Ohio History Journal

STEPHEN C. FOX

Politicians, Issues, and Voter

Preference in Jacksonian Ohio:

A Critique of an Interpretation

 

Two recent studies of the Jacksonian era which devote either

substantive or exclusive attention to Ohio, James R. Sharp, The

Jacksonians versus the Banks: Politics in the States after the Panic of

1837, and Donald J. Ratcliffe, "The Role of Voters and Issues in

Party Formation: Ohio, 1824," have been welcomed as valuable

additions to our understanding of political activity in an important but

long-neglected western state.¹ Sharp's book, of which the section on

Ohio constitutes approximately one-fifth, concentrates on party

attitudes toward banking; Ratcliffe contrasts "grass roots sentiment"

to the manipulative style of party activists. Despite the contribution

of each interpretation, neither has swept all others before it. There

are two principal reasons for this, neither of which is unique to these

studies: first, both authors make narrow assumptions about the roots

of political behavior; second, their methodologies are frequently

careless and in contrast to those of other contemporary historians,

generally unsophisticated. These faults are most evident when Sharp

and Ratcliffe attempt to link economic issues and the activities of

politicians to voters' preferences.

 

Dr. Fox, Associate Professor of History at Humboldt State University, Arcata,

California, wishes to acknowledge the financial assistance of the Mabelle McLeod

Memorial Fund, Stanford, California.

 

1. James R. Sharp, The Jacksonians versus the Banks: Politics in the States after the

Panic of 1837 (New York, 1970); Donald J. Ratcliffe, "The Role of Voters and Issues in

Party Formation: Ohio, 1824," Journal of American History, LIX (March 1973), 847-

70. See Frank O. Gatell's review of Sharp's book in Journal of American History,

LVIII (September 1971), 445-47. While these studies do not account for the entire Jack-

sonian period in Ohio, they are the first substantive published attempts to evaluate

politics throughout the state since Francis P. Weisenburger, The Passing of the Fron-

tier, 1825-1850, vol. III of Carl Wittke, ed., The History of the State of Ohio (Colum-

bus, 1941). Another recent study of Jacksonian Ohio, more comprehensive than either

Sharp's or Ratcliffe's, is Stephen C. Fox, "The Group Bases of Ohio Political Be-

havior, 1803-1848" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cincinnati, 1973), which found

the popular bases of political behavior similar to the sociocultural differences among

Ohio legislators described in Herbert Ershkowitz and William G. Shade, "Consensus

or Conflict?: Political Behavior in the State Legislatures during the Jacksonian Era,"

Journal of American History, LVIII (December 1971), 591-621.

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156                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

The strongest indication of the two authors' shared assumptions is

that both Sharp and Ratcliffe rely too exclusively on evidence of

economic self-interest and either dismiss or fail to explore thoroughly

evidence imbued with cultural, philosophical, and moral

overtones-qualities among any electorate that historians ignore at

their peril. In short, Sharp and Ratcliffe imply that even though

political spokesmen wrote and orated at length on evidence of

moral "corruption" in their society, when the opportunity came to

act-to vote-they, and presumably those for whom they spoke,

shelved such abstractions and inner convictions and sought,

figuratively speaking, to line their pockets. Whether or not such an

assumption can be demonstrated, and it cannot by the methods

employed by Sharp and Ratcliffe, it clearly limits both the roles of

historical actors and an historical investigation into the relationship of

non-self-interested rhetoric to that of motivations other than greed.²

The second problem these studies share relates to what Lee Benson

terms "single-factor analysis."³ These studies confirm, the prodigious

efforts of Benson and others notwithstanding, that single-factor

analysis remains seductively simple and deceptive no matter how

semi-sophisticated (Sharp) or subtle (Ratcliffe) its elucidation. While

both authors discount the interpretative potential of their evidence

through their limited assumptions, their methodologies restrict the

development of that evidence in another way. Both assume that

socioeconomic class differences among the electorate produced

predictable patterns of behavior, even though Ratcliffe offers no data

to verify that assumption, and neither scholar provides a comparable

means to assess clear deviations from such expectations. Although

both accounts abound with suggestions of non-economic motivation,

they are never delineated clearly.

Voters and Economic Issues

James R. Sharp's treatment of Jacksonian politics in Ohio

exemplifies the weakness of any assumption that political behavior

can be attributed solely to social and economic factors rather than

broader cultural conflicts. Even though he effectively and usefully

describes the variety of partisan attitudes toward banks, especially

the intensity of Democratic anti-bank sentiment, his explanation of

 

2. Gordon S. Wood, "Rhetoric and Reality in the American Revolution," William

and Mary Quarterly, XXIII (January 1966), 31, urges historians to abandon the distinc-

tion between conscious and unconscious motivation and to recognize that whether

rhetoric was factually true or not, "it was always psychologically true."

