WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.820 You know, when we usually hear the word democracy, 00:00:02.140 --> 00:00:05.280 there's this, I don't know, this glowing, almost 00:00:05.280 --> 00:00:07.940 sacred aura around it. Oh, definitely. Like a 00:00:07.940 --> 00:00:10.380 pristine Greek temple. Right. You picture the 00:00:10.380 --> 00:00:12.500 marble columns, everybody politely taking turns 00:00:12.500 --> 00:00:15.419 to speak at the forum, just, you know, respectfully 00:00:15.419 --> 00:00:17.660 debating the issues of the day. It's a very comforting 00:00:17.660 --> 00:00:21.600 ideal. It feels clean and ordered and entirely 00:00:21.600 --> 00:00:25.219 rational. But historically speaking, that pristine 00:00:25.219 --> 00:00:28.879 temple is rarely how power actually changes hands. 00:00:29.320 --> 00:00:31.280 Yeah, I mean you look at how modern politics 00:00:31.280 --> 00:00:34.140 actually functions and suddenly that temple is 00:00:34.140 --> 00:00:37.240 completely overrun. It's loud. It's messy. People 00:00:37.240 --> 00:00:39.100 are screaming at each other. The marble is covered 00:00:39.100 --> 00:00:42.070 in graffiti and like Someone is selling t -shirts 00:00:42.070 --> 00:00:44.890 in the lobby. Exactly. It is the absolute definition 00:00:44.890 --> 00:00:46.950 of a political street fight. And frankly, it's 00:00:46.950 --> 00:00:49.270 been that way for a very long time. And if you, 00:00:49.490 --> 00:00:51.609 as an endlessly curious learner, really want 00:00:51.609 --> 00:00:54.469 to understand exactly how we got from that polite 00:00:54.469 --> 00:00:57.350 aristocratic ideal to the absolute street fight 00:00:57.350 --> 00:00:59.929 of modern politics, well, we have the perfect 00:00:59.929 --> 00:01:02.810 deep dive for you today. We really do. We are 00:01:02.810 --> 00:01:05.750 exploring a massive, comprehensive Wikipedia 00:01:05.750 --> 00:01:09.469 article detailing Jacksonian democracy. Our mission 00:01:09.469 --> 00:01:11.769 today is to explore this 19th century political 00:01:11.769 --> 00:01:14.209 earthquake, really dissecting how it permanently 00:01:14.209 --> 00:01:16.909 rewired American politics, how it birthed the 00:01:16.909 --> 00:01:20.609 modern democratic party, and how it relied on 00:01:20.609 --> 00:01:23.730 some profound Honestly, very dark contradictions 00:01:23.730 --> 00:01:26.969 to hold its massive coalition together. So, OK, 00:01:26.969 --> 00:01:29.629 let's unpack this. Yeah. To really grasp the 00:01:29.629 --> 00:01:32.310 magnitude of this shift, we have to set the stage 00:01:32.310 --> 00:01:35.730 in the 1820s. For decades prior, American politics 00:01:35.730 --> 00:01:38.349 was defined by what historians call the first 00:01:38.349 --> 00:01:40.629 party system. Right. Which is essentially the 00:01:40.629 --> 00:01:42.530 Federalists versus the Democratic Republicans. 00:01:42.689 --> 00:01:45.989 Exactly. But by the 1820s, that old order had 00:01:45.989 --> 00:01:47.810 completely fractured. I mean, the Federalist 00:01:47.810 --> 00:01:50.549 Party collapsed. The Democratic Republicans splintered 00:01:50.549 --> 00:01:51.709 into all these different different factions, 00:01:52.030 --> 00:01:54.189 and the political establishment was just in total 00:01:54.189 --> 00:01:57.590 chaos. It was a vacuum. Total vacuum. And out 00:01:57.590 --> 00:02:01.069 of that emerged Andrew Jackson. He was an estatesman 00:02:01.069 --> 00:02:04.510 from some polished Virginia dynasty. He was a 00:02:04.510 --> 00:02:07.930 deeply polarizing, fiercely aggressive military 00:02:07.930 --> 00:02:11.150 figure. And he realized that to seize power, 00:02:11.509 --> 00:02:14.409 he needed to shift the focus entirely away from 00:02:14.409 --> 00:02:16.990 the aristocratic property -owning elites. Right. 00:02:16.990 --> 00:02:19.189 He had to focus squarely on what he called the 00:02:19.189 --> 00:02:21.719 common man. Exactly. And that concept of the 00:02:21.719 --> 00:02:23.599 common. I mean, that is where the entire game 00:02:23.599 --> 00:02:26.699 changes because it completely redefines who actually 00:02:26.699 --> 00:02:28.419 gets to participate in the political system. 00:02:28.580 --> 00:02:30.759 Yeah, because before this era, voting wasn't 00:02:30.759 --> 00:02:32.759 a universal right. You couldn't just walk up 00:02:32.759 --> 00:02:34.800 to a ballot box. You had to prove you own a certain 00:02:34.800 --> 00:02:37.240 amount of land or, you know, pay a specific amount 00:02:37.240 --> 00:02:40.360 taxes. A gated community. It really was. But 00:02:40.360 --> 00:02:43.699 throughout the 1820s, those laws began to shift 00:02:43.699 --> 00:02:46.759 radically. State after state dropped those property 00:02:46.759 --> 00:02:49.020 requirements, moving rapidly toward a universal 00:02:49.039 --> 00:02:51.139 white male suffrage. The garoping the laws is 00:02:51.139 --> 00:02:53.520 just, I mean, giving people the right to vote 00:02:53.520 --> 00:02:56.259 is completely useless if they just stay home 00:02:56.259 --> 00:02:59.340 on election day. Right. And that legal shift 00:02:59.340 --> 00:03:01.699 is just the tip of the iceberg. The mechanics 00:03:01.699 --> 00:03:04.280 of how this happened changed the country forever. 