WI: Andrew Jackson dies in 1825

[KaiserWilhelm]

Andrew Jackson falls off his horse and dies in early 1825, so the efforts to create the Democratic Party have a setback, at best. What would happen next? Would Northern moderates and Southerners unify around someone else, as they did OTL for Jackson? My guess is that JQA struggles to win reelection even without Jackson, but I have a hard time seeing Midwesterners voting for, say, John Calhoun. I would assume that it remains possible for the system to produce more 3/4-way elections that go to the House, but that hardly seems sustainable past ~1840 at the latest. I wonder though, if without Andrew Jackson, northerners dominate American politics more and we get a Civil War by the mid 1840s if there has been little Westward expansion of slavery and the antislavery trends in the North go ahead. That might be a Civil War the South could win, if it’s before the railroads and a largely industrial Northern economy.

 

[Raferty]

This is a pretty big POD as Jackson defined how the party system developed

What he represented, the age of land acquisition and large scale democratization of popular participation in government and property ownership as the country's population skyrocketed, had to find some kind of outlet electorally, but it didn't have to be him, it could have been someone who ran on his legacy.

That said, the Whigs developed mostly out of distaste for his administrations priorities. It's conceivable the opposition to that force would be less dominated by the priorities of Henry Clay and moreso by the Federalist legacy.

 

[Comte de Geneve]

The system still evolves but with different patterns. I believe that a JQA/Henry Clay fusion still evolves supporting high tariffs, a national bank, and federal support for internal improvements. OK, let's call them National Republicans instead of Whigs. I think without Jackson they get a stronger initial boost, with JQA winning reelection over split opposition (think 1836) and Clay, as Sec. of State, his natural successor as per tradition. There is still going to be an opposition develop based on low tariffs, state banks, and state's rights, and expanded democratization (i.e. Jacksonianism sans Andy J) . By the early 30's Calhoun has drank too much South Carolina Kool-Aid to be a serious regional leader in a national party. It could well be that Van Buren, Polk, and Thomas Hart Benton emerge as the leader of this opposition which takes more time to emerge than in OTL. IMHO such a party development would lack much of the extreme personalization that Jackson generated but this could well be a stronger 2-party system than what emerged in the 1840's. I think that in particular these National Republicans would not need to nominate military heroes and would never need a silly ticket like Harrison and Tyler.

 

[lewiswarburton]

Without Jackson, the south is still probably going to eventually going to unite around someone anti-tariff and pro slavery. But if they take longer to coalesce into an organized party, under Van Buren, say, perhaps the Anti-Masonic party makes more gains with OTL northern Jacksonian supporters? In 1832 they might end up winning in Pennsylvania and New York, leading to a tie and the election being decided by congress.

 

[KaiserWilhelm]

Without Jackson, the south is still probably going to eventually going to unite around someone anti-tariff and pro slavery. But if they take longer to coalesce into an organized party, under Van Buren, say, perhaps the Anti-Masonic party makes more gains with OTL northern Jacksonian supporters? In 1832 they might end up winning in Pennsylvania and New York, leading to a tie and the election being decided by congress.

Without Jackson’s Tariff, I’m not sure Calhoun would be radicalized as IOTL, so he might remain as something of a supporter of the strong central government as Jackson was. As for the anti-Masonic Party, I’m not sure, because IIRC most of them eventually became Whigs. Similarly, before the 1840s, much of the South was not strongly anti-tariff or anti-improvements, and without the Bank War, which wouldn’t happen absent as strong a personality as Jackson in the WH, it’s possible the slavery and expansion issue becomes more prominent earlier on. A positive side effect of no Jackson is that the Trail of Tears might not happen, or at least its effects would be more mild.

 

[KaiserWilhelm]

This is a pretty big POD as Jackson defined how the party system developed

What he represented, the age of land acquisition and large scale democratization of popular participation in government and property ownership as the country's population skyrocketed, had to find some kind of outlet electorally, but it didn't have to be him, it could have been someone who ran on his legacy.

That said, the Whigs developed mostly out of distaste for his administrations priorities. It's conceivable the opposition to that force would be less dominated by the priorities of Henry Clay and moreso by the Federalist legacy.

