STEPHEN C. FOX
The Bank Wars, the Idea of "Party,"
and the Division of the Electorate
in Jacksonian Ohio
Among the recent interpretations that
have reinvigorated Jacksonian
studies, two in particular have proved
to be central to understanding that
period: first, that the Bank of the
United States and banking in general were
issues with more political than economic
significance; and second, that it
was during the Jacksonian era that
Americans learned to accept the
legitimacy and competitive spirit of a
two-party political system.
Exemplifying the first of these, Robert
Remini's Andrew Jackson and the
Bank War describes the Jackson-Biddle confrontation in 1832 as
political,
though the author acknowledges that the
Bank's "octopus-like" tentacles
also reached into economic and fiscal
policy, precipitated clashes between
individuals, classes, and sections, and
juxtaposed the social and ideological
views of the major antagonists.' In
another recent study of banking, The
Politics of Jacksonian Finance, John M. McFaul maintains that even
though banking was part of a pro verus
antibusiness controversy,
economic interests remained subordinate
to political interests, and that the
"significant event during the
Jacksonian era was not the triumph of laissez
faire or a protoregulatory state but the
emergence and establishment of a
new political party system."2 In
a final illustration, Banks Or No Banks:
The Money Issue in Western Politics,
1832-1865, William G. Shade
extends the political dimension of
banking even further by arguing that
conflict over banking was only part of a
broader struggle between political
"subcultures."3 As
for the theme of party growth and competitiveness,
books and articles by Richard P.
McCormick and Richard Hofstadter
have shown historians the importance of
the Jacksonian years to the
development of America's two-party
system.4
Stephen C. Fox is Professor of History
at Humboldt State University, Arcata, California.
1. Robert Remini, Andrew Jackson and
the Bank War: A Study in the Growth of
Presidential Power (New York, 1967), 9.
2. John M. McFaul, The Politics of
Jacksonian Finance (Ithaca, 1972), 211.
3. William G. Shade, Banks or No
Banks: The Money Issue in Western Politics, 1832-1865
(Detroit, 1972), 11, 18.
4. Richard P. McCormick, "New
Perspectives on Jacksonian Politics," American
254 OHIO
HISTORY
Yet none of these recent studies goes
far enough. Surely if the key
political role played by the Bank and
the acceptance of party competition
were as important to the Jacksonian era
as historians suggest, then one
ought to be more curious about the
timing of the two.5 The goal of much of
the economic policy of the 1780s and
1790s had been political; both
Alexander Hamilton and his opponents
knew that real power belonged to
those who made economic decisions, and
only secondarily to those who
might benefit from them. Was the fight
over economic policy in the
Jacksonian era any less total? Since
party realignment came so quickly on
the heels of the Bank Wars, perhaps the
Jacksonian and Whig paties
represented more than a simple response
to the Bank's fiscal policies. What
was the relationship between the Bank
and renewed partisanship during
both periods? Were pro-Bank men also
pro-party, and anti-Bank men the
opposite? The same? Or vice versa?
Historians have not looked carefully
enough at the unique extent to which the
Bank issue generated support for
the idea of "party" among some
of the electorate, while leaving doubts
about the efficacy of parties in the
minds of others.6 InJacksonian Ohio the
Bank did just that: it renewed the
ideological debate and electoral
competition absent there since the
collapse of the Federalist party in the
"era of good feelings."
Moreover, because of this catalytic role, the Bank's
legacy is more appropriately a part of
party history than of economic
history. It was pro- and anti-Bank
spokesmen who, in the course of their
debate over the financial merits of the
Bank, most succinctly voiced pro and
antiparty ideals, providing, in turn,
the link between the Bank issue and the
electorate's assessment of the value of
partisanship.7
Historical Review LXI (January, 1960), 288-301, and The Second
American Party System:
Party Formation in the Jacksonian Era
(Chapel Hill, 1966); Richard
Hofstadter, The Idea of
a Party System: The Rise of
Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1790-1840(Berkeley,
1969).
5. The coincidence of the Bank
Wars(1818-1819 and 1832-1834) and party realignment has
led a number of historians to the
conclusion that the political adjustments were due primarily
to economic grievances. See, 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; Kim T. Phillips,
"The Pennsylvania Origins of the Jackson Movement,"
Political Science Quarterly, XCI (Fall, 1976), 489-508. For detailed comment on
Sharp and
Ratcliffe see, Stephen C. Fox,
"Politicians, Issues, and Voter Preference in Jacksonian Ohio:
A Critique of an Interpretation," Ohio
History, LXXXVI (Summer, 1977), 155-70.
6. Tom Paine, the much-travelled
revolutionary pamphleteer, strongly supported the fiscal
policies of the Bank of North America in
the 1780s. But even he recanted his faith in
unicameralism when "party"
considerations in Pennsylvania's legislature became the basis for
opposition to the Bank. See, Philips S.
Foner, ed., The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine
(New York, 1945), 1247, 1255, 390, 409.
7. Details differ from place to place,
but the contrasting attitudes toward partisanship
described in this study are not limited
to a single state, or even to the Jacksonian era. Even
were this not the case, Ohio's political
history has never been provincial. Both contemporaries
and historians have consistently
acknowledged the controversial role of the BUS in Ohio and
The Bank Wars 255
Finally, the search for
"consensus" in American history in recent years
has persuaded numerous historians that
the resounding Whig triumph in
1840 was due to its acceptance of
partisanship and Democratic
electioneering techniques, a "total
transfusion of Jacksonian blood."8 But
as this essay shows, such a portrayal of
Ohio Whiggery overlooks the
party's unique ideological roots and
exaggerates its willingness to
compromise on matters of principle. Long
after the Bank ceased to be the
focal point of Ohio politics, the
continuing debate over "party," rekindled
by the Bank issue, left Democrats and
their opponents looking much less
like "Tweedle Dee and Tweedle
Dum" than has been thought. The
elevation of "principle" above
party considerations in the case of the Bank
turned out to be an ominous dress
rehearsal for the contest between
antislavery and party integrity which
lay ahead.
Before turning in detail to the role of
the Bank, however, it is necessary to
acquaint readers with the relationship
between ideas about "party" and the
social sources of politics in Jacksonian
Ohio.
The Social Sources of Pro and
Antipartyism
William Shade's book on banking and
western politics, as well as an
article he co-authored with Herbert
Ershkowitz, describe the partisan
conflict generated by banking and
related financial issues in the legislatures
of Ohio and a number of other states
during the Jacksonian era.9 In each
study the authors come to the same
conclusion: political turmoil stemmed
not so much from differing economic
interests among legislators as from
the prominence of the state in the
evolution of western and national politics. Recent studies
that pertain exclusively or in part to
Ohio include: 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; Thomas Flinn,
"Continuity and Change in Ohio
Politics," Journal of Politics, XXIV (August, 1962), 521-44;
Ratcliffe, "Voters and
Issues"; Leonard L. Richards, "Gentlemen of Property and
Standing":
Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian
America (New York, 1970); Harry N.
Scheiber, Ohio
Canal Era: A Case Study of Government
and the Economy, 1820-1861 (Athens,
1969); Sharp,
Jacksonians versus the Banks; Harry R. Stevens. "Henry Clay, the Bank, and the
West in
1824," American Historical
Review, LX (July, 1955), 843-48, and The Early Jackson Party in
Ohio (Durham, 1957).
8. Lynn L. Marshall, "The Strange
Stillbirth of the Whig Party," American Historical
Review, LXII (January, 1967), 463. Others who stress Whig
imitativeness are Hofstadter,
Idea of a Party System; McCormick, "New Perspectives," who styles the
Whig metamorphisis
as "Tippecanoe Democracy";
Perry M. Goldman, "Political Virtue in the Age of Jackson,"
Political Science Quarterly, LXXXVII (March, 1972), 46-62; John M. Rozett, "The
Social
Bases of Party Conflict in the Age of
Jackson: Individual Voting Behavior in Greene County,
Illinois, 1838-1848" (Ph.D.
dissertation, University of Michigan, 1974), 28, who argues that
the "cry of 'no party' was a sham,
a rhetorical device used to lure unwary Democrats." In
Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age (New York, 1955), 81-91, John W. Ward
overemphasizes Whig pragmatism to the
point of implying that William Henry Harrison was
"unprincipled."
9. Shade, Banks or No Banks; Ershkowitz
and Shade, "Consensus or Conflict?"
