American History Tellers - Political Parties - Jacksonian Democracy | 2

Episode Date: November 28, 2018

Andrew Jackson lost the 1824 presidential election to John Quincy Adams through what some called a “corrupt bargain” in the House of Representatives. The maneuver was masterminded by hot-headed but politically savvy Henry Clay, who with Adams, announced their intent for far-reaching new federal programs. Fierce opposition to these policies united pro-Jackson supporters who formed a new party, the Democrats, to rally around their hero and elect him to president in 1828.But while Adams was defeated, Henry Clay had no intention of leaving the fight. He helped lead a new party which gathered together anti-Jackson, fiscal conservatives, and pro-states rights factions. The rise of Clay’s new Whig party seemed unstoppable–they captured both houses of Congress and the presidency–until, on April 4, 1841, president William Henry Harrison died in office and gave John Tyler the power of the veto.Support this show by supporting our sponsors!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Imagine it's January, 1809. You're on a narrow spit of land alongside the Silver Creek in southern Indiana. It's the spot where it empties into the Ohio River. You and your companions have just rode across the river from Louisville, Kentucky, to this desolate, windblown place. It's a well-known dueling ground for Kentuckians.

Dueling is illegal in the state, so men come here to the edge of the frontier to settle their differences. This wind won't help you with your aim today. I won't need any help to put this scoundrel in his place. God willing, we'll bury him on this hillside. Your companion is a young, headstrong politician named Henry Clay. Despite being only 31, he's the Speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives. He's come here today to duel with another lawmaker named Humphrey Marshall. The two nearly came to blows two weeks ago after an argument over legislation Clay proposed.

You're here to serve as Clay's second, ensuring that the rules are followed. You and Clay, together with the physician he's brought along, make your way up the shore to where Marshall and his own companions are waiting. Glad to see you were man enough to show your face here today, Clay. And you're even wearing homespun clothes, too. How nice. Clay glares at his enemy for a moment, but doesn't respond. Their argument in the statehouse was over a bill Clay proposed for the Kentucky legislature to only wear American-made clothes rather than fancy European imports. Marshall insulted the whole idea, and Clay, always a hothead, attacked him.

Calmerheads intervened, but Clay insisted on a duel to restore his honor. You and Marshall's assistant count off ten equal paces and instruct the two men to stand at their prescribed spots. Since Clay is the challenger, it's your job to oversee the duel. You hand each man his gun. According to the agreed-upon rules, there will be three rounds. Once I give the word, you may fire at any time. But once the first man has shot, he may not move until the other has fired. Everyone agrees, and you and the others step back

to where you can safely observe the proceedings. Attention! The two men stand facing one another, pistols at their sides. Fire! Marshall immediately raises his arm and fires at Clay. The shot misses. More carefully, Clay aims and fires. Humphrey grunts and staggers back, grabbing his abdomen. For a moment, you think Clay has seriously injured him, but Marshall opens his coat to reveal merely a graze along his flank. Each man reloads his pistol and readies for the second round. Attention. Fire. Again, Marshall fires quickly, and again he misses. Clay curses. His pistol has misfired. Humphrey chuckles, which only enrages Clay further.

Keep laughing, you rat. Mr. Clay's gun has misfired. According to the agreed-upon rules, a misfire counts as a shot. Please prepare for the third round. After Clay clears his weapon, each man reloads for the final round. Attention. Fire. This time Clay fires first and misses. Taking his time, Marshall lifts his weapon.

Clay cries out and drops his gun, staggering backwards. He collapses to the ground, gripping his thigh. Marshall has hit his leg, and blood is beginning to ooze through Clay's pants in a large circle. Clay's doctor runs to his side, but the lawmaker waves him away. I insist on another round. This duel is not yet finished. He hobbles to his feet, but then stumbles again and falls. While the doctor tends to Clay, you confer with Marshall second and decide that, due to Clay's injury, the duel is over. Filled with righteous indignation, Clay isn't happy, but he finally gives in. You've known Clay a long time, having

worked with him as a frontier lawyer in Lexington since the early days. He's impulsive and hot-tempered, a risk-taker who craves excitement. But he also has a keen sense of strategy. As the doctor tends to the wound in Clay's leg, you're relieved to know the young speaker will live to fight another day. Henry Clay is a fighter. In the decades to come, he will return time and again to the center of American politics. He'll play a key role in moments of compromise and conflict and help to define an era marching relentlessly toward confrontation. where aspiring entrepreneurs get 90 seconds to pitch to an audience of potential customers.

If the audience liked the product, it gets them in front of our panel of experts, Gwyneth Paltrow, Anthony Anderson, Tabitha Brown, Tony Hawk. Oh, my God. Buy it now.

Stream free on Freeview and Prime Video. From Wondering comes a new series about a lawyer who broke all the rules. Need to launder some money? Broker a deal with a drug cartel? Take out a witness? Paul can do it. I'm your host, Brandon Jinks Jenkins. Follow Criminal Attorney on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. From Wondery, I'm Lindsey Graham, and this is American History Tellers. Our history, your story. Henry Clay recovered well from his injury at the hands of Humphrey Marshall.

