Clay and the American System

[Now, eight years after the tariff of 1824], we behold cultivation extended, the arts flourishing, the face of the country improved, our people fully and profitably employed…This transformation of the condition of the country from gloom and distress to brightness and prosperity, has been mainly the work of American legislation, fostering American industry, instead of allowing it to be controlled by foreign legislation…”

- Henry Clay, ‘In Defense of the American System’, February 1832

Jackson shared Clay’s devotion to national unity, but otherwise used executive power to quash managed expansion of growth and opportunity. Clay stood for one sort of capitalism, which was associated with the North but which the South needed too, in his judgment. Jackson stood for another sort of capitalism, which was associated with southern planters and homesteaders but which had little to offer the Northeast or the emerging Northwest. Clay ached for a vibrant future; Jackson clung to a dead Jeffersonian past.

- Historian Walter McDougall

1. What is Clay’s point of view regarding the role of government in domestic affairs? Would his opponent in the presidential election of 1832 agreed or disagreed with him? Explain.

2. Pick TWO of the following and explain whether Clay would have used as evidence to defend his assertion that the tariff took the country from ‘gloom and distress to brightness and prosperity’.

a. Establishment of the Second Bank of the United States

b. Panic of 1819

c. Canal Boom

d. Development of roads and steamboats

3. What is McDougall’s point of view toward the political ideologies of Clay and Jackson? Specifically, what does he mean when he stated that ‘Clay ached for a vibrant future; Jackson clung to a dead Jeffersonian past’? Select TWO of the following and explain how a historian would use it as evidence to confirm or challenge McDougall’s thesis.

a. Nullification Crisis

b. Indian Removal

c. Bank Crisis

d. Emergence of the Whig Party