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Andrew Jackson - Good Evil & The Presidency - PBS Documentary

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He learned to fight in the Revolutionary War

He used what he's learned to kill a man gambling death

He led the American army to the most surprising victory in its history but

He also launched an unauthorized invasion of Florida he added vast regions of the

south to the United States but it was land he brutally rested from Native

Americans

he was the founder of the Democratic Party but his enemies accused him of

being an American Napoleon his name was Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson is made possible by major grant from the National Endowment

for the Humanities democracy demands wisdom by the Ahmanson foundation

committed to the creative pursuit of quality education in the arts by the

Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by contributions to your

from viewers like you

thank you

in 1859, as America was rushin towards Civil War, James Parton, the first

historian to attempt a biography of Andrew Jackson arrived at the hermitage

Jackson's beloved home

he was escorted through the mansion by Hannah Jackson who had been Andrew

Jackson's slave from the time she was 10 until Jackson died.

Partin knew that many Americans considered Andrew Jackson the country's

greatest leader since the founding fathers. Parton wrote during the last 30

years of his life. He was the idol of the American people.

Columbus had sailed, Washington fought, Jefferson written fifty years of

democratic government had passed, and the result of it all was that the people of

the United States honored Andrew Jackson before all other living men.

Andrew Jackson, in my mind, is one of the great presidents; and it's not surprising

that he was so loved. In fact, it is said that when the Civil War broke out in

1861. People wanted to vote for Andrew Jackson hoping he would come back and

save the Union. He was that beloved for all of his flaws, for all of his

contradictions, Andrew Jackson did more than any other American of his

generation to enlarge the possibilities of American democracy in doing that

seeing himself as president, as the Tribune of the people, he did more than

anyone to change to enlarge the possibilities of the American presidency

but Jackson was also one of the most controversial presidents in American

history his policies on issues like Indian Removal and slavery provoked

fierce opposition not only in his lifetime but beyond Andrew Jackson for

African Americans is not sort of figure that one who was very dear he wouldn't

form part of the the ranks of the great men of American society because never in

his reign as president in his terms as president

did he ever attempt to expand the rights of people on the contrary he did

everything he could it seems to me to constrict those right to limit those

rights people talked about Andrew Jackson's black moods people talk about

Andrew Jackson's red hot temper but the color of this story is green and it's

the grain of envy and it's the grain of coveting Indian lands

at the Hermitage Parton discovered a portrait of Jackson finished just before

he died it was completely unlike the many heroic

portraits of the great man and the vulnerability it captured brought to

life partners most insightful description of Jackson he was a

democratic autocrat an urbane savage an atrocious saint Americans have always

looked at Andrew Jackson and seen themselves but over the years they've

looked at Andrew Jackson and seen different versions of themselves at one

time they saw the frontiersman the poor boy made good the classic self-made man

today some Americans look back at Jackson and they see the slaveholder the

Indian oppressor even the Indian hater so the debate about Andrew Jackson is

very contemporary one he's an inescapable quintessential American but

of what kind is he a man whom we should admire or is he a man whom we should

despise is he a man whom we should celebrate or is he a man for whom we

should apologize Thomas Jefferson he could never speak on account of the

rashness of his feelings I have seen him attempted repeatedly and as often choked

with rage

in the 1760s Andrew Jackson's parents traded desperate poverty in Ireland for

an equally hard life on the Carolina frontier Andrew never met his father

before he died when his wife was pregnant with Andrew leaving the boy and

his two older brothers to fend for themselves when the Revolutionary War

began in 1775 the Carolina frontier became a dangerous place with one farmer

siding with the Patriots and his next-door neighbor with the British it

was a brawling violent way to grow up you made a living with your hands and

with your spirit your military spirit to defend yourself and your hands to pull

something out of the soil so you had a constant wariness and a

constant threat of violence and I think that's one of the many reasons Jackson

became a man who was so prone to violence he grew up with it he didn't

know anything else during the revolution the fighting in the Carolinas was the

most vicious of the entire war both sides executed men they captured and

committed atrocities against civilians outnumbered and desperate the Patriots

relied on young boys who knew every twist and turn in the woods to carry

orders through the one of them was Andrew Jackson there was

a famous story about young Andrew 13 years old being commanded by his by the

British officer who captured him to clean his boots and Jackson refused to

take such a servile job and the officer slashed him across the face with a sword

and Jackson put his arm up to defend himself and he carried the scars all his

life the war inflicted other even more horrible scars on Jackson

one of his brothers died of heatstroke while in battle and his mother and other

brother died of disease in the boys eyes it was the British who were to blame for

leaving him suddenly alone in the world for Andrew Jackson the American

Revolution was a formative psychic as well as political event for the rest of

his life he would despise the British Empire he would grow up feeling as if he

owed the British a kind of repayment for all that the British had done to him

personally and to his family

Andrew Jackson with that kind of a background you would expect him to be a

very angry and frustrated young man and he was and he made quite a reputation

for himself as a man who is getting into trouble causing all kinds of problems a

fellow resident of the town of Salisbury described the young troublemaker this

way Andrew Jackson was the most roaring rollicking horse-racing card playing

mischievous fellow that ever lived in Salzburg he got a small inheritance from

a grandfather back in Ireland and he went down to Charleston to collect it

and spent the whole thing in a week on horses and liquor and maybe some girls

too but it was all gone pretty fast and he had to trudge back to the upcountry

of South Carolina to somehow pull his life together again there are a lot of

15 year-olds who would not have made it and it wouldn't have surprised anybody

if Andrew Jackson just went down the tubes and was forgotten at that point

but all the people who knew him when he was a boy and a young man said he had

passion fire determination audacity and refusal to be crushed by the kinds of

things that might wipe out anybody else

after apprentice in with a lawyer Jackson became a lawyer himself at the

age of 20 and when he was offered a job as a prosecutor on the frontier he

jumped at the opportunity to join the waves of Americans heading west

when the revolution ends particularly for young men like Jackson with very

little going for them in the East there is this huge expanse of territory

Kentucky and Tennessee to be precise that there was the place you could start

off one of the attractive features of this frontier experience was that all of

these new places were in need of founding fathers so to speak

and they're like a job placement at a new founding father needed for County

and Tennessee and and people like Jackson could apply I mean basically you

show up and say I'm here to create a new community

in 1788 three months before George Washington was elected the first

president of the United States Andrew Jackson arrived at a new settlement on

the edge of the American West it's name was Nashville Tennessee

besides practicing law Nashville's newest citizen bred horses

speculated in land and most significantly fell in love with Rachel

Donaldson robots daughter of one of Nashville's most prominent families

Rachel returned Andrews feelings but their relationship faced an

insurmountable barrier Rachel was already married to a man from

Kentucky named Lewis robots when Jackson arrives his this wild kid and Rachel you

know was sort of wild herself she should never have married Louis Robards and she

finds I think companionship and a kind of kindred spirit in Jackson and they

fall in love but in most of 1790s America women literally belonged to

their husbands I think it's very hard for us to understand that there was a

time in the history of our country where it was virtually impossible for people

to divorce the woman became a part of the husband and she had no separate

legal rights whatsoever from her husband so in the event a woman who wanted to

leave the household she had to leave her children behind because the children did

