William Garrott Brown

“ Henceforth, public men were to be powerful not so much in proportion to their knowledge of statecraft as in proportion to their popularity. They must represent the popular will, or commend themselves and their policies to popular favor. The public men of the old order, like Adams, might be wise and faithful, but they lacked Clay's and Jackson's sympathetic understanding of the common people. And of the two new leaders Jackson had by far the stronger hold on the popular mind and heart. The people had sent him to Washington because he was of them and like them, and because they liked him. ”

“ He was the American whose simple virtues his countrymen most clearly understood, whose trespasses they most readily forgave; and until Americans are altogether changed, many, like the Democrats of the 'Twenties and 'Thirties, will still "vote for Jackson,"—for the poor boy who fought his way, step by step, to the highest station; for the soldier who always went to meet the enemy at the gate; for the President who never shirked a responsibility; for the man who would not think evil of a woman or speak harshly to a child. ”

“ From Hartford, Conn., where the convention of New England malcontents had sat, he was to learn what demands were made by Americans who chose a time of war to change and weaken, if not indeed to destroy, the constitution of their country. From the American commissioners at Ghent he hoped against hope for news of a peace. To the Southwest he looked with dread, for few had dared to believe that New Orleans could be defended. The three messages arrived almost together, and all three were to stick in men's minds for years to come, and to mould men's thoughts about their country. ”

“ These builders of the West had more strength than gentleness, more shrewdness than wisdom, more courage than culture. They were the rough front which American civilization presented to the wilderness and the savage,—brave, hard-handed, themselves somewhat affected with the barbarism they came to displace, yet in all essentials of character true representatives of their masterful race. ”

“ When he left Washington, the practice of removing and appointing men for political reasons was so firmly established that the patient work of reform has not to this day destroyed it. That, to many historians, was the gravest fault of Jackson's administration. It was, however, merely New York methods applied to national politics, and it was a perfectly natural outcome of Jackson's conviction that the people had sent him there to drive out the men who had control of the government. ”

“ The historians still fight the same battle over him and his doings which in former times was fought out by famous orators in Congress, by the whole people at the polls. It is doubtful, indeed, if there ever will be, until the end of the Republic itself, an end of the dispute over the place which that slender figure with the bristling hair ought to have in American history. Had Andrew Jackson any good claim to statues and monuments, to the first place in the Republic, to popularity such as no other man had enjoyed since Washington, to power such as Washington himself had never exercised? ”

“ Jackson himself was slow to make up his mind where the enemy would strike. He lingered at Mobile until November 22, and four days later Sir Edward Pakenham, with a large army and a great fleet, sailed from Jamaica for New Orleans. It was not until December 2 that a worn, thin man, tired and ill, whom nobody, failing to observe the look in his eyes, would have taken for the conqueror of the Creeks, rode into the curious little city that had been the French and then the Spanish capital of Louisiana, and which was not yet half like an American town. ”

“ What is the rightful place in history of the fiery horseman in front of the White House? The reader must answer for himself when he has studied for himself all the great questions Jackson dealt with. Such a study will surely show that he made many mistakes, did much injustice to men, espoused many causes without waiting to hear the other side, was often bitter, violent, even cruel. ”

“ Jackson believed it, and from this time he made war on Clay and Adams. He believed he had a wrong to right, a combination of scoundrelly enemies to overthrow, a corrupted government to purify and save. The election had shown him to be the most popular of all the candidates, and his friends, of whom Benton was now the foremost, contended that the House ought to have chosen him in obedience to the people's will. Until he should be elected, he and his followers seemed to feel that the people were hoodwinked by the politicians. ”

“ The great fight was over the Bank, and on that question Jackson was supported by the prejudices of the poor, who thought of the Bank merely as a rich men's institution, by the fears of the ignorant, who believed the Bank to be a mysterious and monstrous affair, and by the instinct of liberty in many others, who, though they did not believe the charges against Biddle, did feel that there was danger in so powerful a financial agency so closely connected with the government. ”

“ Jackson the duellist must give place to Jackson the soldier. Yet all fighting is akin, and it was but a change of scene and purpose that turned the man of the tavern brawl into the man of The Horseshoe and New Orleans; for it happened that there was nowhere in the Southwest, perhaps nowhere in the country, any other man quite so sure to have his way, whether in a street fight or in a battle. ”

“ When Congress met, it proved to be, everything considered, probably the ablest legislature ever assembled in America. There were brilliant men of a new generation in the lower House, and Adams also was there. In the Senate, the great three were still supreme, and were now united against the President. The debates were long and furious. A panic throughout the country added to the excitement. Clay led the attack, Calhoun and Webster supported it; Benton bore the brunt of it. In the House, the Jackson men had a majority; in the Senate, the opposition. ”

“ In fact, unless we understand President Jackson himself, we cannot possibly understand his administration; for President Jackson, though he was now somewhat subdued in manner, and "By the Eternal" was not quite so often on his lips, was still Jackson of the duelling pistol and Jackson of the sword; and he was also still the Jackson whom Benton saw with the lamb and the child between his knees. All men were still divided for him into friends and enemies. ”

“ The President and his Cabinet followed Adams's advice instead of Calhoun's, and Calhoun himself, as Jackson's superior, wrote to him about the campaign in a friendly way. Jackson naturally thought that Calhoun had been his friend in the Cabinet, and had no reason to suspect that it was Adams who defended, and Calhoun who wished to censure him. He did not learn the truth for many years. Had he known it sooner, there is no telling how different the political history of the next twenty years might have been.
For henceforth Jackson was to be a great figure not in warfare but in politics. ”

“ Jackson meant to serve the people faithfully, but he entered upon the duties of his great office in the spirit of a victorious general. The sort of politics most in accord with his feeling was the sort of politics which prevailed in New York and Pennsylvania. Jackson once declared, "I am not a politician, but if I were, I should be a New York politician." Before long, a leading New York politician, Senator Marcy, expressed the sentiment of his fellows when he said, "To the victors belong the spoils." That was a sentiment which a soldier President could understand. ”

“ It is doubtful, however, if any better man than young Jackson could have been found for the place, and that is almost the same thing as saying that no better place could have been found for him. To the office and his new surroundings he brought the qualities they supremely demanded,—a will that no man ever subdued, [Pg 19] a desperate courage which not even the Tennesseans could match, and a swift, intuitive perception of the way to act in emergencies. ”

“ Jackson was a Christian. Indeed, [Pg 100] there is nothing in the man's whole life more honorable than his perfect loyalty to her. She was a simple, uncultivated, kind-hearted frontier woman, no longer attractive in person, and a great contrast to the courtly figure by her side when she and the general were in company. It is certainly true that the two used to smoke their reed pipes together before the fire after dinner, and that custom, to one ignorant of American life in the Southwest, would stamp them as persons of the lowest manners. ”

“ In the Republican party he always acted with those men who, like Henry Clay, favored a strong government at Washington and looked with distrust on any attempt of a State to set up its own powers against the powers of the United States. As President, he wished the government to take vigorous measures for defense, for developing the country by internal improvements, for protecting American industries by heavy duties on goods imported from other countries. ”

“ Not far away is the Treasury building. Were the horseman alive, by merely turning his head he could see its outline through the trees. There is a tradition in Washington that when this old man lived in the White House, and Congress voted to erect a new Treasury building, the old one being burned, there was some question of the exact spot on which it should stand. The question was put to him when he happened to be walking near the western end of Pennsylvania Avenue. ”

“ As to the public lands, he favored a liberal policy, with the object of developing the western country by attracting settlers rather than raising money to be spent by the government. On the general question of the powers of the government he stood for a stricter construction of the Constitution and greater respect for the rights of the States than Adams believed in. So, notwithstanding Jackson's tariff views, the mass of the people held him a better representative of Jeffersonian Democracy than his rival.
But a party is an organization, and not merely a list of principles. ”

“ Every man, in fact, who in the course of the long debate that followed condemned the acts of General Jackson in Florida was written [Pg 96] down an enemy on the tablets of his memory. He remained in Washington until the House had voted down every resolution unfavorable to his course, and he had thus won his first victory over Clay. Then he set forth on a northern journey which showed him the immense popularity he had in places like New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and gave him an opportunity to increase it by the fine appearance he made in public. ”

“ Outside of Tennessee, few men had ever heard his name. At Washington he was probably distrusted, so far as he was known at all, because of his championship of Burr and his quarrel with Dinsmore, and because he had been for Monroe instead of Madison for President. He was ardently in favor of war with Great Britain because of the impressment of American seamen and other grievances which the United States had borne for years, but there seemed to be little likelihood of his getting a chance to play a part in the war if it should come. ”

“ Parties were hardly yet formed under the Constitution, but in the strife between the followers of Hamilton, who went for a strong national government, and who became the Federalist party, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the followers of Jefferson, who went for the rights of the States and distrusted a strong national government, and who became the Republican party, he sided with Jefferson. Indeed, he belonged to the extreme faction of the Republicans, to which the term "Democrats" was applied, at first as a reproach. ”

“ He sternly refused to appoint any man to office for supporting him, or to turn any man out of office for opposing him. He could not be winning or gracious on public occasions. Ezekiel, the shrewd old brother of Daniel Webster, wrote to him after the election that even in New England men supported Adams "from a cold sense of duty, and not from any liking of the man." It took a New England conscience to hold a follower in line for the New England candidate. The man of the Southwest won many a vote where the voter's conscience did but half consent. ”

“ The nullification doctrine came before Congress in the winter of 1829-30, and was debated in the most famous of American debates. Clay was not there to speak for his tariff system, but a greater orator than Clay took up the challenge. In the greatest of all American orations since Patrick Henry [Pg 135] spoke for liberty, Webster spoke for union and liberty, and Americans will never forget his words until liberty and union are alike destroyed. Jackson was the last man in the country to miss their force. ”