00:03:04.580 --> 00:03:06.500 Because they couldn't just send an email blast 00:03:06.500 --> 00:03:09.259 or run a television ad to get these guys to care. 00:03:09.500 --> 00:03:12.539 No, not at all. A brilliant political operative 00:03:12.539 --> 00:03:15.599 named Martin Van Buren realized something crucial 00:03:15.599 --> 00:03:19.039 about this newly enfranchised group of men. It's 00:03:19.039 --> 00:03:21.120 simply wasn't enough to drop the property laws 00:03:21.120 --> 00:03:24.770 and say, OK. You have the legal right to vote 00:03:24.770 --> 00:03:26.229 now. You would have dragged them out of their 00:03:26.229 --> 00:03:28.449 houses. Basically, yeah. You had to engineer 00:03:28.449 --> 00:03:31.129 a system to pull them to the polls. They built 00:03:31.129 --> 00:03:34.610 the first true mass politics machine. Van Buren 00:03:34.610 --> 00:03:37.150 and the Jacksonians created this highly organized 00:03:37.150 --> 00:03:39.550 network of local and state committees. Oh, wow. 00:03:39.889 --> 00:03:42.289 Yeah. And they established fiercely partisan 00:03:42.289 --> 00:03:44.629 newspapers that, I mean, they didn't even pretend 00:03:44.629 --> 00:03:47.050 to be objective. Their sole purpose was to cheerlead 00:03:47.050 --> 00:03:49.409 for Jackson and just ruthlessly attack his enemies. 00:03:49.840 --> 00:03:51.659 And then on election day, they threw massive 00:03:51.659 --> 00:03:54.020 public barbecues, right? Oh, huge barbecues. 00:03:54.120 --> 00:03:56.219 They organized parades with marching bands and 00:03:56.219 --> 00:03:58.379 they practically drowned the electorate in free 00:03:58.379 --> 00:04:00.939 whiskey. Which is absolutely wired to picture. 00:04:01.219 --> 00:04:03.479 Like there's this famous painting by George Caleb 00:04:03.479 --> 00:04:06.139 Bingham called The County Election that perfectly 00:04:06.139 --> 00:04:08.620 captures this messy reality. I love that painting. 00:04:08.699 --> 00:04:11.879 It's so good. It's not a quiet, dignified affair 00:04:11.879 --> 00:04:14.659 at all. The painting shows voting happening out 00:04:14.659 --> 00:04:17.040 in the open over several days. You've got people 00:04:17.040 --> 00:04:20.259 who are clearly drunk being lit. propped up to 00:04:20.259 --> 00:04:24.480 vote. Grizzled veterans, newly naturalized citizens, 00:04:24.899 --> 00:04:27.300 all just crammed together in a chaotic public 00:04:27.300 --> 00:04:29.800 square. The political machine was physically 00:04:29.800 --> 00:04:32.019 dragging people to the ballot box. It was a true 00:04:32.019 --> 00:04:34.680 spectacle and the thing is it worked fundamentally. 00:04:34.990 --> 00:04:38.790 Because of this machinery, voter turnout skyrocketed 00:04:38.790 --> 00:04:42.029 to about 80 % of the adult white male population 00:04:42.029 --> 00:04:45.829 by 1840. Wait, 80 %? 80%. That is a staggering 00:04:45.829 --> 00:04:48.490 number. The whole philosophy was that the democratic 00:04:48.490 --> 00:04:51.009 ideal had to be embraced, even if it meant that 00:04:51.009 --> 00:04:53.889 loud, chaotic, and frankly sometimes highly uninformed 00:04:53.889 --> 00:04:55.649 votes were deciding the fate of the country. 00:04:55.970 --> 00:04:58.860 Right. It feels incredibly modern to me. It's 00:04:58.860 --> 00:05:01.240 like the dawn of viral social media campaigns. 00:05:01.740 --> 00:05:03.920 Suddenly, the traditional gatekeepers, you know, 00:05:03.980 --> 00:05:06.100 those elite property owners in Virginia, Massachusetts, 00:05:06.620 --> 00:05:09.139 they are entirely bypassed. Exactly bypassed. 00:05:09.220 --> 00:05:11.639 Your political survival no longer depends on 00:05:11.639 --> 00:05:13.579 impressing the aristocracy in a parlor room. 00:05:13.800 --> 00:05:16.420 It depends on going viral in the streets. But 00:05:16.420 --> 00:05:21.060 I have to ask, doesn't this hyper focus on mobilizing 00:05:21.060 --> 00:05:24.680 the masses inevitably lead to intense tribalism? 00:05:24.990 --> 00:05:27.149 Oh, for sure. Like, if you're constantly trying 00:05:27.149 --> 00:05:29.589 to whip up a crowd with parades and partisan 00:05:29.589 --> 00:05:32.670 newspapers, don't you have to create a fierce 00:05:32.970 --> 00:05:36.110 us versus them dynamic just to keep them angry 00:05:36.110 --> 00:05:38.829 and engaged? Well, this raises an important question, 00:05:38.910 --> 00:05:40.910 and the historical record shows that the answers 00:05:40.910 --> 00:05:43.689 are resounding yes. You cannot maintain that 00:05:43.689 --> 00:05:46.170 level of constant frenzied mobilization without 00:05:46.170 --> 00:05:48.290 a villain. Right. You need an enemy. Exactly. 