Did Jackson view Jefferson/Madison as sellouts?

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

I am not that knowledgeable on this subject, but I do think there should be a distinction between Jefferson and Madison.  Madison always had some more "Federalist tendencies" than Jefferson, and overall appeared less ideological, from what I have come across.

I’ve read very good historians compare Jefferson and Madison to Hamilton and Adams. A loud man, with intelligence and spirit, and a quiet man, with genius and wisdom. To me, however, Madison is much more distinct from the likes of Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson, and Burr, in that he was less concerned with his actions than with their results.

Madison had a grand mind and a deep understanding of government, but he lacked the understanding of partisan politics. His writings and speeches reflect a great deal of capability, but his frustration with his limited powers, both as Governor and as President, overwhelmed him. He was therefore quite willing to agree to “Federalist economics” if he perceived them as centralizing the government and therefore securing the future unity and power of America.

Describing Jefferson as "a loud man" is certainly a novel take, considering he was famously introverted and as a member of Congress rarely if ever spoke during debate (unlike Madison). I agree that Madison's misappreciation of partisan politics is a major reason he was less successful than Jefferson or Hamilton as a national leader. (N.B. I don't believe Madison ever served as governor; you're thinking of Monroe.)

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Voting property restrictions were state by state, and their disappearance was a gradual process.  Jackson wasn't so much of a turning point on this as is sometimes imagined. Suffrage among white adult men in many rural areas was nearly universal early on since the property requirements in most states were fairly low.   Another thing to keep in mind is one of the main arguments in favor of property requirements was that it would keep the very wealthy from having too much power by buying votes of the very poor, so the politics of this weren't always what you'd expect from a modern perspective.

Furthermore, democracy did not flow in only one direction. In the decades immediately following the Revolution, property requirements for voting were nearly universal, but other restrictions (by race or gender) were comparatively less common. All but four states allowed free blacks to vote in 1792, and four allowed women to vote, provided they could meet the property requirements. The adoption of universal white male suffrage as the national standard was as much about imposing new barriers to enfranchisement for certain groups as it was about removing old barriers for others. Dorr's Rebellion is an interesting illustration of this: the reform party initially sought to institute universal suffrage, but later moved to exclude free blacks in the final draft of the People's Constitution in order to appeal to Irish and German laborers.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Jackson himself was never committed to universal manhood suffrage and at no point in his political career, whether as president or before, did he ever lift a finger in order to expand suffrage. In 1796, he supported suffrage restrictions while helping to draft Tennessee's Constitution. In 1822, he supported suffrage restrictions in Florida as territorial governor. During his administration, suffrage was entirely expanded by a state by state basis and I'm not aware of anything he did to support those efforts.

Is this including free Black men?  I was always under the impression that Jackson was an important voice for expanding the vote to more White men, but obviously women and Blacks weren't a part of his vision.

No, by and large black men were not included in the vision of removing property qualifications for voting. In fact, in many cases, this was actively regressive for black men - for instance, in New York (an admittedly small number of) black men met the property requirements to vote and had that right restricted further (although not totally stripped away) in the 1821 Constitution, largely written by Martin Van Buren, which otherwise lifted property restrictions for white men.

Source (long PDF warning, it's a 34 page paper from Albany Law School on the history of black suffrage in New York, relevant section starts on page 9 of the document)

After 1776, free blacks were initially able to vote in every state save three (Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia) as long as they could meet the property requirement —a more onerous task in some states than in others. When Vermont and Kentucky came into the Union in 1791 and 1792, respectively, both allowed free blacks to vote, Vermont becoming the first state to institute universal manhood suffrage. (In Kentucky, all free men could vote.) This is of course around the same time that many northern states were abolishing slavery, and as far south as even Virginia you saw serious efforts to dismantle slavery either through the courts or through the legislative process.