But it wouldn't be the last duel the high-spirited Clay would fight in his lifetime. He was renowned for his drinking, carousing, and womanizing. He loved to gamble at cards and was quick to defend his sense of honor. Despite this, his personal charisma, warm-heartedness, and ability to bring people together made him the most prominent politician of his generation. He was elected to the U.S. Senate before he was even the constitutionally required age of 30. Everyone was so taken in by his skillful oratory and leadership qualities, no one seemed to notice his age. Already an important political figure in the 1810s, he would emerge

in the 1820s as one of the primary figures in American politics. In this episode, we'll dig into the origins of the Democratic Party, which began as an opposition party to John Quincy Adams and his prominent Secretary of State, Henry Clay. We'll also see several other new parties rise out of the ashes of the old Republican coalition, and we'll watch those parties battle back and forth over westward expansion as the country finds itself involved in another war. After the debacle of the 1824 election, Andrew Jackson and his supporters had a chip on their shoulders. The Electoral

College had not produced a majority winner, sending the ultimate decision of who would be president to the House of Representatives. Working behind the scenes as Speaker of the House, Henry Clay had helped guide the decision towards John Quincy Adams, even though Jackson won the popular vote. Then, when Clay took a powerful job in Adams' new administration as Secretary of State, Jackson's supporters were certain Adams' win over Jackson was a corrupt bargain organized by Clay. Jackson had already come out of retirement to run for president. After the botched outcome, Jackson was ready to retire for a second time to his Tennessee plantation. But his supporters,

unhappy with the direction of the Adams administration, encouraged him to run again in 1828. He agreed. Though Jackson himself did little active campaigning, he had plenty of supporters willing to do the groundwork for him. New York Senator Martin Van Buren became one of his most vocal supporters, and Adams' own vice president, John C. Calhoun, also supported Jackson. Calhoun and Adams had previously been political allies, but like many other Southerners, Calhoun had become disillusioned after Henry Clay was named Secretary of State. Both Van Buren and Calhoun were concerned that Adams was too much like his father, building up a strong federal government

that was beginning to infringe on states' rights. Together with Jackson's growing army of supporters, Van Buren and Calhoun helped establish numerous pro-Jackson newspapers around the country. They founded political societies to help campaign locally. And then they bided their time. In his first annual address to Congress, Adams spelled out an ambitious economic agenda. His plan called for federal investment in domestic building projects like roads, bridges, and canals.

He wanted to establish a naval academy and a department of the interior to oversee the projects. He also wanted a national bankruptcy protection law, a national university, and a national astronomical observatory. Jackson's supporters, most prominently Van Buren and Calhoun, found all this to be a move in precisely the wrong direction. And they pushed back. They managed to subvert virtually all of Adams' proposals in Congress. They even blocked a proposed federally funded naval exploration of the Pacific Ocean. And in addition to successfully stalling much of Adams' economic agenda, the pro-Jackson faction had successes at the ballot box, too. In the 1826 midterm elections, pro-Jackson candidates won a majority in both the Senate and the House, making Adams the first

president to face a united Congress led by his political opponents. So any hopes of breaking the resistance to his economic agenda in Congress were now dashed. It was around this time that Jackson's supporters began calling themselves Democrats and their growing organization the Democratic Party. In the previous generation, the word Democrat had been used as an epithet, usually by Federalists against their Jeffersonian opponents. It was a way of suggesting that Jefferson's group, like the Frenchmen they loved, believed in mob rule. These views still persisted in some regions, especially in the Northeast, the old home of the Federalists. Adams himself hinted at this perspective in his State of the Union Address,

the same one where he outlined his ambitious economic agenda. Arguing that short-sighted populism could paralyze the nation, he said, if we were to slumber in indolence or fold up our arms and proclaim to the world that we are palsied by the will of our constituents, we would doom ourselves to perpetual inferiority. But Jackson's supporters were more than happy to take a negative term and make it a badge of honor. Supporting the will of the people, the will of the common man, was one of their central tenets. They sought to recreate Jefferson's old vision of the agrarian paradise, a sort of southern plantation aristocracy that valued personal liberty above all. And it was on these principles that

the Democrats rallied around Andrew Jackson for president. Jackson was famous and well-loved for his military exploits in the War of 1812. He'd already won the popular vote in the previous election, and his army of supporters and newspaper editors weren't about to let anyone forget the way that election had been taken from him. And despite some vicious and personal mudslinging against him, when the votes were tallied in the 1828 election, there would be no need for a congressional runoff this time around. Jackson won convincingly, taking 15 of the 24 states and 56% of the popular vote. The era of Jacksonian democracy had begun.

