 You are told that there are no longer parties among us. The line and the lamb lie down together in peace. Do not believe a word of it. The same parties exist now as they ever did. That was a letter from Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin around the time of the election of 1824 and joined as always here on the Liberty versus Power podcast, Dr. Patrick Newman, author of Cronyism, Liberty versus Power in America, 1607, 1849. Patrick, this election is very interesting because for the first time in a while, there's not, it seems like kind of a very clear and obvious error to who should be in this position. And also we have the political process itself changing a good deal while also dealing with the consequences and the environment of one party rule that we addressed in the last episode. Patrick, how should our listeners kind of be thinking about going into the election of 1824? Where is America at politically here? So America in the year 1824 is definitely at a crossroads, at least politically, where is it going to continue on with the National Republicans American system, you know, the Cronyism of central banking, protective tariffs, internal improvements, nationalization of Western territories and aggressive foreign policy. This is the system articulated by Henry Clay, okay, so he's sort of the Hamiltonian of the era, or is it going to go back to something along the lines of the original Republican party, perhaps even as far as what the old Republicans, John Taylor, John Randolph, et cetera, wanted. So this is not the era of good feelings. It's often described as this, the 1820s, just because there's one party. In fact, there was a lot of sectional strife. There was animosity. The panic of 1819 had enormous repercussions in terms of regarding various policy related to tariffs, internal improvements and central banking. And you're starting to see, okay, what is going to happen to the country now that Monroe's gone? Who's going to be the next person that will become president? Will there only continue to be one party, the National Republicans? So you see in 1824, the first time, really in American history, that you see a four-way race, initially five-way race between multiple candidates. They're all vying for this next position of the presidency. But the election of 1824 is very important, which is why I'm very happy that we're talking about it today. Well, that's one of the promising things here, right? As we've been talking about for several episodes now, just how bad this Jefferson Party has become as the Republicans, right? There is very little difference now. You now have the Republicans actively advocating for many of the good ol' Hamiltonian policies. And the good thing is there was a backlash to it, right? And so what we see here is a very interesting and significant political change that happens within this country as a byproduct of the election of 1824 and the election of 1828, some of the successes thereon after. When we go into the election of 1824, we've got four main characters among us in terms of candidates. We've got William Crawford, Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams. And the interesting one in this and the one that our listeners are probably least familiar of is William Crawford, who is seen as someone who could perhaps restore that romantic Jeffersonianism to the political process. Can you go into a little bit about Crawford in particular, since he's probably the least known of the other three? Yeah, so the election of 1824, initially there was not only those three, there was also John C. Calhoun. Right, right. He later just decided to run for the vice presidency, which he did win. But yeah, you have those five main characters and out of those five, you're definitely right that William Crawford is probably the least well known. One reason for this is just due to historical accident in the fact that a lot of his papers got burned in a fire a long time ago. So there hasn't really been many exhaustive biographies where someone's able to look through all of his correspondence. They kind of had to build it up through other sources. But William Crawford is incredibly significant. He was one of the old Republicans, so during the old Jeffersonian era, so he was at least initially fighting against all of Jefferson's sort of descent into cronyism after the Louisiana Purchase. He was a Virginia native. He did move to Georgia, right? And by the time of 1816, so after the War of 1812, William Crawford was pushed by many old Republicans to at least kind of carry on their ideals, right? Because Crawford, he was a limited supporter of central banking, protective, terrorist and internal improvements, but he still strongly believed in limited government and he was especially being very frugal, so limited spending, which is very important to the old Republicans. And he wanted to run in 1816. We spoke about this. He basically decided not to, and then he did again and Monroe won. And so Monroe became, he won the Congressional Caucus and then he became president for eight years. So during this time period, William Crawford most notably was, he was secretary of the Treasury. And he was running in 1824. He was most championed by someone who was really, I kind of think of the brains behind the Crawford candidacy, more so than William Crawford himself, especially at one point when William Crawford didn't really have much of a brain or he was sort of incapacitated during the election, which is just a great story that we'll get into. And that's Martin Van Buren, the little magician from New York. He's a senator from New York and he's really trying to recreate the old Republican sort of creed because Van Buren is upset at how the national Republicans have become very big government. And this has led to all sorts of cronyism surrounding the American system. He wants to bring back party divisions because this is, Martin Van Buren wasn't perfect. He wasn't a perfect ideologue or intellectual, but he was extremely politically shrewd and he wanted to sort of recreate a faction