore, that the spirit

of democracy was thrust into the annals of the American political tradition.

NATIONALISM, SECTIONALISM, AND EXPANSIONISM IN THE AGE OF JACKSON 281

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Perhaps the most memorable public meeting of the era was that “Great

Democratick Republican County Meeting” that took place in New York on

October 30, 1835. Its claim to fame is the formulation of the major planks of

the Democratic Party platform for well into the future—opposition to the na-

tional bank, tariffs, monopolies, and paper money. It is also justly famed for the

flair of its democratic expression. This meeting made its historical mark after

some party leaders, expecting a popular defeat, tried to terminate a nominating

meeting by extinguishing the lights in the public hall. Then, as the story goes,

“Total darkness, for a moment, prevailed; but in a twinkling of an eye hundreds

of candles were pulled from the pockets of the people, which by the aid of

Loco-Foco matches were immediately lighted and old Tammany, amid the

cheers of the democracy blazed in her premature and resplendent glory.”

The “cheers of the Democracy” that went up from the public hall in 1835

thrust the name “Loco-Foco” into the American historical record and have right-

fully captured the attention of historians. Other principles, proclaimed in a more

reserved manner at that meeting, also merit comment. The single largest concern

of the twenty-four resolutions passed that evening in October was the rights and

procedures of the public meeting. Resolution 6 put it this way: “the people have

the right and duly at all times… to assemble together to consult for the common

good.” References to an older construction of the public, as some larger good that

stood above and apart from the mixed and mundane interests of the citizenry,

were overshadowed by appeals to the “people” as they “assembled together.”

The members of a public meeting were obliged to “Give utterances to their senti-

ments, give instruction to their representatives, and to apply to the legislature for

redress of wrong and grievances, by address, petitions and remonstrances.” Subse-

quent resolutions went on to spell out the procedures of popular expression, free

assembly, direct elections, reduced terms in office, and majority rule. Two weeks

later the Evening Post put this vernacular political theory forthrightly: “to carry on

to the fullest extent the principles of pure democracy.”…

Many antebellum politicians harbored a deep antipathy to the democracy of

the public meeting. To James Brooks such political associations were hardly bet-

ter than barnyard gatherings: “Men must be herded as cattle are herded. All clas-

ses, all parties, all occupations make use of societies for all purposes…. The

societies of the day—not the thinking individual men who make them up—are

the winds that often form the gale of public opinion.” Others were still plotting

to maintain suffrage as a privilege of the propertied and to install presidential

authority behind the fortress of a ten-year term. But such antidemocratic senti-

ments were rarely spoken in a loud public voice after 1840. In the words of one

historian the rivals of the Jacksonians maintained “An almost deafening silence

on the entire subject of political democracy.” When the political faction that

opposed Andrew Jackson’s attack on the Bank of the United States found its

name, “The Whig Party,” during the New York City municipal election of

1834, it entered the partisan fray on terms set by radical democrats. By organiz-

ing publicly in order to object to the policies of an administration sitting in

Washington, they provided the final solidification of a democracy of difference:

They practiced and legitimized open, institutionalized, popular opposition.

282 MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN HISTORY

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Cobbs-Hoffman Elizabeth, Blum Edward J., Gjerde Jon. Major Problems in American History, Volume I, 3 edition (ENG)

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