3. Lee Benson, Turner and Beard: American Historical Writing Reconsidered (New

York, 1960), 154-60.

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Voting in Jacksonian Ohio                                        157

 

the effect of the banking issue upon mass political behavior fails to

show that (1) the voting public shared anti-bank views similar to those

of politicians, (2) fiscal problems had any measurable effect on mass

political alignment, or (3) county electoral and demographic data can

demonstrate adequately any potential connection. Finally, Sharp's

reliance on single-factor analysis precludes our ability to determine

whether or not the bank issue was part of a larger set of conflicting

moral perspectives.

Skepticism mounts from the moment Sharp declares thematically

that a "high correlation" existed between wealth and Whiggery in

Ohio, then acknowledges that "there are important exceptions."⁴

Obviously no thesis is flawless, but here we are concerned with the

author's failure to test the salience of a particular kind of

"exception." For example, he admits that the influx of Irish and

Germans into Ohio, especially Hamilton County (Cincinnati), gave

the Democrats a solid base of support in a wealthy commercial

constituency that had "all the earmarks of a stronghold of

Whiggery."⁵ But it is clear that there were a number of such

"exceptions"-too many, in fact, to validate his thesis in Ohio. He

argues that in the Western Reserve, the strongest National

Republican-Whig area of the state, National Republican emphasis on

economic improvement had strong partisan appeal. Nevertheless his

conclusion about actual political alignment in the Reserve points to

another explanation. The area, he claims,

was populated mainly by New Englanders, who gave it an ethnocultural

homogeneity that no other section of the state could match .... The appeal of

a fellow New Englander, John Quincy Adams, an educated and cultivated

gentleman, as opposed to the seemingly crude and unlettered Jackson, was a

powerful factor in molding political habits in the 1820s.⁶

If the Reserve was "powerfully" molded by ethnocultural

homogeneity, what role, exactly, did economic self-interest play?

Were Reserve voters wealthy as well as New Englanders? Did the

cultural differences of the contenders-cultivation versus

crudity-appeal directly, or even indirectly, to opposite

constituencies?

4. Sharp, The Jacksonians versus the Banks, 168, 174. Sharp is not the first to make

such a declaration. Edgar A. Holt, Party Politics in Ohio, 1840-1850 (Columbus, 1930),

9, stated that in Ohio "masses of people, filled with the frontier dislike for banking

institutions, rallied behind Jackson ... " This has been the accepted version of Ohio

politics, notwithstanding the fact that Jackson lost support there between 1828 and his

veto of the Bank of the United States' recharter and subsequent reelection in 1832. The

standard account of Ohio Jacksonism, Weisenburger, The Passing of the Frontier, is

similarly oriented.

5. Sharp, The Jacksonians versus the Banks, 168.

6. Ibid., 169-70 (italics added).

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158                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

Sharp concedes that wealth was also a poor indicator of political

alignment in the Miami and Muskingum valleys. In the latter region,

he reports, "Democratic strength appears to have come from

constituencies that were heavily populated by persons of German

extraction, while Democratic support in the five southwestern

counties [Miami Valley] seems to have been generated both by a large

German population and a long-held suspicion of banks." With

contradiction, then ironic resignation, his argument travels full circle:

there is "no simple explanation" for political behavior in his area, the

only common denominator being "a firm attachment to the

Democratic party."⁷

Although these examples demonstrate Sharp's awareness of the

potential political effect of contrasting ethnocultural groups, he does

not subject their presence to the same systematic examination he

reserves for economic indices. Where Sharp does not specifically

identify ethnic groups he attributes political alignment solely to

economic interest. In other words, despite other remarkable

influences, his conclusion about the source of political behavior rests

primarily on single-factor analysis. Although other historians maintain

that the ultimate political impact of economic factors-in this case

real property-requires a similar test of other possible variables,

Sharp seems to get around this criticism of his approach by claiming

that "statistical data concerning the nationality and location of Ohio's

populace is not available." Instead, his discussion is "enriched . . .

by an impressionistic consideration of factors that do not lend

themselves to quantification, such as ... ethnocultural characteristics."⁸

Notwithstanding the difference between evidence which he claims

is "not available" and evidence that does not "lend itself" to

quantification, Sharp's method leaves him unable to pursue even

significant impressionistic "characteristics," in this case the

revelation that Charles Reemelin, a German immigrant in Cincinnati

and important Democratic spokesman, became a hard money

7. Ibid., 174, 177.

8. Ibid., 178, 342. It would be more accurate to say that statistical data revealing the

nationality and location of Ohio's populace prior to the 1850 are not available. It is

possible, however, to correlate national origins data from the federal manuscript

population schedules of that year with electoral data from 1848 without significant

interpolative distortion. If, in addition, the researcher collects both prior electoral data

and impressionistic evidence of the location of population groups, inferences can be

made about ethnocultural politics throughout the Jacksonian period based upon the

1848-1850 correlations. The competitive stability of the two parties in Ohio from 1834 to

1848 suggests that the location of ethnic groups in 1850 was not significantly different

from earlier residential patterns. Impressionistic sources such as county histories,

gazetteers, newspapers, travel accounts, and personal reminiscences confirm the exis-

tence of these long-standing patterns.

