A Jackson Man: Amos Kendall and the Rise of American Democracy

Introduction

intrductin On her visit to the United States in the mid-1830s, the English writer Harriet Martineau met many of the most famous Americans of the day. No one, however , enthralled her more than a mysterious, undistinguished Democrat who had aroused fear and hatred in his opponents and had captured the imagination of Americans of all persuasions. Amos Kendall, she wrote, was supposed to be the moving spring of [Andrew Jackson’s] administration; the thinker, planner, doer; but it is all in the dark. Documents are issued of an excellence which prevents their being attributed to persons who take the responsibility for them. . . . [W]ork is done of goblin extent and with goblin speed, which makes men look about them with a superstitious wonder; and the invisible Amos Kendall has credit of it all. . . . Every mysterious paragraph in opposition newspapers relates to Kendall. . . . [H]e is undoubtedly a great genius.1 Martineau had heard so much about Kendall’s reputation for never being seen in public that as soon as she arrived in Washington she was on the lookout for him. Suddenly one evening, she recalled, “intimations reached me from all quarters, amidst nods and winks, ‘Kendall is here:’ ‘That is he.’” At first she was taken aback by his strange, sickly appearance, but she soon decided that it worked to his advantage by keeping “the superstitious” in “dread of him.” She surmised that he did not “desire the superstition to melt away; for there is no calculating how much influence was given to Jackson’s administration by the universal belief that there was a concealed eye and hand behind the machinery of government.” Martineau could not take her eyes off Kendall, who “was leaning on a chair, with head bent down, and eye glancing up at a member of Congress,” but suddenly “he was gone.”2 1. Harriet Martineau, Retrospect of Western Travel, 3 vols. (London, 1838), 1:236, 257–58. 2. Ibid., 258–59. 2 A Jackson Man: Amos Kendall and the Rise of American Democracy The Austrian-born writer Francis J. Grund was equally fascinated. He described Kendall sitting at his desk, brusquely interviewing job seekers without looking up from his writing. When Grund was introduced, Kendall made only “a slight motion forward” and “immediately sank back again into his chair.” Instead of being offended by such discourtesy, Grund became one of Kendall’s admirers. He respected his “extraordinary powers of mind, [his] indefatigable habits of industry, [his] calm, passionless [manner] and [his] unerring judgment .” Kendall was proving, Grund was told, that “the various principles of democracy may be united into a system.”3 It was Kendall’s contributions to this system that attracted Martineau and Grund. As their French counterpart, Alexis de Tocqueville, expressed it, they had traveled to America seeking “the image of democracy . . . with its inclinations , its character, its prejudices, and its passions.” Democracy had begun to catch hold in the United States in the 1790s, but how quickly and how fully it had developed depends on how it is defined. The traditional interpretation stresses forms of government and relates the rise of democracy to the creation of mass political parties in the 1830s. A recent school of thought sees its rise much earlier in the informal behavior of people of all types who created a participatory democracy through the use of social organisms such as salons, parades , festivals, and newspapers. Kendall, who edited newspapers and helped build a national political party, is a good source for both interpretations.4 The travelers realized that they were witnessing more than simply a change in government. The onset of democracy was intermixed with the rise of a commercial, capitalist economy stimulated by an expansion of banking, the construction of roads and canals, and the introduction of steamboats and railroads. Markets were growing; the young nation was on the move. Between 1790 and 1860 it would change from a federation of thirteen states and 4 mil3 . Francis J. Grund, Aristocracy in America: From the Sketch-Book of a German Nobleman (1839; reprint, New York, 1959), 298–99. 4. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Phillips Bradley, 2 vols. (1945; reprint, New York, 1980), 1:14. For the older view see Joel H. Silbey, “‘To One or Another of These Parties Every Man Belongs’: The American Political Experience from Andrew Jackson to the Civil War,” in Contesting Democracy: Substance and Structure in American Political History, 775–2000, ed. Byron E. Shafer and Anthony J. Badger...