Ohio History Journal

DONALD J. RATCLIFFE

 

Politics in Jacksonian Ohio:

Reflections on the

Ethnocultural Interpretation

 

 

Who voted for the two great political parties in Jacksonian Ohio? Those

historians who have asked this question have usually given two sorts of

answers. Some have seen the popular basis for the party division in

essentially socioeconomic terms. Occasionally they have detected a class

conflict between rich and poor, but more commonly they have followed

Frederick Jackson Turner in seeing the cleavage in regional terms: the

more isolated back-country and upland (or "butternut") districts are

considered the bedrock of Democratic support, while the more commer-

cialized, river-valley areas are seen as the center of Whig strength.¹ The

other answer stresses the importance of ethnic influences: settlers from New

England were Whig, while those from Pennsylvania and the South joined

with foreign immigrants in voting for the Democratic party. Though few

historians have stressed the socioeconomic interpretation to the exclusion

of the ethnic, some historians and political scientists have seen ethnic

factors as the exclusive determinants of voting behavior; and this latter

view has recently gained new respectability from the application of more

sophisticated statistical techniques to this historical problem. In almost

every state and county the result of such "cliometric" analysis has been the

same: the socioeconomic interpretation has no evidential basis, the party

division can be understood only in "ethnocultural" terms.2

 

 

Mr. Ratcliffe is Senior Lecturer in Modern History, University of Durham, England.

 

1. Frederick J. Turner, The United States, 1830-1850 (New York. 1935). 29, 303. 307.

Typical older works in this tradition include Edgar A. Holt, Party Politics in Ohio, 1840-1850

(Columbus, 1931); Harold E. Davis, "The Economic Basis of Ohio Politics, 1820-1840," Ohio

State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, XLVII (1938), 288-89; Francis P. Weisen-

burger. The Passing of the Frontier, 1825-1850 (Columbus, 1941); and even Walter D.

Burnham, Presidential Ballots, 1836-1892 (Baltimore, 1955), 7-9, 11-13.

2. The word "ethnocultural" embraces the meanings usually associated with the adjectives

ethnic, religious and cultural. Similar emphasis on the origins of the voters may be found in

works as old as George M. Gadsby, "Political Influence of Ohio Pioneers." Ohio Archaeologi-

cal and Historical Publications, XVII (1908), 193-96, as well as in more recent political studies

like Thomas A. Flinn, "Continuity and Change in Ohio Politics," The Journal of Politics,

XXIV (1962), 524-27.

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6                                                          OHIO HISTORY

 

This new ethnocultural interpretation has arisen from the praiseworthy

effort of historians to burrow beneath the self-justificatory statements of

political leaders and to find out what politics meant for the humble voter.

The aim has been to escape from the view of events expressed by the

articulate and educated people of the past, who commonly came from the

more affluent strata of society, and to discover more about the mass of men

who left no record besides the aggregate results of their behavior at the

polls. Historians like Samuel P. Hays and Lee Benson have argued that

careful analysis of voting returns can give a greater precision to our

understanding of political history and help us uncover the social basis of

political behavior thus revealing the experiences, the conditions of life,

and the cultural values and assumptions which made ordinary men behave

as they did in elections.³

The most impressive work of the ethnocultural school has been con-

cerned with the late nineteenth century. Paul Kleppner and Richard Jensen

have shown that elections in the Midwest in those years saw voters lining

up primarily according to their ethnic and religious affiliations. The

Republicans drew their strongest support from "pietistic" or evangelical

Protestants (including many Protestant immigrants) who wished govern-

ments to safeguard the moral order against alien and Catholic intrusions;

the Democrats received their staunchest backing from ritualistic or "anti-

pietistic" Protestants and Catholics, both of whom sought to protect their

institutions and practices by preventing government interference. This

"cross of culture" (to use Kleppner's phrase) was often profoundly affected

by the business cycle, but even after the realignment wrought by the

depression of the 1890s, cultural conflicts continued to play an important

political role in various states and localities. The importance of such

ethnocultural divisions in the party politics of the second half of the

nineteenth century has been ascribed by Kleppner to the crisis of the 1850s,

when a massive influx of Catholic immigrants from Germany and Ireland

provoked a Know-Nothing crusade to preserve the nation's cultural ho-

mogeneity, Protestant character and republican institutions. The resulting

heightened awareness of cultural identity deeply influenced the political

realignment of the 1850s, and made the threatened groups rally behind the

appropriate political party.⁴

 

 

3. Lee Benson, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy: New York As a Test Case

(Princeton, 1961); Samuel P. Hays,"The Social Analysis of American Political History, 1880-

1920," Political Science Quarterly, LXXX (1965), 373-94. The main works which have

resulted from this "new" approach are well summarized by Samuel T. McSeveney, "Ethnic

Groups, Ethnic Conflicts, and Recent Quantitative Research in American Political History,"

The International Migration Review, VII (1973), 14-23.

4. Paul Kleppner, The Cross of Culture: Social Analysis of Midwestern Politics, 1850-1900

(New York, 1970); Richard J. Jensen, The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political

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Politics in Jacksonian Ohio                                             7

 

Ethnocultural historians have also argued, however, that such ethnic

and religious influences were of primary importance in electoral behavior

even before 1850. Lee Benson himself made a path-breaking contribution

with reference to the so-called Age of Jackson: he acutely criticised much of

the evidence that earlier historians had used to sustain an economic in-

terpretation of Jacksonian politics in the state of New York, and he argued

instead in favor of an interpretation which ranged Puritans, natives, and

new British immigrants against non-Puritans and new non-British immi-

grants. Younger historians soon sustained and refined this line of interpre-

tation. In particular, Ronald P. Formisano has produced evidence of the

importance of ethnocultural factors in Michigan politics between 1837 and

1852, and has argued in favor of seeing the Jacksonian electorate as made

up of a series of "political cultures": according to Formisano, these

"antagonistic . .. political subcultures" among the voters perceived

political issues in symbolic terms which related to the moral values of each

group. Thus each party developed a distinctive political character based

upon these perceptions, and that character had a direct impact upon its

success as a political party.⁵ One corollary of such an interpretation has

been the belief that most voters were influenced mainly by their own

immediate social and cultural experiences, and scarcely at all by the

practical issues debated by the politicians. This Formisano sees as generally

true of all "mass party systems" marked by "self-conscious party loyalties";

only in a "pre-party polity" such as existed before the 1830s were electoral

cleavages "oriented to more immediate issue conflicts."⁶

Stephen C. Fox has recently used this line of interpretation to explain

voting behavior in Jacksonian Ohio. Fox uses the election returns for 1848

and the manuscript returns of the 1850 United States Census to demon-

strate that electoral cleavages in Ohio followed the same patterns as those

discerned by Benson and Formisano in New York and Michigan. Further-

more, he makes "anti-partyism," or the distrust felt by many evangelicals

 

 

 

Conflict, 1888-1896 (Chicago, 1971); and, for Connecticut, New York and New Jersey,

Samuel T. McSeveney, The Politics of Depression: Political Behavior in the Northeast, 1893-

1896 (New York, 1972). For the 1850s, see Michael F. Holt, Forging A Majority: The

Formation of the Republican Party in Pittsburgh, 1848-1860 (Yale, 1969) and Ronald P.

Formisano, The Birth of Mass Political Parties: Michigan, 1827-1861 (Princeton, 1971), 195-

331.

5. Benson, Concept of Jacksonian Democracy, esp. 123-328; Formisano, Birth of Mass

Political Parties, 1-194. See also William G. Shade, "Pennsylvania Politics in the Jacksonian

Period: A Case Study, Northampton County, 1824-1844," Pennsylvania History, XXXIX

(1972), 313-33; and idem. Banks or No Banks: The Money Issue in Western Politics, 1832-

1865 (Detroit. 1972), esp. 17-19.

6. Ronald P. Formisano, "Toward A Reorientation of Jacksonian Politics: A Review of

the Literature, 1959-1975," Journal of American History, LXIII (1976), 58.

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8                                                              OHIO HISTORY

 

for the new techniques of party management being developed by the

Jacksonian Democrats, even more central to the party division than did

Formisano, who first drew attention to its importance in this period.⁷ More

recently, Fox has criticised in the pages of this journal two recent works (by

Roger Sharp and myself) which had in common an emphasis upon

economic experiences as influences on voting behavior in Jacksonian Ohio:

Fox dismisses this interpretation, and damns both works for their metho-

dological weaknesses and their devotion to narrow economic

determinism.⁸ If he is right, then there can be no argument against the

establishment of an ethnocultural interpretation of Jacksonian politics in

Ohio to which, indeed, some historians are already beginning to pay lip-

service.

However, the work of the "ethnoculturalists" has its difficulties, as

notably James E. Wright and Richard L. McCormick have shrewdly

argued. Among other things, McCormick points out that the "ethnocultu-

ralists" cannot explain how government policies are determined, since they

create a huge gap between elected officials and the people who elected

them.10 Furthermore, their studies concentrate on communities dominated

by distinctive ethnic or religious groups, and often ignore the many rural,

 

 

7. Stephen C. Fox, "The Group Bases of Ohio Political Behavior, 1803-1848." (Ph.D.

dissertation, University of Cincinnati, 1973); R.P. Formisano. "Political Character, Antipar-

tyism, and the Second Party System," American Quarterly, XXI (1969), 683-709.

8. Stephen C. Fox, "Politicians, Issues, and Voter Preference in Jacksonian Ohio: A

Critique of an Interpretation," Ohio History, LXXXVI (1977), 155-70. The works criticized

are James Roger Sharp, The Jacksonians versus the Banks; Politics in the States After the

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

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

870. The present article is not intended as a reply to Fox's critique, except on points of fact and

interpretation relevant to the argument presented here. In general, that critique is based on a

misreading of my earlier article so blatant that I am willing to allow our differences to be

adjudicated by those who have read both pieces. They can decide, for example, whether an

article which emphasized the role of moralistic antislavery sentiment in the Presidential

election of 1824 can fairly be described as devoted to the proposition that men are motivated

primarily by greed: or whether there is a logical contradition in arguing both that lines of party

cleavage were initially dictated by the voters rather than the politicians in the election of 1824,

and that politicians played a decisive role in stimulating interest and participation, especially

during the subsequent period of extension and build-up (1826-28). Cf. Fox, article, 156.

