 I only have two regrets. I didn't shoot Henry Clay and I didn't hang John C. Calhoun. One of the more infamous quotes from President Andrew Jackson, I went and asked about his regrets of his presidency and I thought that was a good jumping off point for today's episode where we are going to look into the nullification crisis, some of the victories over internal improvements and further deconstructing Clay's beloved American system, and to dive into this and more, I am joined as always by Dr. Patrick Newman, author of Cronyism, Liberty vs. Power in America. You can get a discount at the Mises store with the coupon code LVP. So now that we have shielded the book once again, Patrick, what should we be thinking about going into the successes of the Jacksonian Revolution outside of the big one, the war against the bank? What do you find interesting about this particular period when it comes to some of the other accomplishments of this era? So the Jacksonians, as we've discussed and as you mentioned, again, the Jacksonians are most famous for getting rid of the second bank of the United States, but they've also had many other notable accomplishments when it came to dismantling Henry Clay's American system of protective tariffs, internal improvements in central banking. So they basically got rid of not only the central bank plank of the American system, but they also got rid of the other two planks, the Jacksonians through Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, who's kind of an ex-Jacksonian, but he's still a Jacksonian at heart, and James K. Polk, these four presidential administrations, the Jacksonians instituted the independent treasury. They got rid of protective tariffs. They instituted relative free trade tariffs, and they also downsized the government spending. They reduced federal involvement with internal improvements. They promoted general incorporation laws on the state level, and they reduced the public debt. So when it comes to the American system, at least the economic policy of the American system, the Jacksonians, they were a stunning success. It took them a couple presidential administrations, and unlike the Jeffersonians, the Jacksonians did succeed in reducing cronyism in implementing many reform policies. And, you know, I think emphasizing that, you know, when we think about Jacksonian policy, it really does transcend Jackson's man. We've talked about obviously some of the other leading figures, but, you know, we're also talking about the presidency of Martin Van Buren, a Polk later on, and some of these other figures. But also, you know, there is, and this is in the past episodes, but I want to kind of dive deeper into it now. You know, this is something that is not simply an American phenomenon. This is something that's happening through the Anglosphere. It's also interesting because at the same time, right, you know, we've had, you know, the Napoleonic Wars within Europe, right, you know, that there's a lot of stuff going on within the European continent itself. And there's also sort of this broadening in terms of intellectual divisions between the thought in the Anglosphere and the European continent. And particularly when it comes to the economic side of things, you know, Adam Smith's political consequences continue to go on alongside the American battles with, you know, some of these things going on and the tariff side of things. This coincides with pounding the tables within England, you know, moving against the corn laws that came about in the 1815s. And so when you get into the 1830s and the 1840s, there is a very populist attack on protectionist tariffs, on government privileges for, you know, special industries, right? And so can you just touch upon, you know, let's go down in that transatlantic persuasion rabbit hole on the way that the successes of the Jacksonians also have influenced political trends within England and Canada and as part of, again, a very much a pivot. You know, when we think about liberalism within the Anglo sense, it really much, it really was focused on a lot of this economic policies rather than, you know, some of the attacks on religion that, you know, kind of highlight some of the French aspects. And, you know, this is a very specific Anglo-liberal tradition that the Jacksonians are very much a part of. Yeah, so the America at this time, I'm glad you brought this up, because America at this time, when we think of Americans, many of them came from England, they came from Great Britain. It was primarily immigration at this time period was, it was obviously not only white, but it was, again, it mainly came from Europe and really when in Europe it came from the British Isles. You only started to see other immigration Germans kind of in the 1850s and then Italians and so on later. So America is populated by British, it's WASP, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. So many of the ideas of England are going to reverberate and influence people in America. We've discussed on this podcast how the ideas of Adam Smith and his followers influenced Jeffersonian Republicans, such as Albert Gallatin and so on. This trend continued in the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s with new economists rising through the ranks. Some of these are devoted Smithians. Again, we can look more at their actual doctrinal affiliation, as Rothbard does, but guys like John Baptiste say, said they were Smithian and so that influenced Americans in that regard. When we got our economic thought, it was influenced by British thought because the economic science was still very based in Europe, in particular Great Britain, at least that's the traditional narrative of the classical economics. It was Britain that was ruling the day, guys like David Ricardo and then later on John Stuart Mill, et cetera. The British ideas of the free market, of laissez-faire, et cetera, those influenced the Jacksonians. Of course, Jacksonian ideas also influenced the British. One of the reasons why I argue that the Jacksonians were successful when the Jeffersonians were not and really why the Jacksonians were the most successful libertarian, anti-crony reform movement we've seen in American history is because of this neglected tag team effort with the British, you could say. So the Jacksonians were able to mount an assault on the banking system because the British were also mounting an assault on the banking system. The Jacksonians were able to mount an assault on protective tariffs because the British were mounting an assault on protective tariffs and that allowed Jacksonians to diffuse protectionists to often use the argument why should we lower our tariffs if other countries aren't lowering their tariffs, right? But instead you have this quite really reciprocal trade reduction in trade barriers which is a very powerful motivation encouraging people to support free trade in America. So the Jacksonians were really working informally with British reformers at this time period. They shared ideas, they shared