An Evaluation of The Jackson Administration

Andrew Jackson, who hailed from Tennessee with ‘love’, became the seventh president of the U.S of A, after winning the 1828 presidential elections. He was the first American president to invite the public to a White House ball honoring his first inauguration the following year. In his annual messages to the congress as president, he strongly recommended the abolition of the Electoral College by amendment of the federal constitution giving the people the mandate to elect the President and Vice-President while limiting the service of the former to a single term (John and Gerhard, N.D.).
Jackson is credited as being the only president to have paid off federal debt reducing it to only $33,733.05 but that was before the 1837 depression that lasted for seven years and saw national debt rise ten-fold during its first year. Unlike his predecessors, Jackson had the tactic to preempt his adversaries by exercising executive authority to implement his policies. He voted more bills (twelve, to be more precise) than all his predecessors combined. His opponents called him jackass, a title he held with high esteem during his presidential campaign (Ratner, 1997).
In his first message to Congress, he defended the principle of rotation in office as a move to prevent the development of a corrupt bureaucracy in an attempt to help the nation achieve its republican ideals. Jackson sought to replace corrupt federal employees with new appointees to restore virtue and morality to government; “In a country where offices are created solely for the benefit of the people no one man has any more intrinsic right to official station than another,” he asserted.  Jackson’s principle of rotation in office was dubbed ‘the spoils system’ by his adversaries after Senator William Marcy’s popular (or unpopular) proclamation: “To the victor, belong the spoils.” It’s imperative to note that Jackson did not start the system but is widely credited for popularizing it. The spoils system was not drastic either as he had retained over 80% of the federal employees by the end of his first term (McCurry, 1993).
It was under his tenure that saw the era of the nullification/ secession crisis created by South Carolina’s 1832 Ordinance of Nullification. As declared by the power of the State itself, the federal Tariff of 1828 and that of 1832 were unconstitutional and therefore null and void, to that extent, within the sovereign boundaries of South Carolina (Latner, N.D.). It was during the reign of John Quincy Adams (Jackson’s predecessor), that the highly protective and controversial Tariff of Abominations, 1828 was enacted. The high tariffs on imports of essential commodities from Europe made them very expensive in comparison to those commodities produced in the northern U.S. This consequently raised the prices paid by planters in the South who alleged that the tariffs merely benefited northern industrialists with no due regard, whatsoever, to farmers in the south. This crisis merged issues of sectional strife with disagreements over tariffs amid expectations that the situation would improve significantly under Jackson’s presidency. That wasn’t the case and the issue culminated into the South Carolina Exposition and Protest of 1828. Later in 1832, and in an unprecedented dramatic turn of events, Jackson and his long time ally and vice president of the U.S., John Calhoun, had a major falling out as Calhoun pledged allegiance to his home state, South Carolina over the matter (Kimberling, 1992).
Jackson, however, issued a resounding proclamation against the South Carolina ‘nullifiers’ stating in unequivocal terms that, “the power to annul a law of the United States, is expressly contradicted by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed.” (McCurry, 1993).
As mentioned earlier, in Jackson’s third letter to the congress, he strongly recommended the abolition of the Electoral College. The Electoral College System bears the possibility that the winner of an election may not necessarily be the candidate with the most popular votes. Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, Benjamin Harrison in 1988 and Bush in 2000 were elected with fewer votes than their opponents but won by virtue of the Electoral College System. Andrew Jackson lost to John Quincy Adams in the House of Representatives after winning a plurality of the popular and electoral vote in 1824. Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution stipulated that states could select electors in any manner they desired and in a number equal to their congressional representation (senators plus representatives (Susan, 2000). According to John Moore’s “Congressional Quarterly Guide to U.S. Election, 1985” the Twenty-Third Amendment as adopted in 1961, provided Electoral College representation for Washington, D.C. where the electors would then meet and vote for two people, at least one of whom could not be an inhabitant of their state.
Jackson battled with this issue, among others, throughout his presidency, but his efforts were futile as the system was too entrenched in the constitution. Jackson was widely viewed as a polarizing figure whose political ambition combined with widening popular participation as well as civil and individual liberty. He was, however, also renowned for his resilience and unmatched strength, and hence nicknamed ‘old hickory.’  As he based his career in developing Tennessee, Jackson was the first president primarily associated with the American frontier. His portrait appears on the United States twenty-dollar bill (Ratner, 1997).