163-68. For an alternative discussion of my earlier article, see Bernard Sternsher, Consensus,

Conflict and American Historians (Bloomington, Ind., and London, 1975), 184-86, 194-98,

202.

9. For example, Jed Dannenbaum's study of "Immigrants and Temperance: A Study of

Ethnocultural Conflict in Cincinnati, Ohio, 1845-1860," Ohio History, LXXXVII (Spring

1978), produces evidence which implies that ethnocultural conflicts had been less important

before the crisis of the early 1850s, but then expresses his faith that they had, in fact, previously

been the major determinants of party identity, as Benson had said. See ibid, 130, 139.

10. James E. Wright, "The Ethnocultural Model of Voting: A Behavioral and Historical

Critique." Allen G. Bogue, ed., Emerging Theoretical Models in Social and Political History

(Beverly Hills and London, 1973), 35-56; Richard L. McCormick, "Ethno-Cultural

Interpretations of Nineteenth-Century American Voting Behavior," Political Science

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Politics in Jacksonian Ohio                                              9

 

native-American voters and the many who possessed no religious affilia-

tion. When a rural community made up overwhelmingly of native voters

has been examined, the result has been to play down the significance of

ethnocultural conflicts, even in the 1850s.11

This essay is not primarily designed to criticize the ethnocultural

interpretation as a whole. Indeed, it is based on the assumption that

ethnocultural factors did largely determine the character of the parties after

1852.12 But it will argue that an ethnocultural interpretation, pure and

simple, which rejects completely the role of economic factors, cannot work

in the specific case of Jacksonian Ohio; Michigan cannot be extrapolated

to the Buckeye State. The basic argument is, briefly, that since the major

influence on Jacksonian voting behavior was party loyalty, the period

when loyalties were first formed is of particular significance; and ethnicity

was only one of a number of factors operating at that critical period. The

voting pattern established then was therefore a somewhat complicated one,

but it was one which modified in time as a result of various pressures; and,

of those pressures, economic issues and socioeconomic character were at

least as important, for a time, as ethnocultural influences. The economic

factors that can still be detected, however, took the form not of socioeco-

nomic class interests or antagonisms but of communal responses to the

varying economic experiences undergone by the different regions of Ohio.

 

The Force of Party Loyalty

The most obvious feature of electoral behavior in Jacksonian Ohio was

its extraordinary stability. In election after election, the same constituen-

cies gave majorities of roughly the same proportion to the same party. Any

map showing the counties won by each party in a Presidential election after

1828 shows remarkable similarity to any other such map; and when

deviations occur, as they regularly did in state elections held in years when

there were no Congressional elections, they were the result more of a

falling-off in the vote of one party (usually the anti-Jacksonians) than of a

transfer of allegiance from one main party to another. This stability is most

 

 

 

Quarterly, LXXXIX (1974), 351-77; Robert Kelley, "Ideology and Political Culture from

Jefferson to Nixon," American Historical Review, LXXXII (1977), 531-62, impressively

attempts to interpret the history of American national politics and governmental policies in

ethnocultural terms, but in the end fails to satisfy both "ethnoculturalists" and more tradi-

tional historians. See the comments, ibid., 563-82, especially those of R. P. Formisano.

11. See, for example, Eric J. Cardinal, "Antislavery Sentiment and Political Transforma-

tion in the 1850s: Portage County, Ohio," The Old Northwest, I (1975), 223-38.

12. Melvyn Hammarberg, The Indiana Voter: The Historical Dynamics of Party Alle-

giance During the 1870s (Chicago and London. 1977), effectively qualifies the ethnocultural

interpretation for the post-civil war period by applying the most sophisticated statistical

analysis to evidence of individual voting behavior in Indiana.

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10                                                          OHIO HISTORY

 

surprising in view of the rapid economic development experienced by most

of Ohio's counties in this period, which meant that their interests and even

outlook changed without any major effect on their political behavior. The

best explanation of this phenomenon, as many historians have recognized,

lies in the extremely strong loyalties which voters contracted towards the

major parties. At each election most of them tended to vote for the party

they had voted for on previous occasions, and these loyalties were

commonly transmitted from generation to generation.13 As E. D. Mans-

field wrote after the Presidential election of 1876, "Anyone can see, by

examining the votes of 1828, how little the strength of the parties has

changed since. The truth is that politics, like religion, descend from father

to son, with little variation."¹⁴

The stability created by persistent party loyalties among the voters has

some important logical consequences for those who would discover the

significance of the party division. Suppose, for example, that someone tried

to analyse the influences which operated on voters in the elections of 1844

or 1848: could they be sure that the influences they deduced from the

characteristics of the voters actually operated in that election? For might

not those influences be ones which were important at some earlier period,

but which by the 1840s had ceased to be of immediate significance and

owed their continuing force to persisting party loyalties? Were ethnocultu-

ral factors important all the time, or, as some "ethnoculturalists" have

suggested, only at the period when party loyalties were formed?¹⁵ For

similar reasons, it is a mistake to assume that any one election provides a

means for analysing the pattern of loyalties which marked a "stable phase"

of party politics like that of 1836-1848.16 As most political historians now

 

 

 

 

13. The importance of party loyalty in voting behavior throughout much of American

history is implicit, if not explicit, in the writings collected in Jerome M. Chubb and Howard

W. Allen, eds., Electoral Change and Stability in American Political History (New York and

London, 1971), and Joel H. Silbey and Samuel T. McSeveney. eds., Voters, Parties and

Elections: Quantitative Essays in American Popular Voting (Lexington, Mass., 1972). For

acknowledgement of the role of party loyalty in the Jacksonian period, see, inter alia, Charles

G. Sellers, Jr., "The Equilibrium Cycle in Two-Party Politics," Public Opinion Quarterly,

XXIX (1965), 19-34, 36; Formisano, Birth of Mass Political Parties, 21-27, 322; Fox,

dissertation, 182,405-10.

14. Edward D. Manfield, Personal Memories, Social, Political and Literary, 1803-1845

(Cincinnati, 1879), 235.

15. Silbey and McSeveney, Voters, Parties, and Elections, 3.

16. For example, the Presidential election of 1844 in New York cannot be extrapolated

with safety to earlier Jacksonian elections, especially since the controversy over Catholic

schools in New York during that year caused a heightening of nativist feeling which could well

have transformed what had previously been a relatively minor influence on voting behavior

into an obvious major influence. Benson, Concept of Jacksonian Democracy, 123-328. esp.

117-19, 187-91.

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Politics in Jacksonian Ohio                                              11

 

recognize, we need to study every election and to disentangle the long-term

influences like party loyalty from the immediate, short-term pressures.

Such a distinction would also help to explain why particular ethnocultu-

ral groups tended to support one party rather than another. "Ethnocultu-

ralists" usually explain such behavior by analysing the group's cultural

attitudes and then demonstrating that the views of one party were much

more congenial to those holding such attitudes. But is it not possible that

the party in question held congenial views because it had long enjoyed the

support, and been subject to the pressure, of that particular ethnocultural

group? The Quakers and the "pietist" sects may have been attracted to the

Whig side because the Whigs had a sense of mission and holiness; but it

might be more accurate to say that the Whig party developed a heightened

sense of moral purpose because it grew out of a political formation which

had always had the support of Quakers and "pietists." Similarly, to decide

whether Irish Catholics voted Democrat because they were Irish or because

they were Catholic, it is useful to examine not only the statistical correla-

tions among the characteristics involved, but also the circumstances which

led Irishmen and Catholics into a particular party.17 It is also worth

remembering that groups of voters may have joined a party initially for

reasons which had little to do with group membership, but their group

characteristics may have become of extraordinary significance for the

party's subsequent development. The electoral analyst ought to look more

closely at the historical circumstances which brought the constituent

groups into each party; and he cannot do that by generalizing across the

voting behavior of the years 1836-1852 on the basis of figures derived from

the 1850 census.^l8

Thus it is of some importance to identify when the mass parties of the

Jackson era first attracted their popular support. The "ethnoculturalists"

frequently assert that political parties became "emotionally significant

groups" in the 1830s, yet they have offered little evidence to support that

claim; indeed, they seem almost unnecessarily committed to the notion that

 

 

 

17. Cf. Fox. dissertation, 215, 254, 294, 299, 323, 347-50.

18. Of the "ethnoculturalists," Formisano has most satisfactorily analysed the process of

party formation in the Jackson period. In Michigan national partydivisionswereformed only

as the territory entered upon statehood, and that process was marked by a conflict over alien

suffrage which made ethnocultural factors particularly potent. However, one wonders

whether more emphasis should not be put on loyalties established earlier by some voters,

especially in view of the emphasis Formisano places on the polarising effect of the Antimason-

ic political campaigns; and, indeed, the fact that the issue of alien suffrage divided the

Democrats in 1835 suggests that the party had been formed earlier, possibly under the

influence of non-ethnocultural factors. Ronald P. Formisano, "A Case Study of Party

Formation: Michigan, 1835," Mid-America, L (1968), 83-107, and Birth of Mass Political

Parties. 3-137, esp. 60-67.

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12                                                          OHIO HISTORY

 

party formation could not have occurred before about 1834.19 Admittedly,

there was a period of considerable turmoil in 1834 and 1835 from which a

stable party division emerged, yet the "ethnoculturalists" never seem to

consider seriously whether the division which emerged repeated the

patterns of division which had expressed themselves in 1828. Indeed, it may

be that the strongest evidence that party loyalties had been established

before 1834 lies in the resilience with which the Jackson party, in particular,

survived the storms of dissension and schism aroused by Jackson's Bank

War. In fact, many observers have seen the beginnings of a stable party

division in Ohio in the Presidential election of 1828, while some, including

Dr. Fox, have seen that the "ultimate party alignments" of the 1830s and

1840s were "roughly" predicted by the election of 1824.20

A strong case can, indeed, be made for claiming that the campaign of

1824 is the proper starting-date. In that election, the old Federalist party

failed to run a candidate for the Presidency, while the dominant Republi-

can party could not agree upon a nominee to succeed President Monroe. In

Ohio politicians formed completely new alignments, and organized cam-

paigns on behalf of three of the major candidates Henry Clay, Andrew

Jackson, and John Quincy Adams. The voters appear to have identified

each group clearly, as was shown by the remarkably low level of ticket-

splitting.²¹ Indeed, the sudden appearance of ticket voting in this election is

well revealed by the "pollbook" for one township in northern Ohio. Here

the tellers began by assuming that there were forty-eight individual

candidates for Ohio's sixteen places in the electoral college, and so they

kept a tally of votes for each individual electoral candidate. After six or

seven ballots had been counted, all of them straight party votes, the tellers

began to record only one vote for each ticket, under the first name on the

ticket. Not one of the fifty-five voters offered a split ticket, and all the

electors on each ticket received the same number of votes.²²

Subsequently the politicians appear, from their private correspondence

and newspaper writings, to have assumed that the voters had contracted

some sort of emotional commitment of the groupings created in 1824. After

 

19. Fox, dissertation, 345, 410, 432-33; Formisano, Birth of Mass Political Parties. 3-4.

Benson sees the voting patterns of the next two decades as crystalizing in New York in 1832.

two years before formal party organization was achieved. Benson, Concept of Jacksonian

Democracy, 62.

