AMSCO 4.7 Expanding Democracy

Overview

AMSCO Topic 4.7, "Expanding Democracy," covers how American politics opened up to the common man between roughly 1800 and 1848, especially during the years 1824 to 1840. The chapter explains the causes and effects of the shift toward participatory democracy: states dropped property and religious requirements for voting, all adult White men gained suffrage, political parties grew and modernized, and campaigning became a popular spectacle. This fits Period 4's big story of a young republic transformed by political, economic, and social change, and it sets up Andrew Jackson's presidency in AMSCO 4.8 Jackson and Federal Power.

The chapter opens with Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat who toured the US and published Democracy in America (1835). He was stunned by the "tumult" of American political activity. That outsider's amazement is the chapter's framing device: democracy in America was loud, messy, and everywhere.

Greater Equality and the Rise of a Democratic Society

By the 1830s, equality was becoming the governing principle of American society, at least on the surface. European visitors like Tocqueville noticed things that would never happen back home:

• In hotels, men and women of all classes ate together at common tables.
• Stagecoaches, steamboats, and railroad cars had only one passenger class, so rich and poor sat together.
• Men of all backgrounds dressed alike in simple dark trousers and jackets, so visitors literally couldn't tell classes apart.
• Less wealthy women copied the fashions in wide-circulation magazines like Godey's Lady's Book.

Equality of opportunity (with big limits)

The White majority believed in equality of opportunity, but specifically for White males. In theory, a young man of humble origins could rise as far as his talent and hard work took him. The hero of the age was the "self-made man."

Know the limits, because the AP exam loves this nuance:

• The ideal ignored the enslavement of most African Americans and discrimination against everyone who was not White.
• There was no equivalent "self-made woman." Legal and cultural restrictions limited what women could do.
• By the end of the 1840s, feminists would take up the theme of equal rights and insist it apply to both women and men (setting up the reform movements in AMSCO 4.11 An Age of Reform).

Politics of the Common Man

Between 1824 and 1840, politics moved out of the fine homes of rich southern planters and northern merchants and into middle- and lower-class homes. The factors driving this spread of democracy: new suffrage laws, changes in political parties and campaigns, improved education, and rising newspaper circulation.

Universal White male suffrage

New western states wrote constitutions with no property or religious qualifications for voting:

• Indiana (1816), Illinois (1818), and Missouri (1821) let all White males vote and hold office.
• Most eastern states soon followed and eliminated their own restrictions.

The result was dramatic. Presidential voting rose from about 350,000 in 1824 to more than 2.4 million in 1840, a nearly sevenfold increase in just 16 years, mostly because of changes in voting laws. Political office also opened to men of the lower and middle ranks of society, not just the elite.

This is the core takeaway for the exam: suffrage shifted from a system based on property ownership to one based on voting by all adult White men, and that shift went hand in hand with the growth of political parties.

Changes to Parties and Campaigns

Political parties aren't mentioned in the Constitution, but they quickly became central to American politics. They channeled people's energy into choosing leaders, and during this era they got far more democratic in how they operated.

Nominating conventions replace King Caucus

Before the 1830s, candidates were nominated by state legislatures or by "King Caucus," a closed-door meeting of a party's leaders in Congress. Ordinary citizens had no say. In the 1830s, nominating conventions replaced the caucus. Party politicians and voters gathered in large meeting halls to pick candidates, which was far more open to popular participation. The Anti-Masonic Party held the first nominating convention.

Voters choose the electors

By the election of 1832, only South Carolina still let its state legislature choose presidential electors. Every other state had switched to letting voters choose the state's slate of electors, which made the presidency (indirectly) a popular choice.

The two-party system and third parties

Because presidents were now effectively chosen by voters, campaigns had to run on a national scale, and that required large, organized parties. The two big national parties of the 1830s were the Democrats and the Whigs. Only they could realistically win the presidency.

Third parties still mattered because they pulled new people into politics:

• The Anti-Masonic Party attacked the secret societies of the Masons, accusing them of being an antidemocratic elite.
• The Workingmen's Party tried to unite artisans and skilled laborers into a political organization.

More elected offices

During the Jacksonian era, a larger share of state and local officials were elected rather than appointed. More elections meant voters had more voice in government, which boosted their interest in participating.

Popular campaigning

Campaigns of the 1830s and 1840s were aimed at the interests and prejudices of common people, and politics became local entertainment. Think parades with floats and marching bands, plus big rallies with free food and drink. The downside: candidates appealing to the masses often resorted to personal attacks and ignored real issues. A favorite tactic was accusing an opponent of "aristocratic airs" to make him seem unfriendly to "the common man."

Spoils system and rotation in office

Government jobs became the lifeblood of party organizations. President Jackson appointed people to federal jobs (postmasters, for example) strictly based on whether they had actively campaigned for the Democratic Party. Non-Democrats holding those jobs were fired and replaced with loyal Democrats. The name comes from the idea that in war, the victors seize the spoils of the defeated.

Jackson also believed in rotation in office. Limiting a person to one term in a job let him appoint another deserving Democrat in his place. He defended both practices as democratic reforms: "No man has any more intrinsic claim to office than another." The underlying idea was that ordinary Americans were capable of holding any government office, and one man was as good as another. These practices also helped build a strong two-party system, since party loyalty now paid off in jobs.

Historical Perspectives: Did Jackson Really Expand Democracy?

Historians disagree about whether Jackson's election in 1828 marked a revolutionary, democratic turn in American politics. This debate is great material for a historiography-aware essay.

• The traditional view says 1828 launched the era of the common man: newly enfranchised voters drove out the entrenched ruling class and elected one of their own. The "Revolution of 1828" was the democratic West defeating the aristocratic East.
• 19th-century Whig historians saw Jackson as a despot whose appeal to uneducated masses and "corrupt" spoils system threatened the republic.
• In the 1940s, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. argued Jacksonian democracy relied as much on eastern urban workers as on western farmers. That farmer-worker coalition foreshadowed the one that elected Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s.
• Contemporary historians using quantitative analysis of voting returns found that voter participation was rising in local elections years before 1828 and didn't peak until 1840, an election the Whigs won. Some argue religion and ethnicity shaped votes more than economic class. Catholic immigrants, for instance, objected to native-born Protestants imposing a Puritan moral code like temperance.
• Recent historians read Jackson's popularity as a reaction by subsistence farmers and urban workers against the market revolution. The new capitalist economy divided the electorate, with many Whigs wanting a greater role for business owners. Jackson's veto of the national bank captured popular fears about rising capitalism. For that economic backdrop, review AMSCO 4.5 Market Revolution and AMSCO 4.6 on its social effects.

Key Terms to Know

Practice and Next Steps

Pair these notes with the 4.7 Expanding Democracy course topic study guide for the College Board framing, then continue to AMSCO 4.8 Jackson and Federal Power to see Jacksonian democracy in action. The full set of APUSH AMSCO notes covers every chapter in order.

To check yourself, try APUSH guided practice questions on Period 4, and brush up on definitions with the APUSH key terms glossary. If you're writing essays, the historiography debate in this chapter makes strong evidence, and you can practice with instant scoring at FRQ practice.