07 Jul question essay
7.) Describe the nature of the Whig Party. Whatinterest groups were dominant in its leadership? Who were some of the party’sleaders and what were their policies? How did the election of 1840 reflect thepower of the new democratic ethos?
Directions: Using the outline below and adding pertinentmaterial found in the Brinkley text, write a college-level essay for your Exam#2 responses. Be sure to edit your work carefully…spell correctly, punctuateaccurately, capitalize correctly, write clearly, and, most significantly,respond fully to all parts of the question. Avoid using my language (please do NOT quote me). Shape your responses in your OWN words.Write well, take your time, do a first rate job.
Exam #2 – outline #7 – The Whigs
I. Introduction
A. Whig Party was a national party with support in every region
B. Whig Party successfully elected 2 presidents: WilliamHenry Harrison and Zachary Taylor
C. Whig Party Origins: Early 1830s Opposition toJackson and Democracy
D. Whig Party Dominated by Two Important Groups, both ofwhom find Jackson’s policies destabilizing
1. Northeastern Business/CommercialInterests: Bankers, Businessmen, Shippers, Merchants
2. Southern Planters (An historical term forwhat we might call today an “agri-businessman”)
a. Big Cotton Plantersin the lower south
b. Big Tobacco Plantersin Virginia, Kentucky
c. Big Rice and IndigoPlanters in South Carolina
d. The guy with 500+acres and 20 or more slaves to work them
3. In the 1960s, we’d have called them”The Establishment” (Folks with a lot invested in the status quo)
4. The “River Oaksies” of thisworld? Folks who have money and want to live in a world where they’remost likely able to keep it.
5. Have little use for all this Jacksoniantalk of Rugged Individualism and the value of the Common Man
II. Whig Party Spokesman
A. Kentucky U.S. Senator Henry Clay “The GreatCompromiser,” “Harry of the West,” “The Mill Boy of theSlashes”
B. By the 1830s Clay articulates the Whig economicalternative to Jacksonian Economic Democracy: “The American System”made of four parts
1. A High Protective Tariff, which willproduce many positive results:
a.) Sectional Harmony:Northeast benefits with continued industrial development, South benefitsthrough a growing domestic market from the workers in the northeasternfactories for their agricultural goods, and the west benefits by a growingnortheastern market for their raw material.
b.) EconomicIndependence: We have our own domestic industry, agriculture, and rawmaterial, don’t need any other country for prosperity.
c.) The governmentderives income from the tariff which allows lower taxes and revenue for:
2. A program of Internal Improvements:roads, canals, harbors, transportation infrastructure for further economic development
3. A Central Bank to provide a stablebusiness environment
4. If all this sounds familiar…good…itis just an updated version of Hamiltonianism
III. Problem for the Whigs
A. How does a party dedicated to the interests of the elitedeal with America’s enthusiasm for democracy?
B. By the middle 1830s the answer is clear: adopt therhetoric (language, imagery) of democracy
C. One of their spokesman, Calvin Colton, addressed thiswhen he wrote, “Democracy is a word of deep meaning and great potency inAmerica. No political party can dispense with it. Regardless ofyour political philosophy, be it the most radical or the most conservative,your best passport is democracy.”
IV. Whig Adoption of Democratic Rhetoric
A. Henry Clay gets a new nickname: “The Mill Boy ofthe Slashes” implying he was just a poor boy who’d come togreatness…it’s a fiction…he was comfortably born and became a Kentuckygentleman who’s Lexington estate “Ashland” had its own private horseracing track. (Nothing illegal or fattening about this, it’s just notexactly the home of an ordinary citizen.)
B. Mass. U.S. Senator Daniel Webster had once explained hispolitical philosophy this way: “There is not a more dangerous experimentthan placing property in the hands of one class and political power in thehands of another.” (In other words, the folks who own the countryshould govern it….the “yuppie golden rule” “He with the gold,rules.”) He lived luxuriously on his New Hampshire farm where he saton the porch fondling his gold headed walking stick and gazing out over hisacres, yet he was quoted in the 1830s saying, “Any man who calls me anaristocrat is a liar, and the man who makes that charge and refuses to come withinthe reach of my arm, is not only a liar, but a coward!”
C. Whigs learned that their most successful candidates were”backwoods types” who could sound “democratic” butvoted Whig. The best example of this type was David Crockett.
1. Voted into congress from Tennessee
2. Began voting Whig, made a permanent enemyof Andrew Jackson
3. Defeated for congress, became anentertainer, teller of tall tales
4. Ultimately left Tennessee for Texas andbecame John Wayne…just kidding…was killed at the Alamo, but everybody knowsthat.
D. The ultimate adoption of the democratic rhetoric by theWhigs came in the Presidential Election of 1840
E. Democrats renominated Martin Van Buren for a second term(Jackson’s successor, in trouble thanks to the Panic of 1837 and subsequenteconomic depression)
F. Whigs bypassed Henry Clay for a hero of the War of 1812,William Henry Harrison
1. Nicknamed “Old Tippecanoe”because he defeated Tecumseh there
2. Advertised as a westerner since he ownedland in Ohio (really the product of the Virginia aristocracy)
3. Sounds just like Andrew Jackson, excepthe’s a Whig!!
4. Campaigned on the catchy slogan”Tippecanoe and Tyler Too,” thanks to a Democratic Virginia Senator,John Tyler who switched to the Whig Party to accept their Vice Presidentialnomination
5. Whigs tried to sell Harrison as a Whigversion of Andrew Jackson and labelled Van Buren as a New Yorkaristocrat…which was a complete fiction. His father’d been abarkeeper.
6. Results: Harrison elected the first WhigPresident, sworn into office in March, 1841 and died about a month later ofpneumonia. Succeeded by Tyler who both parties hated (Democrats saw him asa turncoat, Whigs saw him as an opportunist…spent four years in the WhiteHouse unable to do much of anything except make little Tylers…fathered nearly20 children…with two wives, sequential not simultaneous…still ranks as themost reproductive president.)
IV. Conclusion
A. 1844 vividly demonstrates the permanent connectionbetween democracy and American politics when the most anti-democratic politicalparty must use it to gain office.
B. Former President John Quincy Adams, by this time servingin the House of Representatives from his home district, commented on the changebrought about by the Jacksonian Era. Adams wrote in his diary (he’s anAdams, all Adamses keep diaries) about the 1840 election devoid of anysubstantive issues except who was the most representative of the common man andwho was the most aristocratic, “Here is a revolution in American life. Politics, from now on, will have a broad base. Democracy is here to stay. Where will it all end?” I hope nobody digs him up and showshim how it’s evolved in the early twenty-first century.