20. Mansfield, Personal Memories, 235; Richard P. McCormick, The Second American

Party System: Party Formation in the Jacksonian Era (Chapel Hill, 1966), 265; Fox,

dissertation, 427.

21. Harry R. Stevens. The Early Jackson Party in Ohio (Durham, N.C., 1955). For the

range of votes each ticket received through the state as a whole, see Columbus Gazette,

November 18, 1824.

22. Pollbooks for Sandusky township, Huron County, 1815-1824, Vertical File Material,

Ohio Historical Society. "Pollbook" is an inaccurate description since voting was not done

viva voce in Ohio, and the preference of individual voters cannot be traced.

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Politics in Jacksonian Ohio                                            13

 

the House election of 1825, when the Clay and Adams forces combined to

make the latter President, the Jacksonians maintained their opposition

though not reviving their organization until 1826. They then focused their

attention upon the Congressional elections in those districts of eastern

Ohio which had voted for Jackson in 1824 but whose Congressmen had

supported Clay in 1824 and voted for Adams in the House election; in some

of these counties the politicians succeeded in persuading the electorate that

a commitment to Jackson for President meant a vote for a Jacksonian

Congressman, but their failure to pull out the vote in one or two counties

prevented their success in 1826. However, the Adams men recognized that

the established popularity of Jackson in these districts ensured that three

loyal and talented Adams-Clay Congressmen were "certainly" going to be

defeated in 1828-as, indeed, they were.²³

Similarly, the Adams and Clay organizations of 1824 withered away

after the election, in this case partly because the leaders in Ohio believed

that the alliance of their principals was satisfactory to the majority of Ohio

voters, as, indeed, the Congressional elections of 1826 suggested. By 1827,

however, the administration party was developing its organization and

reminding voters that the Adams-Clay administration represented the kind

of economic policy and moral symbol desired by most Ohioans in 1824.

Recognizing the formidable threat offered by the Jacksonians, the Adams

men endeavored to secure victory in 1828 by thorough party organization

in that area of the state-the Western Reserve-which in the 1824

Presidential election had been most hostile to Jacksonism.24 In fact, more

evidence than can be presented here exists to confirm that by 1828 many

voters identified themselves self-consciously with well-advertised party

labels which they associated with "an ongoing organization, symbols, and

traditions," in so far as any traditions could be said to be established after

only four years.25

But do the voting returns for this and subsequent elections confirm that

the nascent parties in Ohio had by this time acquired a stable body of loyal

identifiers who voted for them regularly? Table 1 reveals how far the

 

23. Charles Hammond to J.C. Wright, Columbus, December 16, 1827, Charles Hammond

Papers, Ohio Historical Society. For the development of the Jackson party between 1825 and

1828, see the Larwill Family Papers, Ohio Historical Society, and idem, Western Historical

Manuscript Collections, University of Missouri. An interesting analysis of the progress of

organization in each congressional district may be found in the Washington, D.C., United

Slates Telegraph, July 19, 1828, reprinted in the St. Clairsville Gazette, August 2, 1828. See

also Weisenburger, Passing of the Frontier, 218-36, and Homer J. Webster, "History of the

Democratic Party Organization in the Northwest, 1820-1840," Ohio Archaeological and

Historical Quarterly, XXIV (1915), 6-34, though the latter is not entirely reliable.

24. For the organizational efforts of the Adams men, see, in particular, the Charles

Hammond Papers. Ohio Historical Society, and the Peter Hitchcock Family Papers, Western

Reserve Historical Society, as well as the party press.

25. Cf. Formisano, "Toward a Reorientation of Jacksonian Politics," 58.

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14                                                             OHIO HISTORY

 

distribution of the vote (by counties) of the Jacksonian Democratic party in

each Presidential election between 1828 and 1840 correlates with the

distribution of its vote in preceding and succeeding elections.²⁶ Clearly

there was a very high degree of party regularity in Ohio throughout these

years;²⁷ and the stable pattern of party loyalty dates back not merely to the

1820s but even to the Presidential election of 1824. This last conclusion is

based on the positive correlation of .759 between the elections of 1824 and

1828, which seems surprisingly high in view of the fact that the number of

people voting in 1828 increased by more than two-and-one-half fold over

1824, and Jackson won far more counties than he had in the earlier

 

TABLE 1

Interyear Correlations of Democratic Percentage Strength

of Counties in Presidential Elections, 1824-1844

1824   1828    1832   1836   1840

1828               .759

1832               .666      .923

1836               .510      .763      .889

1840               .426      .744      .818      .888

1844               .421      .705      .828      .875   .970

 

 

election; however, it seems clear that, despite Jackson's considerable gains

in 1828, the degree of support he won in that year in most counties was

primarily determined by the amount of support he had inherited from the

campaign of 1824.28 Thus, if the parties of the second party system began to

 

26. All correlations (with one exception) used in this paper are Pearson product-moment

coefficients of correlation, and are significant at the .001 level. Particular problems are faced in

drawing up a table of this kind because of the frequent boundary changes and the creation of

new counties in Ohio, and different researchers will get marginally different results according

to how they handle the problem. I have used Randolph C. Downes, The Evolution of Ohio

County Boundaries, reprint ed. (Columbus, 1970), to help me distinguish the major changes

and have followed different strategies as seemed most appropriate in each case, but I have

taken great care not to correlate the returns of counties possessing the same name but covering

markedly different areas of land.

27. When Formisano applied this test to successive Presidential elections in Michigan, he

discovered a positive correlation of between .622 and .858, which he considered suggested "the

high stability" of party loyalty during those years. Formisano, Birth of Mass Political Parties,

24-25.

28. If we calculate the coefficient of determination, then it appears that 57% of the

variations in the Jackson vote from county to county in 1828 might be explained by the

variations in the vote inherited from 1824. See also Ratcliffe, "Voters and Issues," 866. I am

grateful to The Journal of American History for allowing me to reproduce, in this and the

following section, material originally published in that journal.

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Politics in Jacksonian Ohio                                      15

 

acquire bodies of identifiers and became "emotionally significant reference

groups" as early as the election of 1824, then we must make certain that we

correctly identify the factors which influenced that critical, initial cleavage

which so determined the future character of the party division.

Party Formation in the 1820s

So how important were ethnocultural factors in determining the voting

patterns in those critical first elections of 1824 and 1828? To date no

"ethnoculturalist" has devoted much attention to this question, but clearly

Dr. Fox holds that the factors at work in these elections were much the

same as those he has discerned in the elections of the 1830s and 1840s. He

rejects the argument that the perception of economic interest played any

role in drawing voters to one side or another, and insists that the basic

conflict was of essentially moral dimensions. This conflict had its roots in

the "profound sense of moral anxiety among Americans who were only just

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'. " Some people were drawn, by their

resentment of privilege and corruption, to the side of the Jacksonian party,

with its egalitarian and anti-intellectual standpoint; others objected to the

Jacksonians' establishment of an "inviolable party dominion" because it

jeopardized "independent political activity," communal feeling and tradi-

tional civic virtues. This "anti-party" sentiment was especially strong,

claims Fox, among the evangelical elements in the Ohio population, and

particularly among settlers from New England. In this way the moral

overtones of the party conflict tended to divide the voters of the state into

distinct ethnocultural groupings, according to how their cultural attitudes

made them view such issues; consequently, since particular ethno-cultural

groups had concentrated in particular areas of the state, the distribution of

party support reflected "ethnocultural regionalism."²⁹

Yet the evidence for the critical election of 1824 suggests that such

moralistic concerns were in fact the common possession of all Ohioans at

the time and so provided no basis for the electoral division. All accepted the

basic principles of republicanism and federalism, and the disagreements

over those terms that had marked the first party system in Ohio did not

reappear in the campaign of 1822-1824. The tradition of"antipartyism," of

objecting to the control of an "aristocracy" of office-holders, was now

turned against the "caucus candidate," William H. Crawford of Georgia;

but he had in any case almost no support in Ohio, and the attempt to

control public feeling by use of the traditional nominating machinery was

attacked by the friends of all the candidates in Ohio. At the same time "anti-

 

29. Fox, article, 162, 166-70, and dissertation, 334, 372-93,421-31. Cf. Flinn, "Continuity

and Change in Ohio Politics," 524-27.

• 11
 

16                                                             OHIO HISTORY

 

partyism" did not prevent any of them from using techniques of partisan

organization and agitation. There was undoubtedly a profound sense of

moral anxiety about the future of the republic and about the "proper" role

of politicians, yet this anxiety was not essential to the party division, even if

in some communities that had undergone certain experiences it helped to

influence political choices.³⁰

Furthermore, the distribution of the vote in 1824 cannot be explained

simply in terms of ethnocultural influences, at least not in the broad and

generalized terms commonly used. A fully developed ethnocultural inter-

pretation emphasizes religion as much as ethnicity, but it is very difficult to

discover very much about the relationship between religion and voting in

the 1820s because of the scantiness of the evidence. The general impression

is that the major churches, particularly the Methodists, divided between

the candidates, although the Quakers moved with some homogeneity

towards John Quincy Adams.31 It is rather easier to test systematically the

broad generalizations commonly made about the voting behavior of

settlers from different sections of the Atlantic seaboard. Undoubtedly New

Englanders, clustered primarily in the Western Reserve and the Ohio

Company counties, gave remarkably few votes to Jackson in both 1824 and

1828.32 But is it equally true that Southern and Middle-state origins in

themselves automatically produced support for Jackson? The mere fact

 

 

 

30. For this election, see Eugene H. Roseboom, "Ohio in the Presidential Election of

1824." Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications, XXVI (1917), 153-224; Stevens,

Early Jackson Party in Ohio; Ratcliffe, "Voters and Issues." For the first party system in

Ohio, and some of the attitudes it helps to illuminate, see Donald J. Ratcliffe, "The Experience

of Revolution and the Beginnings of Party Politics in Ohio, 1776-1816." Ohio History,

LXXXV(1976), 186-230.

