Essay on New York Republicans

The New York Republicans, who usuaIly favored electing everyone and anyone, were obviously embarrassed by the Federalists’ tactics; they after all saw themselves as the true guardians of the revolutionary spirit of 1’776. Van Buren, ‘ very defensively , tried to point out that only a few thousand offices remained appointive; most were elected by the people. Besides, he said in a stunning concession to monarchical principles, retaining some patronage meant not cutting ” every cord that binds to­ gether the people to the government.” Republican Nathan Williams car­ ried this argument even further. Was it not essential, he asked, “that there should be some channel through which the remotest parts of the state would feel the influence of the central administration . . . ? Could it be expected . . . that without a community of feeling, without a single tie of interest, any government would long hang together? What ligament, what cement, would there be to bind the head and the remote parts together?” “Patriotism” could not do it . It “alas! had been found, in some cases, rather weak among us .” Without “influence,” said Wil­ liams , “the government would be like a rape of sand.” Hamilton could not have said it better. These New York Republicans were a long way from In6 and strict republican principles, but their arguments, thrown up in the heat of debate, became part of the intelleemal preparation for the Jacksonian revolution.P

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Jacksonianism did not create democracy in America. But it legiti­ mated it; it restrained and controlled it and reconciled Americans to it. It did so by infusing into American democracy more elements of rnon­ archy than even the Federalists had dared to try. The Jacksonians did this, however, in the midst of the most enthusiastic democratic rhetoric that any modern country had ever experienced. Consequently, the cen­ tralizing and consolidating aspects of the Jacksonian revolution have been obscured and generally lost to us ,

Democraue O.fJiceholding 3°3

The administration of Andrew Jackson had a very different idea of patronage from that of the revolutionaries, one more in accord with the emerging democratic society of the nineteenth century. The J acksonians inaugurated what came to be caIled the “spoils system,” the systematic use of patronage to reward members of the victorious party in an intense and legitimate party competition. By ousting the losing party and ap­ pointing only party loyalists to post offices and land offices and other government positions, the party created networks of influence through­ out the country and helped to hold the country together.

No wonder many thought theJacksonians’ flagrant use ofpatronage was a throwback to the old monarchical techniques of the eighteenth century; this is partly why Jackson’s opponents called hirn “King Andrew” and formed the Whig party. Although the Jacksonians’ jus­ tifications of patronage were sometimes similar to those of the past, its use was different-different not only from that of monarchy but from that of republicanism as weil. The J acksonian officeholders were not sociaIly visible and respectable men. Historians and sociologists have worked hard to show that the social status of the J acksonian officeholders was not dramatically different from that of earlier administrations.n But not only have these studies focused on the administrative elites of the government, ignoring the federal officeholders in the localities, but they have often applied very crude measures of social status and social back­ ground. “Occupation” is virtually no measure at all: there were lawyers and there were lawyers ; an enormous social gulf, perceptible to contern­ poraries if not to us, separated a Harvard-educated attorney from an apprenticed lawyer who had never been to college.

Many of the J acksonian officeholders were new sorts of democratic men. Even Amos Kendall, a member of Jackson ‘s “kitchen cabinet” and author of Jackson’s Bank veto message , was thought by some to lack “the polished conversation the graceful manner & high tone” of a real gentleman; he did “not look like a Gentleman.” In fact, Jackson chose what he called “plain businessmen” for his official cabinet. “He has surrounded hirnself with men of narrow minds, some of them hardly gentlemen,” complained the governor of Virginia.» Not that all Jack­ sonians were without’ wealth and power. Some were Federalist converts who found solace in the Jacksonian attack on corruption and the Jack­ sonian desire to restore order and virtue. Others were ambitious entre­ preneurial go-getters, wealthy hut unestahlished and ungenteel. But many others were like the humble gracer in Frankfort, Kentucky, who became a postmaster-truly ohscure men without social position in their

DEMOCRACY3°4

localities; in fact, their appointment to a post office or a land office was usually the source of any social influence they might have.:J6

Regardless of the officeholders ‘ wealth or soeial standing, however, what was crucial now was their loyalty to the Jacksonian cause. The sole criterion of appointment was not family, not soeial standing, not wealth, not ability, not character, and not reputation, but connection to the party. Nothing else was needed. “The duties of all public offices,” said J ackson in his first annual message, “are, or at least admit of being made, so plain and simple that men of intelligence may readily qualify themselves for their performance…. In a country where offices are created solely for the benefit of the people no one man has any more intrinsic right to official station than another.’ ’37 Anyone now could serve . in any office.

But not for long. The Jacksonians used the older radical whig con­ ception of “rotation in office” not only as a means of freeing govern­ ment as much as possible from any semblance of aristocratic influence but also as a cover for the radical changes they were making in the nature of officeholding. Government office was no longer to be “a spe­ eies of property” belonging to prominent gentlernen simply because of ” their social rank or character. Govemment office now belonged to the people, ordinary people, and all equally had the right and the ability to hold such office-at least for a short period of time. The result was not, of course, any sudden invasion of offices by ordinary people; college graduates and would-be gentlemen continued to dominate high public office in America. But now even they behaved as common people-a fact immediately evident to European visitors. American public offieials, observed Tocqueville in June 1831, possessed little of the aristocratic dis­ tinction that Europeans expected in their government officers. “They are absolutelyon the same footing as the rest of the citizens, They are dressed the same, stay at the same inn when away from horne, are accessible at every moment, and shake everybody by the hand. They exercise a certain power defined by the law; beyond that they are not at all above the rest.’ ’38

In such an egalitarian system of rotating offices, individuals could be appointed and removed at will without damaging the integrity of govemment-because the nature of the offices was now to be different. Offices were to be bureaucratic in a modern sense-rationalized, deper­ sonalized, organized by function, defined by rules and regulations, and paid set salaries.

Because many of the J acksonian officeholders were to be face1ess

A w-u Within Themselues 3°5 functionaries, presumably lacking the traditional aristocratic concern for personal honor or reputation, the government had to devise new mod­ em safeguards against corruptioh. More formal structures were erected, new administrative rules were adopted, and more bookkeeping, receipts, and cross-checking were required-all designed to prevent men from exploiting their offices for personal benefit. 39 These added bureaucratic regulations and red tape in the dispensing of funds were not simply the result of theJacksonian government’s having gotten larger and assumed new responsibilities; they were the result of democracy. The new imper­ sonal rules and the self-policing regulations were made for officeholders who were ordinary men with ordinaryinterests. In the Jacksonians’ idea ofgovemment, “effieiency,” it has been said, “lay primarily in the system (rules and regulations) rather than in men (character).” Office was defined impersonally, bureaucratically. The officeholder’s creed was: “I want no discretion. I wish to be able to tum to some law or lawful regulation for every allowance I am called upon to make. “40

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