in favor of limited government. And he was pushing for Crawford as his preferred candidate. Yes, Van Buren, someone I definitely want to dive down a deeper end and particularly his theories of political parties and his organizational structure. But before we get into that, one of the things I think is interesting is that you have multiple members of the same administration going at each other within this election. You have William Crawford who followed Gallatin as the Treasury Secretary. I believe he started under Madison, if I remember correctly. Well, technically Gallatin left and then there was Alexander J. Dallas, right? He was the guy that he pushed for the central bank. Remember he was Aster's, Aster and Gerard's lawyer, right? And then Dallas had to leave I think for health and I'm not sure if someone minor took up that position but Crawford at the end of the Madison administration, he was in charge of the war department and that's where the funny story, regarding the Indians, the interracial marriage and the Irish and all of that. Then he became Secretary of the Treasury under Monroe. And then you have in the position of real power, right? The person you would naturally expect to be the next man up, the Secretary of State position, which is the position currently held by John Quincy Adams. One of the things that I think is kind of interesting in terms of the personality differences involved is that Clay and John Quincy Adams were both part of the negotiations for the Treaty of Ghent. And so they're here in a room together. And within this sort of personal dynamic, on the one side you had Henry Clay who liked his alcohol and liked his gambling and was this very flamboyant, womanizing sort of personality. And then you have John Quincy Adams who was very much a quiet, serious stern man who had these very deep diaries and just kept to himself. And so you have both of these that have experience within kind of their circles overlapping. And then alongside of all this, you have this upstart rising from outside of politics. Now that the great war hero, Andrew Jackson, who after the great success with the battle at New Orleans ends up becoming a bit of a thorn in the side of the Monroe administration. And so between Crawford and Adams and Clay and also Calhoun, all four of these figures have to react to Andrew Jackson kind of as this growing political force outside of this circle. Can you talk a little bit about Jackson kind of going into this and the consequences of some of his adventures down the Florida territories and the international disputes that kind of came about with some of his actions? Yeah, so just to sort of recap, like you said, I'm glad you're bringing it up. So everyone, it was really the election of 1824 initially was kind of wrangling, if you will, between the various factions in the Monroe administration. Who is gonna follow the top boss, so to speak, right? Because you had John Quincy Adams, he's Secretary of State, which was a position at the time that was really seen as a stepping stone into the presidency. Many other, the prior presidents, Monroe, Madison, Jefferson, they were all had all been previously Secretaries of State. You had Henry Clay, he's Speaker of the House, technically not in the administration, but still a very important force. Calhoun was Secretary of War, Crawford was Secretary of the Treasury. These are all important positions. And then you have Andrew Jackson, who's a Senator from Tennessee. He's seen as a military general, doesn't really have too much experience. He was briefly a Senator during the quasi-war in the late 1790s. And he kind of comes across to these guys as, all right, he's just running on popularity. He's the famous general after New Orleans. He's just running on his own popularity. This was the time, the beginning in the 1820s, when many states had started to embrace democracy more and shift away from having their state legislature choose its electors in the electoral college for the presidency. So Jackson, he was a people's man. And initially his record, after the war, he was always a belligerent, you could say. He was very involved in Indian relations and he himself later adopted an Indian child, but he realized that there were some problems between settlers and the Indians and the Indians claiming large tracts of land. Anyway, the long story short, he sort of goes off of, he invades Florida when the Monroe administration clandestinely gave him support. They didn't want to give him outright support. They wanted to do it secret because they knew what type of political backlash this could bring. So sort of, okay, yeah, we're giving you the ability to do this, Jackson goes full hog. He takes over Florida. And the Monroe administration is very upset at this because one, a lot of people sort of realized that, okay, he might be gunning for something bigger than just being a general. Ironically, Adams defended Jackson because Adams, the secretary of state, really wanted Florida and he was okay with Jackson basically invading Florida and he justified it, saying the Spanish can't control their quote-unquote savages, the Indians and we need this for national security. So Jackson, he was mainly known for invading Florida during this time period. We later got Florida through the 1819 Adams-Ones Treaty and he would sort of establish a record for himself in the Senate. He was anti-bank, he was anti-debt, but he had also signed on to the protective tariff of 1824 because it would pay off the debt. His candidacy in 1824 was not very ideological. It was mainly based off of popularity and charisma, but he still was definitely a force to be reckoned with among the other contenders. And one of the things I think is interesting is that the Virginia dynasty, which has controlled politics for a very long time, even as sort of the ideals of what we think about when it comes to Jefferson and those Virginians kind of went away and a lot of propagandizing from Madison afterwards. But even though there's a lot of, you can draw some historical parallels between the