WI: American Politics with No Andrew Jackson

Skallagrim

Banned
Why this unquestioned assumption that Adams would be re-elected? I see no basis for it. Jackson is gone, but there are other figures who could rise up to lead Jackson's faction.

I perceive Adams's reputation and position as being hard hit by Jackson's OTL "corrupt bargain"-charges. That's not the case here. Also, Jackson was able to unite a rather broad group of supporters, and I don't know who else could do that. In fact, the only I can see doing that is...

Would Calhoun really be the candidate of the Jacksonians?

...you guessed it. Which is why I think he'd be the opposition leader. He already had the clout for it, certainly, and was in a position to take up the mantle. Especially considering that he was Jackson's running mate, too. One may well argue that...

He was a consensus pick among the "Republicans", and at least 66 of the 84 Adams electors voted for Calhoun.

...which is totally true, and he was Adams's running mate besides being Jackson's, but the simple fact remains that if votes for Jackson are being counted, they will be going to Calhoun in practice, simply based on the fact that if Jackson were to become president-elect, Calhoun would thereby become vice president-elect (and with Jackson dead, he would thus become president-elect).

Anyway, with Calhoun already disagreeing with Adams and Clay on practically everything, and being closer to Jackson's politics (esp. since Jackson is dead, so it's easy to say "he would have agreed with me on such and such"...), Calhoun seems like the prime candidate to lead the anti-Adams opposition.

Which is why it makes sense for him to resign the vice presidency and lead the opposition instead. You can say that...

He didn't OTL, despite the even more controversial election of Adams

...but in OTL, he didn't have a shot at being the opposition's candidate. That was going to be Jackson. So Calhoun could just keep his head down and basically side with whichever faction ultimately came out on top. But in this ATL, he's in a much different position.


What makes you certain that Adams and Clay will have a solid majority in Congress?

As I argued, they'll be able to get support from western states that in OTL and in this ATL are inclined to follow Clay's lead (if given the proper incentives). Also, Adams had a majority at the outset in OTL, but Jackson very effectively launched a campagn against Adams, and the opposition gained a majority in 1826. I think that'll be different here, with there being no "corrupt bargain" (and with Calhoun having less broad appeal than Jackson as an opposition frontman, I expect).


Define "the Southern Bloc". Clay had support in many slave states, both in 1832 and 1844.

I have listed states in an earlier post. Note that while Clay certainly had support there, Calhoun pretty consistently had more. Didn't he at one point takes Clay's home state? But in this ATL, if Clay can get states like Kentucky and Tennessee in the Adams camp, the southern bloc is smaller, for sure. But also more cleanly separated from "westerner" Clay, and more firmly in Calhoun's grasp.

Clay had support in the south when his American System was nowhere near being implemented. In a TL where he's implementing it together with a northern leader, while deliberately splitting OTL's southern bloc to get more support, I don't think he'll have much support left in the south...


It was never not about slavery. The whole reason for Southern extremism about "states rights" was the belief that slave states had to have absolutely unquestioned internal power to maintain slavery. Anything which was even a potential check or limit on that power was viewed as an existential threat. Consider the history of South Carolina's Negro Seamen Act, enacted in the wake of the Denmark Vesey conspiracy. A Federal judge struck it down as contradictory to a treaty with Great Britain (per the Supremacy Clause), but South Carolina ignored the ruling. This was in the 1820s.

Calhoun himself wrote that the tariff dispute of 1828-1832 was merely "a skirmish on the outworks" - the actual citadel being slavery.

I'm not saying that slaver interests didn't play a central role in the south all the time. They obviously did. But the whole "secession was always all about slavery"-charge is something I've always seen as revisionism. The whole issue about decentralism ("states' rights"), nullification and secession goes way further back than the whole slavery debate. It has roots in the conflict between Federalists and Anti-Federalists, in the opposition to the Alien and Sedition Acts, and in a fundamental disagreement between centralists wanting a strong federal government and decentralists wanting a looser union. Observe that these various factions did not start out as being clear-cut "north versus south".

Anyway, this is a completely different debate, and not one we should really get into here. Suffice to say I never meant to deny that slavery played a considerable background role in the south's motivations for everything, even in 1832, but that I don't believe that other factors didn't play a very real role. If a state secedes in 1832, no one's going to say "oh, they did this because of slavery!" -- because that issue isn't even being discussed, and there are lots of other real grievances...
 
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So Clay would win 1832 election and probably 1836 as well.

What was Clay's view on Indian removal of the SE civilized tribes? Being from Kentucky, I would imagine that he would be for it, or at least not opposed to it.

Who would be after Clay? Perhaps a Democratic resurgence after the Panic of 1837 (would there be a Panic ITTL?). Who would lead the Dems? Maybe we would have somewhat of a second order counterfactual happening where the Dark Horse, James Polk emerges. Or would Van Buren be the likely leader. Perhaps Polk is the compromise candidate for 1840 that would win over Van Buren and Northern Dems and Calhoun and Southern Dems. Polk becomes Pres, 4 years earlier on an expansion plank of admitting Texas to Union, settling Oregon, obtaining New Mexico and California. So 1840 would see Polk win over Tippecanoe and ??? too (I doubt that John Tyler would be a Nationalist Republican, Wig, or anti-Jackson ITTL)
Jackson didn't start using the "Democrat(ic)" name until the Corrupt Bargain, so if he died before the corrupt bargain there would never be a "Democratic Party" and "Democrats". Jackson started calling his faction the "Democratic Party" and himself and his supporters "Democrats" based on the idea that the Corrupt Bargain was undemocratic.

A civil war that isn't officially about slavery would be interesting. Without slavery being the cause of the seccesion, the North wouldn't have a moral argument against the south seceeding.
 
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