strategy, they shared tactics, et cetera. And this is what allowed the Jacksonians to be successful. In a modern sense, we're looking at this as similar sort of tag team effort though of course things have changed and it's not Jacksonian laissez faire politics per se but there's no surprise, I don't think, or no coincidence that Brexit was voted on the same year as Trump won election. So you saw in a sense like this reemergence of this informal, you know, this Jacksonian-British alliance. Again, sometimes there are economies of scale so you want a movement for laissez faire not just in America but also around the world and for the around the world to the United States, that was Great Britain. I kind of like the idea of Cambridge Analytica which was the group that Steve Bannon worked with for both the Brexit and the Trump campaigns and became a scandalous sort of thing later on because that's what the media does. The idea of that as kind of a modern day version of the transatlantic persuasion, I think it's kind of interesting but it's also just interesting to think about when you consider, you take a step back, I mean here you have a president who, you know, he becomes a national rock star precisely because of killing British soldiers, right? Like it is fascinating development here where again like the Jeffersonians were very French aligned and then here you have, again, Andrew Jackson leading this pivot to the Anglosphere and just not that far disconnected from obviously Wars of Independence and War of 1812. I mean, it's just a very fascinating dynamic here. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, because the Jacksonian movement not only includes Jackson, obviously includes many of his followers but yeah, you still see it's a little bit of an interesting dynamic. Really after the War of 1812, though there were flare-ups regarding you know, border disputes with Canada or even issues regarding the West Coast and then potentially Texas, Americans, we came to see the British more and more as allies and not as enemies, right? Clearly the British from an average American's perspective was the big bad guy from the Revolutionary War to the War of 1812 but after that there were fits but this is the beginning of this American, Anglo-American alliance. And a big reason behind this and this is why the protective tariffs, when we instituted protective tariffs, we weakened that alliance just because of free trade. We realized it's mutually beneficial. We can engage in trading arrangements and so on but so yeah, from the support for a American-British alliance, the sort of informal alliance is coalescing around a man who was famous for fighting the British but that's just the way history goes sometimes. And I think it's also interesting the similarities but also some of the minor differences in the way that the Jacksonians formed. You know, kind of argued their laissez faire policies you know, from a perspective kind of, I know Robert Kelly highlights how you know, the Jacksonians sell around them a conspiracy of clever men who lived by their wits profiting from the toil of those who lived by the sweat of their brow. You know, this is concept, you know, of the Hamiltonian banker, you know, similar today, right, where you have the railing against the financial elites and the vulture capitalists like Dr. Carlson likes to talk about, right, you know, this is kind of baked into the DNA that, you know, you have these hard-working Americans that, you know, there's also this dynamic at play where the ability of going from, you know, being born into a family of the lowest, of the low, you know, with a lot of, you know, with some personal ingenuity and success, you could catapult yourself into the elites of society. You know, there's that dynamic going on where, you know, it is this very interesting change in social conditions. But so the Jacksonians were very much focused on the ways which these government policies were rewarding people, not based off of merit, but off a political pool, whereas, you know, some of the differences and kind of their nuance, but I know like Robert Peel and, yeah, Peel and some of the other leaders in the liberals in England were kind of railing against, you know, the landed aristocracy, something even more, you know, more of that sort of, you know, product of birth, you know, advantage, you know, there's a little bit of differences there going, you know, to I think the differences of America being a product of kind of, you know, something different from the ancient regime, right, that kind of marks, you know, old Europe and differing to the colonies, right? And there's some of the differences there, though. Ultimately, though, these are all kind of sort of class-driven narratives to motivate organization that leads to political reform. And I know we're having this conversation off there. That's one of the things that I, you know, I wrote for Mises that I think a lot of this pushes back, too. And this is why I think it's so important to understand this era within liberalism. You know, Mises remarks, I think it's the end of the chapter called The Future of Liberalism, and it's not a very optimistic thing. But he ends this chapter with no sect and no political party has believed that it could afford to, it could afford to forego advancing in cause by appealing to men's senses. Rhetorical bombast music and song, resound, banners wave, flowers and colors serve as symbols, and the leaders seek to attach their followers to their own person, you know, personality cults. Liberalism has nothing to do with all of this. It has no party flower and no party color, no party song and no party idols, no symbol and no slogans. It has a substance of the arguments. These must lead it to victory. And while I appreciate it from a Misesian perspective, that ultimately there is no substitute for good ideas that lead to policies and the shaping of society that promote, you know, better material while being, all these things that we like. Ultimately though, I look at the Jacksonian era, and I see the fact that you had success with laissez-faire economics wrapped up in party, wrapped up in personality cult in the form of Andrew Jackson. You know, wrapped up in, you know, these partisan newspaper outlets from the second-handlers of ideas, you know, creating these products that transmit the ideas of Smith and Ricardo in a good way, and into, you know, normal conversation. And that, you know, it was a working class fighting back against the elite mentality here. A lot of that had to do with the success of turning these liberal ideas into popular political products. And so I think that, you know, there's something to be said about all, you know, it's easy to roll our eyes at the silliness of most vulgar politics, but here's an example of it actually being put into practice. Yeah, I think that's a great point, and I'm glad you brought that up, because yeah, there's something that you could definitely push back on Mises on, and I think even later, sort of his career