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Voting in Jacksonian Ohio                                         159

 

enthusiast because "he thought he saw in the Whig party an

inclination toward puritanism  which was naturally repugnant to the

genuine German nature."⁹ How many other German immigrants or

native Americans translated this kind of cultural perspective into a

partisan identity? Sharp's analysis provides no answer.

Beyond these exceptions to an economic view, the book-at least

the material relating to Ohio-requires reconsideration for another

reason: Sharp relies on data that seem to verify his economic

hypothesis (if one ignores the "exceptions"), but which in fact do

not. Assuming momentarily that his belief in an economic basis of

politics is valid, and his reliance on county data justified, the ultimate

contribution of the study is jeopardized by the use of data and a

method that are not the most thorough. In the monograph's appendix

he ranks average Democratic strength per county between 1836 and

1844 (highest to lowest) alongside aggregate county real estate value

per capita in 1840 (poorest to wealthiest), hoping to show that

Democratic support was strongest in poorer counties. But more

comprehensive economic and demographic statistics are available for

each presidential year from 1832 to 1848, both before and after the

period of Sharp's survey; no averaging process is necessary.10

Furthermore, in computing per capita valuation, he overlooks the

greater precision afforded by Ohio's quadrennial census of eligible

voters. Rather than apply per capita wealth in 1840 to average

Democratic strength from 1836 to 1844, the state census of 1831 may

be used to compute measures of wealth per voter for 1832, the census

of 1835 for the election of 1836, and so forth (see Table 1). Moreover,

because Sharp uses economic data only from 1840 rather than 1836

and 1840, as well as averaging Democratic strength, he obscures the

political effect of the Panic of 1837, in spite of the monograph's title.

If Sharp's generalized method is questionable, then we ought to be

wary of his conclusion. He finds a positive "rank-difference"

9. Ibid., 183 (italics added). V. O. Key argued that "deviant cases in any sort of

analysis may be of value in pointing to particular correlates of political behavior," A

Primer of Statistics for Political Scientists (New York, 1954, 1966), 120.

10. The comprehensive statistics are "Merchants' and Brokers' Capital and Money

at Interest" and "Total Taxable Property," Ohio, General Assembly, House of

Representatives, Journal of the House of Representatives of Ohio, 31st General

Assembly, 1832, 28 ff.; Ohio, General Assembly, Laws of Ohio, XXXV, 1837, 678 ff.;

Ibid., XXXIX, 1841, 35 ff.; Ibid., XLIII, 1845, 18 ff.; and Ibid., XLVII, 1849, 54-57,

66-69. I am aware of the hazards in census returns which indicate respondents'

evaluation of their assets. I assume, however, that misleading or erroneous responses

were proportionate throughout the state. For the importance of spatial data see Lee

Benson, "Research Problems in American Political Historiography," Common

Frontiers of the Social Sciences, ed. Mirra Komarovsky (Glencoe, IL, 1957), 114;

Benson, Turner and Beard, 200; and Samuel P. Hays, "Archival Sources for American

Political History," American Archivist, XXVIII (January 1965), 17-30.

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160                                                           OHIO HISTORY

 

TABLE 1

Pearson r for Democratic Strength, Merchants and Brokers' Capital and

Money at Interest, and Total Taxable Property, per Voter,

1832-1848

 

Pearson r

Capital and                            Property and

N                                                   Democratic                Democratic

Year                                               Cases                                     Strength                                    Strength

1832                                             68                                           -.172                                           -.281

1836                                             70                                           -.164                                           -.204

1840                                             77                                           -.177                                           -.208

1844                                             79                                           -.179                                               .002

1848                                             81                                           __*                                             -.266

 

SOURCE: Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Gazette, November 22, 1832; Walter D.

Burnham, Presidential Ballots, 1836-1892 (Baltimore, 1955).

*Data not comparable.

 

TABLE 2

Relative Occupational Status Scale, 1850, and Democratic Strength,

1848 Presidential (P) and State (S) Elections

 

Farm                                 Urban

1. Farm laborers, tenants, renters                                                             1. Unskilled

2. Farms worth up to $500                                                                              2. Semi-skilled

3. Farms from $500-$1,000                                                                              3. Skilled

4. Farms from $1,001-$3,000                                                                           4. Service employees

5. Farms from $3,001-$5,000                                                                          5. Sales

6. Farms from $5,001-$10,000                                                                        6. Clerical jobs

7. Farms from $10,001 and up                                                                         7. Managers, Officials

8. Proprietors

9. Professionals

Correlations

% of Potential

Groups                                                                                     Voters                                                      Pearson r

Farm 1                                                                                       14                                                              .031 (P)

.039 (S)

Farm 1, Urban 1-2                    35                    .173 (P)

.163 (S)

Farm 1-2, Urban 1-2                  39                    .199 (P)

.193 (S)

Farm 1-3, Urban 1-2                  43                    .124 (P)

.109 (S)

Farm 1-3, Urban 1-4                  75                    .200 (P)

.219 (S)

SOURCE: Fox, "Group Bases of Ohio Political Behavior," Appendix B.