not belong to her she had no legal ownership to children to property a

woman had no legal identity whatsoever except as a part of her husband

most unhappy couples lived in loveless marriages rather than flout the law but

Andrew and Rachel were not the kind of people who let social convention stop

them from following their hearts these two hapless people up until this point

find each other and the opportunity and the desire merge for a really

extraordinary decision which is for the two to elope to Natchez the two young

lovers headed south along the Natchez Trace trail their goal was the wild and

wooly town of Natchez on the Mississippi River which was governed by Spain by

running off with Andrew Rachel was making it clear that she was never going

back to her husband no matter what the consequences

for a woman to choose to leave her husband especially one who came from

Rachel Donaldson's background was an extraordinarily courageous decision on

her part because in Rachel's case she knew that she was essentially setting

herself up to be condemned by the society that she lived in and the shadow

of this decision would haunt them through the rest of their days in the

beginning the couple's daring elopement was worth it for they made an ideal

match where others could not tame him she could there's one incident that

occurred when they were floating down the Mississippi River and there were

some people that annoyed Jackson I don't recall exactly what it is they did and

he took a rifle and he starts shooting at them and right away they ran down

into the cabin and told Rachel she said please tell mr. Jackson I would like to

see him she could handle him she was the right person for him

with Nashville still a frontier town with few churches and fewer courts

Rachel and Andrew were able to return home after six months and be accepted by

most of the community as man and wife but Rachel's husband was not so

forgiving and he took his case against her to the state legislature where he

won permission to sue for divorce on the grounds of adultery in 1793 the courts

granted Louis the first divorce in the history of the state of Kentucky not

long after Rachel and Andrew were quietly married in Nashville Rachel

hoped that if she and Andrew were loving and faithful the fact that she had been

branded a Scarlet woman would soon be forgotten but her new husband was

interested in politics and her adultery would one day be a central issue in the

race for president of the United States

for all his wildness the young Andrew Jackson also had the determination

vision and charisma of a born leader and in 1796 the state of Tennessee sent him

as its lone representative to Congress but the learnin statesman who filled the

nation's capital didn't quite know what to make of the fiery frontiersman

Jackson was so passionate when he came to Congress in the 1790s the Thomas

Jefferson remembered that he would get on his feet and become overwhelmed with

his emotions literally choked with rage could not get out of word and red-faced

had to sit down again if the Washington elite were unimpressed with the

passionate mr. Jackson the feeling was mutual

Congress was stifling for Jackson it was a place where people met in committees

and did backroom deals and Jackson despised backroom deals it was a place

where people traded favors with one another in order to get what they wanted

and Jackson thought that was hideously corrupt

after just over a year in Congress Jackson resigned declaring I was born

for the storm and a calm does not suit me raising racehorses now became his

favorite pasta and betting enormous sums on those horses in match races became

his passion Andrew Jackson loved horses violence whiskey he was also someone who

if you were his friend you were his friend forever if yours

enemy god help you in 1805 Jackson won a huge sum of money when his opponents

horse came up lame but a dispute over how the payoff was made led to an

escalating series of insults between Jackson and a young Tennessee and named

Charles Dickinson later his friends insisted that Dickinson had said

something about Rachel Jackson and here's something else that Jackson is

very sensitive about because his whole marriage to Rachel had been under a

cloud from the beginning and anybody to raise that point in any direct or even

indirect way would trigger a very violent response

on May 30th 1806 Charles Dickinson and Andrew Jackson met on a dueling ground

Dickinson was reputed to be the best shot in Tennessee and when the signal

was given to fire he fired first but to his shock he apparently missed

then Andrew Jackson took careful aim and mortally wounded Dickinson only then did

Jackson's second notice that he was bleeding Jackson had in fact been shot

in the chest with the bullet lodging next to his heart when he shocked ii

asked how he could possibly have fired back accurately jackson replied i should

have hit him if he had shot me through the brain jackson carried the bullet for

the rest of his life it was unmistakable evidence of how unsuited he was to the

give-and-take of politics but his future in a different arena could not have been

brighter Sam Houston the reputation of general Jackson will adorn the proudest

brightest pages in the nation's history he wears the laurel wreath which his own

valor

in 1812 the United States declared war on Great Britain Andrew Jackson had been

yearning since he was 13 for another shot at the British and having been

voted commander of the Tennessee militia his dream had now come true

to inspire fellow Tennesseans to join his army he declared who are we and for

what are we going to fight are we the titled slaves had George the

third the military conscripts of Napoleon the great or the frozen

peasants of the Russians are no we are the Freeborn sons of America the

citizens of the only Republic now existing in the world and the only

people on earth who possess rights liberties and property which they dare

call their own but the mission Jackson in his men were ultimately given was far

from glamorous tramping and slogging through the forests and swamps of the

southeast until they had found and defeated Creek Indian warriors who were

allied with the British well Jackson is in an enviable position he has one of

four armies assigned to punish the creeks he is poorly supplied his troops

are very poorly trained they have very short enlistments and it's cold and wet

and they want to return home things are not going well

after months in the field Jackson supply lines broke down fearing starvation some

of his soldiers Newton ate and began to walk home to Tennessee but Andrew

Jackson threatened to kill them if they took another step it was not an idle

threat for on two other occasions Jackson had men under his command

executed I see in Jackson's Indian campaigns a ruthlessness that is

frightful to behold he seemed possessed almost with a determination to go on no

matter what finally in March of 1814 Jackson cornered the main creek force it

was camped on a peninsula called Horseshoe Bend because it was protected

on three sides by the Tallapoosa River with the fourth side protected by a

mammoth breastwork of logs they had built the creeks were convinced that

their position was impregnable

but then Cherokee waters fighting with Jackson's swam across the river to the

creek village and set it on fire Jackson saw his chance and ordered his

men to storm the barricade

after brutal hand-to-hand fighting Jackson's forces took the barricade from

that point on after the barricade was breached it's no longer a battle

it is a Search and Destroy mission it is a slaughter

of the 1,000 Creek warriors not one surrendered

it was Andrew Jackson's first great child but to his friend Sam Houston and

fought beside him it was also a tragedy the Sun was going down and it's set on

the ruins of the Creek Nation where but a few hours before a thousand brave

warriors had scowled on their assailants there was nothing to be seen but volumes

of dense smoke rising heavily over the corpses of painted warriors the burning

ruins of their fortifications more Native Americans were killed in the

Battle of Horseshoe Bend than on any other day in the history of the United

States one of the American participants who went down to the river that night to

fill his canteen said it very very nicely the Tallapoosa might very well be

called a river of blood because as the dead and dying made it to the river

the Tallapoosa was turned red

Horseshoe Bend was one of the only victories in a war that was turning out

to be a disaster for the United States the British had captured Washington DC

following the Battle of Bladensburg which military historians have called

the worst disgrace in American military history when the American militia broken

ran hardly firing a shot the British then moved in burned the White House and

the Capitol so the war had been going very badly with Britain threatening to

further humiliate America by conquering New Orleans the army was desperate to

find a general who could get his men to stand and fight the general finally

chosen was incredibly tough on his men and yet his men were fiercely loyal to

him a riddle explained by his nickname Old Hickory Andrew Jackson became Old

Hickory when he was coming back from the front down in Mississippi and he decided

