Jacksonian Democracy and the Bank War

Jacksonian Democracy and the Bank War

One of the things that made Andrew Jackson unique and contributed to the style and tone of the new political age was his commitment to the idea of democracy. By democracy, Jackson meant majoritarian rule. "The people are the government", he said, "administering it by their agents; they are the Government, the sovereign power". In his message to Congress he announced his creed: "The majority is to govern," he declared; and he repeated this commitment at every opportunity. He felt that the electorate should select all its officials in Washington, starting with the President. Jackson advocated a single term of either four or six years for the chief executive and he proposed this change to Congress. Jackson also felt that Senators should be elected to four-year terms by the people, not by the state legislatures. He would even have the electorate select its federal judges for terms of seven years which indicated his commitment to rotation of office as a means of democratizing the government. (Schlesinger pp.314, 402-406)

Jackson's argument for the principle of "rotation of office" was the argument of democracy. Offices exist to serve the people, no one has a special claim to office, and there are no elites, therefore, removal from office is not intrinsically wrong. So when the people elect a new President, it is only right that he be given the opportunity to bring into government the kind of people he needs to help him accomplish the tasks he was elected to perform. He shouldn't be saddled with the holdouts of a previous administration who would most likely be indifferent, if not hostile, to the programs of the new President. Democracy requires that the decision of the people in the selection of their new chief executive should be reflected down to the last office holder, Jackson contended. And if his policy were implemented, he declared, then the notion of office as a specie of property would be terminated. (pp.413-414)

Although Jackson made a great noise about his policy of removal he actually dismissed relatively few men from government service. It has been shown that during his entire eight years as President he replaced no more than 10 percent of all office holders. In the first eighteen months of his presidency, only 919 out of 10,093 employees were removed. This is a very modest record