Jacksonian era that we're about to go into and some of the romantic ideas of Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson was not a fan of Andrew Jackson, right? There's a quote, I feel much alarmed at the prospect of seeing General Jackson president. He is one of the most unfit men I know of for such a place. And so one of the things that's kind of interesting is that when you have these personalities involved, as you mentioned, John Quincy Adams, who's this very stoic, stern guy, was very defensive, what was a lot more defensive and respectful of Jackson than some of these other figures. Whereas Crawford, a Calhoun, even criticized Jackson during that period, which came out later during kind of a breakdown of relations between the two of them. Like it's Adams and Jackson starting off with, have one of the more respectful relationships. And the concern for John Quincy Adams or Henry Clay, Henry Clay, the person they feared was not Jackson, but Crawford. And it's very interesting just, since we know how this whole thing ends, that dynamic I think is very interesting. And of course, one of the reasons why they feared Crawford so much is because of the growing apparatus kind of being developed there. Before, can we touch on just a little bit about Van Buren's background? Because before he becomes, gets to DC, which he, in area, which he doesn't really like what he finds when he gets there. He really cuts his teeth within New York politics opposing the Clinton dynasty, right? And so he's a bit of an upstart. I mean, it's pretty interesting that Van Buren himself doesn't come from a very privileged family. Again, we're now getting into that second generation of American politicians. And here you have a guy who was the son of a tavern keeper who, he's not a war hero, right? He doesn't have anything that he has kind of earned his merit on sort of those historical battlefields and said he's done it by simply being a very shrewd calculator within the legislative process. Him, his group is called the Bucktails within New York politics. And one of the things that gives them power is that he's able to have great loyalty and discipline for those on his side. So they were able to make sure that whatever his little caucus agreed on, even if you didn't like the outcome, you were gonna vote lockstep with everyone else on this issue because doing so was the only way of being able to fight these very entrenched powers. And so when we get to where politics is now adapting, again, this coinciding with the political process itself becoming more democratic with a lot more, a lot more people, largely white men, having the ability to vote now, the necessity of really formalizing the party structure ends up being very important to how these political battlefields go on within the second generation of politicians. Can you touch on a little bit there again? What is Van Buren bringing with him when he signs on with a Crawford in 1824? Yeah, exactly. So great discussion, a good jumping off point we could talk about Van Buren. So Van Buren, he starts off in New York. By this time, the Clinton faction, so George Clinton is dead, he was the anti-Federalist governor in New York, he was Thomas Jefferson, he was the famous vice president who vetoed the bank, at least he didn't veto the bank, excuse me, he cast the tie breaking vote in the Senate in 1811 preventing its recharter. He had gone, his nephew DeWitt Clinton had been, it was in charge and he increasingly supported more and more of the National Republicans program. So DeWitt Clinton was very famous for the Erie Canal, which was the seemingly successful state-run public works program. And the Clinton faction, as you've mentioned, is sort of criticized by the emerging Bucktail faction for basically being too corrupt, too pro-big government, they're losing kind of the cohesiveness of a party organization, it's more about the person at the top Clinton than the actual, any sort of principles that they stand for. So Van Buren organizes what comes to be known as the Bucktails, also the Albany Regency to create sort of a rival faction in New York that will stop Clinton and the state level. And this is kind of a jumping off point for him organizing a much larger organization on the federal level. So this is where Van Buren comes from. As I mentioned before, he's not a perfect ideologue. He is known as the little magician because he can be evasive or he's trying to straddle issues in order to keep his coalition alive. But it's fairly clear that he is still in the limited government direction. And regarding his main usefulness to the reformers, it's that he is the great Politico. He's the organizer. He knows how to get all the people together to create the party so to speak because the actual party as an institutional structure, I think is something a lot of people who are interested in politics now don't know about precisely because the party in the modern era has become so useless. This is why you always hear Democrats and Republicans are always the same. But parties back then, this was this huge thing because not only was this how your patronage was how you got people interested, but it was the ideology that really kind of drove people to one party versus another, right? So it's all about whipping up the enthusiasm in your own group and getting them to come out and vote. So this is where Van Buren sort of coming from. He wants to recreate the old Republican program and he sees Crawford as the best choice for that. At least after putting simply, he sees Crawford as the best choice for it. He's pushing for Crawford to become president in 1824. Two things complicate Van Buren's plan when it comes to Crawford. The first is that Van Buren's strategy was a shrewd strategy. He was trying to just recreate the congressional caucus. He said, all right, well, the Republican party has always nominated its people through the congressional caucus where congressmen just vote on who they want to be their candidate. So as long as I get Crawford to win in that, then well, we win because the