that he would walk while the wounded row and so he walked all the way home

and his men loved him for it it was example of amazing spiritual leadership

and they started calling him Old Hickory because they thought he was as tough as

a Hickory stick Old Hickory had never had a day of formal military training in

his life and yet the Battle of New Orleans would be depicted in song story

and art for the next 100 years Verne Andrew Jackson and his men were

about to shock the world to even out the odds with the British Jackson enlisted

the aid of the French pirate Jean Lafitte Choctaw Indians and the free

blacks of New Orleans then he masked them beside his men on a narrow stretch

of ground between a swamp and the Mississippi River On January 8th 1815 a

huge wave that battle hardened British troops swept down on Jackson's irregular

instead of turning and running as the British had watched American troops do

in numerous battles before Jackson and his men marched into the pages of

American history they really thought that once these professionals came

watching towards these frontiersman they'd all run and to their surprise

they not only didn't run they stood and fired one folly after another right into

the faces of these poor oncoming British soldiers and just mowed them down

Jackson had proved that America could stand up to the world's greatest

military power and win the victory that he won was almost unbelievable

the British lost hundreds of men dead on the battlefield

Jackson's casualties in the main battle were 8 killed and 13 wounded it was

astonishing it's still astonishing as news of the victory spread across the

country America was swept up in a wave of patriotism unrivaled in its history

I think the whole character of the American people changed after the war of

1812 prior to that time you asked the person who or what they were they would

say I'm a New Yorker I'm a Virginian I'm from Connecticut I'm from Massachusetts

after New Orleans they said I am an American Americans pride in the victory

was stoked by a flood of images of the battle for a new invention aquatint

engraving enabled artists to make multiple color copies of the same image

much faster than ever before a delighted American public bought up thousands of

pictures of the glorious American victory at New Orleans and at the center

of many of these new engravings was the new American hero Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson was really one of the first national celebrities songs were

written about him clubs were founded for him January 8 the anniversary of the

Battle of New Orleans towns would have Jackson dinners and banquets he was a

cultural force before he was a political force the festivities were boisterous

for Americans had more than just the Battle of New Orleans to celebrate after

1815 the Americans were very much free to work out their own destiny without

interference from Europe this meant that they were enthused and excited and I

thought they could accomplish anything they wanted to it also lent a sense of

urgency they believed that if they didn't get it right now they might not

get another chance that this was the time this was the place on which a new

world was going to be created they had to make sure that it was the right new

world this turbulent age would become the only period in American history

known by the name of a single man the Jacksonian era yet as the era began

Andrew Jackson was once again living on a farm in Tennessee with no clear future

in American politics for Rachel Jackson having Andrew home was a break from what

was in many ways a lonely life

she and Andrew had proven unable to have children and her dream of spending her

life surrounded by a loving husband and large family had not come true I think

that when Rachel ran off with Andrew Jackson she thought that she was going

to get a husband who was devoted to her and that they would have this warm

circle around the family fire every night

with children running about very similar to the household she had grown up in but

instead she's married a man who's got tremendous ambition so instead of having

this quiet family home which I think was at the heart of Rachel's desires instead

she's married to a very ambitious man who pursues national politics becomes a

military leader and in her own words spends less than the fourth of his

nights under his own roof as he waited to see what Avenue for his ambition

might open next Andrew Jackson tended to his farm and his horses and became a

wealthy man his admirers were soon touting the political appeal of a

penniless orphan who had pulled himself up by his own bootstraps but the real

story of how Andrew Jackson became a wealthy man was more complicated

Frederick Douglass general Jackson has to own that he owes his farm on the

banks of the mobile to the strong arm of the nigra

you you

for millions of poor white Americans many of whom had come from Europe

seeking a better life the ideal America was one in which they

could prosper to give them that opportunity General Andrew Jackson had

forced the Creek Nation to see vast amounts of land in what would become

Alabama and Mississippi to the United States the treasured myth was that this

was a place where white Americans could improve their luck by relying solely on

their own hard labor

the harsh reality was that it was black Americans who were often doing much of

the labor Jackson himself founded a plantation in northern Alabama on land

from which he had just driven the creeks to work the land he brought in slaves

Jackson firmly believed that the slaves were put on this earth to labor and

whites are here to rule in to govern and to lead society and they are at the top

of the pecking order they are at the top of the social order they are at the top

of the political order and therefore they're the ones who rule superior

White's lead inferior blacks follow

Jackson named his biggest parcel of land near Nashville The Hermitage at the

height of its operation well over 100 slaves at the Hermitage called Andrew

Jackson master he would have been a very paternalistic person and he would have

made the slaves think he was their mother and father and got all wrapped

into one but to enslave another person another human being you can't be a good

person you have to be a pretty tough vicious mean person to hold another

person or 140 people in slavery for all of their lives when one of Jackson's

slaves escaped he offered a reward to anyone who would give the man 300 lashes

300 lashes could kill a man because of the infection from 300 lashes on his

back perhaps they would put some grease into the wound some ointment into the

wound they may pour some whiskey on it you know and which would make the man go

into shock but he could die from those wounds he certainly would be healed for

a long time and that would remind all the other slaves here's what you gonna

get if you try to run away from this place

though a few white Americans were starting to question the morality of

enslaving blacks the fact was that slavery was vital to American prosperity

and men like Andrew Jackson could not envision a world without it human

slavery was a powerhouse of the early American economy slave grown products

were the most valuable exports that the United States produced slave grown

cotton slave grown rice slave grown tobacco spilled out of the plantations

of the south crowded onto boats enriched the harbors of New York and Boston and

then fed an appetite of a hungry and shivering world and that's where the

money came from so the people who owned the slaves and the people who bought and

sold the produce that the slaves made were the richest people in the country

and it was the desire to get more of those riches that drove Americans into

the best cotton country in the world the country that was possessed by the creek

in the Choctaw and the Cherokee and the Chickasaw Indians the relentless demand

for Indian land on which to grow cotton created intense conflict with Native

Americans

some of the bloodiest fighting was in southern Georgia where white settlers

were battling Seminoles and creeks who were staging cross-border raids from

Florida with Florida still owned by Spain President James Monroe called up a

man he knew he could depend on to defend America's borders but General Jackson

had even bigger plans Jackson really was simply concerned with Indian insurgency

in Florida he was really concerned about the growing numbers of free and escaped

blacks who were they are free and escaped slaves who were there who were

armed and potentially dangerous and a magnet for other slaves it's a threat to

hit to the plantation economy the combination of an Indian slave alliance

had haunted Americans from the 18th century onward and this was something

that concerned Jackson terribly without orders from Washington

Jackson launched an invasion of Florida and competent during the invasion he

captured two British men who he believed were inciting attacks on Americans

ignoring the ruling of his own military tribunal he had both men executed

when news of the unauthorized invasion reached Washington the Speaker of the

House Henry Clay declared that Jackson had the makings of an American Napoleon

he called on Congress to censure Jackson being censured would have disgraced

Jackson but his conquest of Florida was enormous Lee popular with most Americans

and Congress refused to censure the great war hero

Henry Clay I fail to see how the killing of two thousand English persons at New

Orleans qualifies a person for the difficult and complicated duties of the

presidency

in 1824 James Monroe was retiring after two terms as president Andrew Jackson

thought he was an excellent candidate to be the next occupant of a white house

but he was not the only one with his eye on the job John Quincy Adams was the son

