This next in the series on American history expounds on the events of the rise of Jacksonian Democracy which is seen a pivotal as the era of the common man and precipitating the American Civil War.

Rise of the Common Man
by Michael Doyle

Increasingly becoming the age of the common man
These turned more and to Andrew Jackson as their man
In his general pace of marching toward ascendency
Despite the interruption by Adams, Jackson gained the presidency

In abandoning the politics of deference
The people sought one of their own as their preference
The broadening of white franchise made things more messy
Peaked as it was by Jackson's inauguration to presidency

A brawling self made sort of frontiersman
Rose to the top as only such as he can
Keeping a rough and common touch, he was found appealing
As a change up toward the inescapable, God be willing

A figurehead hero for the forces of populism
Jackson arose as a matter of consensus against elitism
Alexis Tocqueville in his travels of quiet observation
Noted with favor that mass democracy swept the nation

Social equality put America into the vanguard
And for democracy was held in esteem and regard
The democracy and its changes were as much cultured
And one that Tocqueville believed should be nurtured

The elitist North rejected depravity and original sin
Deism and Unitarianism rejected Christianity again
Supernaturalism and the trinity fell by the wayside
In favor of self determinism's wallop of human pride

The burned over area led to Finney's conversion
Becoming the prototype of induced grace and evangelism
This is the age when Mormonism also arose
Boundless in possibilities of social reforms supposed

Utopianism formed new sorts of varied community
Reshaping families and caught up in celibacy
Many seeking after mankind's improbable perfection
With abolition also becoming a spiritual direction

William Lloyd Garrison burned the Constitution as death
Dealt by the devil and holding his Bible as we held our breath
While Frederick Douglas worked more gently within the system
As Uncle Tom's Cabin vitrified the worse of our symptoms

This seminal work cut through the callous unkindness
Giving sight to the wrong in a world of blindness
Slavery had gone so far as to tear asunder family
And in all respects was a tragedy compounded on tragedy

This was also a time of our rising cultural literacy
Hawthorne and Emerson agitated for the American literary
America, as always, was consistently hard to see
Until our writers grew bold enough to invite American intimacy

In the American Scholar, Emerson openly refused
Bemused at the time to get past Europe's courtesan muse
And to produce our own works less timid and untamed
We were to talk our own talk setting forth unblamed

The clay potted by and in our deep national minds
Inspired by the Divine Soul in leaving yesterday behind
This was our intellectual declaration of independence
The comparison of such is more than coincidence

Walt Whitman with all of his unholy torment
Was a voice raised in this Jacksonian moment
Speaking to radical humanism as his flags unfurled
Barbarically pronounced over the roofs of the world

His democratic words sprawled out impulsively
Poured onto paper with ink almost compulsively
The moments of all of reality held his attention
And were set forth in his written observations

There's an essential message in the Open Road
The forging of the soul to tell the tales told
The truest democracy when souls meet soul
And the flames of freedom's dignity do console

(c) March 26, 2020  Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved