Happy Birthday Old Hickory
On March 15, 1767 (246 years ago today) Andrew Jackson, the 7th President of the United States, was born. His exact birth site is unclear because he was born about the time his mother was making a difficult trip home from burying Jackson's father. The area was so remote that the border between North and South Carolina had not officially been surveyed.
Jackson was a lawyer, a politician and an army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend (1814), and the British at the Battle of New Orleans (1815). He was a polarizing figure, capable of evoking visceral responses pro and con. He dominated the Second Party System in the 1820s and 1830s. As president he dismantled the Second Bank of the United States and initiated forced relocation and resettlement of Native American tribes from the Southeast to west of the Mississippi River. He was a populist and is credited with the creation of what is today the modern Democratic Party. The 1830–1850 period later became known as the era of Jacksonian democracy.
Jackson was nicknamed "Old Hickory" because of his toughness and aggressive personality. He fought in duels, some fatal to his opponents and some of which left the odd piece of lead rattling around inside of him. He grew out of poverty to become a wealthy slaveholder. He fought politically against what he denounced as a closed, undemocratic aristocracy, adding to his appeal to common citizens. He expanded the spoils system during his presidency to strengthen his political base.
Elected president in 1828, Jackson advocated for a small and limited federal government. He strengthened the power of the presidency, an office he viewed as spokesman for the entire population, as opposed to Congressmen from a specific small district. He was supportive of states' rights, but during the Nullification Crisis, he declared that states do not have the right to nullify federal laws. Strongly against the national bank, he vetoed the renewal of its charter and ensured its collapse. Whigs and moralists denounced his aggressive enforcement of the Indian Removal Act, which resulted in the forced relocation of thousands of Native Americans to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). Historians acknowledge his protection of popular democracy and individual liberty for United States citizens, but criticize him for his support for slavery and for his role in Indian removal.
There are a great many biographies about Jackson. One of the lesser known but more intellectually stimulating and critical (in the neutral sense of the word) is The Passions of Andrew Jackson by Andrew Jackson, in which the author extensively gives his analysis of Jackson the man and the legend. In summing up Jackson's life, Burstein writes at pages 239-40 as follows:
Jackson arose because America was bursting at the seams. Though young as a nation, it had mature conspiratorial fears at every step of its partisan evolution. Jefferson had smelled conspiracy British-leaning Federalists and indeed a segment of New England aired secessionist views during the War of 1812. Westerners never stopped anticipating a Spanish conspiracy against their settlements. That is why Burr was eagerly supported in Nashville and elsewhere when he showed up claiming that, in John Overton's words, he was "patronised by the government" in planting a new armed settlement in the area of New Orleans. Nationalists wanted the frontier strengthened in expectation of an eventual war with Spain. Jackson emerged as the answer to every imagined threat: Spanish, British and Indian.
Enemies were a necessary stimulus. To preserve a way of life, that it might grow and prosper, required total commitment and complete hegemony. The limits of his understanding did not limit his popular appeal. He was America's defender, and as a defender, he received wide publicity, from 1814 on, in the national press. His later political genius grew from the conviction, put forth by Jackson and planted in the electorate by his faithful aides, that one who could smash foreign enemies could smash domestic conspiracies to subvert the popular will.
What Jackson shared most with George Washington was extrinsic to character and extrinsic to political thought. It was the majority's indefinite but powerful perception that because he had triumphed, they had triumphed. Symbolic qualities tend to mean more than native intelligence or even practical policies. Jackson's well-crafted persona was so credited that people believed it to be his essential character. Heroes remove uncertainty.
For that reason too, the homes of presidents continue to attract visitors. In Jackson's time, Washington's Mount Vernon grave, site was a shrine for pilgrims. After having just consecrated a new Methodist church in 1830, a cohort of more than five hundred Masonic brethren appeared there, standing in a "Cordon around the Grave", scattering sprigs of evergreen symbolic of the Resurrection, as a sign of their pure faith. Jackson himself attested that Washington's memory was no better maintained than by the honors which "Religion and Masonry" accorded it. Similarly, future President John Tyler, in his eulogy of Jefferson in 1826, observed: "Like Mount Vernon, Monticello shall catch the eye of the way-farer and arrest his course. There shall he draw the inspirations of liberty."
It should be no surprise that Andrew Jackson's Hermitage was also consecrated by nineteenth century patriots. In his eulogistic tribute read on July 4, 1845, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Henrik B. Wright linked Jackson with his two renowned predecessors, projecting that his tomb would become a "modern Mecca," where westward moving pioneers would pause to "drop a tear," and give thanks to an illustrious hero. "Virginia has her Mount Vernon and her Monticello," Wright closed his speech. "New England is he repository of the compeers of Washington and Jefferson. Tennessee has her Hermitage!"
Andrew Jackson's passion and Andrew Jackson's fame are one, the sum of a lifetime of vigilance and abandon. If these two seemingly contradictory qualities are able to co-exist, they did so within the anguished frame of this driven man. Totally independent, refusing to be turned away from any object in which he had invested his heart, the American conqueror coveted nothing more and nothing less than dominion over the national household. He wanted to be the unerring father who rewarded loyalty and love and punished moral transgressions. To be so anointed, he was willing to take on the world.
