Jacksonian Democracy

It is known that Jacksonians were strict constitutionalists and that they believed in a firm union. Although Jacksonians were definite supporters of states' rights and individuality, they were also strong nationalists. While Jacksonians strived to preserve the unifying principles that the Constitution contained, they failed to fully represent complete equality in their ways.

Andrew Jackson represented a symbol of the new age of democracy and the "age of the common man." Even though inequalities were still very apparent, followers of Jackson, such as George Henry Evans, ignored the fact that not everyone was treated equal and wrote things like "The Working Man's Declaration of Independence." This document, in a way, depicted the views of Jackson's devotees. It begins by quoting the Constitution, "...all men are created equal..."[Doc A] However, even though the rise of the common man and individual liberty defines Jacksonian Democracy, those principles of the group were shown to be greatly based upon white superiority.

Hypocrisy proved to be a factor in Jacksonian's views when they called themselves defenders of all common men, then blatantly shunning minorities while basically only assisting white men. Their beliefs verified to not apply to the Indians when Jackson, with the support of his administration, exiled them from their ancestral lands and drove them along the "Trail of Tears" to new "homelands" in Oklahoma. [Doc G] Jackson did this even after the Cherokee were established as an independent nation. After defing the Supreme Court by doing this, Jackson defended this horrendous decision by claiming that the Indians would be better off "out of the way" and that the occurrence was a "voluntary" migration west of the Mississippi.

While the democracy showed faults, they did have strong beliefs that were supported by valid reasoning. Concerning the National Bank, Andrew Jackson supported the desires of the majority of the population. Jackson and Jacksonian democrats believed that the bank placed too much control into the hands of the wealthy few and didn't believe that the Constitution allowed for a National Bank. As a result of their principles, Jackson made the decision to withdraw federal funds from the national bank and place them into state institutions and, in turn, vetoed the recharter of it. [Doc B]