federalists aren't gonna actually pose a serious threat. But by this time, because of all the other factions, they're saying, oh, no, no, no, you can't do that. You can vote on this, but that's just you. This is not actually going to speak for everyone, right? Because they knew Van Buren had the strength in Congress to actually pull it off. So Van Buren's main strategy didn't work. And the other thing was that Crawford got sick. He got a stroke and he was basically paralyzed. He had trouble speaking. There was movement issues, et cetera. And Van Buren, which I just find great, he's like, well, we're still gonna run. So I just think of this as sort of a weird- The original Joe Biden strategy. Yeah, it's the original Joe Biden strategy, or it's sort of like a weekend at Bernie. Weekend at Bernie's, right? That's the old move from the 80s. It's weekend at Van Buren's. He's propping up William Crawford and or it's the old Joe Biden strategy where you have someone who probably shouldn't be running for president, but the powers that be are, well, still pushing you to run for president. It was both Van Buren doing, but he was trying to reform the system. So I give him credit for that. And so that kind of hurt the Crawford candidacy or the Van Buren strategy in 1824, but he played a much bigger role after the election of 1824. Yeah, right. And it's interesting because one of the things I love is that a debilitated Crawford still gets more electoral votes in Henry Clay, which considering how much I love Henry Clay, I just kind of, that is something that's good karma just working against the, you know. That is really, that really had to be a blow. Like knowing that Crawford was debilitated, yet you still lost to him. He got third and you got fourth like in the act. That's just gotta be tough. Like that's, you know. Particularly, some of the descriptions that I've read in some of these other books, like, I mean, this wasn't just like a stroke. We're like, you know, you come back a little bit slower afterwards. Like, no, like, this was bad. He was out. And so one of the things I think is interesting about the way that Van Buren's views politics that I think is part of all of this is that he views this process as being absolutely vital for a republic to have success. I've got a quote here that parties, they rouse the sluggish to exertion, give increased energy to the most active intellect, excite vigilance over the public functionaries, and prevent that apathy which has proved the ruin of republics. And so he, you know, this entire idea that we must infuse, we must create a structure that will engage with the normal people, inform them of the right way of thinking about things, you know, instructing them ideologically, and then organizing them in a way to act afterwards. I think in 1824 is kind of the original run for what's going to become the Jacksonian revolution in four years from now. But I think it's interesting though, because when we think about this Jacksonian party, it really begins not with Jackson, but with Van Buren, with this original run with Crawford. Absolutely, absolutely. And so now let's get a little bit into some of the sectional differences here because, you know, obviously, you know, with the way this entire thing plays out, Henry Clay, for the most part, is an afterthought in this entire process, though he becomes very powerful here in a moment. But when it comes to actual popular support, Clay is a distant force within this. Did he carry a state? I think I could tuck you, yeah. Yeah, he did, he did. Okay, but Jackson has support within the South, much of the South and the West. Crawford is supported within Virginia and Georgia, getting the backing of some of those old school Jeffersonians in Virginia and then himself being a product of Georgia. John Quincy Adams, obviously, has access within those old federalist parts within New England and that era. And again, I think it's just interesting here where, you know, for the first time, you know, this isn't a binary process. You have four competing factions with their own regional strengths, you know, now going after this seat of power, which leads us to a solution that is not solved through the election process. Yeah, so it turns into, doubt to be a four-way horse race because once Jackson actually announces his candidacy, Calhoun basically realizes he's out. And this just causes him to run for the vice presidency. And so then you have the results of the election where Jackson commands a plurality in the electoral college and in the popular vote, but he doesn't have a majority. So what happens after that is it goes to a House overtime election. Ironically, when the founding fathers were devising the Constitution, they actually thought that most presidential elections would go into this overtime election where basically each state delegation in the House of Representatives would vote and cast their choice for the presidency. At least as the way the standard narrative goes, they did not foresee the rise of political parties where you would only have like two people running or two major people running. They always thought it would be a lot of people and then the House would always decide. Ironically, the only two times, the only two elections in which the House actually decided the election of 1800 and the election of 1824, the country got very close to getting, the country was enraged and or was on the verge of a revolt in case of the election of 1800 when the federalists were trying to deny Jefferson the election, the presidency and swing it to Burr or in the election of 1824, which a lot of people were upset at over the corrupt bargain, which we'll talk about. So I always just find that funny. It just shows you how much the actual presidential elections now are very different from how they were envisioned to be before. So during this process, Jackson, he's in the lead, but he doesn't have enough. So after the election process was amended in the 12th Amendment, the top three candidates go to the House. So they go to the overtime election where