Jackson was a lawyer, a politician and an army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend (1814), and the British at the Battle of New Orleans (1815). He was a polarizing figure, capable of evoking visceral responses pro and con. He dominated the Second Party System in the 1820s and 1830s. As president he dismantled the Second Bank of the United States and initiated forced relocation and resettlement of Native American tribes from the Southeast to west of the Mississippi River. He was a populist and is credited with the creation of what is today the modern Democratic Party. The 1830–1850 period later became known as the era of Jacksonian democracy.
Jackson was nicknamed "Old Hickory" because of his toughness and aggressive personality. He fought in duels, some fatal to his opponents and some of which left the odd piece of lead rattling around inside of him. He grew out of poverty to become a wealthy slaveholder. He fought politically against what he denounced as a closed, undemocratic aristocracy, adding to his appeal to common citizens. He expanded the spoils system during his presidency to strengthen his political base.
Elected president in 1828, Jackson advocated for a small and limited federal government. He strengthened the power of the presidency, an office he viewed as spokesman for the entire population, as opposed to Congressmen from a specific small district. He was supportive of states' rights, but during the Nullification Crisis, he declared that states do not have the right to nullify federal laws. Strongly against the national bank, he vetoed the renewal of its charter and ensured its collapse. Whigs and moralists denounced his aggressive enforcement of the Indian Removal Act, which resulted in the forced relocation of thousands of Native Americans to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). Historians acknowledge his protection of popular democracy and individual liberty for United States citizens, but criticize him for his support for slavery and for his role in Indian removal.
There are a great many biographies about Jackson. One of the lesser known but more intellectually stimulating and critical (in the neutral sense of the word) is The Passions of Andrew Jackson by Andrew Jackson, in which the author extensively gives his analysis of Jackson the man and the legend. In summing up Jackson's life, Burstein writes at pages 239-40 as follows:
Jackson arose because America was bursting at the seams. Though young as a nation, it had mature conspiratorial fears at every step of its partisan evolution. Jefferson had smelled conspiracy British-leaning Federalists and indeed a segment of New England aired secessionist views during the War of 1812. Westerners never stopped anticipating a Spanish conspiracy against their settlements. That is why Burr was eagerly supported in Nashville and elsewhere when he showed up claiming that, in John Overton's words, he was "patronised by the government" in planting a new armed settlement in the area of New Orleans. Nationalists wanted the frontier strengthened in expectation of an eventual war with Spain. Jackson emerged as the answer to every imagined threat: Spanish, British and Indian.
Enemies were a necessary stimulus. To preserve a way of life, that it might grow and prosper, required total commitment and complete hegemony. The limits of his understanding did not limit his popular appeal. He was America's defender, and as a defender, he received wide publicity, from 1814 on, in the national press. His later political genius grew from the conviction, put forth by Jackson and planted in the electorate by his faithful aides, that one who could smash foreign enemies could smash domestic conspiracies to subvert the popular will.
What Jackson shared most with George Washington was extrinsic to character and extrinsic to political thought. It was the majority's indefinite but powerful perception that because he had triumphed, they had triumphed. Symbolic qualities tend to mean more than native intelligence or even practical policies. Jackson's well-crafted persona was so credited that people believed it to be his essential character. Heroes remove uncertainty.
For that reason too, the homes of presidents continue to attract visitors. In Jackson's time, Washington's Mount Vernon grave, site was a shrine for pilgrims. After having just consecrated a new Methodist church in 1830, a cohort of more than five hundred Masonic brethren appeared there, standing in a "Cordon around the Grave", scattering sprigs of evergreen symbolic of the Resurrection, as a sign of their pure faith. Jackson himself attested that Washington's memory was no better maintained than by the honors which "Religion and Masonry" accorded it. Similarly, future President John Tyler, in his eulogy of Jefferson in 1826, observed: "Like Mount Vernon, Monticello shall catch the eye of the way-farer and arrest his course. There shall he draw the inspirations of liberty."
It should be no surprise that Andrew Jackson's Hermitage was also consecrated by nineteenth century patriots. In his eulogistic tribute read on July 4, 1845, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Henrik B. Wright linked Jackson with his two renowned predecessors, projecting that his tomb would become a "modern Mecca," where westward moving pioneers would pause to "drop a tear," and give thanks to an illustrious hero. "Virginia has her Mount Vernon and her Monticello," Wright closed his speech. "New England is he repository of the compeers of Washington and Jefferson. Tennessee has her Hermitage!"
Andrew Jackson's passion and Andrew Jackson's fame are one, the sum of a lifetime of vigilance and abandon. If these two seemingly contradictory qualities are able to co-exist, they did so within the anguished frame of this driven man. Totally independent, refusing to be turned away from any object in which he had invested his heart, the American conqueror coveted nothing more and nothing less than dominion over the national household. He wanted to be the unerring father who rewarded loyalty and love and punished moral transgressions. To be so anointed, he was willing to take on the world.