would proclaim, rewriting history as propaganda. Jackson had not seized democratic power, which does not exist inside any republican institutions, including the office of the President. Jackson — the tough, slave-holding, military hero nicknamed “Old Hickory” — had seized republican power. This, not democracy, was the danger to the new Few of the east coast — as Jackson soon proved to the Few of the North by vetoing a law to create a new Bank of the United States. By playing to the people and denouncing the bank as a monopoly, Jackson easily won re-election in 1832. The general turned shrewd politician was playing by new rules, new rules that the Few had to learn quickly if they were going to rule the American Republic indirectly through their Guardians and for their own Private Good.
Jackson’s secret formula was not hard to figure out. First, he was using the ever expanding size of the American Republic to his advantage. The number of states had almost doubled by the 1820s. Just before Jackson’s election, the western states had extended the right to vote to all white males without property. It was these votes he was getting,
and the new Few saw that there would be more and more such votes as the country got bigger and bigger. Second, the moneypowered Few saw that Jackson had become President by nominating himself and then selling himself in the limited-choice elections as good Old Hickory, a just-folks hick like the people themselves. The Founding Fathers had built into the Constitution the mysterious “electoral college” which filtered the people’s votes to make sure that only suitable men of property like themselves could become President. But Jackson had found a new way to stack the deck in his favor. He took control of the newly named Democratic Party and made himself the Party’s choice for the highest office in the land. (The Founders had not anticipated seizing political power through a political party since, being a small, homogeneous group of individuals taking turns in public office, they had not anticipated permanent political parties at all.) By funneling the votes of the lower classes through the political party he controlled, Jackson made himself “the people’s choice” for President. Thus, a republican leader seemed to be a democratic representative, and the republic seemed to be a democracy.