To the end, the Whigs regarded Tyler as a traitor to their cause; but the judgment of history is that it was a case of the biter bitten.  They had nominated him for the vice presidency as a man of views acceptable to Southern Democrats in order to catch their votes, little reckoning with the chances of his becoming President.  Tyler had not deceived them and, thoroughly soured, he left the White House in 1845 not to appear in public life again until the days of secession, when he espoused the Southern confederacy.  Jacksonian Democracy, with new leadership, serving a new cause—­slavery—­was returned to power under James K. Polk, a friend of the General from Tennessee.  A few grains of sand were to run through the hour glass before the Whig party was to be broken and scattered as the Federalists had been more than a generation before.

THE INTERACTION OF AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN OPINION

=Democracy in England and France.=—­During the period of Jacksonian Democracy, as in all epochs of ferment, there was a close relation between the thought of the New World and the Old.  In England, the successes of the American experiment were used as arguments in favor of overthrowing the aristocracy which George III had manipulated with such effect against America half a century before.  In the United States, on the other hand, conservatives like Chancellor Kent, the stout opponent of manhood suffrage in New York, cited the riots of the British working classes as a warning against admitting the same classes to a share in the government of the United States.  Along with the agitation of opinion went epoch-making events.  In 1832, the year of Jackson’s second triumph, the British Parliament passed its first reform bill, which conferred the ballot—­not on workingmen as yet—­but on mill owners and shopkeepers whom the landlords regarded with genuine horror.  The initial step was thus taken in breaking down the privileges of the landed aristocracy and the rich merchants of England.

About the same time a popular revolution occurred in France.  The Bourbon family, restored to the throne of France by the allied powers after their victory over Napoleon in 1815, had embarked upon a policy of arbitrary government.  To use the familiar phrase, they had learned nothing and forgotten nothing.  Charles X, who came to the throne in 1824, set to work with zeal to undo the results of the French Revolution, to stifle the press, restrict the suffrage, and restore the clergy and the nobility to their ancient rights.  His policy encountered equally zealous opposition and in 1830 he was overthrown.  The popular party, under the leadership of Lafayette, established, not a republic as some of the radicals had hoped, but a “liberal” middle-class monarchy under Louis Philippe.  This second French Revolution made a profound impression on Americans, convincing them that the whole world was moving toward democracy.  The mayor, aldermen, and citizens of New York City joined in a great parade to celebrate the fall of the Bourbons.  Mingled with cheers for the new order in France were hurrahs for “the people’s own, Andrew Jackson, the Hero of New Orleans and President of the United States!”