of John Adams America's second president he had spent much of his childhood in

Europe with his father and was now Secretary of State his worldview was as

different from Jackson's as his upbringing he was a politician with

imagination he imagined an America that was much more economically developed he

imagined an America with much broader educational opportunities for everybody

he imagined an America in which the rights of Indians and black people and

women were actually respected Treasury Secretary William Crawford and Speaker

of the House Henry Clay were also candidates for president as in every

previous election the candidates did not campaign and in some states residents

did not even get to vote for president instead the state legislature chose that

state's members of the electoral college in the early years of the Republic

voters were not called on to choose the President of the United States choosing

the president was quite honestly and quite deliberately an elitist operation

the people who were thought to be the insiders in state government became the

presidential electors and they chose the president based on which set of

Washington insiders they thought was the best and the people were basically

expected to accept that decision without plate in an election controlled by

Washington politicians the frontiersman from Tennessee seemed certain to finish

last when Andrew Jackson's name was first

floated about as a candidate for the presidency all kinds of leading

politicians were aghast they understood him to be a wild-eyed

military chieftain a hot-tempered individual who had executed a couple of

Brits down in Florida without authority or or apparent reason and as Jefferson

said he was the most unfit man imaginable for the office of the

presidency to counter the view that Jackson was unfit to be President one of

his advisors John Eaton published a series of letters that proposed an

entirely new rationale for what was important in a president in the

selection of a chief magistrate of this union it is not necessary that we should

look exclusively to the mental qualifications of a candidate it is

strength of character a perseverance and steadiness of purpose that makes the

distinguished man what John Eaton does in the letters of Wyoming is simply

stand on its head the conventional understanding of the qualifications of a

president the very qualities that made a candidate before John Quincy Adams being

the the ideal experience in courts of Europe experience and diplomacy

experience as his father secretary in the in various offices of government all

of this is proof of corruption proof of insider status proof of being out of

touch with the people whereas Jackson's complete absence of a resume becomes his

primary qualification for office when the votes were counted in 1824 the

Washington establishment was stunned to discover that Andrew Jackson had won

both the most popular and electoral votes but with four men dividing up the

electoral vote Jackson did not win a majority and the election was thrown

into the House of Representatives

Speaker of the House Henry Clay had finished last and was out of the running

but he had enough support to play kingmaker clay believed with all of his

heart that Andrew Jackson was unfit to be President so he threw his support to

John Quincy Adams and with it Adams was elected president Adams then immediately

offered clay the job of Secretary of State outraged Jackson supporters began

railing against what they were convinced was a corruptbargain between Washington

insiders to steal the presidency from>Andrew Jackson one newspaper which had

endorsed Jackson declared expired at Washington on the 9th of February 1825

the virtue liberty and independence of the United States caused by poison

administered by the assassin hand of John Quincy Adams the usurper and Henry

Clay what they were absolutely convinced of

was that the popular will had been thwarted the election had been stolen

Washington insiders had cooked up the whole thing and they had to make sure it

didn't happen again by 1828 when Andrew Jackson ran against

John Quincy Adams a second time the Jacksonians were ready to launch the

first true political campaign in American history their strategy was

driven by the fact that most states had finally given the vote to all white

males to inspire those men to get out and vote for the first time in their

lives Jackson's campaign took advantage of the latest media revolution

lithography to flood America with lithographs of the hero of the Battle of

New Orleans if you're going to elect the president by appealing to the people as

a whole you change the ground rules completely because you have to win the

popular vote down there at the grassroots at the militia grants in the

taverns in the fairs in the streets all across the country so somehow you have

to be able to reach those people you've got to fire them up

the Jacksonians plan was to rally average Americans around a new idea that

they should choose the President of the United States so they organized all

kinds of popular demonstrations rallies conventions assemblies of people who

would get together and hurrah for Jackson they would pass some set of

resolutions and then they would all have a barbecue and they all have a drink and

they would start to cheer and pretty soon you get the sense that everybody in

this precinct is for Jackson and they'd send a results of that to the newspaper

and try to publicize it as much as they could and this was the kind of tactic

that didn't require finagling behind closed doors it could take place in the

boondocks it could happen in rural Tennessee rural Alabama rural New York

and this kind of stirring up popular vote and giving the people the notion

that they should choose the president and not the caucus members in Washington

that revolutionized American politics the people have not been willing to give

up the choice of president ever since the revolutionary new style of

campaigning soon made Jackson into the heavy favorite but then his opponents

discovered the skeleton inside Andrew and Rachel's closet

the man behind the mischief was a confidant of henry clay's who edited a

Cincinnati newspaper he uncovered and printed the court record of Rachel

Jackson's divorce proceedings which revealed that Rachel had lived with

Andrew while she was married to another man

the story of Rachel's adultery was soon on the front pages of newspapers across

the country Jackson is called the Western Bluebeard

Rachel is the American Jezebel and it said the touch of a profligate woman

like Rachel is going to pollute anyone how can someone like this be put in the

White House and over the women in Washington society Jackson blamed Henry

Clay for the attacks on Rachel and he would later say that it was one of the

great regrets of his life that he did not shoot clay instead Jackson's

campaign fired back with the charge that while Adams was US envoy to Russia he

had procured an American whore for the Russians on this and other stories they

told about Adams were lies whereas the story that the Adams people were telling

about Jackson was true but taken together they all made the campaign of

1828 quite possibly the dirtiest campaign in all American history

the viciousness of the campaign would have consequences no one could have

foreseen rachel was now 57 and had become deeply religious she found it

impossible to accept that people across America were now publicly calling her a

whore and worse just because she had fallen in love with Andrew Jackson so

many years ago to a friend she wrote who has been so cruelly tried as I have our

enemies have dipped their arrows in wormwood and gall and sped them at me

Almighty God was there ever anything to equal it to think that 30 years have

passed

I've come to see Rachel Jackson's life as the plot of a Grand Opera you have a

young woman who makes a mistake in her first marriage and then chooses to

escape that with a very courageous protector but by doing that she's made

perhaps the biggest mistake of her life because this whole story of Rachel as a

fallen woman explodes on the scene again and becomes the moral wedge issue of the