256 OHIO HISTORY
differences in their sociocultural
backgrounds and contrasting attitudes
toward social reform. Yet, by design
neither work examines the popular
response to issues and parties-behavior that was grounded in the
same
cultural antagonism as that found by
Ershkowitz and Shade among
lawmakers. The most striking aspect of
that response was that Whig voters
were much less willing than Democrats to
submit to party discipline. In
election after election rank and file
Whigs dropped out of the political
process more readily than Democrats,
despite Whig control of the state
throughout most of the Jacksonian era.10
Moreover, underlying voters'
behavior in this regard were
long-standing religious, ethnic, and regional
idiosyncracies differing little from
those of their representatives in
Columbus.
The Whig party drew its principal
support from two interrelated
sociocultural groups: Yankees from New
England and the "burned over"
district of New York, and religious
denominations that emphasized piety
and revivalism (the evangelicals).11
Both groups provided ample numbers
10. From 1836 to 1848 Democratic
gubernatorial candidates won only twice: in 1838 with a
majority, and in 1842 with a plurality.
The point is not that Whigs were apolitical, but that
they were antipolitical. Whigs
consistently fought elections with less enthusiasm and with less
relative success than Democrats, even though they won more
elections.
11. Some supporting data and a note on
methodology are necessary here. The Pearson
correlation coefficient measuring the
relationship between the percentage of church
accommodations of the principal
pietistic denominations in 1850 (Baptist, Congregational,
Presbyterian, Quaker), and the voting
strength of the combined Whig-Free Soil* parties in
1848, is +.498; Catholic church seats
and Whig-Free Soil strength, -.365. As for ethnic
background, in a statewide random sample
of fifty-four townships and wards, a comparison
of the numbers of native Ohioans in 1850
and Democratic strength in 1848 shows no
correlation. However, the coefficient of
Democratic strength and New Englanders-New
Yorkers is .442; of Democrats and
Pennsylvanians-Virginians, +.334. And in two Cincinnati
wards in the same sample where the sizes
of the native groups were not appreciably different,
other contrasts emerge: one ward was 88
percent immigrant (forty-eight times as many non-
English as English) and 71 percent
Democratic in 1848; the other only 55 percent immigrant
(three and one-half times as many
non-English) and 40 percent Democratic. In addition, the
first of these had twice as many
non-English as the second, though the latter had ten times as
many English.
*Throughout this paper I combine Whig
and antislave voters (Libertyites and Free
Soilers) because of their similar
regional backgrounds, evangelical-reformist attitudes, and
the overwhelming evidence that antislave
electoral support came almost entirely from the
ranks of Whiggery. This was particularly
true of the Free Soilers in 1848. For example, in all
twenty-three counties where Van Buren
received at least 10 percent of the presidential vote in
1848 (he got 11 percent statewide), Whig
strength fell from its 1844 levels, while Democratic
strength diminished in only eighteen. In
each county Whig losses were markedly greater than
Democratic: across the state the
Democratic percentage of the vote fell .66 percent from 1844
to 1848, while the Whig percentage
dropped by 7.6 percent more than ten times as much.
Similarly, the total number of
Democratic ballots cast in 1848 rose by nearly 4 percent, while
Whig turnout dropped nearly 11 percent.
Yet in the 1848 gubernatorial election, with no clear
third party candidate, the two parties
split the vote nearly evenly, as usual. In 1852 the shift
was reversed: the Whig party registered
a more marked increase in strength than the
Democratic, indicating that former Whig
voters returned to old allegiances with the collapse
of Free Soilism in Ohio.
The Bank Wars 257
of men who rejected the "might
makes right" implication of majoritarian
politics. Yet they too longed for
something not that dissimilar from
political maj oritarianism-a moral
American commonwealth based on the
cultural dominance of native American
Protestantism and buttressed, if
need be, by the legal authority of the
state.12
Those who bolstered the ranks of the
Democracy offered an
unmistakable contrast. They came
primarily from the South, Penn-
sylvania, and Germany, and were likely
to be less religious and more
Catholic than Whigs. Not only were
Democratic strongholds less religious
than Whig centers, but religious
intensity (religiosity) and party strength in
the latter varied directly. Whig
strength was most salient, for example, in
the Western Reserve where the
evangelical crusade was most enthusiastic,
and where Yankeeism was the dominant
demographic characteristic.
Furthermore, since the southern-oriented
Ohio Democracy viewed the call
for American cultural homogeneity as New
England's grab for power in the
West, they rallied behind a doctrine of
social pluralism, countering Whig
activism with an aggressive laissez faire
ethic.13 Paradoxically, however,
Democrats anchored their political goals
to the rock of party discipline and
relinquished political individuality
more willingly than Whigs.
These contending communal and individual
values, carried into Ohio in
the minds of the earliest white
settlers, were the bedrock of political conflict
In Illinois, Abraham Lincoln considered
"Liberty-men" to be Whigs at heart, and referred
to those in New York who refused to vote
for Henry Clay in 1844 as "whig abolitionists." See,
Lincoln to Williamson Durley, Oct. 3,
1845, in Roy P. Basler, The Collected Works of
Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, 1953), 1, 347.
12. T. Scott Miyakawa, Protestants
and Pioneers: Individualism and Conformity on the
American Frontier (Chicago, 1964), 22, 31-32, 44, stresses the
communitarianism of two
prominent evangelical sects, the
Presbyterians and the Baptists. The commonwealth outlook
of New Englanders is also highlighted in
Kenneth A. Lockridge, A New England Town: The
First Hundred Years; Dedham,
Massachusetts, 1636-1736 (New York,
1970), 165, 169, 177,
who says of the future of 17th century
"Puritan communal corporatism" that "the evolution of
a libertarian society in America was
neither as rapid nor as direct as might be
thought .... elements of the communal
ideal . . . remained alive in the towns of New
England and of the northwestern
territories . . . even after the passing of Jefferson and the
coming of Andrew Jackson." The
abolitionist movement is the most obvious example of the
progression from moral suasion to
enforced state action typical of Whig types. Temperance
Whigs would no doubt have been heartened
by Prohibition.
13. Both Paul Kleppner, The Cross of
Culture: A Social Analysis of Midwestern Politics,
1850-1900 (New York, 1970), 75, and Ronald P. Formisano, The
Birth of Mass Political
Parties: Michigan, 1827-1861 (Princeton, 1971), 103, emphasize this distinction
between the
two major parties. Formisano's book,
especially Chapter 6, is an excellent discussion of the
Democratic laissez faire ethic. A good
example of Democratic laissez faire creed in Ohio is,
"The Democratic Party is the
Liberal Party," in the Democratic Standard (Georgetown),
Sept. 12, 1843, in which the Democracy
voiced opposition to organized reform movements
motivated by "ascetic law, force,
terror, or violence," arguing that society should change
naturally, through the "light and
love" of individual reflection instead of the activities of
religious zealots and social tinkerers.
258 OHIO
HISTORY
in the state.14 Both
contemporaries and historians
have noted how
easterners attempted to restructure
their cultural and political pasts in the
West, a process that inexorably shaped
the subsequent history of the
state. 15 Timothy Flint
marveled at the cultural homogeneity of the Western
Reserve and its general resemblance to
New England.16 Later, a county
historian claimed that New Englanders
had plotted their lands "with
mathematical precision an emblem of the
Federalist love of order," while
township lines in the southerners'
region were "zig-zag and crooked,
suggesting the Republican love of
freedom for the individual."17 Political
geographer William T. Hutchinson
concluded that, "The Virginians gave a
portion of the state a southern attitude
toward life and politics which
14. Evangelicalism, by no means a
monolithic ideology, was marked by the ambivalence of
individualism offered through salvation
outside formal church ritual, and the corporate ideal
of the selfless community. Similarly,
the emphasis of a part of Lockean philosophy on the
"natural rights" of
competitive individuals contrasted sharply with the ideal of a community
interest more important than any
individual right.
15. The following describe Ohio's
distinctive settlement patterns: John Kilbourn, The Ohio
Gazetteer or Topographical Dictionary
.... (2nd ed., Columbus, 1816), 29, passim;
Timothy Flint, A Condensed Geography
and History of the Western States, or the Mississippi
Valley, 2 Vols. (Cincinnati, 1828), II, 362; Lewis D. Stilwell,
Migrationfrom Vermont, Vol. V
of the Growth of Vermont, ed. by
Earle W. Newton (Montpelier, 1948), 143, 143n; Lois K.