Imagine you're a road builder in Ohio. It's the late summer of 1833, and you're at a work site just outside of Columbus. You and a fellow worker are sitting in the grass underneath a tree, eating lunch. A few feet away from you, a group of men are gathered around a pile of rocks, hammering them into smaller pieces, then tossing them into a pile to be weighed and measured. More men are out on the road itself, using rakes to spread the small rocks into a thin layer across the roadbed. Hey, you really think this new muck-a-dum method is going to make the roads more durable? Well, yeah, not just that, but they drain better. And they say traveling on them is easier. The rocks are smaller than the

wheels of a carriage, so it makes for a smoother ride. Well, I guess if it worked in Europe, it'll work here. Road building isn't easy. You've made a career out of it like your father before you, but you've also had to work other odd jobs to make ends meet. But when the federal government decided a few years ago to extend the Cumberland Road from western Virginia all the way to St. Louis, it provided the best opportunity yet to use the new road building process. And now, thanks to the government's generous subsidies, you and all the other road builders here in central Ohio are flush with cash. You even were able to buy your wife Charlotte a fancy new dress for Easter this year. I hear there's talk that Democrats might try to cut funding for the road after the next election. President Jackson likes to pinch his pennies. Well, I'd like to

tell President Jackson what he can do with his pennies. This project has created jobs for a lot of people, and what we're doing here is eventually going to help everyone. Imagine all the trade goods that are going to move up and down this road. From the coast all the way to the frontier at St. Louis. Jackson and the Democrats are fools if they put a stop to this. Well, they think the state should be footing the bill. The state doesn't have the money for it. Unless you're ready to pay more taxes.

The foreman steps off the road and looks over at you, scowling. Hey, you two, quit your politics and get back to work. You give the foreman a dirty look. He's a Jackson man, so it's not surprising he doesn't want to hear you complaining about the Democrats. Well, there's a typical Democrat for you. If it were up to him, we'd all be competing with slaves for work on the plantation. What'd you say, smart mouth? You want to work on our plantation?

When I'm through with you, you'll be wishing you were picking cotton. You jump to your feet. Your co-worker tries to calm you down, but your blood is up. You can't talk to me like that, you scoundrel. Just like your president, you walk around here like a petty tyrant. The foreman walks towards you and shoves you to the ground. You scramble back to your feet, ready to tackle him, but your co-worker restrains you. Get out of here. You're both fired. Don't ever come asking me for a job again. You dust yourself off and spit at the foreman as he stalks away. You know you'll be upset later, especially when you have to break the news to poor Charlotte. But right now, you're too angry to have regrets.

There are other crews working on the Cumberland Road. You'll find work with one of them. If not, Mr. Clay in Washington will surely come up with another project that will soon have you working again. By the time Jackson won the presidency in 1828, Henry Clay had taken his fighting spirit from the dueling ground to national politics. He was already one of the most important politicians in the country, and he brought bold and controversial building projects to the nation. First serving as senator, he'd later move to the House of Representatives. He became Speaker of the House for the first time in 1811

and served 10 of the next 14 years in the post. After Adams was elected, he served as Secretary of State, then returned to the Senate after Jackson took over. He very quickly became Jackson's most dangerous political enemy. Not only did the two men disagree on political issues, but there was personal animosity between them as well, and not just because of Clay's maneuvers in the election of 1824. One of Jackson's most loyal and influential newspaper men was Amos Kendall. Kendall promoted Jackson's Democratic Party through his prominent newspaper, The Washington Globe. He was also one of Jackson's closest confidants and advisors,

but Kendall had previously been an editor in Clay's hometown of Lexington, Kentucky, and had even tutored Henry Clay's children for about a year. Kendall and Clay fell out after Clay's elevation to Secretary of State. Kendall wanted a job in the Adams administration, implying he could use his newspaper to push Clay's agenda. Clay agreed, but Kendall wanted more money than Clay was willing to pay. So Clay refused, seeing it as little more than extortion. Kendall then turned the facts around and said publicly that Clay had attempted to bribe him by offering him a job in exchange for positive editorials. The two men never saw eye to eye again.

After their falling out, Kendall bolted for the new Democratic coalition. He found Jackson and his associates ready and willing to give him all the patronage he wanted. And as a result, Clay and Kendall became bitter enemies. For Clay, that animosity extended to Kendall's patron as well. He viewed Jackson as corrupt and immoral, willing to do anything for power and prestige. He became determined to undermine Jackson at every opportunity. During his time in Washington, Clay had developed an economic system that he called the American System. Based in part on Alexander Hamilton's model, its goal was to benefit the nation's economy by encouraging manufacturing and interstate trade.

It called for high tariffs to protect American manufacturing. It also called for a national bank and a single currency to promote interstate trade. Finally, it sought to fund domestic projects like the Cumberland Road, built with the new technology of mucketum to facilitate the moving of retail goods. These projects would be funded by the extra cash generated from the high tariffs. Two of these programs were already well in place by the time Jackson took over. Tariffs had first been raised in 1816, then again in 1828, and the Second Bank of the United States was established in 1816 as well. Jackson viewed Clay's American system with contempt.

His supporters had put a stop to much of it during Adams' presidency, but Clay had no intention of letting that happen again. So Clay and his supporters formed a strong opposition party to Jackson. They began calling themselves the National Republicans, and they established an organizational base to fight Jackson and his platform. One of their biggest fights erupted over the Tariff of 1828. Called the Tariff of Abominations by its opponents, it set a staggering rate of 38% on imported goods. It was passed against Democratic opposition at the end of Adams' presidency, but it didn't go into effect until after Jackson had taken over.