00:05:48.670 --> 00:05:51.290 And that exact dynamic birthed the second party 00:05:51.290 --> 00:05:54.209 system. Jackson was so polarizing and his coalition 00:05:54.209 --> 00:05:57.170 was so incredibly well organized that his political 00:05:57.170 --> 00:05:59.290 enemies basically had no choice but to adapt 00:05:59.290 --> 00:06:01.639 or die. So they formed their own machine. Right. 00:06:01.800 --> 00:06:04.560 Figures like Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams, 00:06:04.839 --> 00:06:07.600 who frankly despised each other and didn't agree 00:06:07.600 --> 00:06:10.839 on much. They were forced to unite and form an 00:06:10.839 --> 00:06:14.600 entirely new organization, the Whig Party, just 00:06:14.600 --> 00:06:18.300 to counter Jackson's massive electioneering machine. 00:06:19.019 --> 00:06:21.279 So the tribalism wasn't a byproduct of the new 00:06:21.279 --> 00:06:23.519 system. It was the engine running. It was the 00:06:23.519 --> 00:06:26.639 fuel. Yeah. OK, so Jackson builds this massive 00:06:26.639 --> 00:06:29.300 loyal base. He defeats the establishment and 00:06:29.300 --> 00:06:32.079 he wins the presidency. But once he's actually 00:06:32.079 --> 00:06:34.740 sitting in the Oval Office, how does he keep 00:06:34.740 --> 00:06:37.660 that massive coalition loyal? I mean, he can't 00:06:37.660 --> 00:06:39.480 just keep throwing parades and handing out whiskey 00:06:39.480 --> 00:06:42.319 for four straight years. No, no he can't. How 00:06:42.319 --> 00:06:44.759 does this new tribal politics fundamentally change 00:06:44.759 --> 00:06:46.899 the way the government itself actually operates? 00:06:47.129 --> 00:06:49.089 By transforming the government into a system 00:06:49.089 --> 00:06:51.889 driven almost entirely by personality and patronage. 00:06:52.250 --> 00:06:54.649 You see, Jackson's worldview was intensely almost 00:06:54.649 --> 00:06:56.970 uncomfortably personal. How so? Well, if you 00:06:56.970 --> 00:06:58.930 look at his letters and his policies, he really 00:06:58.930 --> 00:07:01.689 divided the world into two strict camps, friends 00:07:01.689 --> 00:07:03.769 who deserve to be rewarded and enemies who needed 00:07:03.769 --> 00:07:06.490 to be completely extinguished. There's a very 00:07:06.490 --> 00:07:08.790 little gray area with Jackson. Here's where it 00:07:08.790 --> 00:07:12.879 gets really interesting, because. They institutionalized 00:07:12.879 --> 00:07:15.259 this personal loyalty through something called 00:07:15.259 --> 00:07:18.079 the spoils system. Yes, the spoils system. The 00:07:18.079 --> 00:07:20.920 Jacksonians essentially claimed that rotating 00:07:20.920 --> 00:07:24.040 political appointees in and out of office was 00:07:24.040 --> 00:07:29.399 a core democratic duty. Their argument was that 00:07:29.399 --> 00:07:31.699 keeping the same civil servants in place for 00:07:31.699 --> 00:07:35.199 decades just created a corrupt entrenched class 00:07:35.199 --> 00:07:37.139 of bureaucrats who were totally out of touch 00:07:37.139 --> 00:07:39.670 with the common man. That was certainly the elegant 00:07:39.670 --> 00:07:42.490 public justification anyway. They argued that 00:07:42.490 --> 00:07:44.870 any average citizen of normal intelligence could 00:07:44.870 --> 00:07:46.930 figure out how to do a government job. So, you 00:07:46.930 --> 00:07:49.569 know, rotating them out frequently kept the government 00:07:49.569 --> 00:07:51.709 close to the people. But that wasn't how it actually 00:07:51.709 --> 00:07:54.069 played out, was it? Not at all. The operational 00:07:54.069 --> 00:07:56.610 reality was entirely different. The spoils system 00:07:56.610 --> 00:08:00.310 prioritized strict unwavering party loyalty over 00:08:00.310 --> 00:08:02.589 actual competence. So they just handed out jobs 00:08:02.589 --> 00:08:05.699 to their friends. Exactly. It led to rampant 00:08:05.699 --> 00:08:08.860 corruption because people were being handed crucial 00:08:08.860 --> 00:08:11.480 government jobs. Things like managing customs 00:08:11.480 --> 00:08:13.600 collections, running regional postal routes, 00:08:13.860 --> 00:08:16.300 overseeing federal funds, simply because they 00:08:16.300 --> 00:08:18.600 had knocked on doors for Jackson during the campaign. 00:08:18.779 --> 00:08:21.660 It sounds exactly like a hostile corporate takeover. 00:08:22.360 --> 00:08:25.980 The new CEO comes in, fires the entire season's 00:08:25.980 --> 00:08:28.420 staff, just because they worked for the old boss 00:08:28.420 --> 00:08:31.199 and hands the department head jobs to his drinking 00:08:31.199 --> 00:08:33.960 buddies. That is a perfect analogy. I mean, they 00:08:33.960 --> 00:08:36.039 claimed this was to prevent corruption, but wasn't 00:08:36.039 --> 00:08:39.519 it really just replacing old aristocratic corruption 00:08:39.519 --> 00:08:43.340 with a brand new, highly organized form of partisan 00:08:43.340 --> 00:08:45.799 corruption? It absolutely was. And what's crucial 00:08:45.799 --> 00:08:47.639 to understand is that Jackson didn't really have 00:08:47.639 --> 00:08:50.480 a deeply philosophical framework for this. He 00:08:50.480 --> 00:08:53.120 