Confederate “Heritage” Month 2024, April 19: Jacksonian democracy and the slavery issue

Joshua Lynn took a shot a few years ago of describing the pre-Civil War evolution of “Jacksonian democracy” and the changing view of "Jacksonian democracy" during the last couple of decades.

Early decades of the Democratic Party

Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson were traditionally considered the founders of the Democratic Party, and rightly so. Jefferson actually did found the party, which was (ironically in retrospect) originally called the Republican Party. Their Federalist opponents in the 1790s called the "democratic" Party as a polemic by which they meant to associate them with the upheavals of the French Revolution. Jefferson's party was adroit enough to recognized that the "democratic" label was a helpful one, so they formally changed the party's name to the Democratic-Republican Party.

They continued to mainly use "Republican Party" as their main label. After the War of 1812, the Federalist Party became so discredited by its perceived sympathies for Britain, its title toward the wealthiest, and their authoritarian tendencies that it essentially became irrelevant. "By 1817 the party was practically dead."¹ After 1824, the party developed a “National Republican” faction, led by John Quincy Adams, and the Jackson Democrats who also called themselves simply Democrats. And that latter label stuck until today.

The disputed Jacksonian legacy

The Democratic Party was always dominated by slaveholders. But until 1820 or so, there was a widespread belief that slavery could and would be gradually abolished, which is what had happened in Northern states. But the “Peculiar Institution” became more and more controversial and divisive among American voters.

And American voters at that time were white men with some minimal amount of property. A key element of the Jacksonian movement was to expand (white male) suffrage, and it did. The big economic battle that defined the Jackson Administration was the successful push to abolish the Bank of the United States, which Jacksonians described in class terms as representing the “Money Power.” The Jacksonian reform movement has been rightly described as “proto-populist” because it used a political framework of the People against the elite, i.e., the Money Power. (Lynn at one point calls the original Jacksonian alignment “a national populist coalition of white men.”)

But the reformist movement migrated to other parties and new factions, so that by 1860, the Republican Party was anti-slavery and otherwise supportive of economic policies to benefit workers and farmers. As Lincoln said in his first annual address as President, “Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”² (2)

Lincoln himself said that his two models for his Presidency were Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. But the Democratic Party also looked for ways to use those party icons to serve as symbols for their side as well. Times change, and different people draw different lessons from the past, especially when it comes to familiar symbols.

A ”usable past” for the modern Democratic Party

Part of what Lynn does in his article is to try to disentangle the strains for “Jacksonian” legacy. Referring to historians like Sean Wilentz, Lynn writes:

These scholars would rather the Jacksonian inheritance belong to Abraham Lincoln’s Republicans than to Stephen A. Douglas’s Democrats.

The Democrats like Douglas who stayed in the Democracy were nonetheless Jacksonians, and their thought and politics also comprise Jacksonian Democracy. 1850s Democrats directed their Jacksonian hatred of aristocracy and monopoly not against the Slave Power, but against the Antislavery Power. Instead of protesting against scheming slaveholders, they raged against a dangerous cabal of abolitionists, antislavery Republicans, and other “fanatical” reformers. Democrats believed these fanatics craved state power to undemocratically foist their reforms on white men. For these Jacksonians, race and gender were crucial, as the Antislavery Power did not violate equal rights in the abstract, but the rights of white men specifically in its effort to elevate women and Americans of color. This strain of the Jacksonian persuasion cannot be divorced from racially based notions of democracy in the late antebellum era. Majoritarian democracy, egalitarianism, and white supremacy worked together in the Jacksonian mind. [my emphasis in bold]

But it’s hard not to see a bit of “presentism” in Lynn’s analysis:

Racism, moreover, was not incidental but intrinsic to Jacksonian thought. Whether in the guise of the Slave Power or the Antislavery Power, monopolies were anathema to Jacksonians because they questioned white men’s equality and their monopoly of political power. Jackson pioneered a populist style that echoes in our politics today. That 1850s Democrats also perpetuated Jackson’s principles muddies the legacy of Jacksonian Democracy and suggests the inseparability of democratic populism from white supremacy in our republic. [my emphasis]

What Lynn calls “from racially based notions of democracy in the late antebellum era” were very much part of the Republicans’ view at the time, including Abraham Lincoln himself. And part of just about every other white person’s, as well. The Republicans in 1860 were not campaigning for full racial equality, immediate emancipation, and certainly not for women’s suffrage.

The best-known white antislavery figure who actually did defend the ideas of immediate emancipation, racial equality, and even women’s rights, as well, was John Brown. The guy who fought guerrilla warfare against pro-slavery forces in Kansas Territory, and later tried to form armed guerrilla groups to help slaves escape. But how many people today feel comfortable identifying with the “terrorist” John Brown?

I think he is rightly regarded as a hero and a legitimate symbol of patriotism and democracy. Yet in the twisted world of far-right Trumpistas, Brown is also celebrated as a hero by anti-abortionists who take him – very cynically - as a Christian model for violent antiabortionists.

Lynn also falls into the trap of taking “populism” to be equivalent to rightwing populism. But there are also left and genuinely democratic forms of populism, which sees antiracism and the fight for women’s equality as essential parts of their “populist” redistributionist programs, too.

Lynn’s article is a helpful description of how part of the distinct trend of “Jacksonian” reform adapted to the fight against slavery: “Antislavery Democrats came to see their party as the Slave Power’s political stooge.”

But the proslavery side also adapted some of the concepts and rhetoric. The latter was a definite precursor of today’s rightwing populism: “for them, the Money Power’s modern manifestation was the very antislavery movement many of their brethren were joining.” In present-day Trumpista concepts, we could say they portrayed Abolitionists as the Woke Elite who wanted to deny Southern planters to keep their human property and expand the institutions of slavery.

Unfortunately, Lynn treats the new ideological alliance as almost a neutral narrative choice. Although he briefly quotes Walt Whitman railing against the elite of Southern slaveowners, he doesn’t really call attention to the fact the anti-elite rhetoric used to defend the slaveocracy was 99% hogwash.

1. Editors (2024): Federalist Party. Britannica Online 04/01/2024. <https://www.britannica.com/topic/Federalist-Party> (Accessed: 2024-19-04).

2. Lincoln, Abraham (2024): First Annual Message 12/03/1861. The American Presidency Project. <https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/first-annual-message-9> (Accessed: 2024-19-04).