the state delegations will vote on who will be president. In poor Henry Clay, he loses out to a man who has a debilitating stroke. So he comes in fourth and he cannot participate or he cannot at least run. So he lost the playoff game. He's got to watch the rest of it on the sidelines, right? But he does realize he can at least decide who will become president. Because he has enormous influence in the House being the speaker of the House. And he sees that, okay, he hates Crawford and he doesn't like Jackson. So he sees that John Quincy Adams is going to be his preferred choice. So basically what Clay and Adams agree on in late December 24, early January 25 is sort of a, I'll scratch my back, you scratch, excuse me, I'll scratch your back, you scratch my back. Which is, look, make me Adams, I'll make you, Clay says to Adams, I'll make you president in the House. If you make me your secretary of state with the implication that as being secretary of state, Clay will become president in eight years from now. So basically Adams and Clay decided to sort the popular will, so to speak, to choose the person who did not get the plurality in either the popular vote or the electoral college and instead give it to Adams. Yes, again, Clay's able to really, he plays this off very well behind the scenes. The problem is, however, is that in many ways, because it is so obvious what Clay does here, this ends up being a mark against him in many ways. This is not the last time Henry Clay runs for this office, but he clearly kind of obviously outs himself as part of the sort of cabal style politics that people don't particularly like. And one of the things I think is interesting as well is that when it comes down to the congressional votes, the state of North Carolina actually flips from Jackson to Crawford in some of those backroom deals there. So again, this entire thing plays off very, very interestingly. One of the other dynamics to it is that there's a lot to be said about Jackson's view of running for president during this time. Like he's kind of like, while there's always a little bit of this game, particularly during this period, that you're never running, right? It was seen as being beneath you if you actively campaign. Jackson might have been less interested in the presidency than some of the others, particularly someone like Clay. But after this, he now feels that this position was stolen from him in these backroom deals, where Clay in particular was identified as one of the ring leaders too, which kind of, the one person who, you don't really want to end up on their enemies list is Andrew Jackson. He's someone that can actually make you pay for that down the line in a variety of different ways. But so all of this ends and now we have, I think it is the proper conclusion of this era of good feelings that the son of the first partisan federalist president is now the last representative of this old Republican party that had just slowly corrupted into itself. And then kind of right off the get go, John Quincy Adams begins with, we now have the state of the union address and it's a big speech given in front of Congress at the time, it's a written statement by the president to Congress. But right from the get go, while there is something to be said about the, obviously there's a tremendous amount of hypocrisy within the language used by people like Madison and Monroe in the past, there's some of these rhetorical games going on where they still kind of paid lip service to these old school Jeffersonian values while still acting like a Hamiltonian. Well, now like John Quincy Adams goes full mask off and outlines, no, we are going to use the government to make investments for the common good. We're going to build up universities like they have in Europe. And that's another one of these things here that I think is worth noting is that John Quincy Adams is a man who has spent most of his adult life not in the United States. So he's a product of American aristocracy sent off to Europe with a very long and distinguished diplomatic career but very much a product of Europe. And so here he comes and he outlines a very explicit plan to just amplify all of these internal improvements and other cronious projects right from the get go. Yeah, absolutely. You know, the Adams is a firm proponent of the American system. So he supports central banking. He supports protective tariffs, especially now that by this time in the 1820s, New England has fully moved away from becoming sort of mercantile, shipping interests to supporting full-on manufacturing. This is a lot of this is from the Boston Associates, many of whom donated to John Quincy Adams election. He's also a firm proponent of internal improvements to sort of bind the country together. And so he starts off. So not only are a lot of people kind of upset at how that election turned out, that the overtime house election and particularly at the speed, most people thought that it would be something that would take several rounds of balloting. But what happened is basically Adams and Clay, more or less, went to about six state delegations and they were able to basically ply their, the relevant congressman with special favors and oh, okay, if you vote for Adams, then we'll do something for you, et cetera. These are all these mini little corrupt deals. And so then Adams becomes president that way. So people are upset at that. And then he, as you mentioned, he gives this speech, his opening speech and he's talking about all the stuff the government's going to do and how they need to, we need to fund national observatory and all these internal improvements. And he has this famous line, I believe it's something along the lines of liberty is power. He says that. So it's like he's contradicting the liberty versus power theory. And this caused Jackson many years later in a veto, he said money is power, which is, I like that. He's sort of commenting on old, old John Quincy Adams getting him after all those years. And so a lot of people were upset at that. So Adams starts off as administration, basically