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Voting in Jacksonian Ohio                                              161

 

correlation of .428 between poorer counties and Democratic strength,

seemingly validating his thesis. 11 But Pearson correlation coefficients,

calculated from the broader-based interval data indicated above,

show that lower levels of capital investment and diminished prop-

erty valuations were unrelated to Democratic strength. There was a

slight, though statistically insignificant, tendency for poorer units to

contain more Democratic supporters; only property valuation and

Democratic strength in 1832 and 1848 correlate at a significance

(reliability) level of 95 percent. In contrast to Sharp's conclusion,

then, the Pearson coefficients indicate that partisanship was not a

function of rich and poor geographical areas. This alternative

computation also reveals that the financial crisis of 1837 and the

banking issues of the early 1840s caused no discernible change in

voting habits.

Those who follow too exclusively such things as party leadership,

economic elites, and issues have little chance of telling scholars much

about voters. Further, though analysis based on county data may be

accurate, many believe it less reliable than results obtained from

smaller electoral units.l² Table 2 shows the correlation of occupation

and real property valuation with Democratic strength among potential

voters in fifty-one townships and wards selected at random from

thirty scattered counties.13 These correlations corroborate the

11. Sharp, The Jacksonians versus the Banks, 336. Sharp's correlation and those

computed for this essay refer to geographical areas, not individuals. For cautions in

using these statistics see W. S. Robinson, "Ecological Correlations and the Behavior of

Individuals," American Sociological Review, XIV (June 1950), 351-57.

12. I have collected nearly all the extant township and ward electoral returns in the

state: 39 percent of those which once existed from the period 1824-1848; 41 percent of

those from 1828-1848; and 57 percent of the presidential returns from 1828-1848. Other

historians who support the use of data from smaller constituencies are Lee Benson, The

Concept of Jacksonian Democracy: New York as a Test Case (Princeton, 1961), 148;

Thomas B. Alexander et al., "The Basis of Alabama's Ante-Bellum Two-Party

System," The Alabama Review, XIX (October 1966), 243-76; Frank O. Gatell, ed.,

Essays on Jacksonian America (New York, 1970), 109; and Ronald P. Formisano, The

Birth of Mass Political Parties: Michigan, 1827-1861 (Princeton, 1972), 21. Thomas A.

Flinn, "Continuity and Change in Ohio Politics, Journal of Politics, XXIV (August

1962), 251, argues in favor of county data because of "unavailable" demographic statis-

tics and the expense of manipulating large numbers of units. The computer now pro-

vides significant compensation for the latter. See also Austin Ranney, "The Utility and

Limitations of Aggregate Data in the Study of Electoral Behavior," Essays in the Be-

havioral Study of Politics, ed. Austin Ranney (Urbana, 1962), 91-102; and Mattei

Dogan and Stein Rokkan, eds., Quantitative Ecological Analysis in the Social Sciences

(Cambridge, MA, 1969).

13. The scaling procedure employed here is somewhat modified since it was first

suggested by Ronald P. Formisano, "Analyzing American Voting, 1830-1860:

Methods," Historical Methods Newsletter, II (March 1969), 1-12. The scale is similar

to the five vertical status categories developed by Theodore Hershberg et al.,

"Occupation and Ethnicity in Five Nineteenth-Century Cities: A Collaborative

Inquiry," Ibid., VII (June 1974), 174-216.

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162                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

comprehensive county data summarized in Table 1, and offer even

less support for a thesis that different occupational groups or areas of

contrasting wealth supported opposite parties.¹⁴ Fully 75 percent of

the potential voters surveyed were middle or lower class (Farm 1-3,

Urban 1-4) and nearly equally divided in their political allegiance,

including socioeconomic groups traditionally associated with Andrew

Jackson's organization. The absence of demonstrable economic

competition at the polls, however, does not mean that American

political life or society was benign. Certainly Donald Ratcliffe's

study hints at the depth of partisan antagonism in Jacksonian Ohio.

Instead of showing, though, that Ohio politics worked mainly on the

basis of perceived economic self-interest (as he implies), Ratcliffe

indirectly reveals the dimensions of a political conflict of a quite

different nature.

Voters or Party Organizations?

Superficially, it might appear that Donald Ratcliffe's article on voters

and issues is less slavish to single-factor analysis than Sharp's study.

