• The Politics of Progress • The Politics of Social Reform: Schools and
Asylums • The Politics of Alcohol • The Politics of Slavery and Race
• The Politics of Gender and Sex
BETWEEN1820AND1845,ThomasJefferson’sagrarianrepublicbecameAndrew
Jackson’s mass democracy. Politicians who built the Whig and Democratic
parties participated in the economic and social transformations of those years.
They were also consumers and producers of the new forms of popular culture. In making their political appeals, they tapped skillfully into the national patchwork of aspiration, fear, and resentment. John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and their National
Republican and Whig allies envisioned smooth-running, government-sponsored trans-
portation and financial systems. Such visions echoed the faith in cosmic order, material progress, and moral improvement that had become cultural axioms for the more prosperous and cosmopolitan Americans. Democrats, on the other hand, defended
Jefferson’s republic of limited government and white liberty and equality. They portrayed a haunted political universe in which trickery, deceit, and special privilege—
the old signs of encroaching power—lurked behind the promises of the Whigs.
Whigs and Democrats constructed their coalitions largely at the neighborhood
and state levels. Their arguments for and against state-supported internal im-
provements and state-chartered banks and corporations mirrored the national
debate, and thus strengthened and nationalized party loyalties. Local cultural
battles—arguments over alcohol, sexual morality, education, crime, and much
more—also sharpened Democratic and Whig attitudes.
In the North, the churchgoing middle class provided the Whig Party with a
political culture, a reform-oriented social agenda, and most of its electoral support. Whig evangelicals believed that with God’s help they could improve the
world by improving the individuals within it, and they enlisted the Whig Party in that campaign. On a variety of issues, including prostitution, temperance, public 413
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