The tariff was largely supported in the Northeast and throughout much of the West, but Southerners, most of whom were Jackson supporters, vehemently opposed it. The South was an agricultural economy. Its residents depended on manufactured goods imported from elsewhere, and the tariff increased prices. It also raised costs for British exporters, who in turn lessened their demand for Southern products like cotton to ship overseas. As a result, Southerners saw their cost of living rise even as their income shrank. Many of them also still remember the controversy inspired by John Adams' Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798. Then, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison

had reacted by anonymously authoring the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. Those resolutions had called for the rights of the states to nullify federal laws that they deemed unconstitutional. Taking a cue from that old controversy, South Carolina's John C. Calhoun wrote another anonymous pamphlet. In it, he encouraged the state to nullify the tariff law and refused to collect the tariffs at the state's boards. The state didn't immediately act on Calhoun's proposal, but it did distribute the pamphlet around the state in an effort to drum up opposition to the tariffs. Passion simmered in South Carolina for nearly four years. Finally, a new law was passed in 1832, lowering the tariff. Written by former President Adams, who was now a member of Congress,

Jackson signed the bill in hopes of mollifying South Carolina. But the maneuver didn't work. South Carolinians were incensed by even this lower tariff, and Jackson's apparent appeasement caused an irreparable split with Calhoun. Though Calhoun had been vice president under John Quincy Adams, he had thrown his support behind Jackson in 1828. As a result, he'd remained in the vice presidency after Jackson was elected. But when Jackson signed the 1832 tariff into law, it was all that Calhoun could take. With his encouragement, South Carolina officially declared the tariff null and void and unenforceable in the state. A few weeks later, Calhoun resigned

the vice presidency to become a senator instead, where he'd have a vote in the state. A few weeks later, Calhoun resigned the vice presidency to become a senator instead, where he'd have a vote in the ongoing debate. In response, Jackson threatened military intervention to force South Carolina to enact the 1832 law. He was no lover of high tariffs, but he felt strongly about defending federal authority. A year later, in 1833, with the threat of armed conflict looming, Henry Clay, the great negotiator, stepped in with a compromise. He struck a deal with Calhoun, suggesting that the rates of the tariff should steadily decrease each year for the next decade. South Carolina and the rest of the South accepted the compromise, and peace was restored, but tentatively.

While all this was going on, Clay and the National Republicans were trying to defeat Jackson in the 1832 presidential election. Attacking Jackson for his liberal use of the presidential veto, they depicted him as a tyrant, intent on abusing the balance of powers in Washington. The issue of the presidential veto would become a central theme in national politics for several decades to come. It was born out of the perspective that Jackson had misused the power by overruling legitimate congressional legislation. If Congress represented the will of the people, then vetoing a piece of legislation was tantamount to acting like a king. Jackson vetoed more bills than all previous presidents combined, 12 during his two terms as president. During the 1832 election, political

cartoons in favor of Clay played on this theme. One widely distributed cartoon showed Jackson in the traditional garb of a British king, holding a scepter in one hand, a scroll labeled Veto in the other. He stood atop a U.S. Constitution that had been torn into pieces. The caption read, Born to Command, King Andrew I. The strategy didn't work, though. Jackson's fame and magnetic personality continued to draw loyal support across the nation. Voters viewed the old general as protecting them from the schemes of urban elites.

He won re-election easily, sending Clay to his second presidential election defeat. It was during the same election, however, that the first national nominating conventions were held. Previously, congressional caucuses or state legislators would nominate candidates to the presidency. But beginning in 1832, both the Democrats and the National Republicans used National Party conventions to nominate their candidates. But they weren't the ones who came up with the idea. Instead, that innovation belonged to another party, the first significant third party in American history.

They called themselves the Anti-Masonic Party, a party formed in the wake of a high-profile kidnapping and accusations of murder. For more than two centuries, the White House has been the stage for some of the most dramatic scenes in American history. Inspired by the hit podcast American History Tellers, Wondery and William Morrow present the new book, The Hidden History of the White House. Each chapter will bring you inside the fierce power struggles, the world-altering decisions, and shocking scandals that have shaped our nation.

You'll be there when the very foundations of the White House are laid in 1792, and you'll watch as the British burn it down in 1814. Then you'll hear the intimate conversations between FDR and Winston Churchill as they make plans to defeat Nazi forces in 1941. And you'll be in the Situation Room when President Barack Obama approves the raid to bring down the most infamous terrorist in American history. Order The Hidden History of the White House now in hardcover or digital edition, wherever you get your books. Now streaming. Welcome to Buy It Now,

the show where aspiring entrepreneurs get the opportunity of a lifetime. I wouldn't be chasing it if I didn't believe that the world needs this product. In each episode, the entrepreneurs get 90 seconds to pitch to an audience of potential customers. This is Matt's point, baby. If the audience liked the product,

it gets them in front of our panel of experts, Gwyneth Paltrow, Anthony Anderson, Tabitha Brown, Tony Hawk, Christian Siriano. These panelists are looking for entrepreneurs whose ideas best fit the criteria of the four Ps, pitch, product, popularity, and problem-solving ability. I'm going to give you a yes. I want to see it.

