© Mark Batik Jesuit College Prep, Dallas

 Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit  And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness. -- Flaccus Albinus Alcuinus

 Expanded political opportunity  Suffrage to all white men  Elimination of requirements like property to vote  Spoils system  More elective offices

The Growth of Universal White Male Suffrage Kentucky was the first western state to enact white male suffrage without tax or property qualifications. Other western states followed, and by 1820, most of the older states had dropped their suffrage restrictions as well. By 1840, more than 90 percent of the nation’s white males could vote. But although voting was democratized for white men, restrictions on free African American male voters grew tighter, and women were excluded completely.

The Growth of Universal White Male Suffrage

FIGURE 11.1 Race Exclusions for Suffrage: 1790–1855 This graph shows clearly that as more states entered the Union, laws excluding African American men from voting increased. SOURCE:Alexander Keyssar,The Right to Vote (New York:Basic Books,2000)p.56.

Pre–Civil War Voter Turnout The turnout of voters in presidential elections more than doubled from 1824 to 1828, the year Andrew Jackson was first elected. Turnout surged to 80 percent in 1840, the year the Whigs triumphed. The extension of suffrage to all white men, and heated competition between two political parties with nationwide membership, turned presidential election campaigns into events with great popular appeal.

This well-known painting by George Caleb Bingham, Stump Speaking, shows a group of men (and boys, and dogs) of all social classes brought together by their common interest in politics. SOURCE:George Caleb Bingham (American 1811 –79),Stump Speaking,1853 –54 Oil on canvas,42 1 /2 x 58 in.The Saint Louis Art Museum,gift of Bank of America.Photo © The Saint Louis Art Museum..

 Anti-elite  Anti-intellectual  Democratization of fashion  Newspaper dissemination

The Burgeoning of Newspapers Newspapers have a long history in the United States. Even before the American Revolution, the colonies boasted 37 newspapers (see Chapter 6), and within little more than a decade, that number had nearly tripled. Toward the end of the century, however, the number of newspapers expanded rapidly, by 1835 numbering more than 30 times that of 1775.

Politics, abetted by the publication of inexpensive party newspapers, was a great topic of conversation among men in early nineteenth-century America, as Richard Caton Woodville’s 1845 painting Politics in an Oyster House suggests. SOURCE:Richard Caton Woodville,Politics in an Oyster House, 1848.The Walters Art Museum.

 Romanticism: appeal to the ordinary person Reaction to neo-classicism  Mass market of literature press  High Romantics Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Billy Budd Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter Edgar Allen Poe  Hudson River School Hudson River School