now, he wouldn't, he wasn't involved in the actual campaigning, but, you know, he did do political work, at least, you know, the Vienna Chamber of Commerce and some other things. Again, pushing for policy. Economists can't remain in their high tower. They have to actually try and communicate these ideas to people. And many economists back in the day, both American and classical and Austrian, they were always involved in some sort of politics or some sort of government service. Turgot was economic minister of France. Adam Smith, he was a customs commissioner. John Baptiste was a member of the French legislature. David Ricardo, he was a member of the British Parliament. Carl Menger, tutored a Crown Prince Rudolph and Bamba Verk, he was the Austrian minister of finance. A lot of these guys, they were involved in government policy doing work related to actually trying to bring about anti-Crony reforms, you could say. And yeah, this is a very important point that it's not just the bureaucrat or the government politician that can actually get stuff done. You have to communicate it to the people. And this is something I think Rothbard understood better than Mises, but it's the importance of political parties and campaigning. Again, it's still a sticky situation. Doesn't mean you're still going to get a lot of stuff done, especially in the modern era, but it is something that can't be denied. You have to find some way of energizing people to be interested in these ideas. Your average person back then and now doesn't have the time to read economic tomes or even economic articles. Some people, what most are going to do is they might read a couple headlines a week and that's it. So for those people, of course we can leave the books and all of that stuff to other people. You know, academics were learned, laymen, et cetera. But for your average person, you've got to find some way of communicating problems to them. You've got to find some way of making inflation, debt, tariffs interesting to them. And so they're going to remember slogans. They're going to remember, okay, I'm going to vote Democrat because being a Democrat means free trade or I'm going to vote Whig because being a Whig means protective tariff and so on. You have to actually find a way of hammering points home to people. And a lot of people back in the day, they used sort of quasi-social media to get that done. Short clips and, you know, newspapers or political cartoons that appealed to people who couldn't even read English. So instead they just see cartoons and they see big fat guys with bags of money and they realize, okay, that person's problem. Thinking of Thomas Nast and Boss Tweed, et cetera. So yeah, you have to find some way of actually packaging the economic ideas into a political platform that masses are going to be able to understand and agree with. And this is something that I think the Jacksonians did really well. And you've got a lot of lesser known Jacksonians. William Goode, Amos Kendall, Francis Preston Blair, William Leggett, William Cullen Bryant. These guys were the tweeters of the day. They were writing newspaper articles. They were editors of newspapers. They were writing policy reports, et cetera. Most of them, they all got their hands dirty and they were participating in politics, working in a caucus or even running for office or something like that. Again, this is just how politics was back then and political economy was back then as well as even now. Let's not forget John Taylor, really our nation's first kind of economist. He also served in the, he also was a senator from Virginia a couple of times. So, you know, that point bears emphasis. Yeah, there's a rhyme making quote that I've become fond of, that we study economics to learn how we're getting, how we're being ripped off. And I think that is important. He's got a great series on this particular period of history as well. And Defensive Mises, though, and actually I think you do, you touched on a little bit where there might have been some evolution of thought there. He wrote liberalism originally in 1927. In Austria, and as mentioned before, there is a little bit of a big difference there talking about the Anglosphere and the continent and the way perspectives on some of this changed. By the time he was working with FI and the National Association of Manufacturers and the old right that was opposed to the New Deal stuff, there might have been a little bit of a change there. And certainly, Murray Rothbard recognized the importance of populism as a weapon for good economics. The stuff about a legged though, like in those sort of groups, one of my favorite parts about Gore-Vidal's Burr is that kind of the framing device is William Leggett is encouraging the narrator of the book to find out some dirt about Martin Van Buren because they want to promote someone else to follow up Jackson. And so it kind of goes into what it was I really liked to be like a newspaper boss when they had these very lofty ideas, but also kind of to reconcile that with the dirty politics of the day. It's just a very fascinating dynamic going on there. But speaking of the dirty politics of the day and some of the interesting dynamics and battles that were going on on some of these issues in practice, one of the splits within this era is you have a breakdown of relations between Andrew Jackson and John Calhoun. Calhoun who was this very as a character was really good at kind of remaking himself in a variety of different ways. What I think is interesting is that one of the big, I believe it might have been the big reason for the split in spite of there being other things that Calhoun did in the past that perhaps sort of other further split him and Jackson as well. There's an issue with a woman named Peggy Eaton who was the wife of a dear friend of Andrew Jackson who was accused of adultery very much in the same way that Andrew Jackson's beloved wife was. There's a dynamic there where Jackson sees and Peggy Eaton who plays a very big role in his social circle, some parallels with the wife that ended up dying shortly after his election and Calhoun and his wife want to socialize with the Eatons and this leads this little personal splat leads to a lot of big it leads to a divide that ends up having a lot of ramifications in some of these other issues. Is there anything that we need to know about the Peggy Eaton Affair before I kind of dive into Calhoun and the nullification crisis? It's a good question. I read about the Peggy Eaton Affair usually plays a big role in biographies. I myself didn't include it in cronyism simply because it was kind of a side affair. Jackson was upset at Calhoun for that. Jackson was also upset I believe at Calhoun once he found out that Calhoun kind of double crossed them regarding the his invasion of Florida Jackson blew a gasket on that. Not really much you need to know about Peggy Eaton though I guess you could say Jackson was a feminist. He supported Peggy Eaton. So when people demonize Jackson they should know that