realizing that he doesn't have much of, at least a significant part of Congress's support. People are upset at him in 1826. He loses the midterm elections to sort of this rising Jacksonian coalition. This is the first time that the party in power had lost control of Congress or the sitting president had and in an interim election. So this is pretty big. And Adams and Clay, they're working together trying to continue to enact their American system. But the problem is Jackson's upset, as you mentioned. Jackson was furious at this. He thought that this was the ultimate treachery. He had this famous line, something along the lines of, he said the Judas of the West has closed the contract and has received this 30 pieces of silver. His end will be the same. So he's basically like, I'm taking you out, Clay. You're like, how dare you do this to me? And I'm taking you out, Adams, as well. And so you've got Jackson, who's very upset. He wants to run in 1828. And Martin Van Buren recognizes a profit opportunity because he says, look, Jackson, you know, Jackson, your campaign in 1824 is mainly based off of your personal popularity. Why don't we bring you under the banner of the old Republican creed? You're sympathetic to it. You were very close with the fan you'll make in of North Carolina, one of those old Republicans of years past, your anti-bank, anti-central banking, anti-debt, limited government man yourself. Why don't we run your campaign on these principles which will get even more people interested? So Van Buren starts to embark upon this really, really tough, but I would say, and Murray Rothbard would say as well, a heroic process of organizing this entirely new coalition and doing it in two years. So the Republicans back in the 1790s, they had started to organize in the mid-1790s. Jefferson ran in 1796, he lost that. Then they really started to organize in 1800 and then they won that. Van Buren basically does this all within one election cycle and so he's able to deliver Jackson the victory. And so this is a very important thing that I don't think a lot of people understand because in order to succeed in politics, you have to have the right political infrastructure. You have to have the right party system and Van Buren recognizes this. He recognizes the need to build coalitions. He recognizes the need to bring all of these people together under the banner of Jackson and fighting the American system, et cetera. And this is exactly what he does. So he starts to enlist all of the various factions and he brings them under the banner of Jackson. So Murray Rothbard always spoke very highly about Van Buren's efforts. He was very influenced by Robert Romini, a Jacksonian historian. And I think that Martin Van Buren's creation of this new party is extremely important, particularly because it's still the modern democratic party. The same party organization, the Democrats Now, that was basically created by Van Buren. Now, the party stood for very different things. In fact, probably like a complete 180, it was supposed to be a reform party designed to limit government. But the creation of that party is absolutely Van Buren's doing and he should get an enormous credit for that. And some of the infrastructure that he recognized was important is that you had to have a series of newspapers, because the newspapers informed and gave the partisan perspective of the current events. And if you're not engaging with the common people, if you're not having, they viewed the party process as a two-way street. So you have the party line that's going out there, that's organizing, that's inspiring people within their own communities to get everyone together to make sure they show up to vote. The purpose of the political process was it sort of the most vulgar aspects of politics? In today's parlance, partisanship is like a slur. At the time, it was simply a way of trying to make these things matter, to actually make the ideas a potent part of the political process by having a system of discipline. And this plays out Rothbard's commentary on this process. I know there's some great chapters in the Progressive Era book, discussing it within the context of the third American party system, but sort of similar dynamic there. These aspects I think are really so interesting. And then also with the creation of this broader network of newspapers is when we start having come on to the scene, a lot of these intellectuals that we mentioned a little bit last episode and will continue to play a role within the Jacksonian era where it provides a platform for individuals thinking about economic ideas, thinking about the proper relationship between state and individual. Thinking about these aspects, newspapers were the format to get your ideas out there in a popular way. And so we can take these parties for granted now because this is what we've had ever since Van Buren started. But at the time though, it was a means of getting people that now have the ability to vote to inform them of these things. And that educational aspect is easy to sort of caricature Jackson as just sort of this blood-soaked monster and whatever, but ultimately the Jacksonian success really was a triumph of ideas. Again, with the use of this nationally popular figure as a vessel to promote a very deep and important agenda, particularly from this perspective of liberty versus power. