Age of Jackson DBQ

Document 1


One of the most remarkable features of what I am witnessing every day is a perpetual struggle in both Houses of Congress to control the Executive—to make it dependent upon and subservient to them. They are continually attempting to encroach upon the powers and authorities of the President. As the old line of demarcation between parties has been broken down, personal has taken the place of principled opposition.…A prospect thus dark and unpropitious abroad is far more gloomy and threatening when we turn our eyes homeward. The bank, the national currency, the stagnation of commerce, the depression of manufactures, the restless turbulence and jealousies, the Missouri slave question, the deficiencies of the revenue to be supplied, the rankling passions and ambitious projects of individuals, mingling with everything, presented a prospect of the future which I freely acknowledged was to me appalling.

Document 2


When an artisan engages constantly and uniquely in the manufacture of a single object, in the end he performs this work with singular dexterity. But at the same time he loses the general faculty of applying his mind to the direction of the work. Each day he becomes more skillful and less industrious, and one can say that the man in him is degraded as the worker is perfected. As the principle of the division of labor is more completely applied, the worker becomes weaker, more limited, and more dependent. The art makes progress, the artisan retrogresses. On the other hand, as it is more plainly discovered that the products of an industry are so much more perfect and less dear as manufacture is vaster and capital greater, very wealthy and very enlightened men come forward to exploit industries which, until then, had been left to ignorant or awkward artisans. They are attracted by the greatness of the necessary efforts and the immensity of the results to be obtained. So, therefore, at the same time that industrial science constantly lowers the class of workers, it elevates that of masters.…Thus as the mass of the nation turns to democracy, the particular class occupied with industry becomes more aristocratic. Men show themselves more and more alike in the one, and more and more different in the other, and inequality increases in the small society as it decreases in the great.

Document 3


Everything has become an object of speculation…that is to say, cotton, land, city and town lots, banks, railroads.…Most of these speculations are imprudent, many of them are foolish. The boom today may and must be followed by a crisis tomorrow.…In the midst of all this speculation, while some enrich and some ruin themselves, banks spring up and diffuse credit; railroads and canals extend themselves over the country; steamboats are launched into the rivers, the lakes, and the sea; the career of the speculators is ever enlarging, the field for railroads, canals, steamers, and banks goes on expanding. Some individuals lose, but the country is a gainer; the country is peopled, cleared, cultivated; its resources are unfolded, its wealth increased…here, all is circulation, motion, and boiling agitation. Experiment follows experiment; enterprise follows enterprise.…Men chance their houses, their climate, their trade, their condition, their party, their sect; the States change their laws, their officers, their constitutions.…The influence of the democracy is so universal in this country that it was quite natural for it to raise its head among speculators.

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The planter, the farmer, the mechanic, and the laborer all know that their success depends upon their own industry and economy, and that they must not expect to become suddenly rich by the fruits of their toil…these classes of society…are the bone and sinew of the country—men who love liberty and desire nothing but equal rights and equal laws.…But…they are in constant danger of losing their fair influence in the government, and with difficulty maintain their just rights against the incessant efforts daily made to encroach upon them.…Unless you become more watchful in your states and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges you will in the end find that the most important powers of government have been given or bartered away, and the control over your dearest interests has passed into the hands of these corporations.…You have no longer any cause to fear danger from abroad; your strength and power are well known throughout the civilized world as well as the high and gallant bearing of your sons. It is from within, among yourselves—from cupidity, from corruption, from disappointed ambition and inordinate thirst for power—that factions will be formed and liberty endangered.…Providence has showered on this favored land blessings without number, and has chosen you as the guardians of freedom, to preserve it for the benefit of the human race.

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If we are to believe the assertions of members of Congress advocating a protective tariff, there is no other domestic industry than that employed in our great manufactories. According to their definition, tending spinning jennies in a stupendous brick building, six or seven stories high, some ten or twenty miles from home…is your only domestic industry for the young and blooming daughters of the land. “DOMESTIC INDUSTRY” is no longer represented by the ruddy matron sitting at her own fireside in her own home, turning the spinning wheel with one foot and rocking a chubby bantling [child] with the other, while singing it to sleep with lullabies.…“DOMESTIC INDUSTRY,” according to the tariff definition, is not that of the healthy mechanic or artisan, who works for himself at his own shop.…Domestic industry is nothing but bondage in its most oppressive form, labor in its utmost extremity of degradation. “DOMESTIC INDUSTRY,” according to the protective tariff cant, is that which separates wives, husbands, parents and children; annihilates every domestic tie and association, and renders all domestic duties subservient to the will, not of a husband or parent, but that of an unfeeling taskmaster, to whom the sacrifice of every moment of time, and every comfort of life, is wealth and prosperity.

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Document 7


We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.…The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her.…He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise. He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice. He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men—both natives and foreigners.…He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education—all colleges being closed against her.…He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah (God) himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and her God.…Resolved, that the speedy success of our cause depends upon the zealous and untiring efforts of both men and women, for the overthrow of the monopoly of the pulpit, and for the securing to woman an equal participation with men in the various trades, professions and commerce.