Beginning 1800, the systematic disenfranchisement of women and people of color went hand-in-hand with the "democratic" reforms that extended the franchise to landless white men. Ohio became the first new state to deny blacks the vote in 1803 when it adopted a constitution establishing universal white male suffrage; New Jersey repealed black suffrage (as well as female suffrage) in 1807 with the same act which abolished the property requirement for landless white men. This process culminated in 1838 with the repeal of black suffrage in Tennessee, so that on the eve of the Civil War only five states (Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont) allowed black men to vote without exception, while three others (Michigan, New York, and Ohio) enfranchised black men only in certain elections (MI, OH), or only if they could meet a property requirement (NY).

In short, the traditional narrative that the American electorate was gradually expanded from only white male landholders, to all white men, to all men, and finally to all people is simply inaccurate.

Source: Another long PDF, but absolutely worth it —this completely changed my view of so-called "Jacksonian democracy" when I read it.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

When states required people to own property to vote, did they allow people under 21 to vote?

No. Twenty-one remains the age of majority for voting purposes until 1967, as far as I can tell. Of course, birth certificates aren't really a thing, so I'm sure some young men in their late teens/early twenties did in fact vote during this period.

@Truman How does this complicate, or add to, the narrative of general historical continuity within the parties? (Assuming Federalist-Whig-Republican and DR-Democrat)

An excellent question. The short answer is that the Jacksonians of the 1830s were very much the party of poor, landless white men and immigrants, who were the primary beneficiaries of the so-called democratization of the early nineteenth century —two constituencies it is very easy to place in the Democratic coalition today. But even that is a massive oversimplification, because in Virginia, for instance, or South Carolina, the Jacksonian coalition was far less "small-d" democratic —and in those states, of course, universal white male suffrage came far later than in the rest of the country.

This raises the question of whether the period from 1800 to 1840 can be accurately described as a period of democratization. On the one hand, there is a very strong argument to be made that the first half of the nineteenth century saw a decisive contraction of democracy. Much is made of the property requirements that existed in most states before 1800 —but in fact, in most states (not all —again, Virginia and South Carolina) the property requirement was low enough that upwards 90% of white men could already vote. Remember, this is a heavily agrarian society—practically everyone was a farmer, so practically everyone owned land, and for those who lived in cities or towns other real estate was accepted as an equivalent toward the requirement. In states like New York where the property requirement was higher, it was rarely enforced, as refusing to register an unqualified citizen was likely to earn the offending clerk a coat of tar and feathers. (The article I linked to in my previous post argues the repeal of New York's property requirement for white voters was merely official recognition of its de facto abolition several decades earlier.) Meanwhile, free blacks and women of property were systematically disenfranchised all across the nation, including in parts of New England. In light of this, many will argue that early nineteenth century voter reforms were fundamentally reactionary and illiberal in nature —and I would agree with this to a large extent.

Recently I've found Henry's argument that Yankee Puritans represent a liberalizing force in American history convincing insofar as we consider free markets, universal education, individual enterprise, and universal suffrage pillars of liberal society. (Of course not all such Yankees were Federalists/Whigs, as our friends Messr.s S. Adams and Thoreau would remind us.) Taking this view, I think it's helpful to consider of the Jacksonians in line with Medieval peasants' revolts: the goal is not so much to create a new system, as to claim rights and privileges promised under the old. One could call this a sort of "poor-man's reactionary leftism" in a very literal sense.

On the other hand, there is a danger in attributing too much to the suffrage issue and ignoring other elements of the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian agendas. Jackson was seen as a democratizing forcqe by white people at the time, not because he fought for universal suffrage (he didn't), but because he attacked the established institutions which poor white people in the South and West saw as emblematic of upper class hegemony. There is, of course, danger in equating "poor white people" with "poor people," and such is largely to credit for Jackson's reputation as a man of the people. However, it's important to note that, while there are exceptions, in general Whigs did not portray themselves as defenders of free blacks' or women's right to vote, nor did they govern as such. When we consider the four states that allowed blacks to vote in 1840, two were dominated by Whigs (Massachusetts, Vermont) and two by the Democrats (Maine, New Hampshire). When the Dorr rebels rose up against the Charter government, they initially called for universal male suffrage; the People's Constitution proposed by the reform party revised this to universal white male suffrage to appease the Irish element at the convention, but the following year Rhode Island did in fact re-enfranchise free blacks as part of the state government's concession to the rebels. Notably, Thomas Dorr's cause was championed by the Democratic press, while the Southern Whig President denounced him as a traitor.

