Posted: April 6th, 2015

The relationship between political power, economic growth, and democracy has always been contentious throughout U.S. history, and the age of Jackson was no exception.

The relationship between political power, economic growth, and democracy has always been contentious throughout U.S. history, and the age of Jackson was no exception.

Order Description

The relationship between political power, economic growth, and democracy has always been contentious throughout U.S. history, and the age of Jackson was no exception. As you have read, Democrats (as embodied by Andrew Jackson) and Whigs (as embodied by Henry Clay) possessed very different visions of the proper roles played by democracy, capitalism, and governmental power in American life. In this paper I want you to analyze and compare these visions and their impact upon the lives of Americans from the late 1820s through the early 1840s.
Using the documents from Part II of the Watson book as your evidence, your assignment is to analyze the views of Jackson and Clay on the most important political issues of the day from the late 1820s through the 1840s and advance an argument regarding which actions/policies, based on these visions, were most consequential for Americans of the period.
In order to make such an argument you should focus on answering these questions with SPECIFIC evidence taken directly from the documents in the text:
1. What were the political and economic visions that each man had for America, and what were the specific elements of these visions? How did they intend to translate these ideas into action?
2. Why did they put forth these ideas? What were the motivations behind their ideas? Whose interests did they claim to represent?
You DO NOT need to talk about every document. Choose the documents that best support your argument. A lack of thorough engagement with the sources, however, will affect your grade.
Your paper should be 3-5 pages, 12-point Times New Roman font, 1-inch margins, double-spaced. You should base your paper primarily on evidence from the Watson text, but additional material from lecture and your textbook is allowed – NO OTHER OUTSIDE SOURCES. You should cite evidence using Chicago-style footnotes. Every word processing program will have an option to insert footnotes (in Word it is under References). Here is a helpful website with more information: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/717/01/