AMERICA’S LION

A review of Jon Meacham’s American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House (2008)

(Rating 4 of 5) 

John Meachham’s book American Lion covers the years when Andrew Jackson was the President of the United States.  In some ways it tries to mimic the traditional biography with a few chapters into his background.  This sort of reminds me of the last book I read on John Quincy Adams’ post-presidency.  Include a small mini-biography in the beginning before getting into the substance of your book.  In that view the earlier chapters are a waste of space.  Meacham could have just explained Jackson’s back-story in a single page in the beginning.  Nevertheless this book is good look at Jackson’s years in the White House.

From the start it is clear that Jackson is a different sort of president than his six predecessors.  Even though all of the previous presidents defended their right to use their constitutionally defended powers, Jackson declared himself to be the sole representative of the people and started using his presidential powers rather creatively.  He was the first president to veto bills that he did not like rather than veto on the grounds that a bill was unconstitutional.  His administration was one of the keys to the development of presidency as an institution.    

“Jackson took the Jeffersonian vision of the centrality of the people further, and he took Jefferson’s view of the role of the president further still.  To Jackson, the idea of the sovereignty of the many was compatible with a powerful executive.  He saw that liberty required security, that freedom required order, that the well-being of the parts of the Union required that the whole remain intact.  If he felt a temporary resort to autocracy was necessary to preserve democracy, Jackson would not hesitate.  He would do what had to be done.   In this he set an example on which other presidents would draw in times of struggle.  There were moments, Abraham Lincoln argued during the Civil War, when ‘measures otherwise unconstitutional might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution through the preservation of the nation.’  It was a Jacksonian way of looking at the world.” (p.48-9)

            As I said in my review of Remini’s book on Jackson: there is a dark side to populism.  And the victims of that dark side were the Native American populations of the South.  Forced from their homes and made to relocate to far and distant place.  These actions will always be a stain on Jackson’s legacy.       

“But the answer was, tragically, yes.  Indian removal was possible because enough white Americans had a stake in it, or sympathized with it, and thus the institutions of the country allowed it to go forward.  Frelinghuysen and Evarts were not outliers; there was a significant anti-removal campaign across the country.  And the few groups of Indians—the Iroquois in New York and Cherokees in North Carolina—who managed to carve out small spheres east of the Mississippi after removal showed that coexistence was possible.  But to many, the idea that the tribes might be left alone on enclaves within states did not appear politically feasible once Georgia moved against the Cherokees.  There is nothing redemptive about Jackson’s Indian policy, no moment, as with Lincoln and slavery, where the moderate on a morally urgent question did the right and brave thing.  Not all great presidents were always good, and neither individuals nor nations are without evil.” (p.96-7)

            The area where President Jackson was great was when he stood up to the nullifiers in 1832.  Jackson’s and Clay’s (although neither would acknowledge the other one’s role) actions saved the Union from what could have been a civil war.  Had Jackson backed down to South Carolina's demand it would have been the death of the Constitution of the United States.

“A different, less emotionally nationalistic president in these middle years of the Republic might not have been able to balance the forces of respect for the essential rights of the states with a devotion to the causes of the Union.  Jackson was perfectly able to do this, for he believed in both, and he knew that both would be forever in tension and sometimes in conflict.  It could be no other way in a democratic republic formed from the elements that had formed America.  He wanted the power to act as freely as he could because he believed his judgment would serve the country well, for he made no distinction between himself and a broad idea of ‘the people.’  Egotistical, yes; arrogant, probably.  But to some degree politics and statecraft always involved the character of the leader, and the character of Andrew Jackson was, in the end, well suited for the demands of the White House.  He was strong and shrewd, patriotic and manipulative, clear-eyed and determined.” (p.250)

            The Jacksonian Era ushered in popular politics.  Gone would be the days of statesmen acting above the idea of party.  Now parties were going be far more organized and true vehicles to getting people elected.  Constituent based politics were here to stay.   

