United States

Jackson’s reasons for detesting the second Bank and its president (Biddle) were complex. Anticapitalist ideology would not explain a Jacksonian policy that replaced a quasi-national bank as repository of government funds with dozens of state and private banks, equally controlled by capitalists and even more dedicated than was Biddle to profit making. The saving virtue of these “pet banks” appeared to be the Democratic political affiliations of their directors. Perhaps the pragmatism as well as the large degree of similarity between the Democrats and Whigs is best indicated by their frank adoption of the “spoils system.” The Whigs, while out of office, denounced the vile Democratic policy for turning lucrative customhouse and other posts over to supporters, but once in office they resorted to similar practices. It is of interest that the Jacksonian appointees were hardly more plebeian than were their so-called aristocratic predecessors.

Minor parties

The politics of principle was represented during the era not by the major parties but by the minor ones. The Anti-Masons aimed to stamp out an alleged aristocratic conspiracy. The Workingmen’s Party called for “social justice.” The Locofocos (so named after the matches they used to light up their first meeting in a hall darkened by their opponents) denounced monopolists in the Democratic Party and out. The variously named nativist parties accused the Roman Catholic Church of all manner of evil. The Liberty Party opposed the spread of slavery. All these parties were ephemeral because they proved incapable of mounting a broad appeal that attracted masses of voters in addition to their original constituencies. The Democratic and Whig parties thrived not in spite of their opportunism but because of it, reflecting well the practical spirit that animated most American voters.

An age of reform

The United States at One View, broadside, 1847.The Newberry Library, Strauss Memorial Fund, 2007 (A Britannica Publishing Partner)

United States: 1822–54The United States, 1822–54.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Historians have labeled the period 1830–50 an “age of reform.” At the same time that the pursuit of the dollar was becoming so frenzied that some observers called it the country’s true religion, tens of thousands of Americans joined an array of movements dedicated to spiritual and secular uplift. There is not yet agreement as to why a rage for reform erupted in the antebellum decades. A few of the explanations cited, none of them conclusive, include an outburst of Protestant Evangelicalism, a reform spirit that swept across the Anglo-American community, a delayed reaction to the perfectionist teachings of the Enlightenment, and the worldwide revolution in communications that was a feature of 19th-century capitalism.

What is not in question is the amazing variety of reform movements that flourished simultaneously in the North—women’s rights, pacifism, temperance, prison reform, abolition of imprisonment for debt, an end to capital punishment, improving the conditions of the working classes, a system of universal education, the organization of communities that discarded private property, improving the condition of the insane and the congenitally enfeebled, and the regeneration of the individual were among the causes that inspired zealots during the era. Edward Pessen

The strangest thing about American life was its combination of economic hunger and spiritual striving. Both rested on the conviction that the future could be controlled and improved. Life might have been cruel and harsh on the frontier, but there was a strong belief that the human condition was sure to change for the better: human nature itself was not stuck in the groove of perpetual shortcoming, as old-time Calvinism had predicted.

The period of “freedom’s ferment” from 1830 to 1860 combined the humanitarian impulses of the late 18th century with the revivalistic pulse of the early 19th century. The two streams flowed together. For example, the earnest Christians who founded the American Christian Missionary Society believed it to be their duty to bring the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ to the “heathens” of Asia. But in carrying out this somewhat arrogant assault on the religions of the poor in China and India, they founded schools and hospitals that greatly improved the earthly lot of their Chinese and “Hindoo” converts in a manner of which Jefferson might have approved.

Reverend Charles G. Finney, 1835 engraving.Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.