Yeah, it seemed like a consequential POD, but one that wouldn’t be overdone. And how would the Federalist legacy result in different policies compared to what Clay did OTL, like, specifically? I think if anything Clay would’ve been a bigger influence and could have very well brought about his American system if we get 2 terms of JQA and then 1-2 terms of Clay or a Clay acolyte

 

[David T]

To quote an old post of mine:

***

IMO the real founder of the Democratic Party was not Andrew Jackson but Martin Van Buren.

Van Buren thought that the disappearance of the Federalists and Monroe's policy of "amalgamation"--adopting many old Federalist policies, appointing some ex-Federalists to office, etc.--was a disaster because as he explained to Thomas Ritchie, "Political combinations between the inhabitants of the different states are unavoidable & the most natural &, beneficial to the country is that between the planters of the South and the plain Republicans of the North. The country has once flourished under a party thus constituted & may again. It would take longer than our lives (even if it were practicable) to create new party feelings to keep those masses together. If the old ones are suppressed, geographical divisions founded on local interests or, what is worse, prejudices between free & slaveholding states, will inevitably take their place. Party attachment in former times furnished a complete antidote for sectional prejudices by producing counteracting feelings. It was not until that defence had been broken down that the clamour agt. Southern influence and African Slavery could be made effectual in the North. Those in the South who assisted in producing the change are, I am satisfied, now deeply sensible of their errour.… Formerly, attacks upon Southern Republicans were regarded by those of the North as assaults upon their political brethren and resented accordingly. This all powerful sympathy has been much weakened, if not, destroyed by the amalgamating policy of Mr. Monroe. It can & ought to be revived..."
http://vanburenpapers.org/content/mvb-thomas-ritchie-13-january-1827

In other words, the Republican/Federalist conflict had to be artificially re-created; if there were no Federalists any more, J. Q. Adams had to be portrayed as one. (Of course Van Buren would have denied that there was anything artificial about it, and may have sincerely believed that the younger Adams was a Federalist at heart. ) Jackson was simply the ideal vehicle Van Buren found for this purpose (he had previously supported Crawford, but now Crawford's health made his presidential prospects impossible), and if Jackson hadn't been around, Van Buren and his associates would have found another. Which of course is not to say that Jackson was Van Buren's or anyone else's tool, but the Democratic party would have come into existence even without him.

(Incidentally, Robert Pierce Forbes in his The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath, pp. 214-15 has a scathing attack on Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Robert Remini, Sean Wilentz, etc.--"the neo-progressive school" as Ronald Formisano called it--for downplaying the role of slavery in the formation of the Jackson coalition. "One is at a loss to know just what contemporary politicians would have had to write in order to convince Remini and others of his school that slavery represented a central issue, if not the central issue, of national politics at this time. Alternatively, one is left to wonder whether the modern chroniclers of the Democracy are not still engaged in the same project of distracting attention from the issue by means of artificial class appeals as their historical subjects--and if so, why." https://books.google.com/books?id=lPR28UNIXgEC&pg=PA215)

***
Of course that post doesn't answer who Van Buren would support in the absence of Crawford (for health reasons) and Jackson. Calhoun had now repudiated his earlier nationalism too thoroughly and was too extreme on opposition to the tariff. Thomas Hart Benton (who supported the Tariff of 1828 despite msigivings simply because it was popular in Missouri) was one possibility--he had taken the lead in opposing Adams on the Panama Conference, which helped his popularity in the South.

 

[lewiswarburton]

Richard Mentor Johnson seems like someone Van Buren would back. Opposed to Adams, a little older than Benton. As a bonus, he was in favor of sending an expedition to the arctic to find an entrance to the Hollow Earth. Who doesn’t want to see that happen.

 

[Red_Neptune]

Incidentally, Robert Pierce Forbes in his The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath, pp. 214-15 has a scathing attack on Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Robert Remini, Sean Wilentz, etc.--"the neo-progressive school" as Ronald Formisano called it--for downplaying the role of slavery in the formation of the Jackson coalition. "One is at a loss to know just what contemporary politicians would have had to write in order to convince Remini and others of his school that slavery represented a central issue, if not the central issue, of national politics at this time. Alternatively, one is left to wonder whether the modern chroniclers of the Democracy are not still engaged in the same project of distracting attention from the issue by means of artificial class appeals as their historical subjects--and if so, why." https://books.google.com/books?id=lPR28UNIXgEC&pg=PA215)

Didn't Van Buren became an abolitionist later in life? How did he reconcile that?

