General Andrew Jackson wins the presidency of the United States for the Democratic Party. He is a frontiersman, and thus power within the party slips from the grips of Southern planters to the rough and ready hands of Western frontiersmen. Soon, these internal tensions within the party, along with the dissolution of the Conservative Party (the Whigs), would contribute to the emergence of the Republican Party. Jackson will initiate a process of radical democratization that will lead, among other things, to universal suffrage and the abolition of the Federal Reserve. Two ideals of society begin to emerge: Calhoun’s federalist and autonomous ideal in the South, and Webster’s centralized and efficient ideal in the capitalist North.
