law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages
artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society—the farmers, mechanics, and laborers—who have neither the time nor the means of securing
like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government. There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an
unqualified blessing.
Jackson acknowledged that varying levels of talent and energy (not to
mention inheritance and social connections) create inequalities of power and
wealth. He and other Democrats never talked of economic leveling. But they
constantly accused Whigs of using government to make the rich richer. The grant-
ing of government privileges, warned one Democrat, was sure “to break up that
social equality which is the legitimate foundation of our institutions, and the
destruction of which would render our boasted freedom a mere phantom.” The
Massachusetts Democrat George Bancroft concurred: “A republican people,”
he said, “should be in an equality in their social and political condition; ... pure democracy inculcates equal rights—equal laws—equal means of education—and
equal means of wealth also.” By contrast, the government favored by the Whigs
would enrich a favored few. Bancroft and other Democrats demanded limited
government that was deaf to the demands of special interests. Neither government
nor the market, they said, should be allowed to subvert the democracy of white
men on which the republic rested.
Banks, Roads,
Andrew Jackson’s national administration destroyed the
Canals
Bank of the United States (see Chapter 11). As a result, reg-
ulation of banking, credit, and currency fell to the state gov-
ernments. Banks emerged as a central political issue in nearly every state,
particularly after the widespread bank failures following the crash of 1837. Whigs defended banks as agents of economic progress, arguing that they provided credit
for roads and canals, loans to businessmen and commercial farmers, and the
banknotes that served as the chief medium of exchange. Democrats branded banks
as agents of inequality dominated by insiders who controlled artificial concentrations of money, who enjoyed chartered privileges, and who issued banknotes and
expanded or contracted credit to suit their own advantage. In short, they regarded banks as government-protected institutions that enabled a privileged few to make
themselves rich at the public’s expense.
In state legislatures, Whigs defended what had become a roughly standard
system of private banks chartered by state governments. They had the right to circulate banknotes and had limited liability to protect directors and stockholders
from debts incurred by the bank. Many Democrats proposed abolishing all
banks—“a set of swindling machines,” said one western Democrat. Others pro-
posed reforms. They demanded a high ratio of specie reserves to banknotes as a
guard against inflationary paper money. They proposed eliminating banknotes in
small denominations, thus ensuring that day-to-day business would be conducted
in hard coin and thus protecting wage earners and small farmers from speculative
The Politics of Social Reform: Schools and Asylums
417
ups and downs. Democrats also wanted to hold bank directors and stockholders
responsible for corporate debts and bankruptcies; some proposed banning corpo-
rate charters altogether.
By these and other means, Democrats in the states protected currency and
credit from the government favoritism, dishonesty, and elitism that, they argued, enriched Whig insiders and impoverished honest Democrats. Whigs responded that
corporate privileges and immunities and an abundant, elastic currency were keys to economic development, and they fought Democrats every step of the way.
Democrats in Congress and the White House blocked federally funded roads
and canals (see Chapter 11). In response, the states launched the transportation
revolution themselves, either by taking direct action or by chartering private
corporations to do the work. State legislatures everywhere debated the wisdom
of direct state action, of corporate privileges, of subsidies to canals and railroads, and of government debt. Predictably, Whigs favored direct action by state governments. Democrats often supported internal improvements, but they opposed “par-
tial” legislation that would benefit part of a state at the expense of the rest. They also opposed projects that would lead to higher taxes and put state governments
into debt—arguments that gathered force after the crash of 1837 bankrupted
states that had overextended themselves in the canal boom of the 1830s. The
Democrats made the same argument in every state: Beneath Whig plans for exten-
sive improvements lay schemes to create special privilege, inequality, debt, and
corruption—all at the expense of a hoodwinked people.
The argument about government and economic development in the states
mirrored the national debate. Whigs wanted to use government and the market
to make an economically and morally progressive—albeit hierarchical— republic.
Democrats viewed both government and the new institutions of market society
with suspicion, and vowed to not to subvert the equal rights and rough equality
of condition that were, in their view, the preconditions of republican citizenship.
In language that echoed their Jeffersonian forebears, Jacksonian Democrats
demanded that the market remain subservient to the republic. These state-level
debates helped to cement party loyalties and make them national. Whig and Dem-
ocratic arguments about banks and internal improvement were essentially the
same in every state. In arguing their cases in Alabama or Pennsylvania, legislators and voters strengthened their identities as Democrats or Whigs and their ties with likeminded people throughout the republic. Thus these state-level fights bolstered a national two-party system that did its best to ignore regional differences.
THE POLITICS OF SOCIAL REFORM: SCHOOLS AND ASYLUMS
The establishment of public schools and institutions for criminals and the insane worked the same way. Whigs and Democrats agreed that such state-supported
institutions had become necessary. But Whigs wanted them to improve the char-
acter and morals of their inmates, and were willing to spend money for that pur-
pose. Democrats wanted to educate children and incarcerate criminals and the
insane, but they wanted to do it cheaply. The debates over state-run institutions, in short, gave Americans another opportunity to behave like Democrats and
Whigs.
418