Jacksonian America
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In America durning the Jacksonian era, and egalitarian, democratic culture emerged. Male suffrage was extended to include ever larger portions of the public. The lines between Elites and the commoners began to disappear. A higher percentege of the eligiable voters voted than ever before, and they increasingly voted for men they perceived as their equals. Expanding across the Appalachian mountians, the nation bagan to change in profound ways. The young states of Kuntucky, and Tennasee, had for example instituted universal manhood suffrage. In all of these new western states men found themselves on roughly the same footing. In these new settlements, no one had yet gotten much wealthier than any one else. Also as by definition these new settlers all owned land, they all felt they had a say in their government.. These men however had nobody to elect but their neighbors and local community leaders. They wanted to elect people who new what their lifes were about. So they elected people they thought were their equals. Thus beginning the trend that has lasted to this day, whereby someone like “W” Bush tries to pretend he isnt a rich millionare who was born onto wealth, but that he just a good ole Texas boy.
It was also during this time that a sort of Democratization of the economy began to occur. Prior to this time most people generally accepted the economic and social conditions they were born into. But with the arrival of the revolutionary ideals that we are all equal, men began to ask why they too could not be rich. Thus we begin to see the restlessness, and searching for something better that Tocqueville so eloquently exspounds, upon.
Symbolic of the egalitarianism of the day, poor manners abounded. For to show respect, was viewed as some sort of admittance of a saperiortity. As a result, the spitting of Tobacco became endemic, as