31. Ratcliffe, "Voters and Issues," 854. The Presbyterians also probably divided according

to whether they were associated with the Pennsylvania Scotch-Irish or the New England

tradition.

32. Ratcliffe, "Voters and Issues," 855. 856. There is almost no evidence about individual

voting behavior for this period in Ohio, and the historian is forced to consider the behavior of

communities as defined by political boundaries. He must therefore look forcommunities that

are fairly homogeneous, which means that he should look for the smallest possible political

units. Unfortunately, it is difficult to find township election returns for these early elections,

especially that of 1824, although it is sometimes possible to associate a distinctive ethnocultu-

ral group with a particular township. In general, the historian can make a systematic analysis

only at the county level, and even here the historian is forced to rely on impressionistic sources

such as the various county histories and gazetteers and Henry Howe's Historical Collections

of Ohio, 1st ed. (Cincinnati, 1847) and centennial ed. (2 vols., Cincinnati, 1889).

The historian must, of course, make use of the 1850 Census, the first to provide suitable

material. But it is a mistake to assume that the character of the population in each county was

necessarily the same in the earlier decades as it was in 1850.  And to say, as Dr. Fox does, that

"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" is to use one's conclusion as part of the proof that the conclusion is true. Fox article,

158.

• 12
 

Politics in Jacksonian Ohio                                             17

 

that Miami county, which in 1818 had been reported as "settled by

emigrants chiefly from Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Kentucky," returned

anti-Jackson majorities in 1824, and subsequently, suggests that some

groups of Southern and Middle-state settlers were less favorable to the

Jacksonians than were others.³³

In fact, those communities which were most probably dominated by

Southerners in the 1820s were far from being uniformly strong in their

support of Jackson. The Virginia Military District was, with reason,

regarded as the main center of Virginian settlement, yet in this area in 1824

Jackson for the most part gained less than his average proportion of the

vote over the state as a whole. In the southern part of the district Jackson

gained some substantial majorities, as he did in neighboring counties to the

west which were not particularly marked by Southern settlers. In the

northern and eastern parts of the district, Jacksonism was much weaker;

indeed, one contemporary observer gained the impression in 1824 that "the

Kentucky and Virginia population, on the Scioto, the Muskingum, and the

Upper M iami, supported Clay." Certainly this was true of the area around

Chillicothe, an undoubted center of Virginian settlement.³⁴ Such evidence

suggests that Southerners in Ohio provided considerable support for the

Adams-Clay party of 1828, and it is interesting that the only counties in the

state (other than those settled by New Englanders) which swung towards

Adams in 1828 were the three counties of Logan, Champaign and Clark, of

which at least two were almost certainly dominated by people from

Virginia and Kentucky.³⁵ As Eugene H. Roseboom suggested, Southerners

who settled before 1830 differed in political outlook from later migrants

from the South; hence any association between Democratic voting and

 

 

 

33. Samuel R. Brown, The Western Gazetteer, or Emigrant's Directory (New York, 1820),

287-88.

34. Edward D. Mansfield, Memoirs of the Life and Services of Daniel Drake, M.D.

(Cincinnati, 1855), 170. For Virginians in the Scioto Valley at this period, see William Renick.

Memoirs, Correspondence And Reminiscences of William Renick (Circleville, 1880), esp. 11;

John Cotton, "From Rhode Island To Ohio in 1815," Journal of American History, XVI

(1922), 253; Morris Birkbeck, Notes On a Journey In America (London, 1818), 64-5; Benton

J. Lossing, A Pictorial Description of Ohio (New York, 1848), 83, 84, 88, 89. See also David

C. Shilling. "Relation of Southern Ohio To The South During the Decade Preceding the Civil

War," Quarterly Publications of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, VIII

(1913),4.

35. Gersholm Flagg to Azariah Flagg, Springfield, O., November 12, 1816, and January 8,

1817, Solon J. Buck, ed., "Pioneer Letters of Gersholm Flagg," Transactions of the Illinois

State Historical Society, (1910), 143, 145; John Kilbourn, The Ohio Gazetteer, or Emigrant's

Directory, 11th, revised ed. (Columbus, 1833), 281; Howe, Historical Collections (1847), 84;

Lossing, Pictorial Description. 41, 48, 72; William E. and Ophia D. Smith, A Buckeye Titan

(Cincinnati, 1953), 144; Ohio Writers' Program of the Works Projects Administration,

Springfield and Clark County, Ohio (Springfield, 1941), and Urbana and Champaign County,

Ohio (Urbana. 1942).

• 13
 

18                                                         OHIO HISTORY

 

Southern settlers probably did not develop strongly until the 1840s   if

then."

It is equally difficult to prove that Pennsylvanian origins as such made a

man more likely to vote for the Jacksonians, for people from that

Commonwealth had spread to most parts of Ohio, including those highly

favorable to Adams and Clay. Apparently only those Pennsylvanians who

were also members of distinctive non-English ethnic groups gave signifi-

cant degrees of support to Jackson. Thus, in the end, the only generaliza-

tions about ethnocultural voting in the 1820s that may be made with

confidence are that Adams did well in areas of New England and Quaker

settlement, while Jackson won much support among German and Scotch-

Irish settlers from Pennsylvania.³'

But why should these groups behave in this way'? Republicans from New

England had not always been noted for insisting that a fellow New

Englander like Adams should be elected President: they had fully support-

ed the election of Madison and Monroe. Why had they now become so

much more self-conscious? Why did people begin to talk, in the early 1820s,

of the "Universal Yankee Nation"? The answer which emerges from their

spokesmen in Ohio is simply that the South's success in the Missouri crisis

had made them aware of the power that the South exercised in the nation, a

power which, like Rufus King. they ascribed to the unity of political action

that was prompted by the "black strap," the common interest of slavehold-

ing. As a New York politician recorded, at this time many Republicans in

the North became "anxious to be relieved" of the "reproach" of"support-

ing southern men"; and this feeling, in New York as in Ohio, was strongest

among settlers from New England. Thus the constant identification in later

years of the anti-Jackson men with moralistic concerns may be largely

explained as resulting from the extraordinary significance of the slavery

issue in the period of initial party formation in the early 1820s.^3s

But what of the "Pennsylvania Dutch?" There can be no doubt of their

political homogeneity in 1824. for even a future British prime minister

noticed it;9 but why did they vote so overwhelmingly for Jackson in that

Presidential election? No doubt Dr. Fox is right in saying that a study of the

 

 

36. Eugene H. Roseboom. "Southern Ohio and the Union in 1863". Misis.ssippi lallev

Historical Review, XXXIX (1952), 38-40.

37. Ratcliffe. "Voters and Issues." 862, 863.

38. John C. Fitzpatrick. ed., The Autobiographyl of Martin Van Buren, reprint ed. (New

York. 1973), 1. 13148: .abez D. Hammond, The History of Political Parties in the State of

Nevw Ylrk (Albany. 1842). 11. 127-28. See also Donald J. Ratcliffe,"Captain.James Riley and

Antislavery Sentiment in Ohio. 1819-1824." Ohio History. IXXXI (1972). 76-94: idem.

"Voters and Issues." 851-55: and Shaw Livermore. Jr.. The Twilight of Federalismi: Ihe

Disintegration of the Federalist Party. 1815-/830 (Princeton. 1962), 95-97.

39. Hon. E. Stanley (later Earl ofDerby). Journalof'a Tour in America, I824-25 (priately

printed in limited edition for Lord Derby. 1931), 178.

• 14
 

Politics in Jacksonian Ohio                                               19

 

group's cultural attitudes can make its political behavior understandable,

but what was it they perceived in Jackson that drew them to his side'? How

can it have been their established "political habits," since all the candidates

were portrayed as good Republicans and earlier factional loyalties did not

directly relate to particular candidates'?⁴" Probably, as Benson once

suggested, their behavior was an expression of the "marked conflict"

between "Yankee" elements and the "Dutch," but where is the contempor-

ary evidence to show it'? Unfortunately, the German newspapers in Ohio

said little about their reasons for supporting Jackson.⁴¹ One can only

assume that the Germans were overwhelmed by gratitude to the hero who

had apparently defeated a British invasion of America, since they saw it as a

defeat for those who had least sympathy for them. In that case the loyalty

they now showed to Jackson was based on similar roots to that of the

Scotch Irish from Pennsylvania, who undoubtedly had good reason for

identifying themselves with him and rejoicing over the defeat of the British

oppressor.⁴² Here again, recent experiences may have heightened the self-

awareness of an ethnocultural group and prompted its members towards a

specific choice of sides in this critical election.

Whatever emphasis may be placed on such ethnocultural factors,

however, the fact remains that neither the Yankee-dominated Western

Reserve nor the Scotch-Irish and German belt of settlement across the

"backbone" of the state acted uniformly in 1824. Every county in each of

these belts gave at least one-third of its votes to Adams or Jackson,

respectively; but the counties in the center of the belts gave a plurality of

their votes to Clay. while those on either side gave absolute majorities to

Adams or Jackson, as map I reveals.⁴³ What the less enthusiastic counties

had in common was not a smaller proportion of settlers from New England

or Pennsylvania, but rather a location on the proposed route of the great

 

40. Fox. article. 165. 169. Kim T. Phillips. "T1he Pennsylvania Origins of the lackson

Movement." Political Science Quarterlv. XCI (1976). 489-508. sensitively reveals how a

radical faction concerned for economic reform was drawn into the Jackson party in 1X24. but

she is less convincing in explaining why so many of the state's factions decided to support

Jackson. The evidence suggests that the clear preference, expressed early in the campaign by

the Scotch Irish. if not the Germans, tempted all factions to attract their sympathy and sup-

port by jumping on the Jackson band-wagon themselves.