“If Jackson had been a president of consistent principle, the issue would have been clear.  He was the defender of the Union, the conqueror of the nullification, the hero of democracy.  An American organization was exercising its constitutional right to free speech and was using public mails—mails that were to be open to all—to do so.  But Jackson was not a president of consistent principle.  He was a politician, subject to his own passions and predilections, and those passions and predilections pressed him to cast his lot with those whit whom he agreed on the question at hand—slavery—which meant suppressing freedom of speech.  He had done the same in the case of the Cherokees and the state of Georgia, allowing a particular issue to trump his more general vision of government, a vision of government, a vision in which people who obeyed the laws were entitled to the protection of the president.” (p.304)

American Lion is a good look into a transformative presidency.  From the politics of the petticoat, to the bank war, to infamous Indian removal, and the heroic stand against the nullifiers of South Carolina.  This book is worth a read. 
 

(Video is from the History Channel Documentary on Andrew Jackson's life.)

ONE DETERMINED MAN IS A MAJORITY

A review on Robert V. Remini’s The Life of Andrew Jackson (1988)

(Rating 5 of 5)

Andrew Jackson changed the face of the Republic; his election would signify the new reality that any American man* could be president. He was he first person of common humble origins to elected to the highest office. Jackson was the first president not be from the original thirteen colonies, and the first time the nation had turned to a ‘Westerner**’. He is the only president to have his own time period named after him, the ‘Jacksonian Era.’ Until Andrew Jackson came on the scene ‘democracy’ was a negative word similar to ‘anarchy’. Jackson changes all that making the republic the possession of the common people. Robert Remini does an incredible job displaying the good and bad of this incredible figure.

Jackson never knew his father, because he died while the future president was still in his mother’s womb. Jackson, at the age thirteen, joined the American Revolution, during which he was captured. As a prisoner of war, he refused to clean a British officer’s boots and consequently had his face slit open.

Jackson grew to manhood in the frontier he became a county lawyer and judge, dealing out harsh justice that the frontier expects. He would start a plantation that would ultimately become the Hermitage, and at this time, he would commit the horrible sin of slavery by acquiring slaves. He would fight in duels, most famously the fatal duel with Charles Dickinson. The Dickinson duel occurred because Dickinson insulted Rachel Jackson. What happened involving his wife was embarrassing, they had already married and then they found out her divorce from her first husband was invalid, so they had to remarry. This would be used against the Jacksons for the rest of their lives.


(Rachel Jackson)


(Dickerson duel)

Jackson became involved in politics, serving at the Tennessee Constitutional Convention. He would later go one to be elected one of the state's first U.S. Representatives and then a U.S. Senator. Jackson found that he hated the Senate and resigned to gain a seat on the Tennessee Supreme Court. Jackson would gain the colonelcy of the Tennessee State Militia, and this would be the jumping point to a military career that earned him the nickname ‘Old Hickory.’

Remini describes a military career of incredible success. When the War of 1812 breaks out, the Creek Nation erupts into a civil war and as a result. Pro-British Creeks attack American settlements, and Jackson is sent to stop them. He and the men under his command, some of them were Native American allies, routed the Creeks. At then end of the war***, Jackson had one the greatest American military victories at the Battle of New Orleans.


(General Andrew Jackson)

“Hours earlier the battle in front of the Rodriguez Canal had ended. The entire assault had taken hardly more than two hours, the principal attack lasting only thirty minutes. When the grim business of counting the dead was done, the figures showed 13 American dead, 39 wounded, and 19 missing in action on January 8. British causalities amounted to 2,037, of which 291 were killed, 1,262 wounded, and 484 captured or missing.” p.104

During the Monroe administration, in response to Spanish influenced incursions on the South by the Seminole Nation, Jackson was sent to stop the raids. Jackson went further then his orders indicated and apparently, James Monroe did not really seem to care! However, it might have been plausible deniability for President Monroe was rather pleased by his progress.


