Essay On Jacksonion Democracy

According to Johnson, between 1815 and 1850, the United States astoundingly experienced a period of extraordinary expansion. Despite the “catastrophic bank crash of 1819” (Johnson, pg. 285), the free-market economy was growing, the government was finally able to develop an official model public education system, the birth of universities nationwide had proved advantageous to literacy rates, and the official establishment of political parties pronounced Americans as “the most enlightened in the world” (Johnson, pg. 293-298, 392). However, considering both Zinn and Johnson’s interpretations, this era was characterized as one of unashamed divisiveness and exclusion.
Johnson unapologetically exemplifies the Jacksonion democracy as one of the most advanced and inclusive in the world at the time, one that exerted its efforts to expand education and subsequently give people more opportunities. However, multitudes of people were legally unable to vote or express their
ideas, experienced minute economic progress, and ultimately had been denied the right to an education; including black slaves, Native Americans, women and white working-class men (Zinn, pg. 221).
Firstly, in regards to the era considered the Jacksonion Democracy, not everyone was allowed to vote. Slaves were considered property and only counted as people when it proved beneficial to slave owners, thus automatically and legally denying them right to vote. Native Americans were, “like slaves…invisible...” (Zinn, pg. 218) and weren’t considered as eligible voters, there were few colleges that admitted women to a “peculiar mode of education” (Thoughts Upon Female Education) and at the time few, if any, colleges existed in rural areas for those of the working class (Johnson, pg. 393).
Second, during Jackson’s presidency, economic progress was apparent exclusively to wealthy citizens. “In Philadelphia, working-class families lived…one room per family…with no toilets, no fresh air or water. There was fresh water newly pumped from the Schuylkill River, but it was going to the homes of the rich. In New York you could see the poor laying in the streets with the garbage…the rich fled the city, the poor stayed and died” (Zinn, pg. 218). The Flour Riot of 1837 was simply the working class’ means of retaliating to the economic depression, major food shortages, colossal unemployment, and ultimately what George Henry Evans deemed as partial laws that shamelessly favored one class of society at the expense of another. Lastly, some of those laws became progressively more radical, restricting or completely denying education to specific groups.
In fact, as early as the 16th century, to assuage southern authorities’ anxieties of an uprising, they enacted slave codes, laws aimed to maintain control of slaves and these laws eventually prohibited slaves from learning to read or write (Race, Slavery and the Law in Colonial Virginia). In 1830, Native Americans were “being pushed off their lands” by President Jackson’s Indian Removal Act (Zinn, pg. 217), and even a decade after Jackson’s presidential term ended, women were still being “denied the facilities to a thorough education” (Declaration of Sentiments of the Seneca Falls Convention)
In conclusion, you could define the era surrounding the birth of democracy as inclusive, but only if you exclude black slaves, Native Americans, women and the working class. However, that form of an “inclusive democracy” is indicative of a nation for the rich, rather than one for the
people.