41. i ee Benson. "Research Problems in American Political Historiography," Mirra

Komaroxski. ed.. Commoon F 'rontiers of the Social Sciences (Glencoe, 11l., 1957), 153;

l.ancaster Ohio LtJklg/c, 1823-24. In view of the scantiness of contemporary evidence, it is

interesting to note that one British traveller reported in 1817 that "the most perfect cordiality"

existed in I'crr\ county between the German settlers and their neighbors. Birkbeck. Notes on a

Jou'ti e', 56.

42. Ratclillf, "Voters and Issues." 863. The tensions between these non-English groups and

Nexw Englanders are persuasively described in general terms in Kellev. "Ideology and Political

Culture." 534-43.

43. Some of the complexities of this map are explained in Ratcliffe. "Voters and Issues."

853-63.

• 15
 

20                                           OHIO HISTORY

• 16
 

Politics in Jacksonian Ohio                                   21

• 17
 

22                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

canal which was to connect Lake Erie with the Ohio River. Indeed, nearly

all the counties which lay on planned lines of communication. including the

National Road, tended to be more favorable to Clay than their other

characteristics might lead one to expect. (See map 11). This suggests that an

awareness of local economic interests was a powerful influence on voting

behavior in this election, which is scarcely surprising in view of the long

campaign to persuade Ohioans that the state's economic problems, made

so obvious by the long depression following the Panic of 1819. could best

be solved by the building of certain roads and canals: while Henry Clay was

clearly seen as the one candidate with a real chance of success who was

publicly committed to the "American System" policy of federal appropria-

tions for such internal improvements. Of course the demand for a Western

President had a moral content, combining nationalism with a sense of past

sectional injustices, but it transformed itself into votes mainly in those

counties which could see immediate economic advantages in the "Ameri-

can System" of Henry Clay. For, as Benson has written, "economic factors

are most likely to determine voting behavior when direct, significant, and

clearly perceived relationships exist among government action, party

policy, and material interests."⁴⁴

In practice, the necessities of local economic interest cut across the

ethnocultural considerations. Among New Englanders in Ohio there was a

great public argument in 1824 as to whether hatred of slavery or the need

for roads and canals should have preference, for Adams as an Easterner

was considered unsafe on the internal-improvement issue; and a moral and

upright Congressman like Elisha Whittlesey, representing the most quin-

tessentially Yankee district on the Western Reserve, nearly wrecked his

political career by publicly stating his preference for roads and canals.⁴⁵ In

other parts of the state similar debates took place about the merits and

disadvantages of the leading advocate of internal improvements, especially

where a local interest in the proposed canals conflicted with some sort of

prejudice in favor of another candidate. The uncertain outcome of this

conflict made "chicken-hearted" politicians who wished to come out on the

winning side hesitate before committing themselves to one candidate or

another, and so prevented Clay's campaign from gaining the early

advantage of a legislative nomination which his leading partisans had

hoped to secure.⁴' In the end Ohio's voters had to choose between these

countervailing pressures, and three-quarters of those who voted showed

 

44. Benson, Conceplt of Jacksonian Democracv, 156. See also Ratcliffc, "Voters and

Issues," 850- 51 853-54: Fox. article, 165, 167-68.

45. Whittlesey to Hammond, January 17. February 14, 1824. Charles Hammond Papers:

Whittlesey to Giddings. January 18, February 19, May 13, September 18, 1824. Joshua

Giddings Papers. Ohio Historical Society.

46. Ratcliffe, "Voters and Issues." 850-53.

• 18
 

Politics in Jacksonian Ohio                                                 23

 

that they preferred a slaveholding Western candidate, be it Jackson or

Clay, to a non-slaveholding candidate associated with the economic

interests of the seaboard.⁴⁷

The inadequacies of an ethnocultural interpretation, pure and simple,

when faced by these complex interactions of 1824 is further revealed by the

political behavior of the voters in the line of counties between Sandusky

Bay and Columbus. They gave Adams between 91.2 and 56.5 percent of

their votes, and yet, contrary to Dr. Fox, these counties were not dominat-

ed by New Englanders.⁴8 True, in Huron and Sandusky counties, as well as

in the northern half of Marion which later became Crawford county,

Yankee settlers were numerous and may well have formed a majority of the

population.⁴⁹ And in Delaware county many New Englanders moved in in

the decade before 1824, joining the supposedly anti-Jacksonian Welsh of

Radnor township which, however, did not become markedly opposed to

Jacksonism    until the 1840s.^5°  Yet throughout these counties many emi-

grants from Pennsylvania and other states had also settled. In Union the

early settlers came chiefly from Pennsylvania and Virginia, with New

Englanders not moving in until later.'^" Seneca was "settled principally

from Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New York, and by some few

Germans," while in 1831 the inhabitants of the southern half of Marion

(which retained the name after the division of the county) were reported as

being "from other parts of Ohio, from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylva-

nia, Virginia, and Maryland, and a few from Kentucky."⁵²

 

 

47. It seems unfair to criticize an historian for failing to "reconcile" countervailing

pressures which contemporaries could not reconcile, or for allowing them to prefer an

economic rationale over moral principle or ethnic predilection. More reasonably Dr. Fox

criticizes my former article for failing to provide "a comparable means of assessing the clear

deviations" from economic motivations. In fact. I tried to do this by means of four tables

which indicated trends and exceptions. A more sophisticated statistical approach, which

would have placed numerical values on things like proximity to the proposed route of the

National Road, seemed to me pointless. Fox, article, 156, 163, 165: Ratcliffe. "Voters and

Issues," 851-53, 854, 856, 858, 863.

48. Fox is apparently misled by Table II in my former article which indicated "Yankees"

where there was evidence of some settlement by them. as distinct from the terms "Western

Reserve" and "Ohio Company" which referred to areas where they were predominant. Fox.

article. 165-66; Ratcliffe. "Voters and Issues," 856.

49. Warren Jenkins, The Ohio Gazetteer and Traveller's Guide (Columbus, 1837), 233:

Howe. Hi.storical Collections ( 1847), 445. and ibid. (1889), 1, 482.

50. Kilbourn, Ohio Gazetteer, 6th ed. (Columbus, 1819), 63; [W. H. Perrin and J. H.

Battle. eds], History of Delaware Countr and Ohio (Chicago, 1880), 191-96; William H.

.lones. "Welsh Settlements in Ohio." Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society Publica-

tions, XVI (1907). 211-13. The voting returns for Radnor township may be found in the

Delaware Patron. the Delaware Ohio Slate Gazette, the Olentangv Gazette and Delaware

Adverti.ser. and the Columbus Ohio Statemnan. See also Fox, dissertation, 369.

51. Kilbourn. Ohio Gazetteer (1833). 450; l.ossing. Pictorial Description. 94: Howe.

Htistorical ( ollc( tion.s ( 889), 1. 714.

52. Howe, Iistorical Collectionsr (1847), 457: Kilbourn, Ohio Gazetteer (1833), 298. For

• 19
 

24                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

Some consideration other than Yankee settlement must explain the size

of the Adams vote throughout this area. Contemporary sources make it

clear that these counties had one distinctive feature in common. They all

lay on the route w. ch the great canal had been expected to follow-until the

canal commissioners, for suspect reasons, declared the route to be imprac-

ticable in January 1824. The resulting disillusionment with grandiose

schemes of internal improvement may well have weakened the appeal of

the leading "internal-improvement" candidate for the Presidency. and

made the arguments against voting for the leading Northern and "non-

slave" candidate quite ineffectual. The presence of New Englanders merely

boosted Adams' majorities to levels not attained even farther east on the

Western Reserve, and nearly all Adams' banner counties combined New

England settlement with doubts about the state internal-improvement

program.5

For the most part, however, the demand for "Western" policies carried

the day, and the Adams' men's main hope for victory in Ohio lay in the fact

that those who preferred a Western candidate divided between Jackson

and Clay. But why did they divide, and so provide the basis for the

subsequent party division? One reason is undoubtedly the ethnocultural

preference of the Pennsylvania "Dutch" and Scotch Irish. but another must

be the unpopularity of Clay in the southwestern corner of the state. As map

II clearly demonstrates, Clay failed to win votes not only in some German

and Yankee counties and in those areas most opposed to the new canal

system, but also in the populous counties most closely linked with

Cincinnati. This overwhelming prejudice against Clay in this area did not

arise from hostility to the internal-improvement program; nor can it be

explained simply in ethnocultural terms, since the region was already

extremely diverse in the character of its population.⁴ Contemporary

sources suggest that the prejudice derived instead from the well-known

hardships suffered by Cincinnati, and the area dependent on it, following

the Panic of 1819; for those hardships had been aggravated by the decision

of the Bank of the United States to take legal action against the many

debtors in that area to whom it had so prodigally lent money before the

 

 

 

 

more on the settlement of this area, see the references in Ratcliffe. "Voters and Issues," 856 n.

26.

53. Ratcliffe, "Voters and Issues," 855-56.

54. Kilbourn, Ohio Gazetteer(18 19), 83. 158-59. and ihid. (1833). 66, 146-47. 229.249,309.

382-83. 467, 485: Howe, Historical Collections (1847). 21, 72, 101, 229-30. 249, and ihid.

(1889). I1. 299, 301:  Iossing, Pictorial Description.  36. 65. 79. 95. See also  Shilling.

"Relation of Southern Ohio To The South", 4: Jones. "Welsh Settlements in Ohio." 198-202:

Albert B. Iaust, The German Elemlent in lthe 'litle States (New York, 1927). I. 428-30:

Ratcliffe, "Voters and Issues." 857. 863 n. 53.

• 20
 

Politics in Jacksonian Ohio                                               25

 

Panic, and the blame for that decision fell on the Bank's legal agent in Ohio,

Henry Clay. Thus popular hardships in this area heightened moral

anxieties and indignation about privilege and corruption and the selfish

things politicians get up to-and gave the populace a good reason for

turning against Clay.⁵

In sum, then, the"self-conscious party loyalties" which were established

for many Ohio voters in 1824, at the very beginning of the new mass party

system, were created by the response of individuals to a range of factors.