A thorough examination shows that this is not necessarily so, but

there are two interesting reasons why his article could be accepted as

less inclined to favor an economic analysis. First, Ratcliffe examines

no behavioral variable in any systematic fashion, including economic

interest. Second, with justification if not consistency, he admonishes

historians to modify Harry R. Stevens and Richard P. McCormick's

emphases on institutionalized politics, and to recognize that party

formation did not occur solely because of the activities of politicians,

or as an outgrowth of constitutional and legislative electoral require-

ments.¹⁵ Thus, by making an apparent shift in focus from politicians

to voters, and by stressing partisan continuity, Ratcliffe seems to put

 

14. The following also stress the economic bipartisanship of the period and its

reflection at the polls: Marvin Meyers, The Jacksonian Persuasion: Politics and Belief

(Stanford, 1957), 8; Benson, Concept, 142; Richard P. McCormick, "New Perspectives

on Jacksonian Politics," American Historical Review, LXV (January 1960), 300; Harry

N. Scheiber, Ohio Canal Era: A Case Study of Government and the Economy,

1820-1861 (Athens, OH, 1969), 156-58; Richard T. Farrell, "Cincinnati in the Early

Jackson Era, 1816-1834" (Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1967), 177-79, 223-25;

Walter S. Glazer, "Cincinnati in 1840: A Community Profile" (Ph.D. dissertation,

University of Michigan, 1968), 175-79; and William G. Shade, Banks or No Banks: The

Money Issue in Western Politics, 1832-1865 (Detroit, 1972), 28, who insists that until

1836 demands for western bank expansion came from a bipartisan group of

entrepreneurs.

15. Harry R. Stevens, The Early Jackson Party in Ohio (Durham, NC, 1957);

Richard P. McCormick, The Second American Party System: Party Formation in the

Jacksonian Era (Chapel Hill, NC, 1966). Ratcliffe's criticism of McCormick is similar

to that of Robert E. Shalhope, "Jacksonian Politics in Missouri: A Comment on the

McCormick Thesis," Civil War History, XV (September 1969), 210-25.

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Voting in Jacksonian Ohio                                     163

 

some distance between himself and historians who deal primarily with

economic conflict.

Nonetheless, the contribution of Jackson's organization to

American politics is not wholly dependent upon either McCormick's

view that the second party system evolved from a pragmatic struggle

for office by similar personalities and groups, or Ratcliffe's belief that

competing organizations, called into being by differing economic

interests, became permanent features of American politics as a result

of temporary campaign issues. If Ratcliffe intends to revise

McCormick, readers should also know that in a number of respects

Ratcliffe's assumptions and conclusions reflect another tradition: his

thesis is unconvincing, in part because it is inconsistent, but primarily

because it does not reconcile the roles of economic self-interest and

ethnicity in effecting political behavior. Though he is inclined to

emphasize economic self-interest, he does not explain how it

polarized political constituencies of similar economic structure and

outlook; he provides no systematic test of economic self-interest or

ethnicity; and he mistakes rhetorical moralism for self-interest by

excluding consideration of the measurable realities from which that

rhetoric arose.

It is difficult to accept Ratcliffe's thematic contention that "grass

roots sentiment" played a larger role than the machinations of

politicians in fostering political alignment, particularly since he

contradicts himself on this point. The following statement illustrates

his emphasis on the passive role of politicians:

They did not construct party coalitions in the fashion that suited their fancy;

and they did not make personal alliances and then produce the votes by

means of good organization and propaganda. Rather the alignments they

formed were dictated by the prejudices and interests of their constituents and,

above all, by the ways in which their constituents responded to the issues of

the day.16

Yet, as seen below, Ratcliffe also attributes party growth to an

aggressive, pragmatic, and cynical political style:

The actions of... Clintonians brought a welcome infusion of strength to the

Jackson party, and by energetic and skillful organization they endeavored ...

by stimulating an unprecedented turnout . . . to carry the state for Jack-

son.. . 17

These and other politicians "taught" supporters to consolidate

national, state, and local political loyalties, enabling the leaders "to

16. Ratcliffe, "Voters and Issues," 848-49.

17. Ibid., 860.

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164                                             OHIO HISTORY

gain control of the state assembly, the main dispenser of state patronage." (The implicit logic is similar to McCormick's: constituents' "prejudices and interests" were neither ethnicity nor economics, but the spoils of office.) Then, "once a meaningful party division had [thus] been created, it began to develop a thrust and momentum of its own which enabled it both to extend its operation and to survive amidst changing political conditions."18 What independently creative role could any constituency's "prejudices and interests" play if those attributes were merely part of the "changing political conditions" which politicians manipulated for their own survival? Did politicians' tactics shut out further changes in voters' perceptions of politicians, issues, and their own preferences? Just how consistent is the process of party formation described by Ratcliffe with "grass roots sentiment"? There is another ambiguity in Ratcliffe's thesis: he provides no means to reconcile the roles of economic self-interest and ethnicity in effecting partisan alignments. Again, a careful reading of the thematic statement is crucial, for although the reader is told that partisan alignment was "dictated by the prejudices [ethnicity] and interests 18. Ibid., 865.