Matthews, The Expansion of New
England: The Spread of New England Settlement and
Institutions to the Mississippi,
1620-1865 (New York, 1909, 1962),
178n, passim; Daniel
Aaron, "Cincinnati, 1818-1838: A
Study of Attitudes in the Urban West" (Ph.D. dissertation,
Harvard University, 1942), viii, who
argues that the founding of Cincinnati was more a
triumph of collectivism than
individualism; William T. Hutchinson, "The Bounty Lands of
the American Revolution in Ohio"
(Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1927), 182,
passim; Richard F. O'Dell, "The Early Anti-Slavery
Movement in Ohio"(Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Michigan, 1948), 31; Mary
E. Moses, "Factors Influencing the Population and
Areal Growth of Selected Ohio
Cities" (M.A. thesis, Ohio State University, 1954), 10. Both
Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans:
The National Experience (New York, 1965), 52-53, and
Page Smith, As a City Upon a Hill:
The Town in American History (New York, 1966), 17-20,
30, 32-33, 36, support the theory of
communal development in the West. The earliest party
battles in the state reflected regional
strife. See, Ruhl J. Bartlett, "The Struggle for Statehood
in Ohio," Ohio Archaeological
and Historical Quarterly, XXXII (July, 1923), 472-505;
William T. Utter, The Frontier State,
1803-1825, Vol. II of The History of the State of Ohio,
ed. by Carl Wittke (Columbus, 1942);
Donald J. Ratcliffe, "The Experience of Revolution and
the Beginnings of Party Politics in
Ohio, 1776-1816," Ohio History, LXXXV (Summer, 1976),
186-230.
16. Condensed Geography, II, 362.
My discussion of demographic patterns in Ohio is
based on examination of dozens of county
and local histories, too numerous to be listed here.
(Readers may wish to refer to the
bibliography in my doctoral dissertation, "The Group Bases
of Ohio Political Behavior,
1803-1848," University of Cincinnati, 1973.) These local histories
provide biographical sketches, detailed
accounts of groups and settlement patterns, and
record the growth of towns and
townships.
17. Martin R. Andrews, ed., History
of Marietta and Washington County,
Ohio .... (Chicago, 1920), 100. Eric Foner, Free
Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The
Ideology of the Republican Party
before the Civil War (New York, 1970),
49, quotes a New
York Tribune correspondent's observations in 1857 on the contrast
between New Englanders'
farms in the Western Reserve and those
of Virginians and Kentuckians in other parts of the
state.
The Bank Wars 259
contrasted sharply with other districts
. . . settled so generally from New
England and the Middle States.18
Others believe it was the
"frontier" that ultimately determined political
identity in Jacksonian Ohio. Robert E.
Chaddock insisted that the success
of western settlement depended almost
entirely on its reverence for
individuality: Scotch-Irish influence was
more permanent because "border
life and struggles" had
"accustomed" that people to the wilderness of a
place like southern Ohio which they
rapidly filled with a "self-reliant
pioneer type ...." Chaddock chided
that New England's contribution
was minimal, since emigration from that
section had been too highly
organized.19 A more recent student of
the westward movement confirms
that northerners generally traveled in
groups while southerners journeyed
alone, concluding that "southern
individualism-perhaps reinforced by a
streak of Jacksonian Democracy and fear
of organized efforts of special
interest groups-stood in sharp contrast
to the Yankee notions of
community, mission, and
cooperation."20 Nor was the disparity limited to
Ohio: John Rozett concludes that in
Illinois the "relation of the individual
to social control became the paramount
issue of the Jacksonian period,"
providing the "framework, the
historical reality, necessary to interpret
Jacksonian politics."21
The ambivalent, and at times
paradoxical, posture that Jacksonian
Ohioans assumed toward communal and
individual values left them with a
dilemma that was particularly acute when
it impinged on their view of the
18. Hutchinson, "Bounty Lands,"
182. On differences between northern and southern
attitudes toward collectivity and
individuality see, Charles S. Sydnor, "The Southerner and
the Law," Journal of Southern
History, VI (Feb., 1940), 3-23; Stanley Elkins and Eric
McKitrick, "A Meaning for Turner's
Frontier," Political Science Quarterly, LXIX (Sept.,
1954), 321-53, (Dec., 1954), 565-602;
Phillip S. Paludan, "The American Civil War
Considered as a Crisis in Law and
Order," American Historical Review, LXXVII (Oct., 1972),
1013-34.
19. Ohio Before 1850: A Study of the
Early Influence of Pennsylvania and Southern
Populations in Ohio (New York, 1908), 52, 54. Among those who discount the
effect of the
"frontier" are Aaron,
"Cincinnati," vi; Wayne Jordan, "The People of Ohio's First
County,"
Ohio Archaeological and Historical
Quarterly, XLIX (Jan.-March, 1940),
1-40; Kenneth V.
Lottich, "The Western Reserve and
the Frontier Thesis," Ohio Historical Quarterly, LXX
(Jan., 1961), 45-67.
20. James E. Davis, Frontier America,
1800-1840: A Comparative Demographic Analysis
of the Frontier Process (Glendale, Calif., 1977), 43. Other historians have
raised related
questions: John Higham asks whether
"the great cleavage in American history [is] the
outward one between haves and have-nots
. . . or . . . an inward opposition
. . . between an ethic of communal
responsibility and an ethic of unrestrained in-
dividualism?" See his "Beyond
Consensus: The Historian as Moral Critic,"AHR, LXVII
(April, 1962), 623; and Rozett,
"Party Conflict," 210-11, who points to the contrast in
Jacksonian America between those who
valued "natural liberty," a laissez faire emphasis on
the free reign of individuals, and the
supporters of "legal liberty" who sought positive laws to
shape community values and strengthen
individual liberty. See also, James W. Hurst, Law
and the Conditions of Freedom in the
Nineteenth-Century United States (Madison,
1956).
21. Rozett, "Party Conflict,"
212.
260 OHIO HISTORY
role of political leaders, the
legitimacy of partisan activities, and the power
of government: if individuality was so
important to a free society, and few
were willing to admit that it was not,
then how could it be maintained
through collective action? Might not the
means-either moral suasion
turned state policy, or majoritarian
democracy-destroy the end? De
Tocqueville said of Americans that
"they want to be led, and they wish to
remain free. As they cannot destroy
either . . . they strive to satisfy them
both . . ."22
Phrased in more familiar political
terminology, the dilemma was still the
same: how was a democratic society to
protect the rights of majorities and
minorities at the same time? As
sympathetically as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
portrays the Jacksonian Democrats in his
landmark book, The Age of
Jackson, he admits that they were "no more successful than
[the
Jeffersonians] in resolving . . . the
problem of the virtue of majorities,
and the problem of the evil of
government."23 After all, what was one to do
if virtue and evil appeared in the same
garb? The stunning Whig victory in
1840 unquestionably raised doubts in the
minds of enthusiastic
majoritarians principally
Democrats-about the inherent "goodness" of
any majority. And waiting in the wings
to receive these new skeptics were
many who were already convinced that the
protection of minority interests
required not only a Bill of Rights, but
close adherence to the
antimajoritarian structure of the
federal constitution as well.
It would over-simplify matters to claim
that majoritarians and anti-Bank
men filled out the ranks of one party,
and minoritarians and pro-Bank men
the other. But in Ohio, in general,
Democratic rhetoric and voting were
promajoritarian and anti-Bank; Whig
rhetoric and behavior an-
timajoritarian and pro-Bank. And whether
voters were native-born
Americans or immigrants, Protestants or
Catholics, evangelicals or
nonevangelicals, pro- or anti-Bank, they
quickly learned that as American
society became increasingly politicized
the means to impose their
prejudices on one another lay in the
political process. Sooner or later each
of them had to confront the issue of
"party" head-on. What remains to be
seen is how the Bank question
precipitated that encounter and defined its
evolution.
The Bank and the Role of Parties
Donald J. Ratcliffe's recent article on
party conflict in Ohio prior to the
22. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy
in America, trans. by Henry Reeves, ed. by Phillips
Bradley, Vintage Books, 2 vols. (New
York, 1945), II, 337. More recently, historian Daniel
Boorstin has posed the problem in his
preferred context: "Communities were expressly
created to serve private interests, and
private interests were preserved only by the express
construction of effective
communities." See, Boorstin, National Experience, 72.
23. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The
Age of Jackson (Boston, 1945), 403.
