Crises during the presidency of andrew jackson Essay -- essays papers

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 1... ...s to the fullest limit. Everything he did he thought was in the white people's best interests. When he vetoed more bills than any other president before him, he did it for the public. When he needed support in politics, and he couldn't get much from his colleagues, he would turn to the Constitution and he would manipulate it so the law was seemingly on his side. Of course it also helped to be infallible in the public's eyes. His policy of persecuting the Indians was horrible, his destruction of the Bank of the United States ultimately hurt the citizens, his avoidance of secession was the only thing that was good for the country. But the people believed him and the Constitution, so to these he could do no wrong. BIBLIOGRAPHY Coit, Margaret. Volume 4: 1829-1849 The sweep westward: The LIFE history of the United States. Ed. Editors of TIME-LIFE BOOKS. New York: TIME-LIFE BOOKS, 1963 Commager, Henry Steele, ed. Documents of american history. New York: Appleton-Century- Crofts, 1949 Pessen, Edward. Jacksonian America: society, personality, and politics. Homewood: The Dorsey Press, 1969 Remini, Robert. Andrew Jackson. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1966