was a man of visceral action. The spoils system 00:08:53.120 --> 00:08:56.159 was a weapon. It was used to ensure absolute 00:08:56.159 --> 00:08:58.340 obedience across the board, which really marked 00:08:58.340 --> 00:09:00.759 a massive shift in how the executive branch wielded 00:09:00.759 --> 00:09:03.720 power. The presidency was no longer just a bureaucratic 00:09:03.720 --> 00:09:05.980 administrative role. It was the command center 00:09:05.980 --> 00:09:09.000 of a highly disciplined, partisan army. And if 00:09:09.000 --> 00:09:11.820 you stepped out of line, that army would destroy 00:09:11.820 --> 00:09:14.580 you. Utterly destroy you. There is a spectacular 00:09:14.580 --> 00:09:16.799 anecdote from the source material that perfectly 00:09:16.799 --> 00:09:19.500 illustrates how brutal this loyalty test was. 00:09:20.000 --> 00:09:22.500 And it involves none other than Davy Crockett. 00:09:22.799 --> 00:09:25.299 Oh, this is a great story. So Crockett was a 00:09:25.299 --> 00:09:27.730 representative from Tennessee. And he actually 00:09:27.730 --> 00:09:30.289 dared to vote against Jackson's Indian removal 00:09:30.289 --> 00:09:33.389 policies. And to make matters worse, he refused 00:09:33.389 --> 00:09:36.490 to endorse Jackson's inebriated nephew for a 00:09:36.490 --> 00:09:38.750 cozy government job. Which was a fatal political 00:09:38.750 --> 00:09:41.529 mistake in Jackson's Washington. Right. So in 00:09:41.529 --> 00:09:44.210 revenge, Jackson personally targets Crockett 00:09:44.210 --> 00:09:47.450 in the next election. He uses his entire political 00:09:47.450 --> 00:09:50.509 machine to back a peg -legged opponent named 00:09:50.509 --> 00:09:52.830 Adam Huntsman. A peg -legged opponent, yeah. 00:09:53.070 --> 00:09:55.169 Jackson successfully engineers Crockett's defeat, 00:09:55.470 --> 00:10:03.590 and a furious Crockett famously declares, It's 00:10:03.590 --> 00:10:06.090 such a hilarious quote, but the underlying mechanism 00:10:06.090 --> 00:10:09.029 is genuinely ruthless. I mean, Jackson literally 00:10:09.029 --> 00:10:11.169 hunted down members of his own party who showed 00:10:11.169 --> 00:10:13.490 even an ounce of independence. He purged his 00:10:13.490 --> 00:10:16.799 own ranks. He did? And once he had solidified 00:10:16.799 --> 00:10:19.679 his political army, he turned that weaponized 00:10:19.679 --> 00:10:22.200 executive power toward the broader economy. Right. 00:10:22.320 --> 00:10:25.299 The warfare moves from politicians to the financial 00:10:25.299 --> 00:10:28.159 institutions of the old elite because we see 00:10:28.159 --> 00:10:30.980 this massive expansion of the president's veto 00:10:30.980 --> 00:10:33.500 power during this time. Huge expansion. Before 00:10:33.500 --> 00:10:36.240 Jackson, presidents mostly used the veto only 00:10:36.240 --> 00:10:39.000 if they thought a bill was explicitly unconstitutional. 00:10:39.340 --> 00:10:41.419 But Jackson used it simply because he didn't 00:10:41.419 --> 00:10:44.440 like a policy, or more accurately, because he 00:10:44.440 --> 00:10:46.220 didn't like the person proposing it. The perfect 00:10:46.220 --> 00:10:48.460 example of that is the Maysville Road veto in 00:10:48.460 --> 00:10:51.919 1830. So Congress passed a bill to provide federal 00:10:51.919 --> 00:10:54.440 funding for a road that was located entirely 00:10:54.440 --> 00:10:56.799 within the state of Kentucky. Jackson vetoes 00:10:56.799 --> 00:11:00.039 it. He argues for a strict, limited view of the 00:11:00.039 --> 00:11:01.960 federal government, claiming that because the 00:11:01.960 --> 00:11:04.159 road was a local project, the federal government 00:11:04.159 --> 00:11:06.179 had no business paying for it. But there was 00:11:06.179 --> 00:11:08.799 a catch, right? A huge catch. The glaring sub... 00:11:08.679 --> 00:11:11.019 was that Kentucky happened to be the home state 00:11:11.019 --> 00:11:14.419 of his most bitter rival, Henry Clay. Yeah, so 00:11:14.419 --> 00:11:18.000 it was a petty targeted strike, but it established 00:11:18.000 --> 00:11:21.440 this really powerful precedent of keeping the 00:11:21.440 --> 00:11:24.220 federal government out of local economic development. 00:11:24.539 --> 00:11:27.659 And that philosophy of economic warfare culminates 00:11:27.659 --> 00:11:30.460 in the defining conflict of his presidency, which 00:11:30.460 --> 00:11:34.179 is the bank war. Jackson fiercely opposed the 00:11:34.179 --> 00:11:36.259 second bank of the United States. He believed 00:11:36.259 --> 00:11:38.879 it was a corrupt device designed to cheat the 00:11:38.879 --> 00:11:41.700 common people. He famously told his vice president, 00:11:42.080 --> 00:11:44.480 the bank is trying to kill me, but I will kill 00:11:44.480 --> 00:11:47.259 it. He really had a flair for the dramatic. He 00:11:47.259 --> 00:11:49.720 really did. But wait, for those of us who aren't 00:11:49.720 --> 00:11:52.779 19th century economists, what exactly was the 00:11:52.779 --> 00:11:54.779 second bank and why did Jackson