(President James Monroe)

The election of 1824 was known as the battle of the giants with the single Democratic-Republican Party coming apart with fragments each rallying around each factions' chosen champion. When the votes were counted, Andrew Jackson had won the popular vote**** and he had more electoral votes than any other candidate, but the Constitution mandated a majority of electoral votes, which he did not have. The election was thrown to the U.S. House of Representatives where the top three candidates were: Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and William Crawford. However, Henry Clay, who was the Speaker of House, was the fourth place candidate who did not qualify to be in the House consideration. Clay through all of his support behind Adams. Adams was elected and Clay was then made into the new Secretary of State. Considering the short history of that office*****, Jackson ran off screaming ‘corrupt bargain’!


(President John Quincy Adams 'stole' the election of 1824 from Jackson)


(Henry Clay made the 'corrupt bargain' that would kill his chance for the presidency)

Jackson did something no one had ever done before and that is he ‘ran for president’. He traveled built up support for four years and, in 1828, Jackson had a ‘revolution’ where he and his newly named Democratic Party crushed John Quincy Adams’s re-election bid. He would go on a hold the first ‘people’s inaugural’ that led to a great deal of partying and property destruction.

“The inauguration of General Andrew Jackson of Tennessee, despite the vulgarity and animal spirits unleashed by the occasion, was one of the great moments in American history. And the reason for this, as everyone agreed, was that it represented in a symbolic way a significant advance in representative government for the American people. Andrew Jackson was the people’s own president –the first such—and that was something wonderful and exciting. Seeing the crowds and hearing them cheer a government that they themselves had called into existence augured well for the future of a democratic society.” p.181-2

(President Andrew Jackson)

Remini then tells the story of Jackson’s historic presidency. The seventh president would use the power of his office like no other before him. His struggle with the bank would prove to be one of the defining moments, not only of the nation’s history, but in the office of the President of the United States.


(Critics referred to Jackson as King Andrew I for his use of executive power)

“Indeed, Jackson’s Bank veto is the most important veto ever issued by a President. Its novel doctrines advanced the process already in train by which the presidency was transformed and strengthened. To begin with, Jackson accomplished something quite unprecedented by writing this veto. Previous Presidents had employed the veto a total of nine times. In forty years under the Constitution only nine acts of Congress had been struck down by the chief executive, and only three of these dealt with important issues. In every instance the President claimed that the offending legislation violated the Constitution. It was therefore generally accepted that the question of a bill’s constitutionality was the only reason to apply a veto. Jackson disagreed. He believed that a President could kill a bill for any reason—political, social, economic, or whatever—when he felt it injured the nation and the people.”p.229-30

(Pro-Jackson, Anti-Bank political cartoon)

Another great event was the Nullification Crisis, in which, Jackson acted to save the Union establishing precedent for his future successor, Abraham Lincoln. Henry Clay acted swift enough to avoid bloodshed, but Jackson established the important precedent. What he had told once told Calhoun over drinks he was now telling to the nation: “The Union Must Be Preserved.”

There is also discussion of Jackson’s failures and bad acts. The’ Petticoat Affair’ that resulted in the entire cabinet leaving and the establishment of the informal kitchen cabinet is discussed. In addition, most disgracefully, Remini writes about the removal of the Cherokee Nation from their ancestral lands to Oklahoma, which is the darkest stain of Jackson’s legacy.


(One of the most shameful acts in U.S. history. Even from a political realist perspective, the indiscriminate Indian removal polices that forced the Cherokee Nation out of Georgia were unjustified and horrific.)

There is also the triumphant reelection of President Jackson over Henry Clay in 1832, the Big Cheese event, and his eventual retirement a brief eight-year post-presidency. Andrew Jackson led and incredible life and Robert Remini did an incredible job consolidating his massive research on Jackson into this one-book biography. I highly recommend this to anyone looking to explore the Jacksonian Era and the life of man who made it.

*at least white American

**Back when being a 'westerner' was possible on east of the Mississippi.

***Actually it was after the war, at least on paper

****First time in the history of the country that the popular vote was counted.

*****Thomas Jefferson had been Washington’s Secretary of State.; James Madison had been Jefferson’s. James Monroe had been James Madison’s; and, John Quincy Adams filled the role for President Monroe.

{Video posted on YouTube by DesertSavy the music is by Johnny Horton.}