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm glad you brought that up because my book, Chronyism, I talk about how one these the Jacksonians utilized the newspaper to try and communicate their party ideas to the common man. I'm sure we'll talk more about like the Washington Globe and the other Jacksonian periodicals and intellectuals who were trying to communicate the message to the average person. And really that was how sort of this new battle between liberty versus power would be fought now because Jackson, at least excuse me, before they only had the one party system of the National Republican, so it was just power. And that's why you saw this huge increase in cronyism develop sort of snowball during the Jefferson administration and continue in the 1820s during the so-called era of corruption. But then once you see this democratic party arise, and I know it's gonna be hard for our listeners that the Democrats, they're the good guys, they're the reform coalition. Completely different back then. You know, they're fighting against power, the National Republicans who later morph into the wigs of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John Quincy Adams, et cetera. So you see this liberty versus power dynamic, right? You have power up here and then the liberty sort of comes back after the election of 1824. And especially in the election of 1828 where Jackson, he's riding on this reform, retrenchment in the economy program and he totally demolishes John Quincy Adams in this election. So you see, thanks to Van Buren, the development of the appropriate infrastructure that allows the Democrats in the succeeding administration of Jackson and beyond to go farther than what the Jeffersonians did and actually start to take down some cronyism in significant ways. So to sort of tear down the American system because I'm very sympathetic to the Jeffersonians. I think that Thomas Jefferson dropped the ball in a couple of areas. His first administration was pretty good, but it quickly went to crap after that. In his second administration in Madison, the Jacksonians get a lot more stuff done. And I think this is something that gets overlooked and this credit should be given to Jackson. Credit should be given to Van Buren. Credit should be given to all the other Jacksonians which I'm sure we'll talk about. They weren't perfect, but they actually did, in the years they were empowered, dismantled the American system. They were by far the most successful libertarian, laissez-faire, free market, political force in American politics, both past and present, probably won't be repeated unfortunately. But so this political process, politics is very important when you're studying economic legislation because that's actually how the economic legislation gets passed. So thanks to Van Buren creating this necessary infrastructure, you're actually going to see the Jacksonians accomplish a lot more than what the Jeffersonians couldn't do in Jackson's administration. I also love this dynamic and I think it is very, again, particularly given the time period. But this really is like your average American saying, we don't need you, you fancy pants, New Yorker, New England elite. Even back then, you still had this dynamic where now that we're in this era and it's important to understand that often you hear the phrase Jacksonian democracy and things like that, the democratic aspect of this was independent of Andrew Jackson. It wasn't that Andrew Jackson came in and made changes to give the common man more power in the political process. The changes that were happening to that political structure helped fuel a Jacksonian campaign where he might've otherwise had no chance if it was the old school congressional caucus, very much controlled system. But I also just love that dynamic going from a Quincy Adams to Andrew Jackson just really reflects the changing of the times there. We're not gonna dive too much into the Adams administration itself. Yeah, I think a large part because it got a lot of the issues with it have been very common themes at this point in terms of the internal improvements and all this sort of stuff. I did want to point out one particular scandal that John Quincy Adams had. He bought for the White House a billiards table, which might be the most interesting thing about John Quincy Adams. That was his man of the people moment right there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he was attacked for bringing in gambling equipment into the White House. Again, that will be the strongest point in his favor, in my own opinion. I also think it's interesting that there's this great, great quote. There's a fascinating book on this period called The Birth of Modern Politics, Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, the election of 1828 by Len Hudson Parsons, which is a fun read. But going into this dynamic between Clay and John Quincy Adams, and again, when Henry Clay was made Secretary of State, that was one of those decisions that hurt both men because of how vivid the corruption was. But I did like this. It talks about John Quincy Adams' opinion of Clay generally. The quote was, as for Clay, quoting Quincy Adams, like almost all the imminent men in this country, Clay was only half educated. In addition, he had a reputation as a gambler, a drinker, and a womanizer, but Clay had large and liberal views of public affairs and that his principles relative to internal improvements would produce results honorable and useful to the nation. And I think it's interesting only because again, this shows the mentality that someone like John Quincy Adams was operating with during this time period is that they really believed that in spite of, perhaps all the internal failings, what they viewed as personal failings of Henry Clay, the fact that he was someone that would probably be fun to go out with, they really saw that interest in getting over that successful changing of the constitution by the Jeffersonians, at least in the romantic period of making that constricting document. Someone like John Quincy Adams saw someone like Henry Clay being willing to be as enthusiastic within this American system, within this system of internal impairs and internal improvements and all that money funding in. They thought this was vital to the well-being and cohesion of the country. And I think you still see this very similar dynamic play out in modern politics today where you still have a political process. Again, the regime itself believes that it's important to keep funding and fueling all these great projects of the regime because by their power, they can make otherwise backward words, picks and the uneducated and whatever, they can kind of bring them into a more noble and proper way of doing things. They really were motivated by this crusade to keep this system in place. And again, that's why the success of Andrew Jackson with a Martin Van Buren coming in and knocking out this entire process. These two elections are just absolutely fascinating from historical perspective. And I think they are vital to understand, they're vital for us to understand for anyone interested in political solutions to what we have now. Because even though 1824 might as well be 5,000 years ago rather than just about 200 in terms of the way we think about the world, there's still very much is this aspect where a lot of these aspects of this populist politics are kind of just baked into us, it's kind of that kind of inhuman emotion and the way that we respond to things. Some of this stuff is timeless, in spite of how far back we're really going to here in terms of political strategy. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the election of 1824 has a lot of parallels with the modern era. Again, a lot of people were complaining about the election of 2020 as being corrupt or stolen, et cetera. And that's a whole separate conversation. Obviously, but it still is in many ways echoing the election of 1824 and how that was a corrupt bargain and the election was stolen, so to speak. Because Adams and Clay, I'm glad you brought up the democratization issue. Adams and Clay drastically misunderstood the situation they were in, that it was in the situation of decades prior where most people didn't vote. This suffrage of your average person was seen as a right and this was very, very much an affront to them that the popular will, quote unquote, would be thwarted basically through this over time election finagling and all of that. And so it is important, I think, to understand the election of 1824, not just from the perspective of American history, but also from the modern era. And I wish more people would understand it because I think history doesn't repeat itself, but it certainly does rhyme. And I personally think we're due for another overtime house election sometime. And I hope that does happen because the country would probably just get destroyed, but it's a lot harder now in the modern two-party era, but I think some way, somehow it will happen. Who knows? One last thing, just because it does, it's something that does have an impact on Jackson in a variety of ways going forward. When we're looking at the election of 1828, something else that's notable and perhaps very modern in many ways is that it was a very nasty election. The most famous incident, of course, is the attacks on Andrew Jackson's wife, Rachel, who was previously married, believed that her husband had divorced her, married Andrew Jackson, then it came out that she was not legally divorced, and so they accused her of polygamy and all this sort of stuff. She ends up dying shortly after here, and so that's something that Andrew Jackson, again, a man you do not want to tick off, obviously is very emotional about. You had attacks, they had this mailer that was just very bold of highlighting coffins and crediting Andrew Jackson, kind of trying to hold him, attack him for execution of deserters, during some of his military crusades. They attacked him with the negative opinions that Thomas Jefferson had of him. So this was also a time where, again, part and partial to the democratization of the political process, we're going from a time where you do not, where you even, it is seen as beneath your dignity to even actively campaign, we very quickly go from that in 1824 to outright mudslinging and dirty politics and all of these sort of tools of the trade going right there from the start, which again, I think it's just interesting and kind of seeing the history of American politics. Yeah, absolutely, the politics could be very bitter then, but bitter back then as it is now, partisanship was alive and well, but you would only see the battles continue on, especially once the Jacksonians were in power and they actually started to dismantle the system. But really with this election, in my own book, this is kind of like the last major election or sort of revolution as I call it, similar to the revolution of 1800, you have the revolution of 1828 because this is when the opposition had taken control and just like the Jeffersonians had the ability to reform the government, now with Jackson at the helm, the Jacksonians have the ability to reform the government. Well, so after several episodes of things getting worse and worse and worse in early America, we are now at something that I think, I know Patrick and I both believe is a positive event with the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828. I look forward with the next episode of going into some of the highlights of the Jacksonian regime and some of their own political theories and all that sort of stuff. So I tell that our next Jackson filled episode, this has been another episode of the Liberty versus Power podcast. If you do not have a copy yet of cronyism, again, you can get, there's a discount code at the Mises bookstore, which is code LVP. Please rate, review, like and share. We've gotten some good, great feedback about this series. Again, please hit me up on Twitter. If you'd like the show, send me an email, whatever. And thank you for watching. Patrick, any last words as we conclude here? No, nothing. I think he hit on all the points. You know, make sure if you haven't gotten your copy of cronyism, get it. And also make sure to follow both Phil and I on Twitter and comment about it and promote it. We really appreciate all of your feedback. I'm very grateful that there's this many people interested in what both of us have to say about American history. And this is especially the fact that there's a video of us. So if you're not scared with either of us on how we look, then this really shows that we're talking about important ideas. So again, thank you so much for listening to the podcast and I hope you are enjoying it. See you next episode. Oh geez, oh, oh, Tommy, Tommy, what are you saying?