If our panelists liked the product, it goes into the Amazon Buy It Now store. You are the embodiment of what an American entrepreneur is. Oh, my God. Are we excited for this moment? Ah! I cannot believe it. Woo! Buy It Now.

Stream free on Freeview and Prime Video. Imagine it's autumn in western New York. The year is 1826, and you're traveling with your brother to see family in the eastern part of the state. You're from Batavia, about 25 miles to the west. You've stopped for the night at a small inn in the town of Avon. After handing your horse and wagon over to the attendant outside, the two of you walk inside the inn. Inside, it's warm and cozy with a fire crackling in a large fireplace.

The proprietor, a big bear of a man named Asa, tells you to have a seat. He brings you both a bowl of his wife's stew. You hear the front door open, and several men walk in. Excuse me, we're looking for Aza Nolan. Is he here? Mr. Cheesebrough? I didn't expect to see you here tonight. Yes, we made better time than we expected. The men begin talking in quieter tones.

Your brother leans towards you. Isn't that William Morgan? You look closer at the group and realize one of the men is someone you know from back home in Batavia. Yeah, I'll be damned. I think you're right. Isn't he the one who's been having it out with the Freemasons? Yeah. I don't know all the details, but he was a Freemason himself before they kicked him out. Supposedly, he was writing a book to expose all their secrets. And you know how Freemasons love their secrets. I thought he'd been locked up. He was. Everyone knows that Morgan was just taken to jail in a nearby town a few days ago, accused by a prominent Freemason of the petty theft of a shirt and tie.

The newspaper suggested it was a false charge done to prevent him from publishing his book. But there's been no word since. But now here he is, standing before you with a group of unfamiliar men. And he looks uneasy. The men he's with are still talking to Aza, but Morgan hasn't spoken a word. He keeps looking at the front door, almost like he's thinking of making a run for it. Has he been released from prison fair and square? Or is something more sinister going on? You decide to stand up and call out to him. Excuse me, William. William Morgan.

He turns to you with a terrified expression and starts to respond. Before you can do anything else, though, the men have hustled Morgan out the door with the innkeeper following closely behind. Something's not right about this. You make a snap decision to follow them outside. Wait, where are you going with that man? As the others shove Morgan into the carriage, the man called Mr. Cheesebro grabs your arm in a vice-like grip. Go back to your stew and stay out of other people's business. He shoves you down and you topple to your backside in the dust. The carriage quickly pulls away. You realize your brother has followed you outside.

What was that all about? I don't know, but it can't be good. I should report this to the police. You do, but the police prove to be no help at all. They know Aza Nolan well, and insist he wouldn't be involved in anything out of the ordinary. So you retire late to your room, deciding to put the ugly scene out of your exhausted mind.

It's not until a month later, when you return from your trip east, that you find out that William Morgan is missing and presumed dead. And the Freemasons, including Asa Nolan, are being accused of his murder. The shocking disappearance of William Morgan in western New York ignited a firestorm of opposition against Freemasonry. Newspapers began publishing unflattering editorials. Pamphlets were distributed detailing the corrupting influence that secretive Masonic ideology was supposedly having on American society. When Asa Nolan and the others were acquitted of kidnapping charges, critics pointed to Masonic influence in the justice system. It was no secret that many of the nation's founders had been Freemasons, but opponents

charged that the new generation of Freemasons had become insidious. They were infiltrating the government and the courts, bringing with them corruption and elitism. William Morgan had threatened to expose their secrets, the theory went, so they'd done away with him. And they'd gotten away with it because their allies held political and judicial office. In order to stop this perceived threat, activists in New York formed the Anti-Masonic Party in 1828. Initially a single-issue party, their goal was to keep Freemasons, regardless of political affiliation, out of office. Many of New York's Freemasons were supporters of Andrew Jackson and his new Democratic Party. Jackson himself was a Freemason, and a high-ranking one. He'd served as Grand Master in Tennessee in the early 1820s. This made Jackson a natural foe of the Anti-Masonic Party.

Thus united in opposition to Jackson, the Anti-Masons and the National Republicans became allies. Eventually, the Anti-Masons expanded their platform to embrace national Republican principles like internal improvements and a protective tariff. They spread out of New York and became a factor in state politics throughout New England. But the party's primary contribution to politics was the National Nominating Convention. Since 1824, the congressional nominating caucuses had been seen as old-fashioned and non-democratic. Furthermore, the anti-Masons only had a handful of congressmen anyway, not enough to form a real caucus that could speak for the whole party.

