Hammond's main thesis is that Jacksonian democracy was fueled not by betterment of the common man as its fire, exclusively rather a style by wealthy, major powerful white men "whose quintessentially American divine guidance was not to restrain or destroy the business class, but to join it" (Feller 144). Hammond argues this struggle of capitalists for control of the state is a earmark of American politics. Jackson's popularity did not come from real aspirations of bettering the common man, but through his own and his supporter's ability to position themselves in their aspirations as idealists against capitalists and human rights advocates against the propertied (i.e. exploitative) class.
Feller, D. Jacksonian Democracy. Retrieving The American Past, pp. 133-153.
s as False Democrats Edward Pessen attacks the lofty high-mindedness surrounding the Jacksonian era. He argues that nothing lofty or ideal entered the minds of the "uncommon men" who ran things with "seeming deference to the common man" (Feller 151).
Pessen argues that such lofty ideals were all smoke and mirrors that Jackson and those who supported his power were much much adept at providing the public than the Whigs. In making his main thesis regarding the ii parties in power, the author sounds like he is describing contemporary politics in American society as much as poking holes in any lofty notions regarding Jacksonian democracy: "For all the differences in their political rhetoric, the major parties of the era were more like than unlike, not least in the extent to which their canonic strategies and policymaking apparatus were controlled by relatively wealthy men" (Feller 148). Propaganda and the power of popular hero worship added to Jackson's mystique with the common man, even though Pessen argues that the age may have been named after the common man but it did not belong to him. The only distinction between the shrewd, wealthy, ambitious Whigs and the Jacksonian democrats was that ability of the democrats to flatter the common man. This bestow them enormous power to control their agenda at the expenditure of that of the
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