Jacksonian Democracy DBQ

Words: 866
Pages: 4

Melissa McConnell
Howard
Apush
11/9/15
“I had been less than three weeks in the country and was in a state of something like awe...the absence of poverty, of gross ignorance, of all servility…”(Document D). According to British author Harriet Martineau this was America in 1834, but was she accurate in her assessment? Was America really the land of opportunity and equality? Those that referred to themselves as Jacksonian Democrats certainly thought so. In fact, the Jacksonians viewed themselves as the guardians of everything that was good and unique about America- the constitution, political democracy, individual liberty, and equality of economic opportunity. Were the Jacksonians accurate in their assessment? Clearly their record was mixed and remains open to interpretation.
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For example, in July of 1832 he got rid of the Bank of the US when it came up for recharter. He saw the bank as a “monopoly of the foreign and domestic exchange” and believed that the wealthy were using the Bank to line their pockets (Document B). Further, the Bank, from Jackson’s point of view, violated the Constitution, an argument that had been around for along time. Jackson’s opponent, Daniel Webster, believed that jackson was off on his assessment and, in fact, saw the veto as an alarming “pretension” by the executive branch “over every power of the government” (Document C). In Webster’s view Andrew Jackson was simply using the Constitutional argument to get what he really wanted. The Whigs, like the Federalists before them, viewed the National Bank as both necessary and