hate it so much? 00:11:55.000 --> 00:11:57.120 It's vital to understand the mechanics here. 00:11:57.309 --> 00:11:59.389 The second bank of the United States wasn't a 00:11:59.389 --> 00:12:01.490 normal bank. It was a private corporation that 00:12:01.490 --> 00:12:03.870 held all the federal government's deposits. But 00:12:03.870 --> 00:12:06.289 it was run by unelected elites, most notably 00:12:06.289 --> 00:12:08.730 its president, Nicholas Biddle. Now, because 00:12:08.730 --> 00:12:10.850 it held so much federal money, the bank had the 00:12:10.850 --> 00:12:13.710 power to regulate local, state -level banks, 00:12:14.129 --> 00:12:15.929 basically restricting them from printing too 00:12:15.929 --> 00:12:17.970 much paper money. Which seems like a good thing. 00:12:18.230 --> 00:12:21.169 Well, Jackson viewed this as an unconstitutional 00:12:21.169 --> 00:12:25.519 monopoly. He saw a small cabal of wealthy, unelected 00:12:25.519 --> 00:12:28.639 aristocrats in Philadelphia controlling the entire 00:12:28.639 --> 00:12:31.580 nation's credit and currency, essentially enriching 00:12:31.580 --> 00:12:34.279 themselves at the expense of farmers and laborers. 00:12:34.679 --> 00:12:37.360 So Jackson decides to destroy it. And he actually 00:12:37.360 --> 00:12:40.860 does. He vetoes the recharter of the bank. But 00:12:40.860 --> 00:12:43.340 he doesn't stop there, does he? No, he goes all 00:12:43.340 --> 00:12:45.779 the way. He pulls all the federal funds out of 00:12:45.779 --> 00:12:49.279 the national bank and redistributes them to local 00:12:49.279 --> 00:12:51.399 state -level banks that were loyal to his party. 00:12:51.600 --> 00:12:53.779 Which people mockingly called his pet banks. 00:12:53.899 --> 00:12:56.179 Exactly, his pet banks. But taking a wrecking 00:12:56.179 --> 00:12:58.809 ball to the nation's financial referee. Has to 00:12:58.809 --> 00:13:01.309 have consequences. Massive consequences. When 00:13:01.309 --> 00:13:04.009 Jackson put that money into those loosely regulated 00:13:04.009 --> 00:13:06.429 pet banks, those local banks just went on a massive 00:13:06.429 --> 00:13:09.250 lending spree. They printed mountains of paper 00:13:09.250 --> 00:13:12.070 money, fueling this huge speculative bubble, 00:13:12.450 --> 00:13:14.330 especially in Western land. Oh, I can see where 00:13:14.330 --> 00:13:17.169 this is going. Yeah, Jackson quickly realized 00:13:17.169 --> 00:13:19.590 the paper money was becoming worthless, so he 00:13:19.590 --> 00:13:22.500 panicked. He issued an executive order called 00:13:22.500 --> 00:13:25.419 the Specie Circular, which demanded that all 00:13:25.419 --> 00:13:27.679 federal land had to be bought with hard money, 00:13:28.000 --> 00:13:30.460 meaning actual gold and silver. Which completely 00:13:30.460 --> 00:13:32.659 pulls the rug out from under the economy. Instantly. 00:13:32.960 --> 00:13:35.480 It triggered a catastrophic financial crash known 00:13:35.480 --> 00:13:39.500 as the Panic of 1837. Banks collapsed, unemployment 00:13:39.500 --> 00:13:42.179 soared, and the very common men Jackson claimed 00:13:42.179 --> 00:13:45.440 to protect were financially ruined. Which leads 00:13:45.440 --> 00:13:49.480 me to a major pushback against this entire Jacksonian 00:13:49.480 --> 00:13:52.580 economic philosophy Because they pushed a strictly 00:13:52.580 --> 00:13:55.259 laissez -faire approach like taking a totally 00:13:55.259 --> 00:13:58.019 hands -off attitude toward the economy No government 00:13:58.019 --> 00:14:00.340 interference in wages. No interference in profits, 00:14:00.379 --> 00:14:02.620 right? But if Jackson is supposed to be the great 00:14:02.620 --> 00:14:05.220 champion of the working class, why abandon them 00:14:05.220 --> 00:14:08.059 to a totally unregulated free market? I mean, 00:14:08.100 --> 00:14:10.120 it's like tearing down the only referee in a 00:14:10.120 --> 00:14:11.799 boxing match just because you think the referee 00:14:11.799 --> 00:14:13.740 is arrogant and then leaving the lightweight 00:14:13.740 --> 00:14:15.399 fighters to just fend for themselves against 00:14:15.399 --> 00:14:17.679 the heavyweights. How does that help the common 00:14:17.679 --> 00:14:20.240 man? That's a very fair point. But if we connect 00:14:20.240 --> 00:14:23.360 this to the bigger picture, it makes sense within 00:14:23.360 --> 00:14:27.399 their specific, hyper suspicious worldview. The 00:14:27.399 --> 00:14:30.639 Jacksonians firmly believe that any central economic 00:14:30.639 --> 00:14:33.159 planning, whether it was a national bank or federally 00:14:33.159 --> 00:14:36.179 funded infrastructure, would inevitably be captured 00:14:36.179 --> 00:14:38.659 by the rich and used to create monopolies. So 00:14:38.659 --> 00:14:40.460 they just didn't trust the government to do it 00:14:40.460 --> 00:14:43.000 fairly. Right. To them, government intervention 00:14:43.000 --> 00:14:45.860 always favored the elite. So they believed that 00:14:45.860 --> 00:14:48.519 by dismantling the bank and aggressively paying 00:14:48.519 --> 00:14:51.139 off the national debt, they were actually freeing 00:14:51.139 --> 00:14:53.659 the individual artisan and the yeoman farmer 00:14:53.659 --> 00:14:57.019 from elite control. To a Jacksonian, the risk 00:14:57.019 --> 00:14:59.860 of an unregulated chaotic market was infinitely 00:14:59.860 --> 00:15:02.419 preferable to the certainty of an economy controlled 00:15:02.419 --> 00:15:04.860 by aristocratic bankers like Nicholas Betel. 