The Bank Wars 261
first Bank War in 1818 shows that
Ohioans were already prophetically
ambivalent about parties, and were in
fact operating under a kind of "dual"
political system: rather than two
equally competitive parties doing battle,
politics consisted in large part of pro
and antiparty idealists debating the
"rightfulness" of having party
organizations at all. From 1812 to 1816, as
Ohio Federalism passed into history, its
spokesmen, and others, warned
that the Jeffersonian reverence for
partisanship (exemplified in Ohio by the
Tammany societies) was bringing about
the "degeneration" of American
society.24 But partisanship
did not succumb, even though many non-
Federalists may have wished for its
demise as well. For one thing, the
Federalists' parting shot undoubtedly
struck a lot of people as "sour
grapes." And, in addition to
lingering doubts about "party" still harbored
within the Republican
"consensus" of the "era of good feelings," the then
popular antiparty slogan, "Measures
and not Men," only thinly disguised
the conviction of some of its most vocal
renditioners that merely the wrong
kind of consensus reigned.25 Shortly
thereafter, of course, the Bank of the
United States shattered the fragile
stalemate by bringing the debate over
"party" out into the open
again.
Both the Jacksonian
"revolution" of the early 1820s and Whiggery's
response in the early 1830s coincided
with the uproar over the BUS largely
because the frontal assault on the Bank
had the secondary effect of
arousing old feelings about
"party." It is difficult to separate the Bank from
the question of political reform. In 1818,
Ohioans were preoccupied with
reports of the Bank's financial woes and
the withdrawal of specie from
western bank vaults to make good
Philadelphia's debts. At the same time,
they were equally concerned about the
future of the caucus nominating
system. Ohioans, like other westerners,
believed that it was due largely to
their underrepresentation in Washington
that the Bank was able to impose
its hated policies-in other words,
because of the political "corruption" of
the caucus system. Caring for the Bank's
ills mandated a political cure as
well.
Nevertheless, the eventual political
remedy, a shift toward strict party
discipline and majoritarianism, did not
necessarily unite economically
aggrieved anti-Bank men and nascent
Jacksonians; for while the attack on
the Bank and the collapse of the
congressional caucus paved the way for
Andrew Jackson's political success, not
everyone in Ohio who detested
24. Ratcliffe, "Party
Politics," 200-11, 219. In 1794, during the "Whiskey Rebellion,"
George Washington viewed what he called
"self-created" Democratic Societies with similar
misgivings. See, James T. Flexner, George
Washington: Anguish and Farewell, 1793-1799
(Boston, 1969), 182-92.
25. "Measures and not men" is
an excellent example of the difficulty many Federalists had
in separating idealism from pragmatism.
The slogan seems to be anti "men," but "measures"
are, after all, no more than the deeds
of "men." Obviously, what exponents of the slogan
sought was not so much
"measures" as distinct from "men," but a particular breed
of "men."
The Bank Wars 263
Bank policy was inclined to be a
Jacksonian partisan.26 It was the local
banking establishment that opposed the
BUS in the first place, and most of
these men were prominent ex-Federalists
or future pro-bank Whigs.27
Indeed, by 1825 the once-outlawed BUS
had reestablished its branch office
in Cincinnati, despite the humiliation
of the state's having looted it under
the guise of a so-called "Crowbar
Law."28 Thus by the time Jackson's fame
as a military hero and defender of the
"common man" began to manifest
tangible political results, the Bank had
largely recovered its standing in
Ohio and, for the moment at least, was
becoming a less visible political
target.
The question of a replacement for the
caucus system, however,
continued to haunt Ohioans; for the
discussion of a way to reform "king
caucus" opened the Pandora's Box of
party legitimacy. Many opponents of
the BUS in the early twenties shied away
from replacing legislative and
congressional control of politics with
the kind of "party" foretold by the
Bank struggle. What anti-Bank,
anticaucus, anti-Jacksonians objected to
in 1818 was the political conduct of the
anti-Bank party disciplinarians.
Wherever attention focused on the BUS
from 1818 to 1819, especially in
Hamilton and Ross counties where the
Bank's branches were located, the
most politically-minded anti-Bank men
created rudimentary, but deter-
mined electoral machines, drafting what
they called "reform tickets,"
"delegate nominations," or
simply "anti-Bank nominations." Like the
caucuses, these emerging organizations
openly manipulated candidate
selection, but they now were opposed by
more circumspect organizations
supported by men already skeptical of
disciplined partisanship.29
As the old system, symbolized by the
distant Bank and caucus, began to
collapse, the most aggressive anti-Bank
men implored voters to thoroughly
scrutinize candidates for any office,
giving particular attention to their
position on the Bank. One ambitious
anti-Bank hopeful even called for the
26. Ratcliffe, "Voters and
Issues," prematurely concludes that those who called for
"reform" in 1824 meant
economic reform, and that such men followed Jackson into the
Democratic party after 1828.
Furthermore, he fails to pursue the antipolitical sentiment
reflected in his own phraseology, such
as: "widespread resentment against all
politicians . . . in a position to
exploit public office for their own advantage"; "widespread
resentment of privilege and governmental
corruption"; and "cries of corrup-
tion . . .and . . . promises of
reform," 860-61, 865-66.
27. Utter, Frontier State, 281,
297; Kenneth E. Davison, "Forgotten Ohioan: Elisha
Whittlesey, 1783-1863" (Ph.D.
dissertation, Western Reserve University, 1953), 45.
28. Niles' Register, XVIII, May
14, 1825. For details of Ohio's "war" on the BUS see,
Daniel J. Ryan, "Nullification in
Ohio," OAHQ, II (June, 1888), 413-22.
29. Cleveland Gazette and Commerical
Register, Oct. 13,1818, Aug. 3,1819; Liberty Hall,
Sept. 28, Oct. 15, 1819; Charles T.
Greve, Centennial History of Cincinnati, 2 vols., (Chicago,
1904), 1, 574; Supporter (Chillicothe),
Sept. 22,27, Oct. 6, 1819; Niles' Register, XVII, Nov. 6,
1819; American Friend (Marietta),
Oct. 5, 1821.
264 OHIO HISTORY
resurrection of the "'peoples'
right of instruction."30 Although these
"innovations" eventually
undermined the caucus system, if not the Bank,
many people still questioned the
relevance of the Bank issue to the conduct
of all political offices, and wondered
aloud whether the "new" politics was
any more advantageous than the
"old" to independent judgment and
minority interests. Their objection to the
caucus, after all, had not simply
been that it limited western
representation, but that it also curtailed
individual political activity.31 They
wanted the system opened up, not
closed again by the new majoritarians of
the Bank War. As westerners they
still felt unfulfilled when, in the
aftermath of the Bank-caucus fight,
political power seemed merely to have
passed from one "king" to another.
Ohio politics reached a second watershed
in 1832 when nascent Whigs,
alarmed at President Jackson's
enhancement of executive authority by his
veto of the Bank recharter and his
reliance on "party" to sustain him,
employed the same consensual sentiment
as their ideological predecesssors
in attacking "King Andrew."
Now, however, "Measures . . ." meant
specifically that the General himself
had neither talent nor principle, and
was using "party" in a
contrived assault on the interest of the "whole
people"-a sound, functioning, Bank
of the United States. For Elisha
Whittlesey, who later became an
important Whig leader in northeast Ohio,
Jackson's attack on the BUS came as a
self-fulfilling prophecy. He had
fretted privately in 1828 that the
possibility of Jackson's election amounted
to a national emergency: "We live
in a time," he wrote a sympathetic reader,
"when public office and distinction
dwindle to nothing . . . compared to
the salvation of the Republic."32
As the new Bank crisis gathered
momentum, the President's "in-
novations," as well as those of his
party, worried a good many Ohioans. By
then the state had adopted the so-called
"slip-ticket" ballot, an allegedly
"democratic" measure, but one
that nevertheless severely restricted the
30. Western Spy (Cincinnati),
Aug. 17, 1820; Liberty Hall, Aug. 19, Sept. 6, Oct. 7, 1820;
Niles' Register, XV, Oct. 24, 1818. Niles, in advance of later Whig
ideology, attacked the idea
of instruction throughout 1820, and
editorialized against the caucus system until its demise in
1824.
31. Ohio Federalists had opposed the
congressional caucus as early as 1816. See, Ratcliffe,
"Party Politics," 218.