Peggy Eaton one of the things that kind of alienated her I believe from the Washington elite is she was speaking her mind and she was speaking about political affairs and this was something that women back then they were you just weren't supposed to do that the men handle all of that. Jackson always defended her because he saw her, he saw Rachel his recently deceased wife I believe in Miss Eaton and so yeah that kind of plays a power struggle role it contributes to some of the differences I don't think it's super important it is one of those funny little things but you know you got to give Jackson credit so that's one of my favorite Rothbard quotes was something on the facts that you know what other people consider gossip he considered sociology yeah and I think there is some relevance here though where again something this trite you know this in the grand scheme of things very very small actually you know it plays you know it fuels some of these personal divides that end up having great ramifications so obviously there's a lot more substantive reasons for disagreement but this leads to Calhoun going from the vice presidency there's always that iconic sort of scene right where it's at the height of the nullification crisis and Calhoun is taking on this very strong South Carolina national sort of position of defending the right of nullification here and you know Jackson has his toast you know in praising of the union and then Calhoun has the slide about you know how second only to liberty and this ends up this very tense sort of dynamic here but the background here though is the nullification crisis which is a you know becomes a matter as you as you highlight that not only do you have this intellectual push towards free trade and the recognition that there are certain money interest that benefit from these protectionist tariffs but you also have the dynamic that the Jackson is succeeding at paying down the national debt and once you get to that point where the national debt is extinguished what do you do after that is sort of an open policy question and so can you just break down what was the significance of the nullification crisis and this larger battle over tariffs that the Jackson administration faced yeah so as you mentioned the Jackson administration was committed to paying down the debt so this is something Andrew Jackson wanted to do since the 1820s and of course if you want to actually pay down the debt in that default or reputed on it those options had been lost to the annals of history ever since Jefferson and the Jefferson and the moderates got their way with Jefferson and not the old republicans well the only way you can do that is with revenue from tariffs in land sales. Land sales were still much smaller they didn't really start to rise significantly until the mid-1830 so that was a tariff revenue so Jackson didn't really want to lower tariffs until the debt was paid off some tariff decreases on some minor goods, miscellaneous goods but he wanted to postpone free trade until that alright now in order to fully kind of understand what's going on regarding John Calhoun in South Carolina politics there's a bigger whole story about what exactly is going on regarding South Carolina before this whole tariff struggle and so on South Carolina was previously a staunch federalist state a staunch big government state John C. Calhoun a lot of admirers might not admit it right now but he was a big he was a proponent of big government throughout most of his career he was a strong nationalist during the war of 1812 he was a nationalist while he was secretary of war he kind of changed his tune on protective tariffs in the mid-1820s because one he realized people in his state were becoming more and more free trade because South Carolina was exporting more and upset at higher tariffs so he had people calling him out he had William Smith he was a congressman sort of an old Republican congressman he was upset at Calhoun more importantly you had Thomas Cooper he was this he was a British economist he was a professor in South Carolina he was criticizing protective tariffs Calhoun's embrace of internal improvements and so on Calhoun's facing this pressure once Calhoun wins the vice presidency in the beginning of the Adams administration starts in 1825 he kind of changes he recognizes the political wins he recognizes he has to be much more outwardly small government he has to be supporting lower tariffs and so on he needs to do this because Calhoun really wants the presidency if he wants the presidency then he of course has to have his state behind his back I view Calhoun very similar to how I view James Madison they're kind of opportunists they could talk a good talk they weren't really dedicated proponents of small government Calhoun wrote some nice documents he wrote a disquisition on government he wrote exposition and protest etc both of those have to be sort of analyzed great that came much later exposition and protest relates to the nullification crisis even that's a little bit tempered so by the time of the nullification crisis and I know in this podcast we've skipped the tariff of abominations and Van Buren's involvement in all of that I can only say for people I got in my book I got the story there so he kind of got a fast forward that fast forward through that South Carolinans are really upset at the 1828 tariff of abominations Calhoun is feeling the heat so what he does is he starts to create this actually redraft this exposition and protest which basically comes up with this idea of nullification it was in the ideas were basically implicit in the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions they were actually from there those anonymously written Kentucky and Virginia resolutions really Thomas Jefferson's Kentucky resolution Calhoun says all right if a state disagrees with the policy then it can nullify the law and then the federal government has to pass a constitutional amendment basically if they want to have South Carolina or another state abide by this law they have to pass a constitutional amendment right if they're able to do that then the state has to obey the law or secede so this was Calhoun's kind of way of recognizing differences between various states so for Calhoun a state that disagreed with the law had to call a state convention that would then decide whether to nullify the law right and that's what South Carolina ended up doing regarding the tariff of 1832 when that compromise was passed Calhoun's exposition and protest is kind of weak in certain regards Calhoun was again he was a big government nationalist he had grounded his arguments in the federalist papers which a lot of anti-federalists didn't like he still made nullification sort of well it was now contingent on an amendment and he actually didn't want secession he wanted to put this whole complicated roadblock in front of secession because Calhoun still wanted to be president of the United States so rapidly this kind of becomes a new fighting ground a battle