Mohammad Shakhwar
HIS-103-11651
Professor Cory Davis When you look at what is happening in American politics today, you hear all the time that politics has never been so divisive. That we as a nation are more divided than ever. This may be true, however there has always been a deep divide in the country going all the way back to the nation’s founding. As we look at the “age of Jackson”, we see a contentious divide between Democrats, led and founded by Jackson, and the Whigs party, which Henry Clay represented . Both men, Jackson and Clay held very different views and ideas of the role of democracy, capitalism and the power of the federal government.
Andrew Jackson was a war hero and the seventh president of the United States between 1829 to 1837. He grew up in the Carolinas and participated in the American Revolutionary War. He was captured and tortured by the British, which led to him having a deep disdain for the British for the rest of his life. After the war, he became a lawyer. Subsequently, he became a congressman and a U.S. …show more content…
Before Jackson, the notion of popular democracy was essentially non-existent. However, Jackson embodied that very thing, popular democracy. Clay would refer to Jackson as a “military chieftain”, as an insult and did not agree with popular democracy. He viewed this as a curtain for demagoguery and potentially dangerous to democracy and freedom. However, Jackson won by his overwhelming popularity. This led to the “age of Jackson”, and the “Jacksonian democracy”, which was a movement to give the power to the common man and away from the political elites in the country by way of voting rights. Jackson wanted to expand suffrage for all white men and not just men who owned property or payed taxes. This, he believed was not a real democracy. However, the voting rights were only intended for white men, and not blacks or
HIS-103-11651
Professor Cory Davis When you look at what is happening in American politics today, you hear all the time that politics has never been so divisive. That we as a nation are more divided than ever. This may be true, however there has always been a deep divide in the country going all the way back to the nation’s founding. As we look at the “age of Jackson”, we see a contentious divide between Democrats, led and founded by Jackson, and the Whigs party, which Henry Clay represented . Both men, Jackson and Clay held very different views and ideas of the role of democracy, capitalism and the power of the federal government.
Andrew Jackson was a war hero and the seventh president of the United States between 1829 to 1837. He grew up in the Carolinas and participated in the American Revolutionary War. He was captured and tortured by the British, which led to him having a deep disdain for the British for the rest of his life. After the war, he became a lawyer. Subsequently, he became a congressman and a U.S. …show more content…
Before Jackson, the notion of popular democracy was essentially non-existent. However, Jackson embodied that very thing, popular democracy. Clay would refer to Jackson as a “military chieftain”, as an insult and did not agree with popular democracy. He viewed this as a curtain for demagoguery and potentially dangerous to democracy and freedom. However, Jackson won by his overwhelming popularity. This led to the “age of Jackson”, and the “Jacksonian democracy”, which was a movement to give the power to the common man and away from the political elites in the country by way of voting rights. Jackson wanted to expand suffrage for all white men and not just men who owned property or payed taxes. This, he believed was not a real democracy. However, the voting rights were only intended for white men, and not blacks or