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Voting in Jacksonian Ohio                               165

 

[canal policy and the Panic of 1819] of . . . constituents," Ratcliffe

emphasizes that alignment was influenced "above all, by the ways in

which . . . constituents responded to the issues of the day." Indeed,

whether or not Ratcliffe pays homage to the importance of a

psychocultural phenomenon such as ethnicity, it is clear that by

"issues" he means "interests," not "prejudices." Certainly he does

not believe that the political habits of the Scotch-Irish or

Pennsylvania Dutch polarized voters. In contrast, however, he

continually stresses the popularity in Ohio of candidates who were

"western"-that is, candidates who sought to stimulate particular

economic interest groups. Issues of moral import are invariably

absorbed by self-interest in his account. Henry Clay's attractiveness

as a western candidate, for example, eventually overcame whatever

liability his southern connection (slaveholding) once represented to

Ohio antislavery enthusiasts. John Quincy Adams' appeal to the

"Universal Yankee Nation" was similarly compromised, in

Ratcliffe's view, by the Adams constituency's understanding of the

priority of the canal issue. Yet to say that "It was logical in 1824 for

all people interested in promoting western development to

concentrate their votes on the leading sectional candidate" is neither

a demonstration that they did, nor the only "logical" course

available. 19

Aside from the credibility of Ratcliffe's implicit thesis that

economic interests were the decisive political determinants in 1824,

he fails to explain how economic issues polarized voters if each party

shared a "western" point of view. What substantive economic

differences did voters find, for example, between the Democratic

party, which he describes as depending for its votes upon the "highly

commercialized corn and pork counties," and the National

Republicans and Whigs who attracted counties which were "best

endowed with commercial prospects"?²⁰

Ratcliffe's analysis is also flawed by the use of unsystematized

county demographic and electoral data. The first of two examples

which follow show how such data fail to resolve the ambiguity

between economic self-interest and ethnicity; the second affirms the

difficulty of separating the formative roles of voters from those of

politicians and party organizations. He states that Adams' Ohio

support in 1824 centered either in the main areas of New England

settlement or in regions which were not dominated by New

Englanders but harbored deep misgivings about the proposed state

 

19. Ibid., 857.

20. Ibid., 867.

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166                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

canal system. Yet of five counties along the "Sandusky [canal]

route," a region he claims was not dominated by New Englanders, he

lists three as "Yankee," and a sixth such county, Crawford, was

created in 1826 from one of those "Yankee" counties.²¹

The assertion that Cincinnati was the "dynamic heart" of the early

Jackson party in Ohio is similarly misleading if voters and townships,

rather than party organizations and counties, are used as criteria.

Jackson is known to have had a formidable party apparatus in the

Queen City. In fact, Jackson and Clay, the two "western" candidates

in 1824, received only 44 and 36 percent, respectively, of their

Hamilton county vote in Cincinnati. On the other hand, Adams'

vote in the city-which was not dominated by New Eng-

landers-amounted to 57.5 percent of his county total.²² It seems

more appropriate to say that Cincinnati was the "dynamic heart" of

the Adams movement in that part of the state, at least among voters.

Finally, and most pertinent to the thesis of this article, Ratcliffe

often mistakes rhetorical moralism for self-interest and makes no

substantive attempt to discover what realities lay behind such highly

vocal expression. Though he implies that political behavior stemmed

from the economic effects of the Panic of 1819, his sources and

certain conclusions suggest that there were alternative motives.

Ratcliffe assumes that the political rhetoric-he terms it

propaganda-accompanying the elections of 1824 and 1828 related

more to economic considerations ("hardships") than to larger moral

concerns about either the relationship of government to the economy

(e.g., the American System) or, importantly, the "proper" role of

politicians. As Ratcliffe puts it,"The experiences of the Panic. .. and

depression had created in Cincinnati a widespread resentment against

all politicians who were in a position to exploit public office for their

own advantage."²³ (Does this mean economic advantage, or

organizational advantage-i.e., spoils?) Apparently his concern for

such resentment applies only to pre-1824 incumbents since elsewhere

21. Ibid., 855-56.

22. Ibid., 857. For detailed electoral statistics see Cincinnati Advertiser, November

3, 1824.

23. Ratcliffe, "Voters and Issues," 860. Kim T. Phillips, "The Pennsylvania Origins

of the Jackson Movement," Political Science Quarterly, XCI (Fall 1976), 489-508,

suffers from the same ambiguity, though to a lesser extent than Ratcliffe. For example,

for Phillips to say that "fundamentally shaping the course of [Jackson's] original

supporters was their conviction that the once noble party of Jefferson had sunk into

moral and ideological bankruptcy" (p.499), or that "Democrats of the Old School

predicted that unrestrained banking would have disastrous moral and social

consequences," is not the same as agreeing with Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., that

"economic reform [restraint of the business community] was at the heart of

Jacksonianism" (p.491).