 

[Issei Uzumaki]

What happens to natives? Jackson was a driving force in Indian removal act that led to trail of tears. No Jackson, possibly no trail of tears or could someone worse come along?

 

[David T]

Didn't Van Buren became an abolitionist later in life? How did he reconcile that?

No, Van Buren never became an abolitionist, He was cautious about the annexation of Texas, fearing it might stir up sectional tensions, and this helped lead to his defeat for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1844. This in turn embittered him against the southerners and "doughfaces" (including the party's 1848 presidential candidate Lewis Cass) who had defeated him in 1844 and led him to accept the presidential nomination of the Free Soil Party in 1848. But even the Free Soil Party was not abolitionist (it accepted that the federal government could not interfere with slavry *in the states*) and anyway after its failure Van Buren went back to the Demcoratic Party and supported Pierce in 1852, Buchanan in 1856 and Douglas in 1860.

Some southerners were suspicious of *any* northerner as a successor to Jackson but in truth they had very little cause for objection to Van Buren on slavery until the Texas issue arose. In his inaugural address he repeated his promise that "I must go into the Presidential chair the inflexible and uncompromising opponent of every attempt on the part of Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia against the wishes of the slaveholding States, and also with a determination equally decided to resist the slightest interference with it in the States where it exists" https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/inaugural-address-28 Understandably he was frustrated by doubts on his loyalty to the South:

"To the wife of a Virginia senator, he wrote: "God knows I have suffered enough for my Southern partialities. Since I was a boy I have been stigmatized as the apologist of Southern institutions, & now forsooth you good people will have it . . . that I am an abolitionist."125

"His point was valid. As a young man, he had been one of Thomas Jefferson's most devoted followers. And, as a seasoned politician, he had backed Andrew Jackson, the hero of the South, to the hilt. Other northern Jackson men had been reluctant to support Old Hickory in forcing the southern tribes off their ancestral lands, and in the House two-thirds of them had voted against the measure. Van Buren's men, in contrast, had gone the extra mile. Only one of his followers in the House had voted against Indian removal, while 20 had supported it. Other northern Jackson men also had been less willing to support the South's demand for a gag rule in 1836 to stop antislavery petitions from being presented to Congress. Again, only one of Van Buren's followers had voted against the gag rule of 1836...

"As president, moreover, he always went the extra mile to please his southern colleagues. This was especially true in his nominations to the Supreme Court. All his appointees were southern proslavery Democrats and firm defenders of slaveholding rights in the territories. Of these the most extreme was Peter V. Daniel, a Virginia aristocrat who had studied law under Washington's attorney general and married his mentor's daughter. Daniel was anything but a moderate. He was a proslavery fanatic, a fire-eater who likened abolitionists to "monsters" and refused to tread on northern soil, a brooding zealot who hoped that his fellow southerners would go to "any extremity" to ensure that slave property received greater protection than any other form of property. Nonetheless, in 1841 Van Buren appointed Daniel to the Supreme Court. It was his last major act as president..." https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/mava/lindenwald_hrs.pdf

 

[David T]

Richard Mentor Johnson seems like someone Van Buren would back. Opposed to Adams, a little older than Benton. As a bonus, he was in favor of sending an expedition to the arctic to find an entrance to the Hollow Earth. Who doesn’t want to see that happen.

Johnson was too controversial in the South because he openly lived with an enslaved African American woman, insisted that their daughters be treated as white, ettc. "Openly" was of course the key here. "If Col. Johnson had the decency and decorum to seek to hide his ignominy from the world, we would refrain from lifting the curtain. His chief sin against society is the publicity and barefacedness of his conduct, he scorns all secrecy, all concealment, all disguise." https://archive.org/details/lincolnbluegrass00town/page/78/

 

[Amadeus]

If Jackson dies, then perhaps Van Buren runs in 1828 himself?

 

[lewiswarburton]

Johnson was too controversial in the South because he openly lived with an enslaved African American woman, insisted that their daughters be treated as white, ettc. "Openly" was of course the key here. "If Col. Johnson had the decency and decorum to seek to hide his ignominy from the world, we would refrain from lifting the curtain. His chief sin against society is the publicity and barefacedness of his conduct, he scorns all secrecy, all concealment, all disguise." https://archive.org/details/lincolnbluegrass00town/page/78/

Good point. Johnson was Van Buren’s VP pick in OTL, but being a presidential wold expose his private life to a lot more scrutiny.