Ethnocultural perception and prejudices played an important part, espe-

cially as heightened by either reawakened antislavery sentiment or Anglo-

phobia; but cutting across them were other considerations, notably

sectional awareness, local economic interest, and the passions and hatreds

created by the unusually severe hardships suffered since the Panic of 1819.

In particular, the new party loyalties were to some extent fashioned, by the

policy programs associated with each national candidate. These issues at

stake as the Republican party broke apart were clearly perceived by

contemporaries, and openly discussed in the Ohio press during the

campaign.⁵ Of course, Formisano is more or less right in saying that the

cleavage of 1824 in Ohio could reflect "more immediate issue conflicts" so

clearly because the "self-conscious party loyalties" typical of the later mass

party system did not exist; but that cannot contradict the argument that

this issue-oriented electoral cleavage helped to establish the very party

loyalties that Formisano is talking about.⁵⁷

However, the party cleavage of 1824 was substantially modified in the

55. Cf. Fox. article. 165, 166, with Ratclifle. "Voters and Issues," 857-61. Dr. Fox doubts

whether it may be truly said that "the dynamic heart of the early Jackson party in Ohio" lay in

Cincinnati. As he points out. Jackson gained only 44 percent of his Hamilton County vote in

the city, in comparison with the 57.5 percent of the Adams vote that was gained there. Yet this

does not contradict the fact that Jackson won 55.3 percent of Cincinnati's votes, compared

with 32.9 and I 1.8 percent for Adams and Clay respectively. And if the surrounding rural part

of Hamilton county and neighboring counties-voted for Jackson by even heavier majorities.

this not only suggests that the city contained a more variegated population with morediverse

interests and attitudes, but confirms that Jackson sentiment was especially strong in the rural

area subject to Cincinnati's metropolitan influence. In any case, from 1824 to at least 1832 the

initiative in organizing the Ohio Jackson party came from Cincinnati rather than the state

capital. as Dr. Fox himself has acknowledged. Fox, dissertation, 431, 440. 445.

56. Roseboom. "Ohio in the Presidential Election of 1824," 153-224. Fox, article, 168,

states that, when I am not ignoring the testimony of the actors, I am placing their words in a

context of my own, and not their, choosing. The onus is surely on him to demonstrate the

point rather than for me to produce still more testimony, yet it is interesting to note

contemporary editorials on the election which see it in my terms: e.g., Liberty Hall and

Cincinnati Gazette, November 26, 1824; The Benefactor and Georgetown Advocate, No-

vember 22, 1824; ChillicotheSupporter and S(ioto Gazette, October 21, November 18, 1824.

57. Formisano, "Toward a Reorientation of Jacksonian Politics," 58. It can be argued

that "self-conscious party loyalties" already existed in Ohio deriving from the first party

system, but they had little influence in 1824 in an overwhelmingly Republican state in the

absence of a Federalist candidate. See Ratcliffe, "Revolution and the Beginnings of Party

Politics," 192-227.

• 21
 

26                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

later part of the decade as at least eighty thousand more voters were drawn

into the party conflict and formed their party attachments. In this later

period the same factors as had operated in 1824 were again at work, except

that the demand for internal improvements in particular counties had

declined somewhat, since the projects of 1824 were already being

implemented. John Quincy Adams now possessed all the advantages

enjoyed earlier by both himself and Henry Clay, for since his alliance with

the latter in 1825 and his official statements as President in favor of internal

improvements. Adams had come to represent what most Ohioans had

wanted but not found available in the 1824 electoral campaign a non-

slaveholding President who favored "Western" policies. This uniting of the

main opposing tendencies of 1824 ended the political dilemmas of a

Congressman like Elisha Whittlesey, and paved the way for his unanimous

re-election by his Yankee constituency in 1826 and 1828.⁵⁸ Certainly the

"Southern" quality of Jackson's candidacy gave many men pause, and

turned against him those who were concerned for the moral character of

the Republic if such a man gained power as a result of the machinations of

party hacks as unscrupulous as Jackson's Northern advocates were often

presumed to be.⁵⁹

Such arguments might have been overwhelming in 1828, had the Ohio

Jacksonians not been able to minimize most effectively the differences

between the two parties over the "American System" by supporting the

protective-tariff and internal-improvement measures passed by the Con-

gress of 1828. As it was, they were able not only to rely on strong support in

the southwestern counties and in communities settled by German and

Scotch-Irish settlers from Pennsylvania, but also to exploit two new

sources of support. First, there appears to have been, especially perhaps in

backcountry areas, a widespread popular suspicion of politicians and

lawyers, which had been of little political significance in 1824 outside the

Cincinnati area, this ill-defined prejudice worked in favor of a candidate

who did not possess power or the advantage of office, who was not

commonly associated with politics, and who had proved his commitment

to the Republic in its hour of gravest peril.⁶" In addition, there is also

 

 

58. Hammond to J. C. Wright, Cincinnati, March 16. 1825, Charles Hammond Papers:

('lay to Whittlesey. Washington, March 26. 1825, James F. Hopkins. ed.. The Papers of

Hli, r\ C/at (I.exington. Ky.. 1972), IV. 178-79. See also Ratcliffe, "Voters and Issues." 864-

66.

59 D. . Ratcliffe. "Antimasonry in Context: Patterns of Conflict in a Western Yankee

Community. 1820-1840." an unpublished paper which includes some interesting findings

about "anti-partvism" in this period.

60. This perception of Jackson is best analysed in John W. Ward. Andren .Jackson.

Srmthol For An Age (New York. 1955). though Ward does not always discriminate between

attitudes common to the whole culture and those peculiar to particular groups which tended

to favor Jackson politically.

• 22
 

Politics in Jacksonian Ohio                                      27

 

evidence that Jackson's candidacy benefitted in 1828 from the belief in

some quarters of Ohio that the old Republican party of Thomas Jefferson

must be revived in order to prevent the return to power of old Federalists

under the "amalgamationist" regime of the second Adams.⁶' These new,

less tangible, influences which operated on the new voters of 1828 not only

helped to bring about .ackson's narrow victory, but also ensured that the

cleavage that had now been created among the electorate would reflect a

range of influences even more diverse than those of 1824.

The Implications for the 1830s and 1840s

Hence the primary determinants of voting behavior in Jacksonian Ohio

were the partisan loyalties created in the 1820s; and those loyalties were

established as a result of interacting pressures and concerns which arose

out of immediate issues and the recent experiences of Ohioans in the 1820s.

If these two propositions be accepted, then important conclusions

immediately follow for the analysis of the party alignments of the 1830s and

1840s. For one thing, it is clear that the results of elections in most counties

and districts were determined by the underlying pattern of party

identifications; and in most of those counties the many new voters who

settled after 1830 did not differ sufficiently from the older settlers in their

political predilections to overthrow the established majority. Hence,

whenever a historian analyses the distribution of voter support in terms of

electoral units, be they counties, townships or wards, in any election (or

series of elections) between 1836 and 1852, the probability is that he is

studying a pattern which reflects the concerns of the 1820s rather than those

of that later period. Thus, the fact that the southwestern counties continued

to give majorities to the Democrats through the 1830s and 1840s reveals

more about what had influenced an overwhelming majority of the voters in

the period when most of their party loyalties were formed, than it does

about what concerned them most during those later decades.

This simple truth explains the paradox that all students of Jacksonian

political behavior stumble over. In the years after 1832, financial and

economic issues increasingly came to dominate legislative proceedings,

party resolutions and addresses, the political press, and even the private

correspondence of those actively interested in politics. The importance of

this concern with matters of banking and currency in Ohio has been well

brought out for the years after the Panic by several writers, most notably

Roger Sharp."² The natural assumption to make after reading such

evidence drawn from the articulate members of the political community is

61. D. .1. Ratclitte. "I he Persistence of the First Party System: Southeastern Ohio. 1812-

1828." unpublished paper.

62. Sharp. Iack.sonians Vlersus The Banks. 123-89: Shade, Banks or No Banks, 79-84, 102-

33; Weisenburger. Pas.sing ofthe Frontier, 328-56. 387-440: Holt, Parti Politics in Ohio, 59-

155.

• 23
 

28                                                           OHIO HISTORY

 

that the party division reflected serious socioeconomic cleavages in society

and that voter behavior was influenced by economic considerations. Yet

the fact is that no attempt to prove that socioeconomic factors determined

voter alignments in Ohio in the 1830s and 1840s has so far succeeded.

simply because counties and townships with identical economic character-

istics and interests are found on opposite sides of the party cleavage.

Sharp's own attempt to establish that there was a real socioeconomic

difference between the constituencies each party drew majority support

from between 1836 and 1844 is vitiated by far too many examples of

counties   which           were   apparently    motivated   by   quite   different

considerations              as Dr. Fox has rightly pointed out.6

Upon seeing that a straightforward economic (or socioeconomic-class)

interpretation of the party division cannot work, the "ethnoculturalists"

assume that economic considerations had no relevance to popular voting

behavior. This assumption is strengthened when they detect a large

measure of agreement between the parties on economic policy and

considerable inconsistency in the outlook of Democrats on such matters.⁶⁴

So when these historians find that ethnocultural factors had a marked

impact on voting behavior, they do not ask whether, after admitting the

force of these considerations, there is still room left for economic factors to

have had some influence. In other words, they themselves succumb to a

form of "single-factor analysis." and fail to test for countervailing cross-

65

pressures.

But suppose that, as a simple check, we looked at a listing of Ohio

counties ranked according to the per capita value of their real property as

assessed in 1830. This is probably the most appropriate measure of the

economic character of the various subdivisions in this essentially rural

society; it reveals, however, not the average or typical levels of wealth

among the voters but rather the general commercial value of real property

in each county, and therefore reflects, to a large extent, the proximity of the

county to markets and routes of transportation.^6s On this listing we would

 

63. Sharp. Jacksonmians Versus the Bantks. 160-89: Fox, dissertation. 135-50, and article.

156-62.