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Voting in Jacksonian Ohio                                            167

 

he attributes the Jackson party's ultimate triumph in 1828 to its ability

to capture the state's patronage apparatus.²⁴

Ratcliffe's confusion of rhetorical moralism with self-interest is

evident in a number of other places. He notes that Ohioans viewed

Clay's nomination by a state legislative caucus as a product of "wire

working," believing that the Kentuckian's supporters represented an

"aristocratical junto." From this Ratcliffe concludes that "there can

be no doubt that the widespread popular resentment of privilege and

governmental corruption . . . provided fertile soil in 1824 for the

cause of a candidate who was seen as a strong-minded patriot hero

risen from the people and unconnected with politics." The battle cry

became "No intrigue, no corruption, Andrew Jackson." He also

indirectly reveals that moral concerns had not abated by 1828: "By its

cries of corruption and federalism and its promises of reform . . .

Jacksonian propaganda appealed directly to popular antipathies and

suspicions." That same year the "southwestern counties, as willing

as ever to believe in Clay's proclivity for 'bargain and corruption,'

piled up even greater majorities for Jackson."²⁵ Yet all of these

statements, employed by Ratcliffe to build a case for economic

dissatisfaction, are instead testimony to a condition he seems reticent

to acknowledge: a profound sense of moral anxiety among Americans

who were only beginning to grasp the implications of the sweeping

revolutions in their social, economic, cultural, and political worlds

that historians too casually refer to as "Jacksonian Democracy."

After all, economic crises involved fundamental political questions

from the beginning. As did others in the West, many Ohioans

believed that their economic plight subsequent to 1819 resulted from

24. This exemplifies a pro-Democratic, pragmatic bias not unique to Ratcliffe.

Charles and Mary Beard, The Rise of American Civilization (New York, 1927),

evidenced their ambivalence toward democratic idealism and democratic pragmatism as

well. Like Ratcliffe, the Beards were disinterested in the moral threat inherent in the

changing natures of parties and politicians' traditional roles. When John Quincy Adams

reportedly sought to keep public service "untainted by the vulgar odor of loot and

spoils," they accused him of being "out of lockstep in matter[s] of political patronage"

(p.551). Legislative caucuses, they said, were "submerged in the tossing waves of

democracy" (p.546); yet, "the grand convention was ruled mainly by officeholders and

aspirants for office. While election of the President was vested in the people legally, the

choice of candidates . . . passed from the congressional monopoly to professional

politicians" (p.547). The Beards and Ratcliffe's resignation to what Richard Hofstadter

terms the "mastery and control" of politicians may be founded in the Democrats' own

ambivalence, for as Ronald P. Formisano, "Political Character, Antipartyism, and the

Second Party System," American Quarterly, XXI (Winter 1969), 685, notes, "If there

is a paradox about [Democrats] it lies in their passion for laissez faire in government

and society combined with pragmatic submission to the Organization. ..."

25. Ratcliffe, "Voters and Issues," 860-61, 865-66 (italics added). Meyers, Persua-

sion, 18-24, suggests that the use of the word "aristocracy" did not necessarily refer to

a socioeconomic class, but implied a moral quality.

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168                                             OHIO HISTORY

 

the inadequacy of western representation in Washington, especially

with regard to the conduct of the Bank of the United States. In their

view caring for the Bank's ills required taking a political cure as well,

though one must remember that a political remedy might not unite

anti-Bankites and potential Jacksonians. Though some historians,

including Ratcliffe, may believe that universal anti-Bank sentiment in

Ohio gave western candidates there an edge, proposals for the reform

of "king caucus" did not have a similarly unifying effect. Many who

sought to exorcise the caucus system did so because it seemed to

them to jeopardize independent political activity, as well as maintain

western underrepresentation. Of course from a purely pragmatic point

of view the end of the caucus "revolutionized" political style and led

to the successful candidacy of Andrew Jackson. But if both the Bank

and "king caucus" were equally unpopular in Ohio, "reform" of the

latter proved much more difficult. It does not necessarily follow that

those who cried for "reform" in 1824 meant economic reform, or that

such men followed Jackson into the Democratic party after 1828.

Many opponents of the Bank had little interest in replacing legislative

and congressional control of politics with another variety of inviolable

party dominion; as westerners they still felt unfulfilled when political

power seemed merely to have passed from one "king" to another.

