Jacksonian Democracy Timeline

In 1813, Andrew Jackson adopted Lyncoya Jackson, who had been orphaned during the Creek War after Jackson ordered John Coffee to attack Tallusahatchee. Jackson viewed Lyncoya as a fellow orphan and felt unusual sympathy for him.

Beginning as early as 1815, Lyncoya Jackson’s biography was used to defend Andrew Jackson against charges that his Indian policies were inhumane. The use of the story continued and intensified during the presidential elections of 1824 and 1828.

Jacksonianism emerged from the factionalization of the long-dominant Democratic-Republican Party around the presidential election of 1824, while also participating in a broader democratic transformation already underway in American politics.

The years from 1824 to 1832 were politically chaotic as competing factions formed around Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and the evolving party system.

According to historian Daniel Walker Howe, Jacksonianism began with allegiance to Jackson the man. In its earliest usage, Jacksonian democracy referred more narrowly to the Democratic Party as led by Jackson, president from 1829 to 1837.

Lyncoya Jackson died of tuberculosis during the 1828 presidential campaign. His obituary became a platform for messages defending Andrew Jackson’s treatment of Native Americans.

Martin Van Buren pulled together the new political party in 1828 as Andrew Jackson campaigned against alleged corruption by President John Quincy Adams.

Image source: Martin Van Buren

Andrew Jackson defeated John Quincy Adams in 1828. Adams had assembled a network of factions called the National Republicans, while Jackson’s new coalition swept to a landslide victory.

Image source: 1828 United States presidential election

The new party that supported Jackson did not receive the name Democrats until 1834. Its organization and identity developed during the period of Jackson’s rise to power.

Image source: Democratic Party (United States)

Andrew Jackson served as president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. During this period, Jacksonian democracy was most narrowly identified with the Democratic Party under his leadership.

The extensive period commonly associated with Jacksonian democracy ran from 1829 to 1860. It was marked by expanded political power for the common man, opposition to entrenched elites, and assertions of popular control over government.

The Maysville Road veto of 1830 was one of the most important actions associated with Jacksonian politics and reflected disputes over federal involvement in internal improvements.

By 1831, Andrew Jackson had consolidated political power and was positioned to seek a second term, which he won in 1832.

The Whigs organized around 1834 amid growing discontent with Jackson’s policies and personal political activities, including opposition among prominent figures and many people in Tennessee.

Image source: Whig Party (United States)

In 1835, a quickly published private letter from Jackson to James Gwin revealed that Jackson wanted Martin Van Buren to succeed him. The disclosure intensified political discussion over Jackson’s personal control of the party.

During the Panic of 1857, President James Buchanan acted according to Jacksonian principles by restricting paper-money issuance and freezing federal funds for public works. His refusal to provide an economic stimulus caused resentment among some Americans.

Image source: Panic of 1857

Samuel Eliot later identified 1831 as a key year because of the Nat Turner slave rebellion and the launch of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator. He regarded these developments as signs of an irreversible division between pro-slavery and anti-racist political forces.

In a 1840 letter to his nephew and political protégé Andrew Donelson about a campaign event in Madison County, Tennessee, Jackson wrote that the abolition question was receiving serious attention from local people.

The struggle over the Wilmot Proviso in 1846 became one of the developments that exposed growing sectional divisions within Jacksonian politics over slavery in territories acquired or organized by the United States.

Image source: Wilmot Proviso

The Free Soil movement, originally an offshoot of Jacksonianism, argued for limiting slavery in new areas so that poor white men could prosper. In 1848, it briefly split from the main party and nominated former president Martin Van Buren.

Image source: Free Soil Party

Stephen A. Douglas, one of the leading followers of Jacksonian politics, was a key player in passing the Compromise of 1850. He later became a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1852.

Image source: Compromise of 1850

The passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act in 1854 made slavery the dominant political issue and produced mass defections from the Democrats. Its passage is identified as the point at which the Jacksonian Era ended in political terms.

Image source: Kansas–Nebraska Act

Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, a Jacksonian leader, endorsed slaveholding rights through the 1857 Dred Scott ruling, intensifying sectional conflict over slavery and citizenship.

Image source: Dred Scott v. Sandford

Southern Jacksonians overwhelmingly endorsed secession in 1861, with a few opponents led by Andrew Johnson standing apart from that position.

Image source: Secession in the United States

The political repercussions of the American Civil War dramatically reshaped American politics and helped bring the Jacksonian era to its conclusion.

Image source: American Civil War

Andrew Johnson, a strong supporter of Jackson, became president following Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in 1865. By then, Jacksonian democracy had been pushed off the stage of American politics.

Image source: Andrew Johnson

In his 1889 History of the United States Under the Constitution, American historian James Schouler called Andrew Jackson’s political alliance “the Jackson Democracy.”

In 1890, future president Theodore Roosevelt referred to the antebellum Democratic Party as the “Jacksonian Democracy,” helping establish the term in historical and political discussion.

Image source: Theodore Roosevelt

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.’s 1945 book The Age of Jackson influentially reinterpreted Jacksonian democracy as a phenomenon of labor struggle against business power rather than primarily a product of frontier regional influence.