ground in South Carolina a lot of old Republicans guys like Nathaniel Macon, John Tyler Phillip Barber John Randolph etc they're kind of thinking like what is Calhoun doing we don't trust him they didn't support what he was doing Calhoun's big government supporters guys like George McDuffie and Robert Hain they become the radicals in the state while the South Carolina previous supporters of limited government they kind of switched to becoming unionist they support secession but they're saying Calhoun's whole document is is this weird little thing so this is what Jackson is facing and once the compromise tariff of 1832 is passed South Carolina is unhappy with it in rightfully so because the wigs in congress had managed to delay and sort of keep protections will flow South Carolinans they adopt they follow what Calhoun's doing and they basically nullify the law or they say they're going to nullify the law so then this is the whole crisis that the nation faces okay Jackson this is arguably one of his worst parts of his presidency because he does support lower tariffs but he's he's very upset at what Calhoun's doing he thinks this whole secession idea is something you have to earn in military conflict so Calhoun, Jackson basically says look we're going to push for lower tariffs but you know I will you are not allowed to do this I will hang you if I need to and I will not accept treason in South Carolina alright admittedly a very bad position to take from an anti crony perspective but the important thing is that they got the job done okay the Jacksonians in congress at least the Van Burenites pushed for what was known as the verplank bill lowering tariffs and then due to a compromise between clay and John Calhoun which you can talk more about as well as some other guys a tariff lowering rates over the next 10 years was passed this is why free traders thought that Jackson had achieved a great victory they didn't really focus on the four spill stuff so much okay that only became more important when you get into the civil war and the southern secession with all that stuff etc but the main thing is even during this troubling time the Jackson administration was still able to lower tariffs and a major push was coming from Van Buren the New Yorkers partially to compensate for the tariff of abominations so that's kind of the important basics if you will of this episode it seems to be I think one of the interesting conflicts here right because we identified ways that I love this larger conversation here about the virtues of that strong you know lateral executive versus the congressional sort of driven model right you know what is more incline to liberty we've seen how the Jacksonian model provides very concrete victories but you can't really reconcile a strong man leader with the session right here whether it's Jackson or Caesar or Napoleon or any sort of figures if you have this role where you are you create this personality cult that allows you to kind of restructure you know government a corrupt government out of control government and bend it to your will it is not within your personality to allow South Carolina to leave and it is difficult to reconcile those two because here you have on the economic side of things this is great but on the political side of things obviously the importance of political self-determination and the virtues of political decentralization you know I don't know how to you know this is to me the compelling of Jacksonians Jacksonian period even though there wasn't you know troops were not marched on South Carolina over this great but this conflict I don't know how to resolve internally I just think it's really fascinating I mentioned in my book that this is a weakness of the Jacksonians reform through the executive branch is that when you're concentrating power in the executive branch to try and attack cronyism in other directions of course power tends to corrupt right we've been through this time and time again ad nauseam so Jackson's force bill and his is basically attacks on South Carolina or his criticism of what they're doing it looks like an an imperial proclamation okay and this sort of portends maybe what James K. Polk is going to do during the Mexican war and his heavy handed imperialist invasion of Mexico right so this is it's it's it's it's something every every strategy has a weakness and this is ultimately the weakness of the Jacksonian executive strategy but the important thing is that in this sometimes I think gets overlooked in this struggle for free trade particularly regarding South Carolina free trade during this time period was a broad based movement there was a Philadelphia free trade convention okay before the compromise tariff was pushed for of both free trade southerners and free trade northerners you've got Albert Gallatin he's there you've got Philip Barber he's there you've got all of these economists who are influenced by a John Baptiste say and Adam Smith etc so this this was something that was going to be pushed through by the Jacksonians South Carolina was kind of going through its own political turmoil and they were upset that tariffs weren't being lowered fast up not belittling that complaint because of course this is you know by by by not defaulting on the debt and using revenue to pay it off you're getting pissed at people who are paying those taxes right so that it is a valid complaint but the Jacksonian coalition including Van Buren the Van Burenite supporters etc they were able to negotiate a crisis that really excuse me to negotiate a resolution to the crisis that lowered government you know lowered government involvement really in in all in all aspects right because they were able to lower tariffs alright they were so they were able to get a significant decrease in tariffs over 10 years not the two-year decrease the decrease in two years that you know the New Yorkers supported they Jackson vetoed Henry Clay's distribution bill to distribute revenue to the states that kind of prolong tariff reduction so Jackson's like nope vetoing and even the force bill ended up South Carolina said no we don't like this but Jackson decided not to do anything about that alright so that's significant in itself and it's this all happened right around the beginning of the second Jackson administration or the transition from the first to the second and so the significance is that the move to free trade was going to be accomplished by the Jacksonians without South Carolina but the South Carolina nullifiers did use a states rights reform to sort of speed up this process more now could have caused the major constitutional crisis but now where's the fun in politics if it doesn't so that's the way I look at it I think that well maybe Jackson doesn't come out the best in this the Jacksonians certainly they still do succeed it seems like it's almost necessary to have a moment of political crisis or to get anything significant done right and here's a case of it being done in a good way usually this goes in the wrong way particularly