Abstract
An inordinate amount of attention has focused on the problematic relationship between virtue and self‐interest and too little on the significance of corruption as it bore meaning in the minds of Jacksonian Americans. Charges of corruption constituted a language of opposition within ‐ not side by side with, nor opposed to — a consensus in Jacksonian America on liberty and equality in both the public and private spheres. Corruption, which had multiple and layered meanings, constituted a republican idiom of partisan dissent in an age of liberal political and economic policy. Rather than analyze the economic consequences of national public policy, in this article an examination of the effect of the post‐1837 depression on politics, and specifically Whig and Democratic efforts to translate dissatisfaction with the economy's performance into a program that would provide relief for indebted individuals and states, reveals a social ideology that limns the essence of fierce partisan dissent within the parameters of widespread consensus.
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