32. Whittlesey to Joshua R. Giddings,
July 21, 1828, quoted in James B. Stewart, Joshua
R. Giddings and the Tactics of
Radical Politics (Cleveland, 1970),
19-20. Historians should be
careful in dismissing the fears of
Whittlesey and others (particularly when expressed privately)
as isolated instances of rhetorical
overkill, or as the shrewd manipulation of voters. Close
scrutiny of the relationship between the
Bank and electoral activity in Ohio, together with the
state's past experience with a
"dual" system of politics, provide a striking view of the
continuity of the debate over
"party" throughout the first four decades of the nineteenth
century.
The Bank Wars 265
independence of split-ticket voters.
Again, however, anti-Bank
Jacksonians embraced the principles of
popular instruction and party
regularity more enthusiastically than
anyone.33 And at least one Ohioan
was convinced that these encroachments,
along with Jackson's decision to
remove the government's deposits from
the BUS and his "immoral"
dismissal of cabinet members who had the
temerity to disobey that order,
gave birth to the state's Whig party.
"This whole procedure," he concluded,
"shocked the public mind."
Following that, Whigs placed "opposition to
arbitrary power" at the top of
their list of priorities, ahead even of their
traditional desire to legislate
"for the 'general welfare,' em-
bracing . . . finance, industry, and
commerce."34 During the banking
debates of the 1840s, Lewis Tappan, a
prominent Ohio Whig and
evangelical abolitionist, wrote in a
similar moral tone to New York's
William H. Seward that economic
questions such as the Bank were less
important to "a better state of
things" than "men . . . who value
posthumous fame [and] the favor of God
more than the applause of
officeseekers . . ."35 Undoubtedly many, both then and
now, would
discount the sincerity of such
abstractions. But it must have been harder in
1836 to deny the practical moral logic
of a Jacksonian defector: "If it was
right to elect Gen. Jackson because he
was a favorite citizen, and not the
candidate of the officeholders, it is
right to elect Gen. [William Henry]
Harrison on the same principle."36
Still, there were many who favored
Jackson's Bank initiatives and
believed, furthermore, that in killing
the "monster" Jackson had also
struck a blow at lawmakers who
"disobeyed" the "will" of the people.37 But
an equally adamant constituency refused
to equate Jackson's veto and the
subsequent behavior of his partisans
with their own conception of
33. Laws of Ohio, XXIX, 1831,
44-56; Charles Reemelin, "Reminiscences of Moses
Dawson," Cincinnati Commerical, Dec.
27, 1869, Jan. 19, 1870.
34. E.D. Mansfield, Personal
Memories: Social, Political, and Literary . . . 1803-1843
(Cincinnati, 1879), 284. McFaul puts the
communitarian view another way, saying that "the
issue of money in nineteenth century
America perpetrated a moral exchange between
members of society about the meaning of
life." See, The Politics of Jacksonian Finance, 213-
14. Richard Hofstadter explained it like
this: "people often oppose certain economic policies
not because they have been or would be .
. . hurt by such policies, or even because they have
any carefully calculated views about
their economic efficacy, but because they disapprove on
moral grounds of the assumptions on
which they think the policies rest." See his The Paranoid
Style in American Politics and Other
Essays, Vintage Books (New York,
1967), 89-90. See
also, Shade, Banks Or No Banks, esp.
197; Ershkowitz and Shade, "Consensus or Conflict?",
614-17.
35. March 18, 1842, quoted in Bertram
Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical
War Against Slavery (Cleveland, 1969), 274.
36. Reported in Ohio State Journal, Oct.
15, 1836.
37. Resolutions of Sundry Friends of
the Administration, Columbiana County, Ohio, in
Favor of the Measures of the
Executive Against the BUS, June 24,
1834, 23rd Cong., 1st Sess.,
Doc. 475, typifies Jacksonian anti-Bank
sentiment.
266 OHIO HISTORY
democracy. They found it difficult, for
example, to accept the view of
Cincinnati's foremost Jacksonian
rhetorician, Moses Dawson, that
"democratic" politics amounted
to nothing more than "THE TICKET,
THE WHOLE TICKET, AND NOTHING BUT THE
TICKET," and
were themselves "appalled" to
discover that an 1834 convention of
Hamilton County Jacksonians committed
itself to national party
regularity this time through a series of
questions asked of potential
congressional and legislative nominees.
Although the convention's
selectees were expected to take the
"proper" Jacksonian economic view of
the BUS (the ostensible reason for the
inquisition in the first place), most of
the questions put to them avoided direct
reference to the Bank, focusing
instead on party discipline: nominees
were to (1) adhere to the right of
instruction or resign; (2) pledge their
support for the President's Bank veto
and other administration measures; (3)
bestow patronage only on the party
faithful; and (4) endorse no one but the
convention's selections.38 One
senses from this how easily the
requirements of the pledge and the religious
symbolism of the title given to it by
detractors-the "Cheviot
Catechism" might evoke a Protestant-Whig, antiparty
response.
Historians have long maintained that the
Bank issue was inextricably
linked to the rise of "Jacksonian
Democracy," but they generally
overemphasize the extent to which people
turned first to the Jacksonian
and then to the Whig party because the
Bank had somehow unhinged their
economic lives. It is now evident that
the most important connection
between the Bank and the development of
the second party system in Ohio
can be found in the debate over
"party" rather than in transitory economic
concerns. It is "party," for
example, that helps to explain how men who
opposed both the Bank and the caucus
system in 1818 could, in 1832, come
to the defense of the former, but not
Jackson's replacement for the latter.
The Bank issue was never simply an
economic one. Even William Henry
Harrison, the symbol of triumphant
Whiggery in 1840, had dissociated
himself from the BUS during his 1819
congressional campaign.39
There were others for whom little had
changed between 1818 and 1832,
or, for that matter, between the years
of the battle against the Republican
St. Tammany organization and the latest
"party" crisis. By the early 1830s
they were quite sure that President
Jackson intended to make recharter of
the Bank the litmus test of party
regularity. Regardless of what such men
thought of the Bank's financial merits
(and they were by no means agreed
about that), they believed it to be an
issue about which reasonable men
could differ; they claimed to find no
such liberalism in the umbrella-like
38. Reemelin, "Reminiscences of
Dawson," Cincinnati Commerical, Dec. 6, 1869, Jan. 27,
1870; Niles' Register, XLVII,
Sept. 6, 1834.
39. Niles' Register, XVII, Oct.
30, 1819; Liberty Halland Cincinnati Gazette,Oct. 15, 1819.
The Bank Wars 267
party orthodoxy under which Bank
opponents inevitably took shelter.40 It
was this feature of Democratic behavior
that continued to arouse the
greatest anxiety among nascent Whigs and
led to their organized
opposition. Furthermore, during the
1830s and 1840s, when Moses
Dawson's partisan prescription and the
"Cheviot Catechism" typified
Democratic electoral methods, the Whig
party never wholeheartedly
embraced such tactics, even at the
height of its popularity and power.41
Whigs by no means agreed on every issue.
But like Ohio Federalism,
Whiggery's close ties to New England's
commonwealth outlook imbued
the party with a tradition of Whiggish
constitutionalism-the belief that
power, particularly arbitrary executive
power, could only be held in check
by a balanced constitutional structure.
To Whigs like those above,
majorities that had been seduced by such
executives (i.e., Jackson) were no
less arbitrary themselves. They warned
that centralized party structure and
ideological orthodoxy like the
Democrats' left little room for independent
political judgment and minority
interests. One might even separate the two
parties in Ohio on the basis of those
who sought to stabilize democracy
through Constitutional decentralization
(federalism), and those who
desired to exercise broader public
control over government through
centralization of the
extra-Constitutional sovereignty of popular ma-
jorities.42
Although it was the Bank issue that
helped to crystallize these differing
ideas of "party" in the minds
of various spokesmen, their words were only
part of the emerging contrast between
the Democratic and Whig parties.
To complete the portrait, one must also
match the kind of political rhetoric
seen here with voters' behavior.
40. Marshall, "Strange
Stillbirth," 449-50, concludes that "proto-Whigs . . . recognized
that the [Bank] veto message and its
direct orientation to voters represented a new approach
to politics and new roles for political
leaders. It . . . produced their carefully
planned . . . alignment." See also,
Remini, Jackson and the Bank War, Chap. 3.
41. Federalist-Whig-Republican parties
have not had the same reputations for "machine"
politics as has the Democratic party.