1820 campaigns

when the election of 1828 was over and the votes were counted Andrew Jackson

the war hero who had dramatically expanded America was elected president

in a landslide in January of 1829 he boarded a steam boat to begin his

journey from Nashville to Washington DC had many stops along the way the

townsfolk planned joyous celebrations to honor the first man of humble origins to

become president but Andrew Jackson declined every single invitation he

received for he was too bowed down with grief just after the election Rachel

Jackson had died of a heart attack

Jackson was devastated by Rachel's death from that day forward he carried her

miniature and would speak to Rachel every night before his he went to sleep

whether he was at the Hermitage or in Washington and when he was home at the

Hermitage each evening he would go and visit Rachel's grave and yet Rachel's

death was seen by some as a political godsend for Jackson everyone around

Jackson knows rachel is going to be a problem in the White House because the

women in Washington will not accept her socially and Rachel choosing shall we

say to die at that moment freeze him to focus on all the challenges he'll have

in the White House in many ways she's like Madame Butterfly who realizes that

it's only through her death that she'll be able to give her lover what he needs

but that was not how Andrew Jackson saw it in his eyes his enemies had made an

unforgivable attack on his wife they blame John Quincy Adams for not

putting a stop to it and he blamed Henry Clay for initiating Jackson actually

believed that they killed her and so as far as he was concerned they were her

murderers over the next eight years Jackson's anger at his enemies would

combine with his passionate personality and strong convictions to produce one of

the most turbulent presidencies America has ever experienced Daniel Webster when

General Jackson comes he will bring a breeze with him which way it will blow I

cannot tell

on March 4th 1829 thousands of farmers and tradesmen who had never been to

Washington DC before poured into the White House they had come to celebrate

the inauguration of the first president whose life story they could identify

Andrew Jackson his whole family is wiped out in the revolution he's an orphan

he's angry but he decides to make something of himself and he becomes the

president of the United States it's an extraordinary career it's what

America we like to think is all about to Jackson's working-class supporters their

presence at the inauguration celebration was proof that America was entering a

far more democratic age and that was precisely what were the Washington elite

prominent socialite Margaret Bayard Smith described how the inauguration

party turned into a right what a scene we did witness the majesty of the people

disappeared and a rabble a mob was scrambling fighting romping cut glass

and China to the amount of several thousand dollars was broken in the

struggle to get the punch ladies fainted men were to be seen with

bloody noses and such a scene of confusion took place as is impossible to

describe those who got in could not get out by the door again but had to

scramble out of windows the president after having then nearly pressed to

death and almost suffocated by the people in their eagerness to shake hands

with Old Hickory had to retreat through the back way

the riot deeply alarmed the Washington establishment as men like Henry Clay saw

it Jackson's motley supporters had demonstrated why the founding fathers

had not trusted the masses to choose the president

now clay and his allies worried that Jackson a man famous for his dictatorial

disposition would use the support of this same mindless mob to turn himself

into America's first imperial president it's hard for us to imagine how much

that generation worried that a republic could so easily be taken over by a

strong man by a military chieftain by an emperor napoleon of course had just

recently done that in France Henry Clay was convinced that King Andrew was the

farthest thing from the deliberative statesman that a republic required that

he was in fact a dangerous egomaniacal potential emperor president Jackson's

plans would only stoke Clay's fears for over the next eight years he would

attempt to do nothing less than reinvent the presidency Jackson as president was

not unlike Jackson as a general he was the leader he thought of himself as a

leader he would he understood the separation of powers under the

Constitution but nevertheless he thought that the President had a very particular

role as the man who had been elected by all of the people to lead government in

a way that no previous president could have even thought of that alone execute

Jackson's first assault on the Washington establishment was to fire

dozens of federal employees including 13 district attorneys charging that they

were either incompetent or corrupt or both most of these high-level government

bureaucrats were regarded as untouchable some of them had been there since George

Washington's day Jackson within a few weeks fired a

number of them he removed more government officials than all of his

predecessors put together

but while the president claimed pure motives for the firings his opponents

took one look at the replacements Jackson hired and proclaimed it the work

of the devil some of these people were personally

unsavory some of them had scandals and their backgrounds and as his opponents

and even Jackson's some of Jackson's own supporters thought he was undercutting

the competency and efficiency of government by naked ly rewarding people

for no virtue other than being willing to say and do anything to get him

elected and so he was turning the United States government into his own personal

political machine

but just as Andrew Jackson was starting to look invincible the Washington elite

snared his administration in a sex scandal

Jackson's friend and Secretary of War John Eaton had long been friendly with a

woman named Peggy O'Neil Peggy was married to an officer in the Navy but it

was whispered among the ladies of Washington that she was not entirely

faithful in 1829 news arrived that Peggy's husband had died on board a Navy

ship instead of going into mourning Peggy

almost immediately married John Eaton and that was when the rumor began racing

through the capital that the naval officer had committed suicide after

finding out that the Secretary of War was having an affair with Peggy to the

ladies of Washington it was proof that Jackson's depraved rabble who is going

to sully the cabinet just as it had defiled the White House

the problem with Peggy Eaton part courtesan part common tart is she had a

scandalous sexual past and whenever you see women and sex in this period you

know it's about fear and there was a lot of fear in Washington and anxiety about

the coming of democracy the ladies of Washington maybe couldn't do much about

that but they could do something about Margaret Eaton and they decided to close

their doors to her it was a decision with stunning political consequences in

the capital's early years the social gatherings hosted by politicians wives

were a key venue for Washington's movers and shakers to discuss politics and form

alliances but now prominent Washington wives including those of Jackson's other

cabinet secretaries began demanding that their husbands boycott all gatherings to

which Peggy Eaton was invited suddenly it became almost impossible to conduct

politics in Washington supposedly because of a single scarlet woman if you

read the press you would imagine that Margaret Eaton was some Cleopatra or

Madame pompadour they called Peggy Eaton the doom of the Republic and they

imputed all kinds of power to her that she really didn't have but what was

behind it was not so much fact as this terrible anxiety and fear about this man

who could abuse power and somehow Peggy Eaton symbolized that fear the simplest

way for the president to get Washington functioning again was to tell John Eaton

to accept Peggy's social isolation but for Jackson the attacks on Peggy

were painfully reminiscent of the mudslinging against Rachel the

president's wounds from the loss of his wife were still raw each night he read

from her prayer book and then went to sleep thinking about her and the more he

thought about Rachel the more determined he became to stop the same thing from

happening to Peggy and so for two years the president spent more of his time

defending Peggy Eaton than on any other matter for us today the Eaton affair can

only be compared to Monica Lewinsky but actually it was even more serious

because in the end of course President Clinton did not lose his office but as a

result of not Margaret Eaton herself but what she symbolized the cabinet broke up