As a result, in 1831, a year before the presidential election, party delegates convened in Baltimore, Maryland, to decide on a candidate for president. It was the first time any such thing had ever been tried. As the party evolved, opposition to Freemasonry became a secondary issue, especially at the federal level. Conspiracy theories about Freemasons worked well at the state and local level, but it wasn't enough to gain broad national support. And in fact, the candidate the anti-Masons nominated for president in 1832 was a Freemason himself and refused to denigrate the group in speeches. As the first third-party

candidate on the presidential ballot, he won 7% of the popular vote and carried the state of Vermont. The anti-Masons didn't succeed as a viable national party, but the idea of a national convention spread. Very soon after, but the idea of a national convention spread. Very soon after, both the Democrats and the National Republicans chose their nominees for president through their own nominating conventions. After Henry Clay's bad loss to Andrew Jackson in the 1832 presidential election, his National Republican Party began to lose steam. But over the next few years, a new coalition began forming in its place. It initially consisted of former

National Republicans teamed together with former Jackson supporters, who were disaffected by Jackson's conduct during the nullification crisis with South Carolina. They hadn't liked Jackson's threat to use the Army to enforce the tariff, and they saw it as an assault on states' rights. Additionally, Jackson had earlier vetoed the recharter of the Second National Bank. Renewing the charter had been part of Henry Clay's economic agenda. The veto was viewed by many as a subversion of the will of Congress. Congress was the voice of the people. It was one thing to veto a bill that was unconstitutional.

As the protector of the Constitution, that's what the president was supposed to do. It was another thing entirely to veto legislation that the president just simply didn't like. As a result, after 1832, many Jacksonians began to see eye to eye with Clay and his supporters, who had been long arguing that Jackson was a tyrant and a threat to Republican values. In time, the new coalition was joined by former anti-Masons, as well as a former New England Federalists who were still involved in politics. By 1833, the group began to call itself the Whig Party. The Whigs were one of the early political parties in Great Britain, characterized by their

opposition to absolute monarchy. During the Revolutionary Period, Americans had adopted the name to indicate their opposition to King George III. Calling themselves Whigs was a way for Clay's new coalition to voice their disapproval of the president they called King Andrew I. Politically, the party was an amalgamation of the old Federalist and Jeffersonian Republican values. Like the Federalists, Whigs embraced a strong centralized economic system, similar to the one championed by Alexander Hamilton and later Henry Clay. From the Jeffersonians, they took a strong view of states' rights, with limited power to Congress and, especially, the president. They wanted to see

a return to the old days, when the office of the president was more ceremonial in nature, less hands-on, and primarily focused on foreign rather than domestic affairs. Congress was constitutionally imbued with the power to legislate. Let Congress do its job representing the will of the people. The president should stay out of it. In 1836, the Whig Party was still in its infancy. It operated locally, but it still lacked a unified national presence. This lack of cohesion led to nominating four different Whigs for president that year, each representing a different geographical region. Collectively,

they ran against Jackson's hand-picked successor, Secretary of State Martin Van Buren, but also ran against each other. Their hope was to spread the electoral vote so thin that Congress would have to pick a winner, much like in the 1824 election. But the Democrats controlled the House of Representatives by a comfortable margin. It was unlikely they would choose a Whig over Van Buren unless he came in last and therefore be ineligible for the runoff. It was a strange strategy, but perhaps the best they could hope for. The plan failed. Van Buren secured a clear victory, and Democrats maintained control of both chambers of Congress. But the four Whig

candidates combined for 49% of the popular vote, a showing that was strong enough to keep the party growing in prominence. Prospects for a Whig takeover of the federal government began to look brighter after the country entered an economic depression right at the start of Van Buren's presidency. It was blamed in part on the monetary policies of Jackson, which were continued by Van Buren. The Panic of 1837 led to a five-year depression where hundreds of banks closed and thousands lost their jobs. By the time the 1840 presidential election approached, the economy had not yet fully recovered. Battling Van Buren for four years had unified the Whigs across the country, too. There would be no repeat of the multiple-candidate strategy of the previous election. Instead, the party nominated war hero William Henry Harrison, who had come in second at the

polls in 1836. Harrison was the first presidential candidate to actively campaign for his election. Prior to his time, it was considered beneath the dignity of the office for a person to campaign on their own behalf for president. In 1840, Harrison changed all that by touring the country and making numerous personal appearances. During the War of 1812, he had earned the nickname Old Tippecanoe due to his victory in the Battle of Tippecanoe. Now, Harrison leveraged that recognition into a campaign slogan that soon became famous, Tippecanoe and Tyler Too, taken from the lyrics of a popular campaign song. It became a familiar refrain played throughout the

country. In their opposition to Harrison, Democrats attempted to undermine his campaign by emphasizing his age. At 67, he was the oldest man to ever make a serious run for president. In speeches, they referred to him as Granny and sought to paint him as too old for the rigors of the presidency. But the country was still in the midst of the worst economic depression it had ever experienced. Van Buren and the Democrats, blamed for the downturn, didn't have a chance. Harrison won easily, giving the Whigs their first president. Whigs also took majorities in both

chambers of Congress. For Henry Clay, it looked as though the hard work of 15 years was finally going to pay off and his economic vision for America would finally become a reality. He fully intended to be the power behind the throne of the elderly Harrison. The dream of urban growth driven by free enterprise and federal subsidies seemed closer than ever. Unfortunately for Clay and his young party, things were about to take a sudden and dramatic turn for the worse. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island.