00:15:05.080 --> 00:15:07.240 So what does this all mean for the concept of 00:15:07.240 --> 00:15:09.460 Jacksonian democracy? Because as we go through 00:15:09.460 --> 00:15:11.700 the source material, there is a devastating catch 00:15:11.700 --> 00:15:13.940 to this vision of liberty. A very dark catch. 00:15:14.340 --> 00:15:17.519 Yeah. This economic laissez -faire attitude and 00:15:17.519 --> 00:15:20.820 this massive expansion of voting rights, it required 00:15:20.820 --> 00:15:23.480 a strictly enforced boundary. I mean, to unite 00:15:23.480 --> 00:15:26.909 such a wildly diverse group of people. poor northern 00:15:26.909 --> 00:15:29.690 city laborers on one side and incredibly wealthy 00:15:29.690 --> 00:15:32.929 southern plantation owners on the other, the 00:15:32.929 --> 00:15:35.129 movement desperately needed another. And this 00:15:35.129 --> 00:15:37.350 is where we have to confront the darkest, most 00:15:37.350 --> 00:15:40.049 foundational aspects of Jacksonian politics. 00:15:40.370 --> 00:15:42.509 That massive expansion of democracy we talked 00:15:42.509 --> 00:15:44.710 about earlier, dropping the property requirements, 00:15:44.730 --> 00:15:47.230 it was exclusively for white men. In fact, the 00:15:47.230 --> 00:15:49.269 historical research points out a chilling parallel 00:15:49.269 --> 00:15:52.169 here. During the exact same period that voting 00:15:52.169 --> 00:15:55.240 rights were vastly expanding for white men, The 00:15:55.240 --> 00:15:58.220 voting rights for free black men were being systematically 00:15:58.220 --> 00:16:00.840 revoked. It's incredibly bleak. States like New 00:16:00.840 --> 00:16:02.720 York and Pennsylvania, which previously allowed 00:16:02.720 --> 00:16:05.639 some free black men to vote, they literally rewrote 00:16:05.639 --> 00:16:08.340 their constitutions to strip those rights away 00:16:08.340 --> 00:16:10.519 just as they were handing them out to poor white 00:16:10.519 --> 00:16:13.700 men. And it wasn't a coincidence, you know, it 00:16:13.700 --> 00:16:17.539 was the actual mechanism of their political coalition. 00:16:18.039 --> 00:16:20.559 Historians argue that the core value holding 00:16:20.559 --> 00:16:23.299 the entire Jacksonian movement together wasn't 00:16:23.299 --> 00:16:26.720 economic policy. It was white supremacy and racial 00:16:26.720 --> 00:16:29.360 essentialism. I mean, think about the sheer mechanics 00:16:29.360 --> 00:16:32.679 of it. What does a struggling immigrant Irish 00:16:32.679 --> 00:16:36.200 laborer in a New York slum actually have in common 00:16:36.200 --> 00:16:39.639 economically with a wealthy slave -owning cotton 00:16:39.639 --> 00:16:42.269 planter in Mississippi. Absolutely nothing. I 00:16:42.269 --> 00:16:44.610 mean, their economic interests are entirely opposed. 00:16:44.730 --> 00:16:46.950 Exactly. But they were united by a political 00:16:46.950 --> 00:16:49.850 ideology that established whiteness as the ultimate 00:16:49.850 --> 00:16:52.590 unifying factor. Jackson essentially offered 00:16:52.590 --> 00:16:55.269 a psychological wage. He told the poor white 00:16:55.269 --> 00:16:57.710 laborer, you may not have money, but in this 00:16:57.710 --> 00:17:00.730 democracy, your race makes you the absolute equal 00:17:00.730 --> 00:17:02.350 of the richest planter. And this wasn't just 00:17:02.350 --> 00:17:04.170 campaign rhetoric, right? I mean, it translated 00:17:04.170 --> 00:17:06.970 into brutal systemic federal policy. Oh, absolutely. 00:17:07.130 --> 00:17:09.690 The most defining aggressive policy of Jackson's 00:17:09.549 --> 00:17:12.869 entire era was Indian removal. It was the ethnic 00:17:12.869 --> 00:17:16.190 cleansing of unceded indigenous lands, most famously 00:17:16.190 --> 00:17:18.589 resulting in the Trail of Tears, specifically 00:17:18.589 --> 00:17:20.809 to make way for the expansion of the Cotton Kingdom 00:17:20.809 --> 00:17:23.609 and the institution of slavery. The data from 00:17:23.609 --> 00:17:25.829 the era shows that a politician's vote on Indian 00:17:25.829 --> 00:17:28.930 affairs was the single most consistent predictor 00:17:28.930 --> 00:17:31.839 of their partisan affiliation. It was the defining 00:17:31.839 --> 00:17:34.660 wedge issue. And Jackson's personal approach 00:17:34.660 --> 00:17:37.200 to indigenous people was marked by profound, 00:17:37.680 --> 00:17:40.140 almost dizzying psychological contradictions. 