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democracy; and it was Jackson who first built successfully upon it.

The same irregular crossing of theoretical and practical threads is apparent in Jackson's constitutional opinions. In the main he was a strict constructionist, a firm believer in the necessity of maintaining unimpaired the rights of the states. Yet however much he cared for the states, he cared for the Union more, and was prepared to resent at a moment's notice any encroachment upon the prerogatives of the federal government, particularly the executive branch of it. In other words, he was a strict constructionist so far as strict construction did not interfere with his practical preconceptions of the sphere of the federal powers; but in times of crisis his view of the scope of the federal powers would have done credit to the straightest sect of Federalists. At one with Jefferson as regards the general theory of democracy, Jackson's rough-andready common-sense saved him from the impracticality which marks in general the public life of Jefferson, and made middle-class democracy what it had never been before in the United States, a working scheme of government.

Next to his theory of the will of the people, Jackson's conception of the relation of the three departments of government to one another is perhaps most notable. Nowhere is the mixture of the good and the bad more curious. Such a notion as that promulgated in his bank veto, regarding the respect due

to a decision of the supreme court, is as visionary as the fancies of an unsound mind. On the other hand, his assertion of the essential independence of the executive was a contribution of the first order. The office of president had grown less dignified and less independent under Madison, Monroe, and John Quincy Adams. Unquestionably there was real danger of the establishment of a legislative oligarchy, under whose influence the executive would be reduced to a mere administrative agency, and the judiciary be shorn of all substantial power. Against this trend Jackson successfully protested, albeit with an offensive arrogance which alienated some to whom the theory otherwise appealed.

It is to the Jackson régime that we owe the modern conception of political leadership and party affiliation. The essence of that conception is the formulation of political opinion by self-constituted leaders, the control of voters by a "machine," and absolute intolerance of dissent. The importance of the individual voter declines, but that of voters as a mass is enormously enhanced. Platforms are framed to win votes, not to express definite opinions. The development of political organization was, of course, necessitated by the growth of the electorate, but the appeal was increasingly to the lower rather than the higher sentiments. Naturally, therefore, we have in Jackson's time the beginning of a general withdrawal of the higher classes from active politics. Men of consequence go out and men of the mass come in. Family, education, experience, and high ideals find less and less place in the coarse, vulgar political life which Jackson represented. Only in the south, where there were no "bosses," and where the aristocracy of leading families and great planters dominated affairs, did the old order survive.

Finally, it is in the time of Jackson that the historian notes the emergence of the west as a distinct and influential factor in national politics. The growth of the west in population and wealth, reflected in the steadily increasing representation of that section in the House of Representatives, was shown still more in the demand for greater recognition in the federal councils. The west of the thirties was a raw, unformed region, abounding in natural resource, but dominated by a population appreciably lower in many of the essentials of culture than was to be found elsewhere in the United States. It is not surprising, therefore, that the irruption of such a society into the national field should have been temporarily disastrous, and that men of the older east, accustomed to consider politics as a somewhat serious business, should have resented the rule of what seemed to them only a mob. Undoubtedly, too, the appearance of the west accentuated the sectionalism which had been growing for a generation in American life. Yet it was through the west, and through Jackson who was the incarnation of its tone and temper, that the true nature of American democracy was to be made clear. Whatever the sphere of an aristocracy in the United States-whether that aristocracy be one of breeding or of intelligence or of wealth-the destiny of the state is in the keeping of the rank and file; and it is the greatest of all Jackson's contributions to American politics that he, first of all the presidents, gave to the people an opportunity.

No single phrase suffices to characterize adequately either Jackson or his time. In the great democratic revolution which came about between 1825 and 1840, Jackson is at most points the recognized and trusted leader. He embodied with rare perfectness a political theory, at the same time that he spoke only what the mass of men everywhere thought. His public life exhibits at every point the profoundest limitations and the sharpest contradictions, yet he is beyond question the most influential personality in American politics from the time of Jefferson to the time of Lincoln.

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CHAPTER XIX

CRITICAL ESSAY ON AUTHORITIES

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL AIDS

HERE is no special bibliography of the period covered by the present volume. The more important literature is classified in Channing and Hart, Guide to the Study of American History (1896), 366-374, and W. E. Foster, References to the History of Presidential Administrations (1885), 22-26. Numerous important works, with critical annotations, are listed in J. N. Larned, Literature of American History (1902), 181-204, 273-294, 302-331. The biographies of Jackson by James Parton (3 vols., 1861) and W. G. Sumner (revised edition, 1899) include extended lists of works consulted. The special studies enumerated below contain comprehensive references to authorities, both printed and manuscript. See the "Critical Essay on Authorities" in Frederick J. Turner, The New West; Albert Bushnell Hart, Slavery and Abolition, and George P. Garrison, Westward Extension (American Nation, XIV., XVI., XVII.).

COMPREHENSIVE SECONDARY ACCOUNTS

Hermann Eduard Von Holst, Constitutional History of the United States (Mason's translation, 8 vols., 1876-1892), contains the most thorough account of the period on its constitutional side. James Schouler, History of the United States under the Constitution (6 vols., rev. ed., 1899), is a well-balanced general narrative. The fifth volume of John Bach McMaster, History of the People of the United States

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