Events
1830
Congress passes Indian Removal Act
1832
Black Hawk War
1834
Whig Party forms
1835
Start of Second Seminole War
1836
Bank of the United States’ charter expires
Jackson issues Specie CircularMartin Van Buren is elected president
1837
Panic of 1837
1838
U.S. army forcibly removes Cherokee on “Trail of
Tears”
1840
Van Buren establishes independent U.S. treasury
William Henry Harrison is elected president
Key People
-
Nicholas Biddle
President of the Bank of the United States; exerted
significant influence on U.S. economy
-
Henry Clay
Kentucky
statesman; co-founder of Whig Party
-
Daniel Webster
Massachusetts
senator; co-founder of Whig Party
-
Martin Van Buren
Eighth U.S. president; inherited depression from
Panic of 1837
-
William Henry Harrison
Ninth U.S. president; died after only a month in
office
-
John Tyler
Tenth
U.S. president; angered fellow Whigs by opposing most of their agenda
The Age of Jackson
The Age of Jackson and the “Jacksonian
Democracy” that it brought with it were markedly different
from anything the nation had yet experienced. Unlike the early republic,
which had been dominated by wealthy politicians, the Age of Jackson
was a new age of the common man, a period of American cultural history
that shunned wealth and aristocracy in favor of humble origins,
log cabins, and frontier ruggedness.
During this period, more and more American men were granted the
right to vote, as property ownership and literacy restrictions for voting
were abolished in more and more places. As universal manhood suffrage
became the norm, the lower and middle classes gained an outlet to
express their political opinions.
The Indian Removal Act
Prior to his political career, Jackson had spent much
of his life in the military, clearing the West of Native Americans.
During the War of 1812,
he had routed the Creek Nation (allied with Britain), and had spent
subsequent years pursuing the Seminoles in Florida. As president,
he continued to push native peoples off their lands to make room
for white American farmers. In 1830,
Jackson and congressional Democrats passed the Indian Removal
Act to remove, by force, all Indians east of the Mississippi
to “permanent” reservations in present-day Oklahoma
and Nebraska.
The Indian Removal Act reversed many earlier policies
that recognized Native American lands as foreign soil. Some tribes,
such as the Cherokees, had expended great effort in attempt
to integrate themselves with the new American society. They
had created a tribal government based on separation of powers and
checks and balances and had embraced agriculture and the market
economy. In the 1831 case Cherokee
Nation v. State of Georgia, the Supreme Court had
ruled that the Cherokee had legal rights to their lands. Nonetheless,
Jackson pursued his removal agenda mercilessly. Many of the relocated
tribes were lumped together on one huge reservation, which made
it difficult for them to preserve culture and tribal identity
over the years.
The Trail of Tears
Throughout the 1830s,
the U.S. Army supervised the relocation of more than 100,000 members
of the Chickasaw, Creek, Choctaw, Cherokee, Seminole, Sauk, and
Fox tribes. Most of these Native Americans had to travel the roughly 1,000 miles
on foot, sometimes in chains. Tens of thousands died on the journey,
which was labeled the Trail of Tears.
Some tribes, however, resisted resettlement. Consequently,
U.S. Army troops crushed the Sauks and Foxes in the Black
Hawk War of 1832 and
the Seminoles in the Second Seminole War of 1835–1842.
