herefore would be incapable of holding such a high political office. This was ironic as Jackson had been elected to the House of Representatives at the age of twenty-nine. When he turned thirty, he was elected to the Senate, and when he reached the age of thirty one, he was appointed to a state supreme court judge of Tennessee. The only real issue of the election was that of the passing of the tariff of 1828, or, the tariff of abominations. It was proposed by Jackson to weaken Adams and his party. Items such as hemp, iron sail duck and woolens had an extremely high tax applied to them. Jackson figured that this tax was so high that even the northern states that wished for higher taxes on goods would veto it. He hoped that when it was vetoed he could turn to the south and say, "we sure pulled one over on them (the north)." To the dismay of Jackson, the tariff was passed. Now the South had become angry with Jackson for having the tariff passed. John Calhoun, Jackson's vice presidential candidate secretly wrote a letter denouncing it. Jackson and his newly founded Democratic Party had followed the concepts of a low tariff, strict construction, a weak central government, private morality, ignoring slavery, and opposing the Bank of the United States. Jackson was very much against the idea of a national bank. "The bank," Jackson told Martin Van Buren, "is trying to kill me, but I will kill it!" Jackson, in vetoing the recharter bill, charged the Bank with undue economic privilege. He believed that it put too much power and authority into the hands of only a few. The few people that did have control over the banks were upper class wealthy men, not representatives of the common man. Adams had adopted Clay's American System, which consisted of a second bank of the United States, a high tariff, and internal improvements. Jackson was opposed to all of these. Jackson did however support internal improvements, just not at federal expe...
