PC: Aftermath of a Jackson Assassination?

So, let's say that Richard Lawrence gets rather luckier than IOTL, and he pulls the triggers on Jackson, and he goes down. Now, the Constitution is very clear that the Vice President (Van Buren) will act as President, but that doesn't mean that he's actually president, as there was some debate on that with Tyler. So, is there a chance that Van Buren's seen as illegitimate and resigns, leaving president pro tempore John Tyler in charge, with Van Buren pledging to run popularly during the special election of 1835?
 
Insofar as political capital would be made of the death, it would not be against Van Buren but against the Whigs. However crazy Lawrence was, the Democrats would argue, he was (in Benton's words) "acted upon by a general outcry against a public man," specifically by the charge that Jackson was a "tyrant." https://books.google.com/books?id=3qIU6HhBXmwC&pg=PA523 (Note that when asked who should be President, Lawrence answered "Mr. Clay, Mr. Webster, Mr. Calhoun." https://books.google.com/books?id=FNbn8PLx5qAC&pg=PA10)
 
Insofar as political capital would be made of the death, it would not be against Van Buren but against the Whigs. However crazy Lawrence was, the Democrats would argue, he was (in Benton's words) "acted upon by a general outcry against a public man," specifically by the charge that Jackson was a "tyrant." https://books.google.com/books?id=3qIU6HhBXmwC&pg=PA523 (Note that when asked who should be President, Lawrence answered "Mr. Clay, Mr. Webster, Mr. Calhoun." https://books.google.com/books?id=FNbn8PLx5qAC&pg=PA10)

The Jacksonians did have a very large majority in Congress, true. So, what aftereffects can we expect?
 
A soc.history.what-if post of mine from several years ago:

***

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/sd8IrG-Q3Ao/OVxNk0cZuvwJ

By 1835 the main lines of Jacksonian policy were set, and Van Buren will
presumably follow them as in OTL. Nevertheless there were still a few things
Jackson had yet to do and which Van Buren could conceivably have done
differently.

One question is whether Van Buren in 1836 would have issued a Specie
Circular. The fact that as president he later refused to yield to
considerable pressure from many in his own party to revoke it is not
conclusive evidence, since once it had become part of the "Jackson legacy" it
would have been hard for him to revoke it without reviving the old charge
that he was a political manipulator without principles or courage. (It is
interesting that the hard-money locofocos as of 1836 did not consider Van
Buren one of themselves and did not endorse him. But as of 1836 Van Buren
seems to have been sincerely *both* for giving the state bank deposit system
a chance--he was not yet for "divorce of bank and state" or an "independent
treasury"--*and* the Specie Circular, and didn't see any contradiction
between them.) In any event, just what effect the Specie Circular had on the
Panic of 1837 is debatable. Some years ago, in a book entitled *The
Jacksonian Economy,* Peter Temin basically argued that the Panic of 1837 was
neither the fault of Jacksonian economic policies (as the Whigs claimed) nor
of Biddle (as the Jacksonians claimed) but of the money-tightening policies
of the Bank of England. However, there has been some dispute on this:

"What caused the banking panic and suspension of convertibility of 1837? Many
US historians since that era have pointed to two policies of the Jackson
administration. One was the Specie Circular of August, 1836, requiring that
land purchases from the federal government, which had soared to high levels
during the boom, be paid for in specie rather than bank money, as had been
customary before the Specie Circular went into effect. The other was the
distribution of a mounting federal surplus, after the national debt had been
entirely paid off by 1836, to the states in 1837, as required in the Deposit
Act of June 1836. The surplus-distribution legislation passed by Congress was
not strictly a policy measure of Jackson, although his administration went
along with and administered it. Proponents of the theory that one (or
possibly both) of these measures was the trigger of the financial panic
argued that they increased the demand for specie by the public and caused
specie reserves of banks to be reallocated around the country in ways that
increased the fragility of the banking system, leading to the panic of May
1837.

"Continuing on his revisionist bent, Temin examined the two measures and
found them wanting as causes of the panic, mostly on grounds that amounts of
specie required for land purchases and the movements of specie required to
distribute the federal surplus to the states starting on January 1, 1837,
were too small to have caused the panic.

