This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years. And now it takes form in a new way.
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Morgan Chase Bank and a member of the IC subject to credit approval terms apply. And we return to Our American Stories. Up next, another installment of our series about us. The Story of America series with Hillsdale College professor and author of the terrific book, Land of Hope. We're talking about Professor Bill McClay.
Much like today, after America's founding, and much to the chagrin of people like George Washington. Two political parties waged war against one another. The Democrat-Republican Party and the Federalist Party. After the War of 1812, though, one of those parties would pass into oblivion. and that would set up another political revolution.
Let's get into the story. Take it away, Bill. It seems hard to imagine this today, but after only five presidential elections, one of the two major parties simply vanished. It was the Federalist Party. The Federalist Party was gone.
and the Republican Party. was ascendant. With President James Monroe running Essentially unopposed in his second term in 1820. Can you imagine anything like that today? And this made for relatively peaceful times.
And when you have running unopposed, that's a reason to call it. The era of good feelings, which is a phrase that um probably didn't apply to many old Federalists. They weren't feeling too good.
So there's a kind of Settledness, a kind of predictability, stability. when it came to presidential elections. The election of 1800 had been All full of tension and a sense that the world might be coming to an end, or at least the Constitutional Republic might be coming to an end. But those days were far behind. And actually, when you look back at it, except for John Adams, who was, of course, a New Englander and a Federalist.
There'd been a Virginian, not just a Jeffersonian, but a Virginian. occupying the White House. George Washington for two terms. Thomas Jefferson for two terms. James Madison for two terms and James Monroe.
for two terms. Adams, by the way, only served one term. But the country was changing. And the country was growing, and the Virginia dynasty, which overtook the New England. Dynasty, the Addams family.
would itself come to an end in what can be charitably called a chaotic election. There were four Republican candidates. John Quincy Adams, William Crawford, Henry Clay. and one political outsider. Andrew Jackson.
One of these candidates, William Crawford, withdrew from contention due to problems with his health. And in the event, in the election, Henry Clay, a very influential figure in the Congress. Henry Clay had the lowest Vote total both in the popular and electoral vote. But he was able to use this influence. to push John Quincy Adams into the presidency.
Much to be preferred to the wild man and unknown Joker card. Andrew Jackson. This was infuriating. to Jackson and his supporters. Yeah.
They accused and not without reason. The followers of Clay and Adams of a corrupt bargain, essentially a stolen election.
Now Adams was superbly equipped for the job. He not only was to the manor born as the son of a president who had served overseas. Uh, as a secretary to him, who knew many of the players in world politics of the day, had been secretary of state under Monroe. He had been an important figure in the formulation of American foreign policy, including the Monroe Doctrine associated with Monroe's names, but really a product of the mind of John Quincy Adams.
So, he was, in a sense, in terms of looking at his resume, you'd say, wow, this is the guy. But there were real problems within his party, and Adams. was unable to pivot. or adjust to the circumstances at hand.
Some things never change. Don't think that our politics today is uniquely dirty. It's really actually rather clean compared to the election of 1828, the election of 1800. other elections to come. This campaign of eighteen twenty eight was brutal.
Both sides. Caricature of the other side in crude ways, in ways that amounted to sort of character assassination. Adams's supporters portray Jackson as a crude, ignorant. Wild man from the frontier. Adams himself used the term barbarian.
to describe Jackson. While Jackson's supporters portrayed Adams As an elitist, Out of touch. Corrupted by his patrician, even aristocratic origins. Jackson was a man of the frontier. Part of his appeal was the fact that he had raised himself up from very hard scrabble beginnings.
In North Carolina to become the greatest American military hero of his time. His success In the War of 1812. stayed with him.
So He was a patriotic favorite. Appealing To the Americans. Who were shop owners, farmers? Mechanics. Use the term, it was used at the time: the workers, working class people, artisans.
They were the people who turned out in force and enthusiastically. to Carrie Jackson. over the top. And and so Andrew Jackson would win. In 1828, And by the sheer force of his personality, he created a new political party.
The Democratic-Republican Party. And of course this would eventually become shortened to the Democratic. party and it was It was the beginning of today's Democratic Party. Which has existed continuously since Jackson's time. It's had periods, low periods, very low periods, especially after the Civil War, but it's existed.
since Jackson's time. Mm.
So, Jackson's election was a bit of a revolution, although it was a revolution that picked up on and brought together elements that were already. In place, the talents and energies of an expanding nation and the Greater and greater expansion of the franchise, the sense of growing sense of America as a nation dedicated to equality. Equality only in certain limited ways from our perspective, but relative to the rest of the world, relative to previous American history. A definite expansion. of the scope.
of the average ordinary man. It was The Age of the Common Man Politicians needed to learn how to connect with the average man. You didn't do it by writing learned treatises. You needed to do it by appealing to popular taste, popular sensibility. races began to look as much like entertainment.
And carnival barking, and less the high-minded discourse about issues and policies alone that you might have found the Federalists. engaged in and even found at the time of the ratification. Of the Constitution, the debates over the ratification of the Constitution, very high level. discourse then. but not so much the political campaigning.
after Jackson's election. He taught the country a lesson. He taught Adams a lesson. The hard way. that to be high-minded and snobbish was not gonna work with this growing.
expanding and diverse electorate, often highly imperfectly educated electorate in America. That was the reality of the thing. It's a reality that's still with us. Mass democracy. requires a discourse, a language, mode of expression that can reach people where they are.
Instead of telling them, well, if you want to know what's going on, you've got to raise yourself to my level. You've got to go to college, you've got to get a degree, you got to learn how to talk like I do. No, you gotta learn how to talk like they do. And as always, a terrific job on the storytelling by Professor Bill McClay. He teaches at Hillsdale College.
The story of us. on our American stories. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years. And now it takes form in a new way.
The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint. It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage. Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semi-q. That's usmint.gov/slash S-E-M-I-Q.
Hot take. You can disagree with someone and not hate them. I know, really groundbreaking stuff. But lately, that line seems blurry because hate is rising across communities in all kinds of ways, and Jewish communities. Are you getting a lot of it right now?
You don't have to agree with people. You just have to not be awful. The Blue Square is a simple way to say, I'm with you, and I don't tolerate hate of any kind. Go to bluesquarealliance.org, get a pin, share it, and stand up. This January, Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship takes over the ocean.
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