64. Fox. dissertation. 132-34. cites Hlarry N. Scheiber. Ohio 'Canal Era: A (Cae Stllr o/f

Govertnmlel andi the Econollr. 1820-60 (Athens. 0.. 1969) as indicating that "neither the

Bank nor the State's canal policy were clear-cut partisan issues either before or after the

financial crisis of 1837." Yet the works cited in ni. 62 above give ample evidence that the

bipartisan agreement of 1825-32 on matters of economic and financial policy gradually broke

down in the course of the I830s. while Scheiber recognizes that "the rising influence of a

hardmoney. antibank faction" within the Democratic party was threatening the canal

program by 1839. Ihir., 145-49. 157-58, 297.

65. E.g.. Fox, dissertation. 161. 173. 186; formisano. Birth of 'as.s Political Parties, 31-

55.

66. Ihese values were calculated by adding the assessed value of land (including houses)

and of town lots (including buildings). as equali/ed by the State Board of Equalization. Ohio

• 24
 

Politics in Jacksonian Ohio                                             29

 

find that, of the thirty most "valuable" counties, seventeen (or 56.7%) had

voted for Adams in 1828, while nineteen (63.3%) of the thirty least

"valuable" had voted for Jackson. But if we extract from the list those

counties which were attracted to the side of Adams or Jackson in 1824 and

1828 as a result of ethnocultural factors or because they shared in the deep

hostility to Clay generated in the southwestern counties, then a far

more striking picture appears. For of the ten most "valuable" counties

among those that remain, all but one (90%) had voted for Adams in 1828,

and there are reasons for thinking that the one exception should have been

omitted with the others. Of the ten least "valuable" that survive, only three

had voted for Adams; and two of those counties lay in the agriculturally-

backward area close to the Ohio River which was involved in the

production of coal and salt and was therefore more integrated into the

commercial system than were the areas of subsistence agriculture which

also appeared at the lower end of the list.⁶⁷ If the same game is played with

the 1835 tax assessments and the 1836 Presidential election results, then we

obtain identical results: nine of the ten most "valuable" counties that

survive voted for Harrison, and seven of the ten survivors at the bottom of

the list voted for Van Buren.⁶⁸

Such results suggest that there was a real difference in the economic

character of the constituencies supporting each party, even if that

difference was obscured because many non-economic considerations,

including ethnocultural influences, also helped to determine which way a

constituency voted. The distinction between the more commercialized and

the more remote areas appears, after all, to have some relevance to voting

behavior. As a further test, we must attempt some sort of statistical

correlation between these economic characteristics and Democratic

strength in the various counties. If we correlate the per capita assessment of

real property for each county with the percentage of the total vote won

there by the Democratic party in each Presidential election, then (as Table

11 shows) some sort of reasonably impressive correlation appears.⁶⁹ The

 

 

General Assembly. Senau .lJournal, 1830-31, p. 26. This form of taxation had been adopted in

1825 in order to help shift the fiscal burden of the state towards those whose property

appreciated in value as a result of the state's canal program.

67. The excluded counties are indicated in Ratcliffc. "Voters and Issues," 856. 858. 863. The

exception among the most "valuable" counties, namely l icking. may fall into the range of

counties whose voting behavior was influenced by "old party feeling": see Ratclifle, "Persist-

ence of the First Party System." For the mining area. see Sharp. Juaksonian. C' ersl\ 7Th

Bank, 171-73. and Ratclifle, "Voters and Issues." 853.

68. Ohio General Assembly, House Journal 1835-36, table B located between pp. 180 and

181. This was the first full assessment following the general realuation of 1X34. and the

assessments had been checked by the State Board of Equalization.

69. This result contrasts markedly with the figures presented in Fox, article, 159-161, which

apparently demonstrate the lack of such a correlation between the voting behavior and

• 25
 

30                                                               OHIO HISTORY

 

TABLE II

Correlations of Democratic Percentage Strength in

Presidential Elections with the per capita Valuation

of Land and Town Lots, 1828-1844.

Election

Year                                 Year of Valuation

1827      1830     1835    1840   1844

1828                    .376      .394      .439

1832                    .459      .457      .489

1836                                              .389 - .341    .213

1840                                              .415    .352 - .104

1844                                              .429- .318     .086

 

correlation may, of course, be accidental and needs to be subjected to

multivariate analysis: yet these economic correlations remain striking in

that they compare favorably with the ethnocultural correlations that I have

calculated so far for Ohio in the 1830s, and that Dr. Fox has reported for

the 1848 election.⁷⁰

 

economic characteristics of the counties. 'Ihe difference arises because Dr. Fox has used. not

the valuation of real property, but two alternative measures. The first is based on the

assessment of "Merchants' and Brokers' Capital and Money at Interest," which is surely a

most unjust measure to use, in this rural society, since it conceals qualitative as well as

quantitative differences between the counties. In 1835 the most isolated counties reported

minimal amounts of such capital, nearly one-half with under $55.000: one-third reported

more than double this amount, and one (containing Cincinnati) was assessed at S 1591.833.

Inevitably, the degree by which these figures vary could never be reflected in comparable

degrees of party strength, as measured by Pearson correlations, which are based (n interval

levels. Far more suitable would be Spearman rank-order correlations and when that test is

applied to the relationship between "Merchants' Capital, etc." in 1830 and Democratic

strength in 1832. the answer is .377 as compared with the coefficient of .172 produced by

Pearson's test. (The assessment for 1830 has been used simply because it is the only one I have

at hand. but it cannot differ greatly from that of 1832. Ohio General Assembly. Senate

Journal, 1/30-31, p. 26).

As his other measure. Dr. Fox employs the assessment of"Total Taxable Property" which

not only includes "Merchant's Capital, etc." (and so is not an independent test), but also

incorporates various forms of personal property. Yet the assessment of personal property was

notably incomplete and inaccurate, and by the 1840s every Auditor of State was complaining

of the inadequacies of the system. At last a new system of assessing personal property was

introduced in 1846, and the first satisfactory assessments reported in 1847. The Pearson

correlation coefficients between this assessment and Democratic strength in 1840 and 1844

are .381 and .387. respectively. General Assembly Executive Dlocument's for 184142. doc.

no. 3. p. 15: for 1842-43, doc. no. 6, pp. 23-25: and for 1847-48. pt. I, pp. 28-29. 71-73.

The valuations used in Table 11 may be found, as equalized by State officials. in the Senate

Journal. 1827-28, pp. 36-37. and in General Assembly Documents for 184041 (doc. 69) and

1844-45 (doc. 7). For 1830 and 1835, see n. 66 and n. 68 above.

70. Fox, dissertation. 310, 347. 383, 384. 390.

• 26
 

Politics in Jacksonian Ohio                                            31

 

Yet even if there was no case for saying that the party division of 1828-

1840 in part reflected some sort of economic division, the "ethnocultural-

ists" would still not be justified in assuming that the absence of a clear

socioeconomic cleavage between the parties necessarily proves that there

was no relationship between voter behavior and the financial and economic

issues debated by politicians and journalists. Surely the fact is that

constituencies of differing economic characters gave majority support to

the same party, and similar constituencies gave it to different parties,

simply because a majority of their voters had established their loyalties at a

time when the financial and economic issues connected with the banking

and currency problems of the 1830s were almost entirely absent from Ohio

politics. The very variety of the factors which in the 1820s had created the

pattern of party support ensured that it would not reflect a simple economic

cleavage.⁷' Thus by the time the banking and currency questions

reappeared in the 1830s, they had to be handled by political parties formed

without any reference to those issues; and the result was that many

constituencies continued to give majorities to a party which did not

represent the outlook of most people in that constituency on the leading

issues of the day.

This tension between established loyalties and present outlook on the

immediate issues of the day helps to explain why the Democratic party

became subject to such strong internal factionalism over currency and

banking questions after 1832. In the course of the middle 1830s an internal

struggle took place within the party, in Ohio as nationally, which by 1838

had resulted in the triumph of those most hostile to banks and paper money

over those Democrats who had greater respect for them. The latter "soft"

faction in many cases remained in the party; as men of talent, they often

gained important positions; and, on occasions, they used their influence

and their votes to help defeat some of the more extreme measures favored

by a majority of their party colleagues.⁷² Such men often came from the

more commercially advanced counties close to Cincinnati where a large

Democratic supremacy had been established in the 1820s as a result of

popular hostility to Henry Clay. Though that hostility had been associated

 

 

71. Hence my interpretation in tact endeavors to explain the very paradox which Dr. Fox

claims disproves it! Cf. Fox, article, 163, 165, with Ratcliffe, "Voters and Issues," 867. Dr. Fox

agrees that banking and currency problems were of little importance in state politics between

1824 and 1830, but argues, interestingly, that Ohio's confrontation with the national bank

between 1818 and 1821 resulted in diverging attitudes towards partisan organisation which

influenced the party alignments that emerged in the early 1830s. Fox, dissertation, 120-32.

149,426-54.

72. John M. McFaul, The Politics of Jacksonian Finance (Ithaca and London, 1972), 69-

216: Weisenburger, Passing of the Frontier, 277-84, 295, 308-13; Sharp, Jacksonians versus

the Banks. 3-24, 123-59. Sharp's account is very good in dealing with politicians who found

themselves trapped in this way on the wrong side of the party fence. See ibid., 14-16, 123-59.

• 27
 

32                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

with resentment against the deflationary policies pursued locally by the

Bank of the United States during the Panic of 1819, it is a mistake to

assume (as Sharp does) that there was a long-standing anti-bank tradition

in that region which persisted until the 1840s; if anything. experience of the

earlier Panic simply made Cincinnatians and their immediate neighbors all

the more aware of the need for adequate banking facilities and a sufficient

currency.³ This at least appears to have been the general opinion, yet

established party loyalties ensured that only Democrats would usually be

elected to office. These representatives, and those in similar constituencies,

often felt obliged to support "soft" policies, if only because they were aware

that the majorities enjoyed by the Democrats in their part of the state were

declining.⁷⁴

Indeed, it is such shifts in majorities that historians should look to if they

wish to determine whether the financial and economic issues of the period

had any impact on voters. If the voting pattern as a whole reflects decisions

of the 1820s. then it is the small shifts in that pattern that reflect the popular

response to the short-term issues of the 1830s and 1840s. If we begin to

measure these "swings" in the proportion of the vote that the Jackson party

won, then we immediately find that those southwestern counties turn out to

be shifting quite markedly against the Jacksonians in the course of the

1830s: and, in this respect, they are behaving like the other most commer-

cialized counties in the state. Where there are obvious exceptions to this

rule, they tend to be counties facing an influx of new non-British immi-

grants, like Stark County. 5 Again, from Table 11, one can see that the

general economic character of the various counties appears to have most

relevance to voting behavior in 1832, the year of the Bank Veto. This

suggests, at least tentatively, that in 1832 the.vote for Jackson tended to

decline in counties with higher property valuations (and therefore better

placed in the nation's marketing system) and to increase in more isolated

counties with lower property valuations. which were less dependent upon

good banking facilities. Such figures at least leave open the possibility that

economic problems had a measurable effect on mass political alignments.⁷⁶

However, Table 11 also suggests that economic considerations began to

 

 

73. Sharp, Jacksoniatns vers.us rlle Bunks, 177-78. For the demand for more banking

among "mechanics or small dealers" in Cincinnati itsell, see (incinnatiAdvcertiser, Januar 4.