Conclusion

Two important phenomena have been observed in considering

these recent studies of Jacksonian Ohio. First, too many scholars,

Sharp and Ratcliffe among them, refuse to consider seriously the

possibility that the people of whom they write often believed and

acted upon the things they said whether or not those historians are

willing to relate "mere talk" to realities other than economic

aggrandizement. A major problem of Ratcliffe's analysis is not only

that he ignores the testimony of his actors, but that he places their

words in a context of his, not their, choosing. Second, even among

those who profess to have considered factors other than economics in

their analyses, initial assumptions about political behavior and

methodological simplicity qualify their overall success. Historians

ought first to ask: how credible is any rhetoric, particularly if it does

not refer directly to economic self-interest? Second, what other

realities might evoke rhetoric of remarkable intensity and polarity

when economic self-interest is not evident? Once these initial

questions are posed requisite methodologies will follow.

Still, care must be taken. It will be remembered that Sharp's

economic data are misleading and that he excuses his reliance on

single-factor analysis by asserting that ethnocultural statistics for

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Voting in Jacksonian Ohio                                    169

 

Ohio are unavailable. Because Ratcliffe does not systematically

locate ethnic groups in the state or account for their cultural

ideologies he can only speculate about their political predilections.26

His assessment of the role of ethnic groups would be enhanced if he

pursued the likelihood that their political homogeneity and persistent

attitudes toward many issues, including finance, slavery, and

partisanship itself may have derived from complementary cultural

perspectives.

To discount automatically the credibility of rhetoric which

encompasses elements of cultural and moral philosophy because it

does not always coincide with economic self-interest or because other

realities (e.g., ethnicity) seem vague and difficult to measure, is to

ignore the distinct cultural perspectives of voters, leaving an

interpretative vacuum vulnerable to methodological simplicity. The

case of Ohio illustrates that when historians concentrate on one rather

than a series of elections-1840 in Sharp's case, 1824 in

Ratcliffe's-they are likely to fall back on a single-factor analysis and,

hence, to separate rhetoric from reality. In contrast, illustrations of

the links between the voting patterns of defined parts of the electorate

and the expressed ideas of political spokesmen, newspaper

editorialists, clergymen, and other rhetoricians ought to underscore

the necessity of developing a healthy skepticism about the degree to

which individual politicians, or fleeting issues, determine political

history.²⁷ Though detailed correlation analysis of electoral behavior in

Jacksonian Ohio from 1832 to 1848 discounts the relationship of

wealth to voting, it does reveal significant partisan contrasts between

resident Yankees and Southerners, between immigrant groups,

between natives and immigrants, between evangelicals and other

Protestant denominations, between Protestants and Catholics, and,

significantly, a marked contrast in the degree of partisanship between

Whigs and Democrats. Whig rhetoric not only evinced a strong

religious and moralistic anti-party bias based upon such ties, but these

men also acted as though they meant it. Whig voters, despite being

supporters of the state's majority party throughout the Jacksonian

period, were historically less stable partisan followers and less

committed to "winning" than were Democrats, even after their

 

26. "Why Jackson attracted the support of the 'Pennsylvania Dutch' in 1824 remains

a mystery," Ratcliffe, "Voters and Issues," 863.

27. Samuel T. McSeveney, "Ethnic Groups, Ethnic Conflicts, and Recent

Quantitative Research in American Political History," The International Migration

Review, VII (Spring 1973), 14-33, discusses recent multivariate electoral studies; Allan

G. Bogue, "United States: The 'New' Political History," Journal of Contemporary

History, II (January 1968), 5-27, is an earlier description and evaluation.

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170                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

alleged conversion to Democratic electioneering techniques in 1840.

In addition, Whig anti-partyism varied directly with the strength of

evangelical Protestant denominations and Yankee ethnicity.²⁸ These

patterns of behavior strongly suggest that those who keep track of

politicians, issues, and voters ought not to be influenced unduly by

the now infamous contemporary slogan, "watch what we do instead

of what we say"; scholars should also heed history-makers who

implore them to "watch what we do as well as what we say."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

28. Preliminary exposition of these conclusions may be found in Fox, "Group Bases

of Ohio Political Behavior," and more concisely in two unpublished manuscripts by

Fox, "Lee Benson's Ethnocultural Hypothesis: A Postscript from Ohio" and "Parti-

sanship and the Bank of the United States in Jacksonian Ohio."

Donald Ratcliffe, "The Experience of Revolution and the Beginnings of Party

Politics in Ohio, 1776-1816," Ohio History, LXXXV (Summer 1976), 186-230, is far

more attentive to the moral sensitivity of Ohioans than the article under inspection

here. He acknowledges that many Federalists and Republicans were disillusioned with

partisanship prior to 1824; that many such men opposed the peoples' "right of

instruction" for moral reasons; that the word "aristocracy" was often used to denote

officeholder tyranny rather than socioeconomic status; that much of Jacksonian politics

arose from earlier, non-economic issues; and that the conflict between party regularity

and antipartyism was itself a "dual" party system.

• 16