There is no small amount of historical continuity
reflected in journalist Henry Fairlie's
recent comment that while today's Democrats
"acknowledge the preeminence of
politics over other forms of social action," the Republican
party opposes political action, opposes
winning elections, and is "opposed to itself as an
instrument of political will." See,
"The Democrats: By Politics Possessed," The New Republic
(Oct. 30, 1976), 26, and "Party
Without a Country," ibid. (Sept. 11, 1976), 18, 19.
42. Whig skepticism of political
centralization is a principal theme of Moisei Ostrogorski's
Democracy and the Organization of
Political Parties, ed. by Seymour M.
Lipset, Anchor
Books, 2 vols. (Garden City, N.J.,
1964), 11, 33-36, 41-42, 54, 278-79, 288-89. For evidence in
Ohio of the National Republicans'
reluctance to merge national, state, and county issues see:
Cincinnati Gazette, Oct. 7, 1827; Western Cornet (Xenia), Oct. 19,
1827; Richard T. Farrell,
"Cincinnati in the Early Jackson
Era, 1816-1834" (Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University,
1967), 205.
268 OHIO HISTORY
The Partisanship of the Electorate
As late as 1850 a Whig editor in the
Western Reserve wrote with all too
typical resignation that
We are always glad when Election is
over. Upon the review of the contest we all of us
find matters to regret, and have
occasion to rejoice that we may once more settle
down to our ordinary pursuits. For
ourselves, though we have felt deeply anxious
for the triumph of our principles and
the success of our candidates, we have not
designedly injured the feelings of any
one. If we have offended any we regret it, and
trust that such will make all due
allowances. We have done what we could for an
honorable triumph.43
Earlier press reports provide some
evidence that, in general, Demo-
cratic and Whig voters acted on the
basis of the contrasting views of
"party" held by such
spokesmen. Like the Federalists, Whigs really only
gestured at being political. Their party
apparatuses were weaker than the
Democrats'; in many counties Whigs often
failed to field full or even partial
slates of candidates; Whigs had less
hesitation in reverting to "independent
candidacies"; and, in marked contrast
to their opponents, Whigs invariably
suffered large drops in turnout during
off-year elections.44 But beyond
these impressions, systematic analysis
of the electorate's response to
partisanship from 1836 to 1848 confirms
that to a major degree the reality
of Ohio's politics (i.e., grass roots
voting) matched the rhetoric of its
politicians. The data that follows
confirms the accuracy of those
newspapers that reported both the
respective rhetorical distinctions drawn
by Democratic and Whig spokesmen between
"party" and "no party"
ideals, and the contrast in actual
Democratic and Whig enthusiasm for
politics.
Unfortunately, there is no way to
determine how individuals voted in
antebellum America. Nor can one say with
complete certainty that within
relatively large and somewhat
heterogeneous counties, Whig-antislave
voters did one thing, and Democrats
another. But if it can be shown that
43. Portage County
Whig (Ravenna), Oct. 16, 1850.
44. Examples are: Liberty Hall
(Cincinnati), Oct. 5, 1837; Ohio Repository (Canton), Oct.
3, 1839; Guernsey Times (Cambridge),
Oct. 14, 1837; Ohio Statesman, (Columbus), Oct. 15,
22, 1839; Ohio State
Journal(Columbus), Oct. 18, 22, 1839; Scioto Gazette, Oct. 3, 10,
17,
1839; Circleville Herald, Sept.
29, 1839. Very often, when Federalists were outnumbered and
saw little hope for success they
withdrew from electoral contests or simply deposited blank
ballots. But in contrast to the Whig
party in the 1830s and 1840s, the Federalists were truly a
minority party during the first decade
of the century. In light of the similarity between some
Federalists' principled objections to
"party" and Whig antipartyism, caution ought to be
exercised in attributing Federalist
electoral lethargy exclusively, or even primarily, to "sour
grapes." On Federalist tactics see:
Charles Cist, The Cincinnati Miscellany, 2 vols.
(Cincinnati, 1845-46), I, 60; Ryan,
"Nullification in Ohio," 413-14; Ratcliffe, "Party
Politics,"
200-01, 217.
The Bank
Wars 269
voting
patterns fluctuated significantly in electoral units dominated
overwhelmingly
by one party, or that such counties
switched partisan
allegiance
more often than counties controlled by the other party, then it is
at least
arguable that party lines among the majority in the former were less
tightly drawn
than in the latter.45
Table 1
illustrates the first of several points. One can see in column two
(Average Index
of Stability) that voting regularity (cohesion) in Whig-
antislave
counties was less reliable than in Democratic counties, and that
this pattern
of relative instability characterized all of the units dominated
by
Whig-antislave parties, whether it was by as much as 78 percent, or as
little as 51
percent. Note, too, that as the counties neared greater political
heterogeneity
(party strength closer to 50 percent), lessening one's ability to
relate
behavior principally to one group of voters, the difference in the
index narrows.
(If, however, only the next six Whig-antislave units instead
of all
nineteen are matched with the remaining six Democratic counties in
order to
equalize the comparison in terms of party strength, the Whig-
antislave
index increases from 23.9 to 25.)
Table 1
Whig-antislave
and Democratic Counties with Indices of Stability,
1836-1848
Average Average
Party Strength
Index of Stability
(%) (%)
Strongest
Whig-antislave (10) 66.1 28.5
Strongest
Democratic (10) 62.4 25.1
Second
Strongest Whig-antislave (10) 59.5 23.4
Second
Strongest Democratic (10) 55.7 20.3
Remaining
Whig-antislave (19) 56 23.9
Remaining
Democratic (6) 52.4 22.3
45. This
section is based on sixty-five counties in continuous existence, with some
boundary
changes, from 1832 to 1848. The new counties (sixteen more by 1848) created
from
adjacent
townships introduce some bias, but the unavailability of consistent township
data
(see below)
makes such distortion unavoidable. Still, the more important question regarding
boundary
changes or migatory patterns is not whether they had a destabilizing effect
that
270 OHIO
HISTORY
Table 1 also shows the inverse
relationship between Whig-antislave
strength and stability, a contrast that
challenges the view of some historians
that Whigs failed to vote as regularly
as Democrats because they pictured
themselves as a hopeless minority,
doomed to inevitable failure no matter
what they did on election day.
Furthermore, the fact that the disparity
between strength and stability pervaded
Whig-antislave counties at all
levels suggests that political
disenchantment was a habitual Whig state of
mind, not an anomaly or symptom of
overconfidence.46
Table 2 summarizes two additional trends
related to the religious basis of
antipartyism: first, the total
percentage of evangelical church accom-
might be confused with antipartyism, but
whether such shifts affected each party differently.
The consistency of the results found in
all three dimensions of this study-by party, across the
state, and through time-suggest that
they did not.
To establish an "index of
stability" (average total shift of votes, by county, from 1836 to
1848), the changes in party percentages
were summed and divided by the number of elections
(e.g., the shift from the 1836 state to
the national election, plus the shift from the 1836 national
to the 1838 state election, and so
forth, divided by eleven); the higher the fluctuation, the more
politically unstable the county. (As for
shifts due to nonvoting, perhaps the clearest symptom
of antipartyism, contemporary newspapers
consistently reported that this phenomenon was
far more characteristic of Whigs than
Democrats. See note #44.)
This test assumes that the stronger the
party in a county, the more politically homogeneous
the county, and that therefore the
strongest units offer the best basis for comparing large
numbers of units over time. Note that
the "index" could reflect a shift in either party, since
fluctuation in Whig-antislave voting is
merely the reciprocal of change in the Democratic
percentage, and vice versa. Given this,
the correlation of strength and stability in all counties
has a diluting effect since fluctuation
in weaker counties (majorities close to 50 percent) cannot
easily be attributed to one party or the
other. Although a correlation coefficient of .08 reflects
little association between average
(Democratic) strength and average fluctuation in each
county, it also does not accurately
reflect the disparity in party support in counties with large
majorities. For that reason it is
necessary to turn to each party's strongest counties where
tendencies toward stability or
instability would be more likely to characterize the behavior of
the dominant group.
Of course, township data would make the
test even more reliable since smaller electoral
units are more politically homogeneous
than larger ones. But Ohio township data is too
incomplete to use exclusively for this
period. Only 40 to 60 percent of the state's township
election returns are available, and all
township religious statistics gathered during the 1850
federal census are lost. Nonetheless,
the results reported here are consistent with a similar
analysis of available townships (see
note #47).
