The Jacksonian Period Has Been Celebrated As The Era

Politically, the so-called "Jacksonian Era" lives up to its billing as the era of the
"common man" in a couple of ways. The first is that many states expanded the right to
vote in the years before and during the 1830s. This led to an electorate increasingly composed
of small landholders, laborers, and the urban working class. Accordingly, politicians had to
appeal to these new voters, and one way they did this was by billing themselves "men of the
people," and their opponents as the opposite. Andrew Jackson, though a wealthy planter and
lawyer by the 1820s, became "Old Hickory." and Whigh presidential candidate William
Henry Harrison later depicted his opponent Martin Van Buren as an effete dandy. Jackson and Van
Buren both pursued policies that directly appealed to ordinary Americans, including Indian
removal and the so-called "Bank War." In this sense, this really was an era of the
"common man." At the same time, there are some caveats needed. The first is that the
"common man" was...

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