00:17:40.240 --> 00:17:42.940 It really was. Which brings us to arguably the 00:17:42.940 --> 00:17:45.799 most bizarre and hypocritical historical footnote 00:17:45.799 --> 00:17:49.240 in this entire deep dive. The story of Lincoya 00:17:49.240 --> 00:17:51.279 Jackson. Yeah, the story always stops me in my 00:17:51.279 --> 00:17:54.140 tracks. It's wild. Andrew Jackson actually adopted 00:17:54.140 --> 00:17:57.039 an orphaned indigenous boy and not just any boy. 00:17:57.160 --> 00:17:59.640 a child orphaned from a village that Jackson's 00:17:59.640 --> 00:18:01.440 own troops had destroyed during the Creek War. 00:18:01.859 --> 00:18:04.259 Just unbelievable. Jackson brought this boy back 00:18:04.259 --> 00:18:06.619 to his plantation, the Hermitage, and raised 00:18:06.619 --> 00:18:10.900 him. Yet Jackson and his political allies actively 00:18:10.900 --> 00:18:13.799 used this boy's biography as a campaign prop. 00:18:14.119 --> 00:18:17.960 During the 1824 and 1828 elections, when critics 00:18:17.960 --> 00:18:20.720 attacked Jackson's Indian removal policies as 00:18:20.720 --> 00:18:24.259 inhumane, his machine literally pointed to Lincoya's 00:18:24.259 --> 00:18:27.220 presence in his household as proof of Jackson's 00:18:27.220 --> 00:18:29.359 benevolence. What's fascinating here is how it 00:18:29.359 --> 00:18:31.960 highlights Jackson's ability to separate personal 00:18:31.960 --> 00:18:34.759 paternalism from systemic subjugation. I mean, 00:18:34.759 --> 00:18:37.259 he could feel genuine paternal sympathy for a 00:18:37.259 --> 00:18:39.539 single individual orphan that his own military 00:18:39.539 --> 00:18:42.299 campaign had created, while simultaneously orchestrating 00:18:42.299 --> 00:18:44.970 the forced removal and death of tens of thousands 00:18:44.970 --> 00:18:47.109 of people from entire nations. I look at all 00:18:47.109 --> 00:18:49.049 of this and I find myself really pushing back 00:18:49.049 --> 00:18:51.650 on the very word democracy in Jacksonian democracy. 00:18:52.089 --> 00:18:53.829 It feels incredibly deceptive. How do you mean? 00:18:53.910 --> 00:18:55.930 It's like an exclusive country club that proudly 00:18:55.930 --> 00:18:58.369 brags to the national press about lowering its 00:18:58.369 --> 00:19:00.589 membership fees so that any regular guy can join 00:19:00.589 --> 00:19:03.269 while at the exact same time it's building a 00:19:03.269 --> 00:19:05.930 giant fortified wall with armed guards to keep 00:19:05.930 --> 00:19:08.049 everyone else out. That is a highly accurate 00:19:08.049 --> 00:19:11.750 way to visualize it. This was Jax's great terrible 00:19:11.750 --> 00:19:15.109 innovation. He actively superintended massive 00:19:15.109 --> 00:19:17.569 systemic inequality, the aggressive expansion 00:19:17.569 --> 00:19:20.329 of slavery, the ethnic cleansing of indigenous 00:19:20.329 --> 00:19:23.769 peoples, precisely so that white men of all economic 00:19:23.769 --> 00:19:26.029 classes could feel like absolute equals in the 00:19:26.029 --> 00:19:28.650 public square. It was a democracy built entirely 00:19:28.650 --> 00:19:30.950 fundamentally on the requirement of exclusion. 00:19:31.450 --> 00:19:34.309 So how does a coalition built on such massive 00:19:34.309 --> 00:19:36.869 internal contradictions finally break apart? 00:19:37.230 --> 00:19:39.130 And what does it leave behind when it does? Well, 00:19:39.210 --> 00:19:41.569 the coalition finally fractures in the 1850s. 00:19:41.670 --> 00:19:44.369 A political alliance built purely on racial essentialism 00:19:44.369 --> 00:19:46.769 simply couldn't survive the escalating violent 00:19:46.769 --> 00:19:48.930 tensions over the Western expansion of slavery, 00:19:49.609 --> 00:19:51.430 specifically surrounding the Pansas -Nebraska 00:19:51.430 --> 00:19:54.430 Act in 1854. The party just tore itself apart. 00:19:54.529 --> 00:19:56.109 So they split into different factions again. 00:19:56.230 --> 00:19:58.890 Right. Many anti -slavery Jacksonians in the 00:19:58.890 --> 00:20:00.869 North finally defected to form the Free Soil 00:20:00.839 --> 00:20:03.200 Party and eventually the modern Republican Party, 00:20:03.539 --> 00:20:06.079 while Southern Jacksonians overwhelmingly embraced 00:20:06.079 --> 00:20:08.259 the path towards secession. But even though the 00:20:08.259 --> 00:20:10.920 specific coalition shattered, the machinery they 00:20:10.920 --> 00:20:14.119 built didn't. The legacy of that incredibly strong 00:20:14.119 --> 00:20:16.759 executive branch, the use of the veto pen as 00:20:16.759 --> 00:20:19.000 a routine political weapon rather than just a 00:20:19.000 --> 00:20:22.039 constitutional safeguard, and the entire architecture 00:20:22.039 --> 00:20:25.519 of mass popular politics. That remained a permanent 00:20:25.519 --> 00:20:28.109 fixture in American governance. Unquestionably. 