Finally, it is conceivable that close
competition between parties caused higher rates of
fluctuation. To test this possibility, I
calculated the rank-order coefficient of correlation of
counties with the slimmest majorities
(most competitive), and those with the highest
fluctuation (most unstable). However,
the result obtained by ranking the counties from 1 to
65, with the highest ranked being those
with majorities closest to 50 percent, and matching
that order with the position of each
county according to its total fluctuation, highest to lowest,
shows that there was little relationship
(-.18).
46. Rozett, "Party Conflict,"
21, 23, does not agree that Whig losses were attributable to
antipartyism. Instead, he argues that
Whigs suffered periodically from low morale,
particularly in 1846 and 1848 when their
popularity was undermined by opposition to the
Mexican War. Nonetheless, his argument
rests on a very narrow base (Greene County,
Illinois), and he does not explain why
only Whigs, but never Democrats, suffered "morale"
problems, or why Whigs, but never
Democrats cried "no party." He admits, however, that
Democratic voters were
"somewhat" more loyal to their party.
The Bank Wars
271
modations (seats) averaged nearly 43
percent in those twenty strongest
Whig-antislave counties, but only
slightly over 30 percent among the
Democratic counties; second, correlation
of evangelicalism and party
strength in the same forty counties
shows that the strongest Whig-antislave
counties contained directly
proportionate evangelical strength (+.34),
while the relationship was decidedly indirect
(-.48) in the strongest
Democratic units. (The association
between pietistic denominations and
Whig-Free Soil strength in all counties
in 1848 was +.498.)
Table 2
Strongest Whig-antislave and Democratic
Counties and Evangelical
Church Accommodations, 1836-1848
Strongest Whig-antislave (10)
and Avg. % Evangelical 46.1
Second Strongest Whig-antislave (10)
and Avg. % Evangelical 39.5
42.8 Total (avg.)
Pearson r (20) + .34
Strongest Democratic (10)
and Avg. % Evangelical 24.4
Second Strongest Democratic (10)
and Avg. % Evangelical 35.9
30.2 Total (avg.)
Pearson r (20) -.48
Finally, the relationship between
instability and Whig-antislave strength
typified even the smallest political
units. In the 282 townships and wards
compared in an additional test, both
inter and intraparty instability proved
to be greater in the Western Reserve,
the hub of Yankee-Whig-
evangelicalism, than in townships
throughout the rest of the state.47
But what about voters and the BUS? The
task of assessing the role of
voters vis a vis the Bank in Ohio is
hindered by the absence of any referenda
47. From 1836 to 1848, 1.4 times as many
townships in the Western Reserve as those
272 OHIO
HISTORY
on Bank issues; the electorate had no
avenue for an unambiguous response.
But as has been noted, there was more to
the Bank question than just the
Bank. The voting habits of Jacksonian
Ohioans described above confirm
that the rank and file of the two major
party groups, Democrats and anti-
Democrats, behaved, over a period of
time, in fundamentally different
ways; and with regard to the BUS, that
pattern strongly suggests that both
the moralistic posturing of political
leaders on the subject of the Bank,
together with the predispositions of
Ohioans toward "party" values, had
considerable bearing on voters' actions.
Voters took their political cues less
from passing concerns like the BUS than
from the way in which such issues
evoked traditional attitudes. Like no
other political episode of the
Jacksonian era, the Bank controversy had
not only once, but twice put a
match to the dry tinder of partisanship.
Only something with the
immediate anxiety-producing impact of
Bank policy, coupled with the
decline of deferential political habits,
could have had that effect. And it was
precisely this unique feature of the
Bank Wars in Ohio that makes it easier
to see how the broader dimension of the
struggle, the one pitting "party"
against "no party" men,
conditioned the partisanship of the electorate as
well.
When voters went to the polls in
Jacksonian Ohio, they did not behave
simply as pro- or anti-Bank men with
only their pocketbooks in mind.48
Certainly they gave some thought to the
value of the Bank as a financial
institution and the effect of its
policies on their lives. But they also must
have known that voting for pro- or
anti-Bank candidates would remove the
issue from the realm of economics and
put it squarely into the political
arena. There, majority coalitions with
more on their minds than the BUS
would determine a great deal more than
just the future of the Bank. In the
larger sense the central issue of the
Bank Wars was not whether the BUS
was "good" or "bad,"
but whether one ought to trust organized majorities
of unknown persuasion with the power to
settle the issue. It was a question
of democratic faith, a great "leap
in the dark" not yet acceptable to
outside it switched party allegiance,
and more than two and one-half times as many units in
the Reserve showed significant
fluctuation (at least 20 percent per year). Twenty percent is an
arbitrary figure, but it is large enough
to emphasize major changes. The units employed in this
test were not selected at random, but
they are all of the units for which complete state and
presidential election returns are
available to 1848. Foner, Free Soil, 108-09, 147, finds that
during the 1850s radical Republican
strength in Ohio was centered in the Western Reserve,
and that partly loyalty "was not
the radicals' forte."
48. Sharp, Jacksonians versus the
Banks, 336, attempts to show a statistical relationship
between poor counties and Democratic
strength in Ohio. But correlation of available indices
of per capita wealth ("Merchants'
and Brokers' Capital and Money at Interest" and "Total
Taxable Property") and Democratic
strength from 1832 to 1848, as well as correlation of
occupational status and Democratic
strength in townships and wards in 1848, does not
demonstrate that wealth, status, or
occupation had much to do with voters' discrimination
between parties. See, Fox,
"Politicians, Issues, and Voter Preference," 160.
The Bank Wars 273
everyone, but one that nonetheless made
the BUS the sounding board for a
lot of moral talk about
"party" and continued to divide the electorate
during the years of the second party
system.
Conclusion: Rhetoric and Reality
Although Ohio's Democrats complained
everlastingly about the power
of so-called "aristocratic"
social and cultural groups (i.e., the BUS and its
supporters) over individuals, they, in
turn, exhibited little respect for
individualism when it came to political
camaraderie. Whigs, as has been
noted, displayed quite another attitude
toward politics. Yet, the Whig
notion of how "party" ought to
be used shows that one of the most puzzling
of American political paradoxes is the
party organization that competes
fiercely, but remains, ideally,
"above it all," even at a time when the purpose
of politics is increasingly being
defined as "winning." Nonetheless, the
rhetoric of many Whig spokesmen and the
behavior of most Whig voters in
Ohio corresponded to Richard
Hofstadter's recent definition of the
antiparty party as one that believes
that "parties are evils that can be
avoided or absorbed or suppressed, even
if this must be done,
paradoxically, through the temporary
agency of a party of national
unification."49 Party
activists who came to that conclusion thought of
themselves as patriots, not mere
political functionaries. When everyone
else had accepted their "truth,"
parties would no longer be necessary. Thus
the success of Jackson's party convinced
men who harbored lingering
doubts about the efficacy of parties
that if the Republic were to be "saved,"
they had no other choice than to fight
fire with fire. A Whig editor took this
view of "party" in 1840,
ironically on the eve of his own organization's
greatest triumph:
[the] great Whig party . . . have been
battling . . . against the introduction and
perpetuation ... of party tactics ....
We have fought . . . for freedom of
opinion and election .... Not for this
or that set of men-or for this or that
party-but for exemption from the
usurpations of all men, and from the restraints
and tyrannies of all parties .... If in
the union of a Party there is strength-in
the union of a People there is
greater strength ....50
In order to appreciate the contrast in
partisanship between Whigs and
Democrats, and at the same time to sense
how aggressive, practical politics
49. Hofstadter, Idea of a Party
System, 16-17. Bernard Bailyn, The Origins of American
Politics (New York, 1968), is a good starting point for an
explanation of the antiparty ideal.
This theme has received increased
attention in recent years, most notably and ably by Michael
Wallace, "Changing Concepts of
Party in the United States: New York, 1815-1828,"
American Historical Review, LXXIV (Dec., 1968), 453-91; Ronald P. Formisano,
"Political
Character, Antipartyism, and the Second
Party System," American Quarterly, XXI (Winter,
1969), 683-709, and Mass Political
Parties, Chap. 4.