which was the first time this had ever happened in United States history and

the last to put an end to the scandal John Eaton and the other members of

Jackson's cabinet resigned enabling the president to replace them with men not

caught up in the feud the press lampooned the cabinet

secretaries as rats fleeing Jackson's sinking ship

Andrew Jackson disunion by armed force is treason are you ready to incur its

guilt

if the eatin affair had an air of melodrama it was also a sign that

tragedy was waiting in the wings vice president John C Calhoun whose wife had

battled Jackson over Peggy Eaton was simultaneously involved in another

crises one that threatened to bring the nation to Civil War John C Calhoun from

about 1830 on was obsessed for the remainder of his life with one

fundamental problem and that was the problem of protecting slavery in a

nation where slaveholders were becoming a minority

how could slavery be perpetuated in the face of an indifferent or even hostile

north the crisis was triggered not by slavery but taxes Congress eager to

protect northern factories had passed a law which imposed a high tax on the

cheap imported cloth used by southern plantation owners to clothe their slaves

determined to eliminate the tax and protect slavery

Calhoun began promoting nullification under which every state had the right to

disregard within its borders any law it considered unconstitutional

nullification appealed to Calhoun and other South Carolinians because it was a

way of asserting states rights and clearly that was a fundamental threat to

the entire idea of a federal system and it went straight to the heart of the

fundamental American question of who was sovereign was the federal government

sovereign was the state or the state's sovereign where the people stopped these

were all incredibly complicated questions that consumed the Jackson

White House and Jackson's Washington

nullification sphere cysts supporters were congressmen from South Carolina its

bitterest opponents were northern congressmen who were convinced it would

lead to the breakup of the Union and then there were those whose positions

were unknown including President Andrew Jackson

on April 13th 1830 all three factions were represented at a dinner in

Washington DC in honor of Thomas Jefferson's birthday John C Calhoun and

the nullifiers had been plotting for months to use the event to convert those

sitting on the fence to their cause and in their eyes Jackson a fellow slave

owner was a natural ally Andrew Jackson had his own plans for the dinner and as

he arrived he felt the same thrill he had always felt before a battle as the

evening began the nullifiers endeavored to build support by making toast after

toast to the importance of states rights

then suddenly President Jackson raised his glass looking Jhansi Calhoun

straight in the eye he made his toast our federal union it

must be preserved those seven words sent shockwaves through Washington for all

now knew where Andrew Jackson stood he would not tear apart the nation he had

helped build

for vice-president calhoun jackson's opposition to nullification was

intolerable the two men soon stopped speaking then

in november of 1832 the state of south carolina formally nullified the tax and

added that if the federal government challenged its right to do so South

Carolina would withdraw from the Union it's hard for us to understand how

serious nullification was it nearly led to Civil War people troops in South

Carolina were marching Jackson himself wanted to lead the federal army into

South Carolina they were fortifying forts in Charleston Harbor this was very

close to an all-out civil war and it was Andrew Jackson's duty to stop that

instead of reacting in anger as he had so often before Jackson issued a

presidential proclamation in which he appealed to the people of South Carolina

seduced as you have been my fellow countrymen by ambitious deluded and

designing men I call upon you in the language of truth and with the feelings

of a father to retrace your steps say we too are citizens of America Carolina is

one of these proud States her best blood has cemented this happy Union and then

add if you can without horror and remorse this happy Union we will

dissolve this picture of peace and prosperity

we will deface these fertile fields we will deluge with blood disunion by armed

force his treason are you ready to incur its guilt and that's when he said the

union is perpetual it is not a union of states it is a union of people and once

you're in that union you can't get out and I as the chief executive have sworn

to enforce the laws both those ideas are adopted by Abraham Lincoln in his

inaugural the whole thing is set up by Jackson

with both sides preparing for civil war the most skilled negotiator in Congress

Henry Clay succeeded in winning passage of a compromise bill that dramatically

lowered the tariffs Jackson signed it South Carolina

agreed to abide by it and war was averted or Andrew Jackson the story of

nullification contained a dire warning if Americans kept arguing about slavery

a civil war was inevitable and so the president began appealing to northerners

to stop agitating against slavery but that was not what the abolition movement

had in mind in 1835 the New York abolitionists lewis and author Tappin

realized that the steam-powered printing press made something brand-new in

American politics possible a mass mailing and so they sent pamphlets to

thousands of influential people in the south such as ministers to try and

convince them to speak out against slavery the first batch of pamphlets

arrived in Charleston South Carolina

but the postmaster never delivered them to the addresses instead they were taken

to the town square and burned

Jackson and Jacksonians paranoia about slavery as is seen in this whole

incident about abolitionist literature being sent into the South like all

paranoia has some foundation in reality their fear is that the word would get

out of the slave population and within sight slaves to revolt and this is a

concern that they all have in this period particularly as you get into the

early 1830s in the wake of the the nat turner rebellion anytime rebellions have

taken place slaveholders have become increasingly paranoid and there and the

instinct is to squash their articulation of these sorts of expressions as quickly

as is possible tampering with the mail was a serious

federal crime but President Jackson tacitly encouraged postmasters to

destroy the pamphlets and he demanded that Congress outlaw mailing them saying

they were incendiary

the tappan Flyers provide an interest in insight into what we could say is the

Jacksonians view of democracy because of all things the ability to petition the

ability to get word out about your position is a fundamental tenant of all

democratic societies so in that sense then Jackson and his people are

attempting to squash a clear democratic voice in this period Elias Boudinot the

Cherokee Nation what sort of hope have we from a president who has an

inclination to disregard laws and treaties we have nothing to expect from

such a president

like Thomas Jefferson Andrew Jackson fervently believed that it was small

self-employed farmers who had made America great and he believed that the

key to keeping it great was to continue expanding West so that each new

generation could have farms of their own in Jefferson's vision the frontier was

the place that each generation would replicate the ideal Republican community

the problem of course is that the native people are already living out there and

with one eye americans managed to not notice them but with the other eye they

couldn't fail to notice them because as soon as you got there you were in

conflict with them and that creates the the fundamental tension that becomes the

story of Indian Removal in 1830 Jackson won approval force of an Indian Removal

Act that appropriated half a million dollars so that Native Americans living

east of the Mississippi could be removed to land west of the Mississippi in

support of the Act Jackson said what good man would prefer a country covered

with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive

republic studded with cities towns and prosperous farms

occupied by more than twelve million happy people and filled with all the

blessings of liberty civilization and religion but Native American tribes such

as the Cherokee had an entirely different view than white men of how to

relate to the land the Cherokee way is to share is to be harmonious they really

were a spiritual people they had a way of life that would perhaps put most

Christians to shame they exercised that way of life daily every morning the

whole village would go to the water for a blessing and at this going to water

ritual this old man sung this song

hee-yaw Connie hit a her you you Connie he walkie Akane he WA saucy Akane

he or neither see Akane he unnie hey ho ah candy so when I sang that song it

would have been the same sound that you would have heard in the 1700s so that

was all disturbed because of the contact with the whites

soon after the creation of the United States many in the Cherokee tribe

decided that their one hope of saving their land was to take Thomas

Jefferson's advice and embrace the white man's way of life the Cherokees in fact

took exactly the advice that Jefferson offered they settled down they put on

European clothing to developed an alphabet they learned to read and write

they set up town meetings and a mayor and city council on all those things and

they still had to go because the problem was they were sitting in Georgia and

Georgia was to be ours not to Hertz they could not coexist with Georgia preparing

to expel the Cherokee to Christian missionaries brought a case to the

Supreme Court that challenged Georgia's jurisdiction over the Cherokee Nation

the Supreme Court ruled in the Cherokees favor but Andrew Jackson declared the

decision of the Supreme Court has fell stillborn

Jackson encouraged Georgia to ignore the verdict on the grounds that the Cherokee