after the 20th century but there's something to be said about the virtues of political crisis and obviously what's probably obvious to our viewers now but should be made explicit is that the role of sectoral politics here these sectional clashes is really a major factor in shaping these political battles John C. Calhoun is kind of a Machiavellian figure who's kind of ranking himself up he's trying to build himself up as one of the leaders in the Southern contingent a Machiavellian counterpart who would be the forementioned Henry Clay can you talk a little bit about one of the things I think is interesting is you highlight all these ways that Clay is trying to undermine this push towards reduction of tariffs mainly in the way that this leads to I think highlights a lot of political strategy that still goes about today one of the things they try to push was kind of delay giving a 10-year delay period for the gradual winding down of these reforms which is often done as well if you want something not to get done at all you kind of bake it in to have this very long process there you can always get Congress later on to delay and stop these sort of commonplace what's sold as very moderate sort of decline in rates and things like that but also can you talk a little bit about the strategy of trying to do whatever you can to not reduce the levels of spending as a way of trying to maintain these tariffs because someone like Clay he is explicitly there's a lot of motivation here to prevent the lowering of prices through trade for very select industries that he benefits from that other allies benefit from they're very much is they're trying to use all these delay tactics in order to maintain the cronyism inherent within these industries that are the biggest benefactors of these protectionist tariffs so this is a great I'm glad we're talking about this is a great point because Clay's strategy he's obviously a very shrewd individual so Clay you have to think of it from his perspective Clay he's now having to deal with Jackson who's going to be president in you know the first administration from 1829 to 1833 and then especially after Jackson just totally you know he smashes Clay in the 1832 election Clay realizes that okay I got to go to the drawing board the wigs realize that now instead of adding on more to their American system as they were doing in the 1820s they're now going to have to try to protect it in what way they can and sometimes if you can only save 50% of a sinking ship then you know that's just your best option so Clay realized that people were coming down on the protective tariff so he was trying to do everything in his can to defend the tariff because for Clay that was a huge lynchpin of the American system without that protective tariff a lot of the other planks fall apart you're not going to be able to stimulate manufacturing at the expense of the other sectors you're not going to be able to raise revenue to fund a system of internal improvements so on and so forth okay because then we can get into whole Clay's foreign policy stuff and how that relates to the protective tariff so Clay was one he was going to argue for lowering tariffs he would argue for lowering tariffs on non goods that weren't produced in America right so they weren't really protective tariffs at all so he was going to say oh we could lower those like tariffs on T or T or things like that it wasn't iron and steel and traditional manufactured products Clay was also arguing for this distribution system so he was saying okay Congress is not willing to embark upon its own program of federal its own federal program of internal improvements because of the Mazeville road veto and some other stuff that maybe we'll talk about in the near future and he said okay well why don't we just distribute to the states this is something that Calhoun also had expressed support for and this idea this is a really this is a really good strategy because Clay basically said in order to justify these tax these high taxes we have to spend money we have to spend money and and so he was saying well why don't we distribute to the states now we're going to create a vested interest group the states want money from the federal government right so they're going to support policies that strengthen the federal government this is something that happens a lot now this is the only way we were able to get states to raise the drinking age well Congress said they cut off their highway funds okay this is also a strategy Republicans in the post civil war era did in order to defend the protective tariff they said okay we're going to support instances where they're going to support programs that increase government spending such as increased payments to veterans right this is a way of justifying the high tariff so clay is trying to do this he's trying to prolong the tariff he's saying well we're going to only institute cuts now now they're going to be spread out over 10 years okay and this again is delaying the pain and maybe the maybe the wigs will be able to win control of the government before then and and change the policy or right when the tariffs are scheduled to end in 1842 then then they can just start raising them again which is actually what they tried to do so clay strategy is to try to prevent the jacksonings from destroying the American system right now and it's a smart strategy but unfortunately for clay and fortunately for opponents of cronyism reformers it's just not good enough there aren't enough people behind the policy and clay has to watch his precious protective tariffs you know get destroyed he's not able to protect his protective tariffs in other words can you just briefly also touch on you know kind of the jackson or the jacksonian pushback was trying to create a southern western sort of alliance here on trying to break through some of the schism Senator Thomas Hart Benton proposes his own dynamic trying to lower land prices I think just kind of interesting within some of the gamesmanship involved can you just touch on briefly the attempts there by the jacksonian side to offer a different sort of sexual alliance that would have provided perhaps greater strength in some of these moves I know you love any chance we can to talk about Senator Thomas Hart Benton yeah so I think that I love Thomas Hart Benton because he's an interesting character in the jacksonian coalition who doesn't always get discussed so much or mentioned there was a Rothbard review of a history book in the early 60s when Rothbard was criticizing it and he said well they don't even mention Thomas Hart old bullying Benton as if like this is like this is a worthless history book if you don't mention Thomas Hart Benton and of course he's a great jacksonian he's a rugged man like Jackson himself he actually previously fought Jackson in a duel and he shot him in the arm and then they later they later became great friends and Benton was a prominent senator from Missouri who was a staunch jacksonian in the upper chamber so Henry