It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn, and it harboured a deep, dark scandal. There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reached the age of 10 that would still have heard it. It just happens to all of them. I'm journalist Luke Jones, and for almost two years, I've been investigating a shocking story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn.

When there's nobody watching, nobody going to report it, people will get away with what they can get away with. In the Pitcairn Trials, I'll be uncovering a story of abuse and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely Pacific island to the brink of extinction. Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. This is the emergency broadcast system.

A ballistic missile threat has been detected inbound to your area. Your phone buzzes and you look down to find this alert. What do you do next? Maybe you're at the grocery store. Or maybe you're with your secret lover. Or maybe you're with your secret lover. Or maybe you're robbing a bank. Based on the real-life false alarm that terrified Hawaii in 2018, Incoming, a brand-new fiction podcast exclusively on Wondery Plus,

follows the journey of a variety of characters as they confront the unimaginable. The missiles are coming. What am I supposed to do? Featuring incredible performances from Tracy Letts, Mary Lou Henner, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Paul Edelstein, and many, many more, Incoming is a hilariously thrilling podcast that will leave you wondering, how would you spend your last few minutes on Earth?

You can binge Incoming exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery+, in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Imagine it's April 6, 1841. You're a young law student in Washington, D.C., and you've been working as a clerk court for Circuit Court Judge William Cranch. You're standing in a modestly decorated hotel room with wood paneling and a crackling fireplace.

Two days ago, the city, and indeed the whole country, received shocking news. The new president, the beloved old Tippecanoe, died at the White House after a brief illness. He'd only just been inaugurated a month ago. His vice president, John Tyler, wasn't even in town and only arrived this morning. You're now in his room at the Browns Hotel in Washington, preparing to assist Judge Cranch administer the

oath of office. Tyler has just finished meeting with several members of Harrison's cabinet, and he seems frustrated. He's a tall man with a prominent beak-like nose that gives him a regal bearing. I know the cabinet means well, but they just can't decide on their own about all this. They think my title should be Vice President Acting President. That's just nonsensical. It's like calling someone Colonel Acting General. Well, no one really knows what to do, I'm afraid. A decision must be made to sort this problem out. The problem, you know, is that the Constitution is not very clear on the subject of presidential succession. It says only that the powers and duties of the office shall devolve on the vice

president if the president dies. So does that mean the vice president becomes president or only fulfills the president's duties in his capacity as vice president? No one really knows, but most people seem to think that the founders would never have intended for someone to be the actual president who wasn't elected by the people. Vice President Tyler thinks otherwise. I've already made the decision. As vice president, I'm also president of the Senate. How can I be president of the Senate and also acting president of the country? It's a conflict of interest. I must be one or the other. The Constitution surely grants me the full powers of the presidency.

If that's what you believe, then you should act quickly. With serious questions being debated about your actual role and title, I strongly urge you to let me administer the oath to you. It's precisely the decisive action you must take to assert your rights. And let's get on with it. You hand Judge Cranch his bifocals, together with a leather-bound Bible and a sheet of paper with the oath of office printed on it. He holds the Bible out and instructs Tyler to place his hand on it. Do you, John Tyler,

solemnly swear that you will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will, to the best of your ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I do. Congratulations, Mr. President. As you accompany Judge Cranch back to his office, you can't help but think that Tyler has now only done the easy part, taking the oath. Convincing everyone else of his legitimacy will be a much bigger task. William Henry Harrison was the first president to die in office. No one knew what to do, and everyone had a different opinion. Tyler's quick action and unwavering insistence that he was the actual president and not just the acting president set an important standard for the future. Eventually, Congress came to see it his way. Still, his opponents consistently referred

to him throughout his term as his accidency. And he certainly had a lot of opponents. Just a few years earlier, Tyler had been a Jackson-supporting Democrat, but like many other moderates in the party, he'd become disaffected with Jackson's heavy-handed governing style. He was especially disillusioned by Jackson's military threats during the nullification crisis with South Carolina, and eventually joined Henry Clay's coalition of Whigs. The result was that the Democrats despised him as a traitor, and the Whigs were suspicious of him as a Jacksonian at heart. After the 1840 election, Henry Clay had hoped to inaugurate a new era of dominance by the Whigs in American politics.

It was a calamity to him when Harrison died. He couldn't control the independently-minded Tyler the way he'd hoped to control Harrison. Determined, however, to forge ahead with his plans, he oversaw the passage of a bill to re-establish the national banking system that Jackson had dismantled. No self-respecting Whig would have opposed it. Tyler vetoed it. The Whigs went back to the drawing board and attempted to rewrite the legislation more to Tyler's liking.

