Politics During Age of Jackson

Zarina Ratzlaff

April 11th, 2016

US History Mon-7pm

Politics during the Age of Jackson

        Discuss how, during the Age of Jackson, politics became a spectacle. Include other         examples besides the presidency of Andrew Jackson.

ny events within the years prior to the 1700s led up to the development of the concept of English Freedom.  It all began when King James gave a charter to the Virginia Company, who were a private business organization that consisted of merchants, members of English Parliament, and aristocrats and that they were sent on a voyage to the North Americas to search for gold.  During the 1607 time period, funds were minimal. As Jamestown became the first permanent English settlement, thousands of settlers continued to come over to live and work.  This then led to new empires that allowed labor and economic resources, created new societies and even reshaped existing ones around the Atlantic area and gave more power to the nations of northwestern Europeans.  “Interest in colonization was spurred by national and religious rivalries and the growth of a merchant class eager to invest in overseas expansion and to seize for itself a greater share of the world trade.” (Forner Pg. 46) (Give Me Liberty).  This was the colonist way to come over to the North Americas to develop their way of freedom.  Freedom of the way they explore for gold, freedom for how they work, and freedom of how they wanted to create society in new land to eliminate feudalism.

        In the year 1606, James I helped to define freedom at the time by granting the charter of the Virginia Company.   They defined this by giving the colonists power to vote for who they wanted to be in the members of their assemblies.  This tradition rested on the Magna Carta, which was signed by King John in 1215. This mission was to promise colonists that they would enjoy “all liberties” that lived in the “realm of England”.  This was to protect the common laws like the right to trial by jury, and access to land.  With this, they had freer rein to economic independence as well as religious. The idea that certain rights of Englishmen applied to all within the kingdom had developed in conjunction to what they traditionally defined as their liberties.

        Over the centuries, the definitions of freedom changed between 1640 and 1660.  The Levellers had a different definition to freedom.  “…Universal entitlement in a society based on equal rights, not a function of social class.” (Forner Pg. 83) (Give Me Liberty). Another group known as the Diggers defined freedom to be even more open and that freedom should apply to everyone equally whether they were rich or poor.  The Diggers believed that freedom is when all are entitled to being comfortable in their living situation since it’s their own land that they lived in.

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