Clay's American system was sort of billed as a way of allying the north with the west Clay argued that the west was more similar to the north or the in order to really pass these programs that benefit the north you had to enlist the west because the south wasn't going to support protective tariffs come hell or high water so then Clay says well we're going to have to bring it bring the west into this argument so Clay was saying well protective tariffs they're going to benefit north they're also going to benefit some western industries but more importantly they're going to raise the revenue that and this is the key point combined with high prices of western lands right the revenue that congress would get from selling land at high prices both of these things are going to provide enough money to fund internal improvements that will benefit the west okay so this is sort of the agreement Clay was trying to propose to the west we're saying look the American system is actually going to benefit you guys so Thomas R. Benton is a Jacksonian from Missouri Missouri at the time is basically the west it's the frontier of the country more or less in terms of states and Thomas R. Benton was a man who was who supported internal improvements he was a westerner he was he supported low tariffs he also was very anti-bank but that was kind of his one weakness internal improvements but starting in the late 1820s realized that hey wait a second this American system actually isn't going to benefit the west because while the protective tariffs would fund internal improvements that benefited the west Clay also needed high prices for western lands and this was something that would hurt the west Benton was staunchly supportive of very low prices for western lands basically allowing homesteaders to get them which is a very Rothbardian position so what Benton said is why don't instead of why don't we try a southwest alliance so I can get the west to support the southerners demands for free trade if southerners support the west demand for low land prices and then both of these will be able to block internal improvements so Benton is saying is look I will give up support for internal improvements if you if southerners support low land prices that was sort of his agreement which I think is very interesting and it's important to look at because usually you make a coalition by saying look I'll support your special interest policy if you support my special interest policy what Benton was actually doing is look I'll help you fight your hated special interest policy if you help us fight our hated special interest policies they weren't looking to quote quote regarding special interest policies they were looking to both Benton and his supporters were looking to attack special interest policies so he was pushing for the southwest alliance I think it was a great idea unfortunately the south particularly the southeast including South Carolina and basically the coast the rest of the North Carolina Georgia Virginia et cetera they were reluctant to lower land prices because they wanted lower land prices to pay off the debt so they wanted to focus more on protective tariffs and this was kind of the big stumbling block because without the lower land prices Benton wasn't going to give up the support for the internal improvements and so this is something I really wish it worked because the Jacksonians did fight internal improvements and they also fought protective tariffs they weren't as successful in lowering land prices and this was kind of a stumbling block it's unfortunate nothing's perfect but they couldn't get to that I give Thomas Hart Benton major props for trying some of the other successes of the era I loved when Jackson vetoes a road that would have directly benefited Henry Clay which itself kind of reflecting some changes there and you highlight I don't need to go too deep into it but there's this move towards more state driven leadership on the internal improvement side of things but unfortunately in spite of some of these suggestions of the margins you highlight how the actual physical record of the Jacksonian era is a bit of a mixed bag even though the national debt is phased out which allows for these free trade conversations spending itself does increase and so can you just talk a little bit about some of the downfalls here which includes a good old election year sort of spending and as well as military spending with the Second Seminole War things like that here are some trappings that we continue to have it continues to be easy to justify spending in spite of the fact that you have a very strong circle around here that understands the benefits of reducing public spending for the larger benefits here it's still difficult to kind of get away from that sin of government yeah so spending Jackson was successful Jackson the president was successful at least his administration and paying off the debt less successful in controlling spending overall though at least by the Polk administration the debt and spending were on downward trajectories before the Mexican war so at least in that regard you know overall they were much more successful on the spending issue than Jackson per se Jackson strategy the initial Jacksonian strategy and something that James K. Polk also pursued was again reform has to begin with the executive so why don't we use this presidential veto and start vetoing Congress's internal improvement legislation the Maysville road veto of May 1830 was actually the Jacksonians Jackson's first real use of the presidential veto that transformed it it came before the bank veto the bank bill veto in 1832 and so Jackson strategy was okay I'm going to control internal improvement spending by vetoing things unfortunately it worked for a little bit but at the end of his term spending started to go up as well as internal improvement spending one because some of it was just hidden in general bills that was very hard for Jackson to detect something that's still done today right all these little things that you just kind of add in to a must pass bill and you can get a ride with just anything you want exactly you know the the little things in there Jackson you know certain internal improvement projects he was supportive of then you had a huge increase in military spending during the Second Seminole War then there was the issue of elections in 1832 in 1836 the Jacksonians were incentivized to push for pork to benefit themselves during the election this is kind of that corruption issue but you know after the Jacksonian term after Jackson's the first presidency of the Jacksonian so Andrew Jackson the you started to see those more frugal you know scruples being pushed for the panic of 1837 was a big jolt really energized the Jacksonians into cutting government spending a lot of state internal improvement projects had not worked out Jacksonians realized that hey wait a second corporate charters combined with government subsidies that's a recipe for cronyism it's a recipe for disaster so Jacksonians