So I would say the recent scholarship is pretty much "game-over" for the traditional view of Jackson as a heroic champion of the people; but it is broadly speaking true that the radicals who favored democratic and liberal reforms in the North were generally Democrats in the 1830s and early 1840s, until the increasing hegemony of the slave power within the Democratic party forced them to look for other lodging.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

I wonder why so much of Europe retained property-owning requirements until the 20th Century.

Most of Europe was ruled by conservative monarchies and jealous nobles prior to 1914, so it's not terribly surprising.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Recently I've found Henry's argument that Yankee Puritans represent a liberalizing force in American history convincing insofar as we consider free markets, universal education, individual enterprise, and universal suffrage pillars of liberal society. (Of course not all such Yankees were Federalists/Whigs, as our friends Messr.s S. Adams and Thoreau would remind us.) Taking this view, I think it's helpful to consider of the Jacksonians in line with Medieval peasants' revolts: the goal is not so much to create a new system, as to claim rights and privileges promised under the old. One could call this a sort of "poor-man's reactionary leftism" in a very literal sense.

With all due respect to Henry, I have not seen this dynamic well demonstrated at all on the ground in politics beyond the education issue during the period in question. Yankee Puritans routinely lined up behind WASP dominated, protectionist and/or nativist dominated political machines throughout the course of the 19th century. Now yes there was a liberal element in the region, but the story of the early 19th century is of that element's decline in voting power. Even before the Whigs had collapsed, they had already come to dominate in large measure Southern New England and Vermont, because of a variety of factors and it is no accident that the Dorr Rebellion occurred at all during this period and failed. It would be almost 100 years before the WASP machine will be toppled in Rhode Island, and arguably only made possible because the state had become majority Catholic.

Sure when you examine the religious doctrines there are some egalitarian attributes and there are some issues where this manifests (education and abolition, much later, women's suffrage), but on the whole we frankly do not see this and instead one sees typical attributes of polarization between the previous religious/ethnic majority and the rising majority with support for restrictions on the political power of the latter supported by the former. Political transformation then occurring when a critical mass of power is finally obtained by the rising demographic to toss out the former establishment. Rhode Island in the early 1930's, Massachusetts in the late 1940s and 1950s.

I agree with most of this. I think it's worthwhile to distinguish between liberal capitalism as a socioeconomic system and American liberalism as an egalitarian ideology descended from Jeffersonian thought. To that extent only, a description of the Puritans as a liberalizing force in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (and to a lesser extent the early nineteenth century) has some merit in my view. This is what W. H. Seward meant when he described the Whigs with their program of nationalist economics as the "progressive" party: not that they favored the socialist-curious egalitarian politics of Thoreau or Dorr, but that they were the party of emergent industrial capitalism. This is adjacent to the distinction between liberals and Radicals I was alluding to in the other thread: those who desired a meritocratic society ruled by a "natural aristocracy" and governed by self-reliance and up-by-the-bootstraps morality on the one hand, and those who favored a truly egalitarian society founded on common cause and solidarity among the lower classes on the other.

It's instructive to consider the Puritans' attitude with regard to toleration. Elementary students are told the Pilgrims came to America in search of religious freedom, which is true —up to a point. The early Protestants believed, as is so typically Medieval, in the overwhelming power of the Truth —that the common people had been misled by corrupt priests and princes, but if they were only able to read the scriptures for themselves, they would surely realize their true interpretation. Of course, anyone who reached a different conclusion was either mistaken or deliberately subversive —so heresy must be punished harshly, again to protect the ignorant masses. So the Puritans believed in toleration, but not really —in religious liberty for themselves, and all those humble enough to accept and believe in the Truth. "Liberty for the righteous" sung in the same key as "equality for the deserving" —"all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."