Elected by a majority of the white male voters in the United States, Andrew Jackson was known as the "president of the common man."" "Andrew Jackson embraced a distinct and simple theory of democracy. Government, he said, should offer "equal protection and equal benefits- to all its white male citizens and favor no region or no class over another that meant making an effort to extend opportunities to the rising classes of the West and South (Brinkley 226)."" With these new opportunities the West and South began to separate themselves from the aristocratic "citadels- of the Northeast and essentially began to split the North and the South politically.
With the surge in voters and the rise of "King Mob,"" there was a growing disagreement with the tactics and views of the new president and the Democratic Party, which led to the eventual establishment of a second party. The Whig Party, as it became known as, was named in part to criticize the new president that they referred to as "King Andrew I."".
"Denouncing the president as King Andrew I, they began to refer to themselves as Whigs, after the party in England that traditionally worked to limit the power of the king. With the emergence of the Whigs, the nation once again had two competing political parties. What scholars now call the second party system' had begun (Brinkley 238)-.
The view of the new political party was that of reducing the powers of the president and putting more power in the entire federal government. The Whig party, which was "strongest among the more substantial merchants of the northeast, the wealthier planters of the South, and the ambitious farmers and rising commercial class of the West (Brinkley 238),"" was more focused on the "industrial and commercial development (Brinkley 238),"" that favored Northern development. Unlike the Whigs, the "democrats drew more support from smaller merchants and workingmen of the Northeast; from Southern planters suspicious of industrial growth; and from westerners who favored a predominately agrarian economy (Brinkley 238-9),"" which favored more of a Southern agricultural development.