"However, a recent paper by Peter Rousseau ('Jacksonian Monetary Policy,
Specie Flows, and the Panic of 1837,' forthcoming, Journal of Economic
History) takes a closer look at the evidence and suggests that Temin may have
been too quick to discount the importance of the Jacksonian measures.
Rousseau shows that the Specie Circular did not end the land-purchase boom,
as Temin supposed, so it therefore most likely did promote a drain of specie
from eastern banks to accommodate continued frontier land purchases from the
federal government after August 1836.

"Even more important, according to Rousseau, preliminary transfers of federal
balances among banks in various regions of the country during the last half
of 1836, made to prepare for the surplus distributions of 1837, had the same
effect. Banks in New York City, already the financial center of the country,
lost more than $10 million in federal deposits between August 1836 and July
1837, and saw their specie reserves drop from $5.9 to $3.8 million from
August to December 1836, before the first surplus distributions, and from
$3.8 to $1.5 million from December 1836 to May 1837, just before they
suspended convertibility. Although Temin allowed that the Specie Circular and
surplus distribution might have produced banking strains, he did not envision
that they were as severe as Rousseau's data indicate.

"Be that as it may, having rejected the Specie Circular and surplus
distribution as causes of the 1837 panic, Temin needed another explanation.
He found it in the money-tightening policies of the Bank of England,
commencing in mid-1836, in response to its declining gold reserves. Tight
money in England soon became tight money in the United States, given the
extensive commerce between the two countries, and it also caused a drop in
the price of cotton by early 1837. The drop in cotton prices threatened the
solvency of commercial firms on both sides of the Atlantic, and when they
began to fail in 1837, the banks that had lent to them were also threatened,
leading to runs on their reserves and the suspension of convertibility in the
United States. By finding the source of the US panic of 1837 in Bank of
England policies and related cotton-price fluctuations, Temin continued his
exoneration of Andrew Jackson's policies from responsibility for the
inflationary boom and its end."
http://eh.net/bookreviews/library/sylla

Even if the Deposit Act did play some part in causing the Panic, it is
important to note that the Deposit Act was not really the work of Jacksonians
but primarily of Whigs and expansion-minded Democrats. Jackson evidently
decided not to veto the Deposit Act because of the argument that a veto of
a supposedly inflationary bill--though its ultimate effects may actually have
been deflationary--at a time of currency contraction could defeat Van Buren.

My suspicion is that Van Buren, had he been president in 1836, would be at
least as interested in getting Van Buren elected as Jackson was! So I would
not count on him to veto the Act.

> Does the expulsion of the Cherokee proceed on
> schedule, or is it at least delayed? (OTL, the expulsion treaty was
> ratified in 1836 by only one vote).

Or does Van Buren successfully press the Senate to ratify the treaty as a
"monument" to the "martyred" Jackson?

Remember that the Jacksonians would use the assassination as a weapon against
Jackson's opponents. However crazy Lawrence was, they would argue, he was
(in Benton's words) "acted upon by a general outcry against a public man,"
specifically by the charge that Jackson was a "tyrant."
http://books.google.com/books?id=6HAPAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA523 (Note that when
asked who would make a good President, Lawrence answered "Mr. Clay, Mr.
Webster, Mr. Calhoun.")

In any event, if the Cherokee removal treaty is not ratified by the 24th
Congress, it probably will be by the 25th Congress (1837-9), where the
Democrats gained strength in the Senate against the Whigs (and would probably
make similar gains in this ATL):
http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/history/one_item_and_teasers/partydiv.htm

Another point: Jackson on his last day in office recognized the independence
of Texas. Would Van Buren have recognized Texas? My guess is that he would
(though like Jackson he would wait until after the 1836 election).
Recognition--especially after the election--had limited political risks, as
long as it was not followed by annexation. (Texas incidentally is an
indication that Jackson was not always as reckless as he is sometimes
portrayed. Even after both houses of Congress had passed resolutions
favoring the recognition of Texas, he still waited...)

One other possible long-term effect of Jackson's death: One could argue that
without Jackson's insistence on Texas in 1844, Van Buren might have won the
Democratic nomination that year. But Southerners would still want Texas
whether Old Hickory was alive to urge it or not. And many Northern Democrats
would still try to block Van Buren for other reasons (e.g., believing he was
too "pro-hard-money" and "anti-banks"). OTOH, even if Van Buren were
rejected, it is not certain Polk would have been chosen had Jackson died in
1835. Jack Linthicum and I discussed this a few years ago:
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.what-if/msg/eae68ebe1cb7421f
 
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