Crises During The Presidency Of Andrew Jackson

Essay, Research Paper

Crises during the presidency of Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson was a very influential man during the 1800’s. Events that took place during his two-term tenure as President called upon his expertise on the Constitution. These events had a major impact on the country at that time. He had to face obstacles that presidents before him had not faced, but there was also one that was an old issue that was being reopened. This was the controversy over the constitutionality of the Bank of the United States. The other major obstacles were the nullification controversy and the treatment of the Cherokee Nation.

The nullification controversy started before Jackson came into office. In the year before Jackson had taken office, Congress had passed a tariff for the declared purpose of protecting northern manufacturers and businessmen. Southerners thought that the industrialization of the north would lead to the downfall of the southern agrarian economy. They named the tariff the “Tariff of Abominations”(Coit 11). Vice-President John C. Calhoun of South Carolina led the movement of people who thought that “a combined geographical interest should not be able to disregard the general welfare and turn an important local interest to its own profit”(Coit 12). Calhoun was not for the secession of South Carolina so he tried to think of a substitute. He borrowed an idea evolved by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798 and 1799. The idea was nullification. Nullification, as Calhoun viewed it,

the right of a “single state to veto, within its own borders, a federal law that it deemed unconstitutional-subject to the later approval of at least one fourth of the states. If such approval was not forthcoming, the state should, if it wished, be allowed to secede from the Union”(Coit 12). The South knew that nowhere in the Constitution was Congress given the express right to impose a tariff whose purpose was simply to protect industry. Up to that point, President Jackson’s view was unknown. But that all changed at a Jefferson Birthday dinner. Most of the toasts had been printed up beforehand and were nullificationist. So Jackson rose, looked at Calhoun and stated, “Our Union. It must be preserved”(Coit 16). Calhoun knew he had to think of a retort so he stood and said, “The Union-next to our liberty most dear”(Coit 16). From this the public inferred that Jackson’s view was that he was against nullification. A year later Jackson asked Congress to lower the tariffs, to make the South happy. Congress did so, but it was not enough for South Carolina. A month later a special convention met at the state capital and nullified the United States tariff acts of 1828 and 1832. Jackson ran for reelection that year without Calhoun and won. He declared, “The Constitution . . . forms a government, not a league”(Coit 17). He also stated that to annul a law was “incompatible with the existence of the Union,” and “to say that any State may at pleasure secede . . . is to say that the United States is not a nation”(Coit 17). He meant that nullification or secession would be an act of war. He also stated in his famous proclamation to the South Carolinians, “The ordinance is founded . . . on the strange position that anyone State may not only declare an act of Congress void, but prohibit its execution; that they may do this consistently with the Constitution; that the true construction of that instrument permits a State to retain its place in the Union and yet be bound by no other of its laws than those it may choose to consider constitutional”(Commager 188). This clearly shows

that Jackson thought that nullification was illegal according to the Constitution, and any attempt to enact it was a rebellious act of treason. The Constitution wasn’t specific on either side of the issue, but Jackson manipulated the meaning of it well to sound like he was right and nullification was illegal. After hearing Jackson, most of America was on his side.

Jackson’s harsh treatment of Indians needed backing from the Constitution, or else he would seem like a tyrant. Jackson thought progress was inevitable and the Indian land was needed to bring civilization to those areas. Twelve million whites were more important than “a few thousand savages”(Pessen 318). The main Indians being persecuted were the Cherokees, Choctaws, Creeks, and the Chickasaws. They lived in the south. Defenders of these tribes said that the policy of white farmers having the right to take the land of the savage was okay as long as they were savage, but these tribes were not savage. They were skilled in the art of white civilization. Many had intermarried with white wives, lived in white man’s houses, and had adopted the white man’s dress. The Cherokee Nation had built roads, schools, and churches, they had even invented their own written language. Some even owned slaves. They thought that they were protected by rights given to them by treaties with the United States.

The state of Georgia refused to recognize any special quality about the Cherokees except that they were red men and the fact that they owned land which the white men wanted. In 1829 the Georgia legislature passed a law extending its authority over the Indian territory within the borders of the state. Then, a Cherokee named Corn Tassel, killed another Cherokee in the territory. He was taken before a Geo