Historians and political scientists continue to emphasize the connection between the expansion of the suffrage to almost all adult white males and Andrew Jackson's election to the presidency in 1828. That interpretation has the unfortunate effect of preventing general appreciation of what has been clear to specialists for decades, that the suffrage had significantly expanded and the United States become in many ways a functioning democracy long before 1815. Even before the Revolution at least 60 percent of adult white males had been able to vote, and that figure had expanded significantly by 1787. The traditional belief that voting must be restricted to those with a "stake in society" still persisted, but increasingly the stake was measured less by the freehold ownership of landed property than by measures of civic involvement such as taxpaying, militia service, and evidences of social contribution. Qualifications defined by wealth were gradually undermined by inflation, and restrictions on voting proved difficult to enforce in practice. After partisan differences became inflamed in the 1790s, turnouts rose to unprecedented—and sometimes unrepeated—levels. In the end this pressure from below created a situation in which even conservatives thought that honest elections required the legal recognition of what was in fact happening at the polls. There was no constitutional revolution in the 1820s, except in New York, and the growing political agitation that resulted in Jackson's election was nothing more than the application to presidential elections of what had become commonplace in many states before 1815.
THE formation of national political parties In the Jacksonian era is most fashionably described from the point of view of the politicians who formally directed the process. The story usually tells how politicians, in their quest for office and power, developed organizational machinery capable of winning elections in their various states, while at the national level they formed alliances with powerful political leaders in other states whose cooperation could enable them to win control of the presidency. Political issues are assumed to have been largely irrelevant to this process, partly because the political strife of the 1820s is considered to have been a contest of ambitious personalities rather than of issues and partly because it is now almost axiomatic that American political parties are catchall electoral machines designed essentially for nominating and electing candidates to office. Similarly, the attitudes and interests of the electorate are thought to have had little influence on party formation, since the politicians had apparently mastered the techniques of winning votes and could therefore lead their constituents. These assumptions have, if anything, been strengthened by recent studies of Jacksonian voting behavior, for these usually emphasize that the electorate divided along ethnic and cultural lines and was largely uninfluenced by the political debates and power struggles of the politicians. Leading historians of party formation accordingly have felt justified in ignoring political issues and the responses of the electorate and in slighting the importance of ideology and constituencies, even though they have run the risk of divorcing the growth of a political party from its immediate historical environment.' Donald). Ratcliffe is lecturer in history in the University of Durham, England.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.