ITICS FROM 1824 TO 1845

%325. New Political Institutions.%--Of the political leaders of
Washington's time few were left in 1825. The men who then conducted
affairs had almost all been born since the Revolution, or were children
at the time.[1] The same is true of the mass of the people. They too had
been born since the Revolution, and, growing up under different
conditions, held ideas very different from the men who went before them.
They were more democratic and much less aristocratic, more humane, more
practical. They abolished the old and cruel punishments, such as
branding the cheeks and foreheads of criminals with letters, cutting off
their ears, putting them in the pillory and the stocks; they partly
abolished imprisonment for debt; they established free schools,
reformatories, asylums, and penitentiaries. They amended their state
constitutions or made new ones, and extended the right to vote, and
introduced new political institutions, some of which were of doubtful
value, but are still used.

[Footnote 1: John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson were born in 1767;
Henry Clay, in 1777; John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, Martin Van Buren,
and Thomas H. Benton, in 1782.]

%326. Political Proscription; the Gerrymander.%--One of these was the
custom of turning men out of public office because they did not belong
to the party in power, or did not "work" for the election of the
successful candidate. As early as 1792 this vicious practice was in use
in Pennsylvania, and a few years later was introduced in New York by De
Witt Clinton. Jefferson resorted to it when he became President, but it
was not till 1820 that it was firmly established by Congress. In that
year William H. Crawford, who was Secretary of the Treasury and a
presidential candidate, secured the passage of a "tenure of office" act,
limiting the term of collectors of revenue, and a host of other
officials, to four years, and thus made the appointments to these places
rewards for political service.

Another institution dating from this time is the gerrymander. In 1812,
when Elbridge Gerry was the Republican governor of Massachusetts, his
party, finding that at the next election they would lose the
governorship and the House of Representatives, decided to hold the
Senate by marking out new senatorial districts. In doing this they drew
the lines in such wise that districts where there were large Federalist
majorities were cut in two, and the parts annexed to oth