they're supporting general incorporation laws on the state level getting rid of the chartering system and in the new state constitutions they're supportive of and I think this is very important they're supportive of restricting state's abilities to invest in internal improvements or to lend money to companies or to invest in companies purchasing their stock etc so to try and separate the government from getting involved in businesses now the 1850s showed there were loopholes particularly regarding giving land or having the federal government give land to states that they can then give to companies and that's a whole different story but the Jacksonians at the state level and the federal level after the panic of 1837 they were really good at fighting government spending and continuing to pay off the debt the Van Buren was good on this he's very frugal he's gone Tyler for the most part and then before the Mexican war Polk was very good on this and Polk, his famous veto was this rivers and harbors veto bill excuse me, this rivers and harbors bill that he vetoed that was supposed to benefit the west and he vetoed that so the Jacksonians initially they weren't as successful in reigning in government spending but they still were able to get the job done which I think is admirable and it shows you that it takes several presidential administrations but if you're slowly chipping away and you've got your eyes on the prize so to speak and you don't get distracted you'll be able to make progress okay and this is the Jacksonians yes so they were successful in this regard I do think a big thing was obviously regarding any of this William Henry Harrison he was a wig he won in 1840 but he died and you pretty much had an ex Jacksonian John Tyler running the show split with Andrew Jackson over executive power all of his greatest policies from a libertarian anti crony perspective were basically just presidential vetoes so he was kind of doing the Jacksonian strategy right so it was just for presidencies of the Jacksonian strategy reformed through the executive and I think that's really important it's successful essential banking successful protective tariffs and it is successful with government spending and internal improvements one last point to end on there is also a major change within the supreme court at this time with the passing of our dearly beloved John Marshall which it gives Jackson the ability to have a great impact on the supreme court since John Marshall who was a benefactor of a lot of this cronyism in the past now gets to be replaced by a Jacksonian judge can you just touch a little bit about the significance of that on some of these things from a judicial perspective going forward so Chief Justice Marshall he finally kicks the bucket in 1835 you know it was a long time coming and so Jackson he wasn't a huge he wasn't a huge fan of John Marshall for various reasons but so Jackson says alright I'm finally going to change the supreme court and the supreme court if you remember since the Adams administration the tail end of the Adams administration it's like a federalist stronghold that's where the federalists were able to survive after getting kicked out of the presidency and Congress they were able to survive in the supreme court Jefferson didn't really reform the supreme court or appoint people that could fight John Marshall so John Marshall was able to exercise his his dominance over this institution for many decades and so the Jacksonians wanted to you know of course chip away at the supreme court so once Marshall dies Andrew Jackson is then he basically appoints Tawny and Philip Barber to the supreme court and both of them are sort of hardcore old Republican Jacksonian Democrats especially Philip Barber Tawny had some controversial decisions later on in his career notably Judd Scott but he he was an excellent Jacksonian judge early on and so a famous case was the Charles river bridge versus the Warren bridge case where basically the Jacksonian supreme court said that you know the the states have a right to rescind corporate charters or to revise them so if they give if one current legislator gives a charter basically a monopoly that doesn't mean that it's protected through all time from the contract clause which is what John Marshall and even Hamilton they argued earlier on regarding the Yazoo land scandal so this is a big moment because it sort of shifted the supreme court away from being a big government body to becoming one much more appreciative of states rights okay and so this was the the major reform that deserves proper appreciation because it did change the judiciary at least for a little bit that old Yazoo land scandal oh the Yazoo lands oh yeah well now that we have seen again some of the great triumphs and some of the parts of moderation of the Jacksonian era next week's episode we're going to go into some of the more failings and what kind of the decline of the Jacksonian tradition later on but this has been a one of my favorite topics and I think there's a tremendous amount that we can learn from this particularly for those interested in radical economic change which is what we had here both ideologically and through this extension in terms of policy so any other things do you want to wrap up here Patrick before we get out of here just to kind of build off of what you were saying before that you know one of the main reasons why we look at history is so we could learn from it and how to reform the present so when you're thinking about okay how could we possibly try and change the Leviathan government we have today or try to get reforms done well one way in which we can look at is this possible is well what did people do in the past and when they succeeded and I think there's a lot to learn from the Jacksonians that a lot of strategy and tactics that they practice that we don't really know about now and that's all that's why it's important to have this podcast we're able to talk about it because the Jacksonians they might be our only hope for the years ahead because here is a concrete example against so many of the arguments against republican government and democracy at all right it's so easy to rob your way into future elections and again there's a little bit of that here with some of the political machinations but here's an example examples out there within history of a law say fair republic and again it's not perfect a lot of issues there a lot of things you know all needs to be said but again if you're looking at what is a government that actually functions the way we kind of want to here's an example and I think this is one of my favorite parts of the book and if you don't have your copy of cronyism liberty versus power in America what are you doing are you listening go turn in that coupon code please rate review share get the word out get thank you for all the feedback we have delivered and this has been a another episode of liberty versus power podcast until next time this is the official Patrick Newman Tommy what are you saying