were not really a nation a writer to the Cherokee newspaper of the Phoenix

remembering that warriors from the Cherokee Nation had played a key role in

the Battle of Horseshoe Bend that had launched Jackson on his road to fame at

this request asked of General Jackson when the thunders of his cannon were

heard in the southern forest and he will say they are a nation

these unfortunate people who flocked to the standard of the brave commander at

Horseshoe and nobly fought are now repaid with ingratitude and oppression

solely on the basis of the color of their skin

thousands of Cherokee families were evicted from their homes by American

soldiers and forced onto what became known as the Trail of Tears one of the

Christian missionaries who traveled with them wrote I have no language to express

the emotions which render our hearts to witness this season of cruel oppression

in Georgia multitudes were not allowed to take anything with them but the

clothes they had on well furnished houses were left to pray to plunderers

who like hungry wolves follow the progress of the captors and rifle the

houses and strip the helpless for what crime then was this whole nation doomed

to this almost unheard-of suffering the period of Indian Removal really is a

black mark on American history America which started out as a shining city on a

hill sinks to the bottom of darkest depths in Indian Removal Andrew Jackson

and other Americans willing to do what it took to separate Indians from their

land if it meant ignoring treaties if it meant ignoring principles of

international law if it meant ignoring common decency and a sense of justice

than it was done

with smallpox and cholera rampant on the Trail of Tears more than two thousand

Cherokees died Andrew Jackson had tried to convince Native Americans that he was

their great white father but the Cherokee now had a different name for

him they call him Jack Cena and other Jerky's people here and we say that

would laugh Jackson the devil Jack Cena he's devil iced Andrew Jackson unless

you become more watchful you will find that the most important powers of

government have passed into the hands of the corporations

when it came to Indian Removal and slavery President Jackson's view is

mirrored those of many other Americans but there was one issue where he was

truly a visionary in his concern for how average Americans would fare as the

economy became ever more industrialized

the world we know was taking shape in those years and the questions that were

so urgent then are continued to be urgent it was the nature of capitalism

it was how people were going to make their livings and there's nothing

scarier nothing more fundamental to people than how they're going to feed

themselves and clothe their families and make their way in the world for

centuries learning a craft such as shoemaking had enabled workers to make a

decent living but across the country artisans like shoemakers were suddenly

losing their jobs to factories all of a sudden it's a job that can be done by a

child by a woman by an unskilled man for pennies but think what happens to the

shoemaker the shoemaker who has spent all of his life learning the skills of

making a whole shoe his skills have become worthless and as

a result he feels worthless and if you look at how much money he's got in his

pocket he may be worthless that way also he's he's broke

in the early years of Andrew Jackson's presidency these working-class Americans

created a new way of giving voice to their concerns the minstrel show on the

surface it was simply an expression of racism and proof of how little white

Americans really knew about black Americans but the hidden secret of the

minstrel show was that it was not just about how whites saw blacks but also

about how they saw themselves of course you're putting on that mask to make fun

of african-americans but by virtue of putting on that mask

you've also enabled yourself to speak of yourself the songs of the theater at the

time revealed that the audience is feeling squeezed by a new America it's

being squeezed by an America that seems to be coming more and more for the rich

instead of the common people so we can look to the stage and we can find a

place in American society where that working-class could express in a

powerful and gripping way what it felts about what this world was doing to them

out there

for a working-class white America putting on the mask of a slave was a way

of saying I feel like a slave the minstrels also talked about the man they

hoped would free them they sang their some who at our party rail call us the

ragtag and bobtail but we have some within our pale who we are sure will

never fail to vote for General Jackson

for Andrew Jackson the central question of his presidency was what he could do

to prevent these average Americans from being exploited by the rich and powerful

the answer Jackson hit upon was to destroy an institution that he thought

was giving the wealthy an unfair advantage it's real title was the second

bank of the United States but Jackson's supporters called it the monster Bank

Andrew Jackson dislikes all banks and he said at one point but he particularly

disliked the Bank of the United States as established by Congress after the war

of 1812 the reason was simple it had too much power outside of any kind of public

accountability the bank was an enormous economic institution they could really

control credit and therefore control American economy itself for Jackson that

meant that the American economy was being run by people who are not elected

that these unelected bankers had their hands on the levers of power and could

control people's lives their destinies and indeed control the political system

itself

to Jackson one of the monster banks worst sins was that it was funding new

style businesses that were beginning to wrap their chemicals around both the

economy and the government these new businesses were called corporations the

problem with corporations as far as Jackson was concerned was they had no

body to be kicked or sold to be damned they were faceless anonymous machines

that were motivated only by making profit for their shareholders and as a

result they could grow much much larger than the average consumer the average

worker the average citizen but Jackson's opponents thought corporations would

help America become more prosperous and they thought his plan to blow up the

bank verged on insanity board was the bank that guaranteed that the paper

dollars in Americans wallets were worth something

Jackson took a kind of fundamentalist view of money and credit gold and silver

dollars were real money paper was in some sense fake those who were perhaps

more astute economists than Jackson thought that this position was just

short of Neanderthal the United States had been built on credit as Henry Clay

said in the Senate we have always been a paper money people we won the revolution

on paper money clay and his allies in Congress decided

to put some heat on Old Hickory near the end of Jackson's first term they passed

a bill extending the bank's charter clay calculated that the president would have