50. Scioto Gazette, Nov. 5, 1840.
274 OHIO HISTORY
might complement rather than contradict
negative attitudes toward
"party," one must look beyond
the activities of party leaders, party
apparatuses, legislative voting, and
traditional electoral issues. After all,
the quandary in accounting for antiparty
partisans is that inevitably they
seem to adopt the tactics of the
"enemy." Leonard Richards shows, for
example, that it was the organizational
success of antislavery that made it
so threatening to established political
leadership and accepted canons of
political behavior.51 Yet,
antislavery, antimasonry, and nativism, all
closely associated with Whiggery, were
largely manifestations of organized
religious emotion, and all were antithetical to Andrew Jackson's
emerging
Democracy in that idealistically, at
least, they were meant to be the
harbingers of a nonpartisan American
consensus. Certainly, for a great
many men the impetus to organize included
more than a quest for "spoils";
historians must learn to be less cynical
about this. They must attune
themselves to the intellectual and
cultural sources of political rhetoric, as
well as the record of voters, and be
prepared to distinguish between
organizations with primarily political
goals and those with purposes
encompassing a cluster
of"moral" concerns. The resulting impression will
very likely resemble what John McFaul
suggests: that Democrats
moralized politics, while Whigs
attempted to politicize morality.52
If Whigs at all levels party leaders as
well as voters-were more
enthralled with evangelicalism than were
their political opponents, it
should not be surprising to find that
vocalized doubts about self-justifying
political organizations also matched
Whig rather than Democratic
behavior. After all, political
independence, a cardinal tenet of Ohio
antipartyism, called for "right
behavior," a guide for the political
community that closely paralleled the
goals of evangelical Protestantism.53
Indeed, nothing was more damnable to
evangelicals from a political
standpoint than the threatened
displacement of God-given individual
judgment, either by secularly designated
men or the "will" of popular
majorities. Nor did challenges of this
type go unanswered:
The motto and rule of action of the real
republican party of this country, has been,
and it is hoped will continue to be, 'Principles
and not men.' This is the political
golden rule .... in a late instance . . . instead of principle designating
party,
the name of a man, is the rallying point .... republicans . . . should
wear the
51. "Gentlemen of Property and
Standing," 58-62, 159-60.
52. McFaul, "Expediency vs.
Morality: Jacksonian Politics and Slavery," Journal of
American History, LXII (June, 1975), 38.
53. Aileen S. Kraditor, Means and
Ends in American Abolitionism: Garrison and His
Critics, 1834-1850, Vintage Books (New York, 1969), 25-26, stresses the
antimajoritarian
thrust of abolitionism. See also Charles
C. Cole, Jr., The Social Ideas of the Northern
Evangelists, 1826-1860 (New York, 1954), 151.
The Bank Wars 275
harness of no man-they ought not to
subject themselves to be gathered
together .... But if there shall be
organized opposition to us, in these
particulars, we must sustain them by
similar organization. 54
In Ohio, as perhaps elsewhere,
"Principles," or "Measures and not
Men," had been the quintessential
slogan of the "era of good feelings." But
its symbolic use did not end there, for
the struggle between those who were
increasingly committed to "party
for party's sake" out of frustration with
the BUS and those who adamantly opposed
that kind of political
"revolution" did not end in
the 1820s with the flush of economic recovery,
in the 1830s with the
"solution" to the second Bank crisis, nor even by 1840.
The Bank issue merely brought old
cultural and ideological antagonisms to
the surface.
On the one hand, most of the
Pennsylvania Scotch-Irish, southerners,
non-English immigrants, Catholics, and
non-evangelicals supported Old
Hickory's pluralist assault on the
establishment. They saw political
majoritarianism as a bulwark against
Whig elitism. Paradoxically,
however, Democrats believed the best way
to achieve social and economic
individualism was through "the
party, the whole party, and nothing but the
party."
Ohio Whiggery, on the other hand, drank
deeply from the cup of New
England communitarianism. In sharp
contrast to the Democrats'
individualist "America,"
enforced by "party," theirs would be nonpartisan
and consensual. Ideally, the Whigs were
a party with a difference-in effect,
a counter-organization.55 Moreover,
unlike the Democrats' pragmatic, no-
questions-asked approach to winning
elections, Whigs seemed only to need
an "honorable triumph" from
time to time. All too often this distinction
eludes historians. Many scholars look
upon Whig lethargy at the polls and
their reluctance to solicit votes from
"workingmen" or Germans as
demonstrations of insincerity,
opportunism, even hypocrisy; rarely do
historians attach these stigma to
Democratic methods. Perhaps the
salesmanship that Democrats found so
congenial was more difficult for
Whigs as a matter
of"principle," something that modern political cynicism
too readily denies past generations.
54. Western Herald and Steubenville
Gazette, Dec. 4, 1830.
55. Richard Hofstadter said of a
subsequent generation that "The Progressives . . . did
not seriously propose to dismantle . . .
society .... Nor did they always make the
mistake of thinking that the revolt
against organization could go on without itself developing
new forms of organization. They were
trying, in short, to keep the benefits of the emerging
organization of life and yet to retain
the scheme of individualistic values that this organization
was destroying .... Of course the
struggle . . . could not take place without the benefit
of some form of counter-organization;
but it was characteristic of this style of thought to
conceive of these counter-organizations
as private organizations based upon high principles
rather than . . . interests ...."
See his The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F. D. R.
(New York, 1955), 214-15, 257.
276 OHIO HISTORY
Nonetheless, while differences in the
rhetoric and behavior of political
groups in Jacksonian Ohio were
significant, there is always danger in
portraying any subject with broad brush
strokes. Not all Whigs were
immune to the sirens of strong
partisanship, and it can be argued that both
parties moralized in one way or another.
Moreover, the most competitive
Whigs often ignored the signs of permanence
in their own party. Many
were ambitious, disciplined partisans,
who stood toe-to-toe with
Democratic rivals on the stump. But if
power was congenial to some Whig
politicians, it was not to all of them,
nor to many Whig voters. Even though
some Whig and Democratic politicians
might sound equally partisan,
careful attention to what all of
them said, especially in conjunction with
what voters did, reveals a marked
disparity between the two party groups.
The evidence offered in this essay
should caution analysts of antebellum
politics to be more wary of assumptions
resembling George Wallace's
assessment of modern parties; not only
was there a "dime's worth of
difference" in the rhetoric and
behavior of political groups in Jacksonian
Ohio, keyed in major part by the Bank,
but their conflict typified
Americans' historic and tortured
ambivalence over communal and
individual values. On the basis of what
was said and done, on the
congruence of rhetoric and reality,
parties and voters in Jacksonian Ohio
cannot be likened easily to
"Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum," either in
regard to how the Bank of the United
States affected attitudes toward
"party" or in how those views
were registered at the polls.
STEPHEN C. FOX
The Bank Wars, the Idea of "Party,"
and the Division of the Electorate
in Jacksonian Ohio
Among the recent interpretations that
have reinvigorated Jacksonian
studies, two in particular have proved
to be central to understanding that
period: first, that the Bank of the
United States and banking in general were
issues with more political than economic
significance; and second, that it
was during the Jacksonian era that
Americans learned to accept the
legitimacy and competitive spirit of a
two-party political system.
Exemplifying the first of these, Robert
Remini's Andrew Jackson and the
Bank War describes the Jackson-Biddle confrontation in 1832 as
political,
though the author acknowledges that the
Bank's "octopus-like" tentacles
also reached into economic and fiscal
policy, precipitated clashes between
individuals, classes, and sections, and
juxtaposed the social and ideological
views of the major antagonists.' In
another recent study of banking, The
Politics of Jacksonian Finance, John M. McFaul maintains that even
though banking was part of a pro verus
antibusiness controversy,
economic interests remained subordinate
to political interests, and that the
"significant event during the
Jacksonian era was not the triumph of laissez
faire or a protoregulatory state but the
emergence and establishment of a
new political party system."2 In
a final illustration, Banks Or No Banks:
The Money Issue in Western Politics,
1832-1865, William G. Shade
extends the political dimension of
banking even further by arguing that
conflict over banking was only part of a
broader struggle between political
"subcultures."3 As
for the theme of party growth and competitiveness,
books and articles by Richard P.
McCormick and Richard Hofstadter
have shown historians the importance of
the Jacksonian years to the
development of America's two-party
system.4
Stephen C. Fox is Professor of History
at Humboldt State University, Arcata, California.
1. Robert Remini, Andrew Jackson and
the Bank War: A Study in the Growth of
Presidential Power (New York, 1967), 9.
2. John M. McFaul, The Politics of
Jacksonian Finance (Ithaca, 1972), 211.
3. William G. Shade, Banks or No
Banks: The Money Issue in Western Politics, 1832-1865
(Detroit, 1972), 11, 18.
4. Richard P. McCormick, "New
Perspectives on Jacksonian Politics," American