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What happens when the political ideas and constitutional interpretations of one generation are replaced by those of another? This process has occurred throughout American history down to the present day as "we the people" change our minds about how we govern ourselves. Depicting a monumental clash of generations, Gerard Magliocca reminds us once again how our Constitution remains a living document. Magliocca reinterprets the legal landmarks of the Jacksonian era to demonstrate how the meaning of the Constitution evolves in a cyclical and predictable fashion. He highlights the ideological battles fought by Jacksonian Democrats against Federalists and Republicans over states' rights, presidential authority, the scope of federal power, and other issues. By doing so he shows how presidential politics, Supreme Court decisions, and congressional maneuverings interweave, creating a recurrent pattern of constitutional change. Magliocca builds on the view that major changes in American political and constitutional development occur generationally-in roughly thirty-year intervals-and move from dominant regime to the emergence of a counter-regime. Focusing on a period largely neglected in studies of such change, he offers a lucid introduction to the political and legal history of the antebellum era while tracing Jackson's remarkable consolidation of power in the executive branch. The Jacksonian movement grew out of discontent over the growth of federal power and the protection given Native Americans at the expense of frontier whites, and Magliocca considers such issues to support his argument. He examines Jackson's defeat of the Bank of the United States, shows how his clash with the Marshall Court over the Cherokee "problem" in Worcester v. Georgia sparked the revival of abolitionist culture and foreshadowed the Fourteenth Amendment, and also offers a new look at Dred Scott, M'Culloch v. Maryland, judicial review, and presidential vetoes. His analysis shows how the interaction of reformers and conservatives drives change and how rough-and-tumble politics shapes our Republic more than the creativity of judicial decisions. Offering intriguing parallels between Jackson and George W. Bush regarding the scope of executive power, Magliocca has produced a rich synthesis of history, political science, and law that revives our understanding of an entire era and its controversies, while providing a model of constitutional law applicable to any period.
This dual biography with documents is the first book to explore the political conflict between Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay - two explosive personalities whose contrasting visions of America's future shaped a generation of power struggle in the early Republic. ln a clear, even narrative that outlines the economic, social, technological, and political dynamics of the early nineteenth century, Watson examines how Jackson and Clay came to personify the opposition between democracy and development. Following the biographies are twenty-five primary documents - including speeches from the Senate floor, letters to the new president, and Jackson's famous bank veto - that parallel the narrative's organization and immerse students in the debates of the day. Also included are headnotes to the documents, two maps, portraits of both figures, a chronology, a selected bibliography, and an index.
Volume Three covers Jackson's reelection to the presidency and the weighty issues with which he was faced: the nullification crisis, the tragic removal of the Indians beyond the Mississippi River, the mounting violence throughout the country over slavery, and the tortuous efforts to win the annexation of Texas.
Focuses on key Supreme Court battles during Jackson's tenure--states' rights, the status of Native Americans and slaves, and many others--to demonstrate how the fights between Jacksonian Democrats and Federalists, and later Republicans, is simply the inevitable--and cyclical--shift in constitutional interpretation that happens from one generation to the next.
From New York Times bestselling historian H. W. Brands comes the riveting story of how, in nineteenth-century America, a new set of political giants battled to complete the unfinished work of the Founding Fathers and decide the future of our democracy In the early 1800s, three young men strode onto the national stage, elected to Congress at a moment when the Founding Fathers were beginning to retire to their farms. Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, a champion orator known for his eloquence, spoke for the North and its business class. Henry Clay of Kentucky, as dashing as he was ambitious, embodied the hopes of the rising West. South Carolina's John Calhoun, with piercing eyes and an even more piercing intellect, defended the South and slavery. Together these heirs of Washington, Jefferson and Adams took the country to war, battled one another for the presidency and set themselves the task of finishing the work the Founders had left undone. Their rise was marked by dramatic duels, fierce debates, scandal and political betrayal. Yet each in his own way sought to remedy the two glaring flaws in the Constitution: its refusal to specify where authority ultimately rested, with the states or the nation, and its unwillingness to address the essential incompatibility of republicanism and slavery. They wrestled with these issues for four decades, arguing bitterly and hammering out political compromises that held the Union together, but only just. Then, in 1850, when California moved to join the Union as a free state, "the immortal trio" had one last chance to save the country from the real risk of civil war. But, by that point, they had never been further apart. Thrillingly and authoritatively, H. W. Brands narrates an epic American rivalry and the little-known drama of the dangerous early years of our democracy.
Though he was best known as a politician, Henry Clay (1777-1852) maintained an active legal practice for more than fifty years. He was a leading contributor both to the early development of the U.S. legal system and to the interaction between law and politics in pre-Civil War America. During the years of Clay's practice, modern American law was taking shape, building on the English experience but working out the new rules and precedents that a changing and growing society required. Clay specialized in property law, a natural choice at a time of entangled land claims, ill-defined boundaries, and inadequate state and federal procedures. He argued many precedent-setting cases, some of them before the U.S. Supreme Court. Maurice Baxter contends that Clay's extensive legal work in this area greatly influenced his political stances on various land policy issues. During Clay's lifetime, property law also included questions pertaining to slavery. With Daniel Webster, he handled a very significant constitutional case concerning the interstate slave trade. Baxter provides an overview of the federal and state court systems of Clay's time. After addressing Clay's early legal career, he focuses on Clay's interest in banking issues, land-related economic matters, and the slave trade. The portrait of Clay that emerges from this inquiry shows a skilled lawyer who was deeply involved with the central legal and economic issues of his day.