no choice but to sign the bill because a veto would be seen by the American

public as so irresponsible it would cost Jackson re-election but clay had made a

fundamental miscalculation about the character of Andrew Jackson a character

that was exemplified by an event that took place in the midst of the battle

over the bank at the President's request a navy surgeon was brought to the White

House to operate on a painful shoulder

the problem was a simple one there was a bullet in it 20 years before during the

War of 1812 Major General Jackson became embroiled

in a feud between one of his officers and a prominent Nashville family instead

of mediating the dispute as might have been expected of a man of his stature

General Jackson took part in a full-scale gun battle during it he was

shot at point-blank range and almost died

this saga defined the character of Andrew Jackson he could not pass up a

fight and when he fought he was willing to risk everything of the bank he

declared the bank is trying to kill me but I will kill it on July 10th 1832

Jackson vetoed the bill reauthorizing the bank the president's address in

defense of the veto was perhaps the most important of his life for he had to

explain to the American people not with bombast

but with words from his heart why he so fervently opposed the bank it is to be

regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to

their selfish purposes when the laws undertake to make the rich richer and

the potent more powerful the humble members of society the farmers the

mechanics and laborers who have neither the time nor the means of securing like

favors to themselves have a right to complain of the injustice of their

government we can at least take a stand against any prostitution of our

government to the advancement of the few at the expense of the many

to help rally support for Jackson's re-election campaign in 1832 the

president and his closest advisor Martin Van Buren came up with one of the

boldest strokes in American political history they founded the Democratic

Party Jackson thought of the democracy as it was called wasn't called the

Democratic Party was called the democracy thought of it as the

association of the vast majority of Americans the majority that should

govern to make sure that they would govern there are all sorts of ways in

which ordinary people can participate Jackson thinks that's important because

the ordinary people have to associate more because they don't have the

resources that the rich and the well-born do for years

Jackson's opponents had lampooned his frontier roots by portraying him as a

jackass to their shock the Jacksonians began embracing the symbol well the

donkey has assembled a Democratic Party started out as a satire as an attack on

the rubbish sort of Beverly Hillbillies nature of the Jackson's Democratic Party

but interesting people like Henry Clay and others didn't quite understand that

in urban settings the donkey may have been a figure of fun but for people in

rural America which was most of America at the time the donkey was essential to

daily life and it was someone you could rely on and Jackson and the Democrats

were presenting themselves as people you could rely on a second party quickly

arose to oppose the Democrats called the National Republicans they chose

Jackson's fiercest rival Henry Clay to run against him for president

Henry Clay and Andrew Jackson hated each other clay saw himself as a great

American Statesman and couldn't quite understand how this rube from the

Carolina back country who'd never gone to school who'd never read a book in

Clay's view could possibly be so powerful and have such a hold over the

people thereby ensuring that Clay himself would never do that because he

didn't appreciate I think Jackson's gifts of both charisma and the power of

his personality during the election campaign Jackson and his advisers again

demonstrated complete mastery of the media tools available to them this man

was sitting for his portrait again and again and again Jackson had a sense that

I want the American people to know me and to know what I look like and I think

that's says something about his political sense he's a first in many

ways and he's the first president that I know who had a desire to use the media

to communicate with the American people on Election Day voters flocked to the

polls in record numbers and thanks to Jackson's reputation as a military hero

and his continuing expansion of America they gave Old Hickory a landslide

victory but what Andrew Jackson read into the victory was that he now had a

mandate to destroy the Bank of the United States and so the president

ordered the government's money removed from the bank but even some in his own

cabinet thought such a step was illegal and Jackson had to replace two Treasury

secretaries before finding a third who would obey Him nothing like this would

happen again until Richard Nixon during the Watergate crisis had to go through

three attorneys general to find one who would fire Archibald Cox a special

prosecutor on the floor of the US Senate Henry Clay asserted that nothing less

than the future of American democracy was at stake

we are in the midst of a revolution hitherto bloodless but rapidly tending

toward the concentration of all power in the hands of one man

for the only time in American history the Senate centered the president people

throughout the nation began calling it the bank war it was a war in which

reason and economics were the casualties and the chief combatants were Jackson

and the president of the Bank Nicholas Biddle the confrontation between Andrew

Jackson in the Bank of the United States escalated you might almost say beyond

the bounds of sanity from the point of view of Nicholas Biddle president of the

Bank of the United States this maniac president was going to destroy the

American economy and both sides got so wrapped up in it that they did reckless

things Nicholas Biddle in an effort to procure recharter actually triggered

what was called a panic in those days the stock market crash and a brief

depression not realizing that in doing this he was proving every point Jackson

made about the reckless power on that the bank of the United States held over

ordinary Americans lives

finally in 1836 the bank's charter expired and its doors were closed and

Andrew Jackson once again emerged from a battle victorious an historian has

written that every once in a while in American history it becomes necessary to

save American capitalism from the capitalists that left to their

own devices they will so accrete power that they will end up ruining the

economy well Jackson in some ways saw that was the beginning of that process

as American capitalism was just beginning to develop he saw that to keep

the system going in a democratic fashion as he saw it it was necessary that

accountability had to be there in the system in a way that it did not seem to

be as of 1832

Jaxon's battles during his second term in office were not just political one

afternoon as the president was leaving the capital a mentally ill man who

believed that Jackson had killed his father approached him

the explosion of the pistols percussion-cap convinced bystanders that

the president had been shot but the gunpowder inside the pistol failed to

ignite the assailant then drew a second pistol and fired point-blank into the

president's chest miraculously the powder inside the second gun also failed

to ignite as a result Andrew Jackson survived the first assassination attempt

ever against an American president

then in the presidential election of 1836 Jackson's hand-picked successor

Martin Van Buren rode old hickories coattails to victory

on March 4th 1837 Andrew Jackson's tumultuous presidency came to an end

in a sign of the remarkable changes that had taken place during his years in

office he left Washington not in a carriage pulled by horses as he had

arrived eight years before but on a train car pulled by a steam-powered

locomotive

to a reporter Jackson said after eight years as president I have only two

regrets that I have not shot Henry Clay or hanged

John C Calhoun

the legacy Andrew Jackson left behind him was a complicated one but if there

was one key feature that would allow future generations to make sense of it

all it was the way in which Jackson's fight for the rights of the average

white man pointed the way for others take rights of their own

jacksonian democracy had no room in it for black people it was not willing to

free the slaves it had utter contempt for the political

aspirations of women and everybody knows it was utterly violent and remorseless

to the Indians but look how the victims of jacksonian democracy defended

themselves they didn't go out and become monarchists instead what they did was to

take the principles of jacksonian democracy and demand that they be

applied to them too when you look at the feminists they used

the Declaration of Independence to demand the right to vote when you look

at the abolitionists they said the demand for human equality is good for

the slaves as well when the Indians wanted to defend themselves against

white encroachment the Cherokees created a written constitution and a democratic

government of their own so that the abolitionists the feminists the Indians

all responded to this aggressive jacksonian democracy not by becoming

monarchists but by saying we have to have some too

Jackson spent the remaining years of his life at his beloved Hermitage though

others would one day see a connection between his quest for opportunity for

white man and the ideal of opportunity for all Andrew Jackson himself never did

he continued to own dozens of slaves never worrying that they toiled from

sunrise to midnight with no hope of a better life or giving any thought to

what their opinion was of him sometimes when they had a funeral for a fellow

slave like at the Hermitage they would say one day your head must bow as low as

ours as they sang this funeral march to the grave one day your head must bow as

low as ours when they sang that song they're looking at Andrew Jackson the

master as they march along

the whites thing that they're just singing a great melodious song but it

had a deep meaning and what it meant is one day you must die - one thing that

makes all men equal is death all men must die equally one day your head must

bow as low as house on June 8th 1845 Andrew Jackson died America's seventh

President was laid to rest beside his beloved wife Rachel in the garden at the

Hermitage

14 years later Jackson's first biographer James Parton visited the

grave the historian had already spent many months reading what hundreds of

Jackson's contemporaries had to say about him but the writer still found it

nearly impossible to sum up old hickory

if anyone at the end of a year even had asked what I had discovered respecting

General Jackson I might have answered thus

Andrew Jackson I am given to understand was a patriot and a traitor he was one

of the greatest generals and wholly ignorant of the art of war

a stickler for discipline he never hesitated to disobey his superior the

first of Statesmen he never devised or framed a measure he was the most candid

of men and was capable of the profoundest dissimulation he was a

democratic autocrat an urbane Savage an atrocious saint

discover more about Andrew Jackson explore the history of the imperial

presidency and watch debates about Indian Removal slavery and other

controversies from the Jacksonian era at pbs.org

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YouTube Transcript:Andrew Jackson - Good Evil & The Presidency - PBS Documentary

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Andrew Jackson - Good Evil & The Presidency - PBS Documentary