Key Terms
- American System
- the program of federally sponsored roads and canals, protective tariffs, and a national bank advocated by Henry Clay and enacted by President Adams
- code of deference
- the practice of showing respect for individuals who had distinguished themselves through accomplishments or birth
- corrupt bargain
- the term that Andrew Jackson’s supporters applied to John Quincy Adams’s 1824 election, which had occurred through the machinations of Henry Clay in the U.S. House of Representatives
- Five Civilized Tribes
- the five tribes—Cherokee, Seminole, Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw—who had most thoroughly adopted Anglo-American culture; they also happened to be the tribes that were believed to stand in the way of western settlement in the South
- Kitchen Cabinet
- a nickname for Andrew Jackson’s informal group of loyal advisers
- log cabin campaign
- the 1840 election, in which the Whigs painted William Henry Harrison as a man of the people
- monster bank
- the term Democratic opponents used to denounce the Second Bank of the United States as an emblem of special privilege and big government
- nullification
- the theory, advocated in response to the Tariff of 1828, that states could void federal law at their discretion
- rotation in office
- originally, simply the system of having term limits on political appointments; in the Jackson era, this came to mean the replacement of officials with party loyalists
- second party system
- the system in which the Democratic and Whig Parties were the two main political parties after the decline of the Federalist and Democratic-Republican Parties
- spoils system
- the political system of rewarding friends and supporters with political appointments
- Tariff of Abominations
- a federal tariff introduced in 1828 that placed a high duty on imported goods in order to help American manufacturers, which southerners viewed as unfair and harmful to their region
- Trail of Tears
- the route of the forced removal of the Cherokee and other tribes from the southeastern United States to the territory that is now Oklahoma
- tyranny of the majority
- Alexis de Tocqueville’s phrase warning of the dangers of American democracy
- universal manhood suffrage
- voting rights for all male adults
- Whigs
- a political party that emerged in the early 1830s to oppose what members saw as President Andrew Jackson’s abuses of power