Tyler vetoed it again. Clay and the Whigs were absolutely livid. In the elections, they had swept both chambers of Congress and the presidency. This had given them what they had viewed as a mandate to enact their vision for the country. And now Tyler, supposedly one of their own, was single-handedly ruining everything. The truth was, Tyler had never been a supporter of Clay's national banking system. Like most of his former Democratic colleagues, he believed a national bank was unconstitutional. He also saw the battle as a personal one between himself and Clay, with the power of the presidency at stake. Letting Clay win,

he believed, would undermine his position, which had already faced questions of legitimacy. In an effort at unity early on, Tyler had kept all of Harrison's cabinet when he took office. After Tyler's second veto of the banking bill, with Clay's encouragement, all but one of them resigned in protest. Their hope was to force Tyler himself to resign in disgrace. When he didn't take the bait, Clay and his Whig colleagues did the only other thing they could do. They officially expelled him from the party. Tyler was now essentially an independent, rejected by the Whigs and unwanted by the Democrats.

There was even talk of impeachment, though it ultimately came to nothing. So the Whigs' first foray into running the government had become a fiasco. In the midterm elections of 1842, Democrats won back the House. Clay resigned his seat in the Senate to focus on the presidential election of 1844. With Congress split between Democrats and Whigs, and Tyler alienated from both of them, the government came to a standstill.

Neither party nominated Tyler in 1844, and Democrat James K. Polk narrowly defeated Henry Clay in Clay's fourth attempt to win the presidency. Polk's party also won majorities in both chambers of Congress. The Democrats were back in control. The Whigs had failed to make progress on their plans for America. But the Democrats and James K. Polk saw their ambitious dreams of westward expansion come to fruition. It all happened as a result of a two-year war with Mexico,

the dominant issue of the Polk presidency. He and the Democrats justified it by invoking Manifest Destiny, the view that America had a divinely given right to spread westward across the continent and bring liberty and freedom along the way. Polk initially tried to buy the land from Mexico, but when that didn't work, he chose a military option to push his agenda forward. The war was decried by Whigs as an illegal land grab, an immoral effort to expand the power of the slave states. Among its most vocal detractors were former President John Quincy Adams and freshman Congressman Abraham Lincoln of Illinois. They accused Polk of deliberately provoking the Mexicans into drawing first blood, then using that confrontation as an excuse to invade their country in retaliation.

The issue was not over Mexico proper, but over the territory it owned north of the Rio Grande, including the large New Mexico and California provinces. Much of this territory was south of the Missouri Compromise Line of 1820, meaning it could be carved up into slave states if the U.S. could get their hands on it. For Mexico, the war was a disaster. Because of its political and civil instability, it was in no position to fight a much better equipped U.S. Army. After several key military defeats, Mexico signed a treaty agreeing to Polk's demands.

They ceded all of the disputed territory, essentially all of the American Southwest after the Pacific Ocean. In an effort to be magnanimous, Polk agreed to pay Mexico for the land, but at only about half the price he had offered before the war. With the signing of the treaty, America had instantly added thousands of square miles to its territory, and just as quickly, the question of the expansion of slavery came screaming to the forefront. Already, there was a growing abolitionist movement in the North. The Liberty Party had formed in 1840 to campaign for abolition. Though its presidential candidate, James Burney, made little headway nationally, the party helped to bring organization and political legitimacy to scattered abolitionists around the North. But while abolitionists

remained a small minority, there was growing concern in the North about the balance of power between the states. Throughout the 1820s and 1830s, the number of slave and free states had remained equal. With the addition of both Texas and Florida in 1845, however, slave states now outnumbered free states. The territory won from Mexico had the potential to expand the power of the slave states even more, and the South had every intention of exploiting its advantage. A showdown on the issue was coming, one that would expose the country's political and cultural divisions and lead the young nation into a dangerous crisis.

On the next episode of American History Tellers, we'll delve into the turbulent 1850s, the unresolved issues over slavery define the politics of the era and bring the country to the brink. For the Whigs, conflicts over slavery tear the party apart, while the Democrats fight to spread the institution as far as they can. And the decade gives rise to new parties, like the abolitionist Republicans, whose very existence pushes the country towards civil war.

If you like American History Tellers, you can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. From Wondery, this is American History Tellers. at wondery.com slash survey. American History Tellers is hosted, edited, and produced by me, Lindsey Graham, for Airship. Sound design by Derek Behrens. This episode is written by B. Scott Christmas. Edited by Dorian Marina. Edited and produced by Jenny Lauer.

Produced by George Lavender. Our executive producer is Marshall Louis. Created by Hernán López for Wondery. with a green top that's permanently living in your fridge. Did you know that the Air Jordans were initially banned by the NBA? We'll explore all that and more in The Best Idea Yet, a brand new podcast from Wondery and T-Boys. This is Nick. This is Jack. And we've covered over a thousand episodes of pop business news stories on our daily podcast. We've identified the most viral products of all time. And they're wild origin stories that you had no idea about. From the Levi's 501 jeans to Legos. Come for the products you're obsessed with.

Stay for the business insights that are going to blow up your group chat. Jack, Nintendo, Super Mario Brothers. Best-selling video game of all time. How'd they do it? Nintendo never fires anyone. Ever. Follow The Best Idea Yet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to The Best Idea Yet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.