00:20:28.309 --> 00:20:30.569 And it's a style of politics that continues to 00:20:30.569 --> 00:20:32.910 resonate heavily today. Now, it's worth noting 00:20:32.910 --> 00:20:35.750 here, and we are strictly looking at the historical 00:20:35.750 --> 00:20:39.009 and academic comparisons drawn by political scientists 00:20:39.009 --> 00:20:41.710 in our source material, not taking any political 00:20:41.710 --> 00:20:44.190 stance ourselves. Right. Absolutely. Just reporting 00:20:44.190 --> 00:20:46.609 what the Wikipedia article notes. Exactly. But 00:20:46.609 --> 00:20:48.930 many scholars frequently point to Donald Trump 00:20:48.930 --> 00:20:52.049 as a modern embodiment of this exact Jacksonian 00:20:52.049 --> 00:20:54.210 style. Right. The parallels they draw are definitely 00:20:54.210 --> 00:20:56.849 there. The source points to the massive upset 00:20:56.849 --> 00:20:59.289 victory against an established political dynasty, 00:20:59.769 --> 00:21:02.170 the relentless populist rhetoric pitting the 00:21:02.170 --> 00:21:04.930 common man against entrenched elites, a highly 00:21:04.930 --> 00:21:07.250 opportunistic foreign policy, and, of course, 00:21:07.470 --> 00:21:09.990 Trump's own personal affinity for Jackson, like 00:21:09.990 --> 00:21:12.130 famously hanging Jackson's portrait in the Oval 00:21:12.130 --> 00:21:14.369 Office. Yeah, the connections are very direct. 00:21:14.849 --> 00:21:18.130 It really makes you wonder how an ideology tied 00:21:18.130 --> 00:21:21.329 so closely to one man's cult of personality manages 00:21:21.329 --> 00:21:24.009 to outlive him by centuries. It's like a band 00:21:24.009 --> 00:21:27.329 breaking up, but their specific, distinct sound 00:21:27.329 --> 00:21:30.029 becomes an entire genre of music that people 00:21:30.029 --> 00:21:32.849 are still playing 200 years later. That's a great 00:21:32.849 --> 00:21:34.789 way to put it because Jacksonianism was never 00:21:34.789 --> 00:21:37.710 really a coherent set of rigid policy platforms. 00:21:37.990 --> 00:21:39.930 If it had been, it would have died in the 19th 00:21:39.930 --> 00:21:43.009 century. Right. It was and is a style of politics. 00:21:43.470 --> 00:21:45.690 The relentless emphasis on the will of the majority, 00:21:46.210 --> 00:21:48.769 the deep abiding suspicion of established experts 00:21:48.769 --> 00:21:51.750 and elites, and the reliance on a powerful, culturally 00:21:51.750 --> 00:21:54.509 dominant executive. That became the foundational 00:21:54.509 --> 00:21:57.250 blueprint for modern American political strategy 00:21:57.250 --> 00:21:59.970 utilized by politicians across the spectrum. 00:22:00.329 --> 00:22:03.289 which ties us all back to you listening right 00:22:03.289 --> 00:22:05.559 now. Because whether you are watching a modern 00:22:05.559 --> 00:22:08.140 political debate or seeing politicians on the 00:22:08.140 --> 00:22:11.440 news railing against the coastal elites or watching 00:22:11.440 --> 00:22:14.680 a campaign use incredibly sophisticated data 00:22:14.680 --> 00:22:17.640 to turn out a hyper -specific base of voters 00:22:17.640 --> 00:22:20.579 while vilifying the opposition, you are looking 00:22:20.579 --> 00:22:23.460 at the direct descendants of Martin Van Buren's 00:22:23.460 --> 00:22:25.559 and Andrew Jackson's political machine. It's 00:22:25.559 --> 00:22:28.460 all connected. It is a stark historical reminder 00:22:28.460 --> 00:22:31.140 that expanding democracy has historically been 00:22:31.140 --> 00:22:34.119 a double -edged sword. All too often, expanding 00:22:34.119 --> 00:22:36.380 rights and access for one specific group has 00:22:36.380 --> 00:22:38.799 been paid for by directly removing them from 00:22:38.799 --> 00:22:41.880 another. It requires us as engaged citizens to 00:22:41.880 --> 00:22:44.380 always look past the soaring rhetoric of protecting 00:22:44.380 --> 00:22:46.680 the common man and critically ask the harder 00:22:46.680 --> 00:22:49.059 question, who is deliberately being left out 00:22:49.059 --> 00:22:51.279 of that definition. Exactly. Which leaves us 00:22:51.279 --> 00:22:52.880 with a final thought for you to mull over as 00:22:52.880 --> 00:22:55.440 we wrap up this deep dive. The Jacksonians successfully 00:22:55.440 --> 00:22:58.180 used race as an essentialist unifier. They used 00:22:58.180 --> 00:23:00.720 a single rigid identity marker to bind together 00:23:00.720 --> 00:23:02.880 groups of voters who actually had completely 00:23:02.880 --> 00:23:05.779 opposed contradictory economic interests. Yeah, 00:23:05.779 --> 00:23:08.619 poor laborers and rich planters. Right. So Look 00:23:08.619 --> 00:23:11.059 at the complex political coalitions of today 00:23:11.059 --> 00:23:15.319 across the globe. What are the invisible, unacknowledged 00:23:15.319 --> 00:23:17.599 boundaries or essentialist ideas being used right 00:23:17.599 --> 00:23:20.019 now to convince wildly different groups of people 00:23:20.019 --> 00:23:22.500 that they share the exact same interests? The 00:23:22.500 --> 00:23:24.500 political temple is still loud, it's still messy, 00:23:24.599 --> 00:23:26.140 and the columns are still covered in graffiti. 00:23:26.619 --> 00:23:28.559 The question you always have to ask is, who is 00:23:28.559 --> 00:23:30.740 standing at the door deciding who gets led inside?