1837.

74. Cl. Sharp, Ja( ksniuns ,ersul the Batik ,, IX4-88. Alternatively, "softs" occasionally

came from counties with overwhelming l)emocratic majorities marked by strong control

from the county seat.

75. Kilbourn. Ohio (iazueierw (1833). 450. I hope on another occasion to present my

calculations based on "swing." though they suffer from being restricted to county-level data.

76. C0. Fox, article. 157. V.O. Key. Jr., The Responsible Electrorate (Cambridge. Mass..

1966) emphasi/es the role of issues in influencing the voters who shifted sides, and indeed new

Voters. in the Presidential elections of 1936-1960.

• 28
 

Politics in Jacksonian Ohio                                          33

 

have less effect on voting behavior as the 1 840s proceeded and approached

the point from which the "ethnoculturalists" have made their calcula-

tions.⁷⁷ In that case the rise of cultural tensions in the 1840s began to affect

the character of a party system which had never directly or exclusively

reflected them, any more than it had been dominated simply by economic

considerations. It was because the second party system was marked by a

variety of ethnocultural and socioeconomic divisions that growing nativist

feeling was prevented from finding expression simply through one of the

existing major parties; and so, as the "ethnoculturalists" have shown,

religious and ethnic tensions played an important role in bringing about the

collapse of the second party system and the development of a new system of

party conflict in the 1850s.i'

 

Conclusion

Clearly, this line of argument is intended to restore the finan-

cial and economic issues debated by politicians and voters after 1832

to a central place in the explanation of political developments in the

Jacksonian era. It also endeavors to keep open the possibility that

Democratic voters shared the anti-bank views of the politicians, and that

banking and currency problems had a measurable effect on mass political

alignments. Merely to tolerate the possibility of such an "economic"

interpretation is, however, enough to make many historians assume that

the aim is to revive the worn-out doctrines of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.;

indeed, such has been the impact of his Age of Jackson on American

historiography that it is all too often assumed that all socioeconomic

interpretations must be trying to establish that the party system was

marked by socioeconomic class divisions-or else must be based on a

simpleminded belief that men are motivated by their economic self-interest

to which Schlesinger himself never subscribed.⁷⁹ However, it is perfectly

possible to construct an economic interpretation which accepts that

people's views on economic issues were often based on cultural attitudes,

that the political culture of a particular group could determine the way it

responded to problems of banking and currency. Marvin Meyers has

demonstrated the cultural significance of such issues: he sees at the heart of

The Jacksonian Persuasion a conflict between the ideals of the old, static,

 

77. Cf. Fox. dissertation. 310.

78. Holt, Forging A Majority, shows that the party cleavage in Pittsburg in 1848 reflected a

mixture of ethnocultural and socioeconomic factors, but by the later 1850s it had shifted to

reflect primarily religious divisions.

79. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Jackson (London, 1946). See also Fox,

article, 156, and dissertation, 93, 98-99; Formisano, Birth of Mass Political Parties, 31-55:

Edward Pessen. Jacksonian America. Society, Personality and Politics (Homewood. 11..

1969). This article, like my earlier article on 1824, presumes to say nothing about socioeco-

nomic class differences.

• 29
 

34                                                         OHIO HISTORY

 

agrarian Republic and the social and cultural changes being wrought by the

rapid economic transformations of the nineteenth century. For Meyers,

this conflict created a tension within the people of the time, as they found

themselves condemning the very business practices that they themselves

used in their workaday lives; yet, as John William Ward has suggested, this

paradox may have lain not so much within all "Jacksonians" as between

distinctive groups of differing outlook.'^o At this point ethnocultural and

economic interpretations at their best can come close together, for William

G. Shade has effectively argued that the issues associated with banking

were closely related to the attitudes of particular broadly-defined ethnocul-

tural groups."

Granted then that political attitudes were commonly determined by the

communal experiences of identifiable groups living and often worshipping

together; but were the experiences which fostered a political culture

necessarily always ethnocultural in character? For has not Lee Benson

persuasively argued that the ecology of an area, the character of local

economic activity, and the relative isolation of a place or its integration into

the market economy can also encourage the development of a particular

political world-view?82 What is more reasonable than to propose the

hypothesis that the ways in which Americans responded to the many

changes that were taking place around them in the Jacksonian period were

determined not only by the attitudes common among their ethnocultural

group, but also by the attitudes fostered by the economic experiences of the

communities or localities in which they lived? After all, there is some

modern social science research which suggests that a person's political

behavior can be influenced much more by the socioeconomic status of the

neighborhood he lives in than by his own socioeconomic status; and there is

much evidence that different parts of Ohio (and the United States)

experienced some marked changes of socioeconomic status in the decades

after 1815.83

Such an interpretation has the great advantage of relating voter behavior

 

 

80. Marvin Meyers, TheJacksonian Persuasion: Politics and Belief'(Stanford. 1957);John

W. Ward, "The Age of the Common Man," in John Higham. ed., The Reconstruction of

American History (New York. 1962). 95.

81. Shade, Banks or No Banks, 17-19, 133-44. The same point is recognized by Sharp, even

though in general he emphasizes primarily economic factors; see, for example, his treatment

of the Ohio Germans in Jacksonians versus the Banks, 178-84. See also Kelley "Ideology and

Political Culture," 541-42.

82. Lee Benson, Turner and Beard: American Historical Writing Reconsidered(Chicago,

1960). 215-28.

83. David R. Segal and Marshall W. Meyer, "The Social Context of Political Partisan-

ship," in Mattei Dogan and Stein Rokkan, eds., Quantitative EcologicalAnalysis in the Social

Sciences (Cambridge, Mass., 1969). 217-32. Some of the economic experiences in Ohio are

well summarized by Sharp, Jacksonians versus the Banks, 160-89.

• 30
 

Politics in Jacksonian Ohio                                        35

 

to political developments. The ethnocultural interpretation in general

ignores the relationship between election results and the formulation of

governmental policy, and assumes that politicians could make decisions

without worrying about their effects on the voters. On the whole, the

"ethnoculturalists" are the ones who "watch what we do instead of what we

say." or who, at least, refuse to take seriously most of what the politicians

and journalists were actually saying.⁸⁴ In fact, however, in the course of the

1830s the Ohio Democratic party moved from a somewhat ambiguous

position on questions of banking, currency, and economic development to

a much more radical and doctrinaire standpoint which the Whigs de-

nounced as fatal to the prospects and prosperity of the state. By the early

1840s Democratic policy threatened not only the continuance of the state's

banking system, but even the successful completion of the canal program.

Why were such policies adopted? Why did most Democratic legislators

vote for them with such proven regularity?⁸⁵ Why did the people back home

continue to re-nominate and re-elect them? Was it because the policies were

arrived at as a result of interactions between the grass roots and the

decision-makers? Was it because, after the experience of rapid economic

change which marked Ohio after 1825, the people of certain political

cultures, living in particular communities and already attached to one of

the great parties, would stand nothing less?

Such questions, however, are not even admitted by some ethnocultural

historians. They regard the proposition as "established" that the issues

debated by politicians did not influence voters, that the level of political

awareness among voters was very low. Yet little systematic research has

been carried out into the question using evidence contemporaneous with

the 1820s and 1830s; they are simply reading back into the Jackson period

the results of some modern survey research and the theorems of modern

political sociology. Surely the historical evidence should be examined

before the proposition is regarded as established, for, as Walter Dean

Burnham has argued, there are as yet no grounds for assuming that at all

times and places there must be an "absence of any clear issue cognition in a

mass electorate."⁸⁶

Similarly, it seems to be assumed that because voting behavior in the late

nineteenth century was largely dominated by "the cross of culture," so it

 

 

84. Fox. article, 168, 170.

85. Herbert Ershkowitz and William G. Shade, "Consensus or Conflict'? Political Behavior

in the State Legislatures During the Jacksonian Era." Journal of American Hi.tory. L.VIII

( 1971), 591-62 I, which reveals "sociocultural differences" among Ohio legislators compatible

with the line of interpretation proposed in this article. Cf. Fox, article, 155.

86. Walter D. Burnham, "Quantitative History: Beyond the Correlation Coefficient,"

Historical Method.s Newsletter, IV, (1972) 63, 65. Cf. Formisano, Birth of Mass Political

Parties. 3-14: Fox. article, 161, 169.

• 31
 

36                                                         OHIO HISTORY

 

must have been before 1850: indeed, the "ethnoculturalists" assume that

they are describing the inevitable characteristics of the mass political

parties which dominated American politics from the I 830s onwards. Yet it

cannot be argued that the mass party system was a new development in that

decade until the political system of the previous thirty years has been more

thoroughly researched: the politics of the Jeffersonian period, like Jack-

sonian politics later, may have been marked by many characteristics of a

mass party system and at the same time both could have been significantly

different from the politics of the period following 1850."⁷ Historians should

think carefully before generalizing from one period to another, and

especially before applying the precepts of modern political science and

sociology to earlier epochs; but equally they should beware the trap of

hailing as "new" developments which may well have been taking place in

earlier periods they have not yet thoroughly studied.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

87. For differing views of the early period, see Ronald P. Formisano, "Deferential-

Participant Politics: The Early Republic's Political Culture, 1789-1840," American Political

Science Review, LXVIII (1974), 473-87, and Ratcliffe, "Revolution and the Beginnings of

Party Politics."

• 32