The Jacksonian Persuasion: Politics and Belief

by Marvin Meyers

A Stanford University Press classic.

Genres: Politics, History, American History, Biography

302 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1899

Reviews

[Seán · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dope analysis of the self-conflicted democratic impulse of the Jacksonian era. Not actually an ideology as such, Meyers documents a "persuasion" or collective psychology, a paradoxical political point of view that rose, fed the dreams and fears of millions, hardened into orthodoxy and then was slowly swallowed up. Also, rather than tedious, Meyers' examination of the works of de Tocqueville and Fenimore Cooper (and obscure characters like Leggett, Sedgewick and Rantoul) was an effective way to lay out his "case."

[Don Incognito · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book makes its thesis clear by the end of the introduction, pretty well finishes explaining the motives of the common man (Jacksonian Democrats' political base) during the Jacksonian era within the first half of the book, and relies very heavily on a review of the literature to back up the thesis. Therefore, you may want to avoid reading this book unless you've read the following authors and works: Notions of the Americans, by James Fenimore Cooper; Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville; William Leggett, and Robert Rantoul. These works are discussed in detail, and unless you've read them, you won't get that much out of the author's discussion of them. Various historians who wrote much later on the Jacksonian era are also discussed substantively.

It would also help to be very familiar with the career of Martin van Buren, Andrew Jackson's vice-president and successor. There is an entire chapter devoted to van Buren, and I couldn't follow it. (There is no chapter devoted to Jackson, obviously the dominant political figure of the Jacksonian era.)

[Tascha Folsoi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really interesting read about the tension between the values, beneficiaries, and policies around an agrarian world and an industrial one that is cementing the dominance of titans of industry. Doesn't deal with slavery or indigenous people, but it does what it does quite well. Recommend.

[John Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quality writing with solid analysis. Definitely a little dated.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this a little dull. In portraying both fictional and real people who personified in some way the Jacksonian (or anti-Jacksonian) persuasion, Meyers' tries to show the variety and commonalities of those he thinks of as of the Jacksonian Persuasion.

“The Jacksonian paradox …the fact that the movement which helped to clear the path for laissez-faire capitalism and its culture in America, and the public which in its daily life eagerly entered on that path, held nevertheless in their political conscience an ideal of a chaste republican order, resisting the seductions of risk and novelty, greed and extravagance, rapid motion and complex dealings.” 12

“What the Whigs deliberately maintained in the inheritance was the ambitious scheme for economic progress through banks, tariffs, and public promotion of internal improvements.” 14

“Jackson’s ‘real people’ are essentially the four specific occupational groups he names, the men whose ‘success depends upon their own industry and economy,’ who know ‘that they must not expect to become suddenly rich by the fruits of their toil.’ The lines are fixed by the moral aspects of occupation.” 21

“Defective morals, habits, and character are nurtured in the trades which seek wealth without labor, employing the stratagems of speculative maneuver, privilege grabbing, and monetary manipulation.” 22

“The bank system suspends the real world of solid goods, honestly exchanged, upon a mysterious, swaying web of speculative credit. The natural distributive mechanism, which proportions rewards to ‘industry, economy, and virtue,’ is fixed to pay off the insider and the gambler.” 26

“Mutable actions and frozen principles.” 43

“A random set of family trades shared by Sedgwick with Jackson and Van Buren would include: hostility toward privilege as a distortion and corruption of natural social arrangements; aversion to the ways of chance and cunning; praise for the active and productive as against the passive and manipulative economic roles. All three consider debt a cardinal sin, and spun-out credit a kind of devil’s lure. More systematically, they share a view of politics as a system of defense for the good private life…All three men see a falling off from a better past in the decisive realm of character and morals, and predicate their hopes for wholesome progress on the return to a prior base of values.” 178

“Liberty and moral reformation are not a perfect match…Logically and historically the laissez-faire principle led toward the city, the factory, the complex market and credit economy; the simple agrarian republic of virtue could not stand against it.” 204

“What gives the fierce tone to Jacksonian politics is the sense that extraneous forces within society, powerless on their own to prosper and persuade, conspire to seize the government and convert it to an engine of despotism, theft, and corruption.” 212

“But still they could not let their differences to. If only by the shading of a constitutional clause, a Whig must press his special concern for endless progress under democratic capitalism, stimulated by the state. A Jacksonian must insist that the changing world is full of terrors, and hint at least that once there was a better, even as he helps perfect the instruments of change.” 237

“Jacksonian Democracy is rightly associated with ‘the rise of the common man’; it is wrongly identified with the fight for the acceptance of the principles of political democracy, which had been fought and won before Jackson’s party came on the scene. On the contrary, political democracy was a necessary condition for the emergence of Jacksonian Democracy…” 238