Friday, September 17, 2004

Andrew Jackson and the election of 1828

John Scalzi, in the process of asking Can It Be November Already? brings up the election of 1828, one of the more significant moments in the progress of American democracy.

That was, of course, the election that broke the death grip that the Bank of the United States and allied monied interests had put onto the democratic government, and put Andrew Jackson into the White House.

That reminded me that I haven't made any gratuitous Andy Jackson posts lately, so it's high time I make up for that.

Jackson's former home at The Hermitage, just outside of Nashville, is now a state park, which is worth seeing if you're ever in that area.  And they've recently updated their Web site to give a nice little slideshow when you first log onto it.  Their gift shop is one of my favorite stores.  No place I know of has some much Andrew Jackson kitsch concentrated in one place!

On the Web site, you can get a Hermitage collector plate, Andrew Jackson cup plates and replicas of Old Hickory's White House china.  You can get an Andy Jackson doll,  Hermitage mousepads, a Hermitage Christmas ornament and a miniature bust of the great man himself.  (I highly recommend the latter.)

They also have a Jackson in the News feature, through which I came across this presentation by Robert Remini, the leading contemporary Jackson biographer, that appeared in Humanities, July/August 2003.  It's a lecture called Ordinary Heroes: Founders of Our Republic.  He recaps a story from the General's younger days:

Here I hope you will forgive me for mentioning Andrew Jackson, but I cannot resist the temptation. At thirteen years of age he and his older brother, Robert, joined a group of patriots commanded by Colonel William Richardson Davie and participated in the Battle of Hanging Rock against the British. The Americans almost won the battle, but they captured a supply of British rum, got drunk, and fled the scene in panic when the British started firing back at them. Later the two boys were captured and Andrew was slashed on the head and wrist because he refused to clean a British officer’s boots. The two boys were imprisoned in Camden where they were starved, robbed, and abused. They contracted smallpox. Their mother, Elizabeth, managed to win their freedom as part of an exchange of prisoners that was arranged between the British and Americans. Thirteen British soldiers were exchanged for the two Jackson boys and five of their neighbors. But Elizabeth found her sons near death from smallpox. She procured two horses and placed the dying older brother on one and rode the other herself while Andrew, barefoot and without a jacket, walked the forty miles to their home in the Waxhaws. When she arrived home, the older son had expired and Andrew seemed close to death. Fortunately the nursing skills of his mother brought him around. When he had recovered Elizabeth traveled one hundred and sixty miles to Charleston to nurse American prisoners of war held on prison ships in the harbor. A short time later Elizabeth contracted cholera and died. At the age of fourteen Andrew Jackson was an orphan, a victim and hero of the war for independence.

It was that kind of courage and heroism that kept a patriot army in the field.

Yeah, Jackson was fighting the enemy when he was 13 years old.  Not either one of the 2004 presidential candidates can claim that!

While we're on Remini's lecture, I was struck by his description of how the Founders viewed the office of the presidency.  Some of them held the office in the kind of reverence today's Republicans hold George W. Bush:

But what to call this venerable hero? The Constitution called him the President of the United States but that was not good enough for men like John Adams, who preferred “His Most Benign Highness.” Other members of the Senate opted for “His Highness, the President of the United States of America and Protector of the Rights of the Same.” Washington himself rather liked “His High Mightiness,” and in his public documents frequently referred to himself in the third person as though he were royalty. But this attention to a title was not frivolous or a matter of pride. The members were concerned about how a republican government would be viewed abroad among European monarchical states. They will hold us in contempt, feared John Adams. They will mock us and our republic and consider us of little consequence. Calling our head of state nothing but a president will be regarded as undignified.

The Hermitage site has a "Jackson" tab that has some good biographical information.  Like on that 1824 election:

Americans went to the polls in the fall of 1824, handing Jackson a victory in the popular vote, but not enough Electoral College votes to win. The decision fell to the House of Representatives who met on February 9, 1825 and elected John Quincy Adams with House Speaker Henry Clay as Adams’ chief supporter. Jackson graciously accepted his defeat until rumors began to fly that Clay and Adams had struck a deal to ensure Adams’ election. When Adams’ named Henry Clay as his Secretary of State, it confirmed Jackson’s suspicions that the two men had reached a “corrupt bargain” and deprived the American people of their popular choice for president.

No, that stuff didn't start with the Bush dynasty and Florida.  Although it is an interesting coincidence that John Quincy Adams, the only person so far besides the White House's current occupant who became president after his father had been president, came to office under these circustances.

By 1828, Jackson was ready to win the White House, but first he had to suffer through a bruising campaign that to this day is still recognized as one of the meanest in American history. Adams’ supporters accused Jackson of being a military tyrant who would use the presidency as a springboard for his own Napoleonic ambitions of empire. For proof they ran out every skeleton in Jackson’s closet, his duels and brawls, his execution of troops for desertion during the War of 1812, his declaration of marshal law in New Orleans, his friendship with Aaron Burr, and his invasions of Spanish Florida in 1814 and 1818. But by far, the most painful personally for Jackson was the attack on his and Rachel’s character over their marriage. Technically, Rachel was a bigamist and Jackson her partner in it. Adams’ supporters attacked not only Jackson, but Rachel as morally unfit to hold the nation’s highest office.

Gasp, choke, snort!!!  The Hermitage should clean up their act a bit and say that Rachel was accused of being a bigamist by her husband's reactionary opponents.

But the point is, the other side, the side that was defending the president who got his office in the Stolen Election of 1824, was trashing Jackson's wife and defaming his military record.  There were Foxists long before there was a Fox News.

Ah, but our hero certainly didn't sit still for this nonsense:

However, they did not let the character assaults launched by Adams men go unanswered. They struck back with attacks on corrupt officials in Adams’ Administration and labeled Adams an elitist who wanted to increase the size and power of government to benefit the aristocracy.

Let's see, a stolen presidency.  Massive corruption.  Government by the rich and for the rich.  I think we can relate to the scene.

Fortunately, this part of the story had a very happy ending:

In the fall of 1828, the decision fell to the voters and they overwhelmingly elected Jackson. Jackson’s victory was seen as a complete repudiation of Adams and his vision for America. Furthermore, it revealed the belief of some that the United States government was run by a small group of aristocrats that were unresponsive to the demands of the voters.  The "common man" placed Jackson in office and sent him to Washington to crush the power of the aristocrats. But, Jackson’s victory was also due in large part to his military accomplishments and the trust voters had that he would bring the same success in restoring honor to government. Personally, Jackson had achieved vindication for the “corrupt bargain” that robbed him of the White House in 1824 and laid waste to the barbs and accusations flung during the campaign. (my emphasis)

So, I think the answer to John's question about whether the 1828 campaign was a nasty as the one in 2004 is, "Yeah, pretty much."  Of course, there's weeks to go and it could get much worse. They didn't have Rush Limbaugh or Swift Boat Liars for Adams back then.  But word could still get around by newspapers and "Coffin hand bills" (depicted at the Hermitage site).

I'd have to say, though, that the 1800 campaign, when Thomas Jefferson was running to unseat Old Man Adams from the presidency, was even mastier.  When that one was over and Jefferson had won decisively, the radicalFederalists wanted to just have Adams refused to turn over the government to Jefferson.

So Jefferson and Adams took a walk alone along the streets of Washington - the Secret Service bodyguards didn't come along until Lincoln's day - and Jefferson told him, look, John.  We've heard what your guys are talking about trying.  So go back and tell these blithering monarchists to add up the state militias.  We've got more of them than your side.  And if they try this, we will use the troops to restore the results of the election.

It worked.  (But Jefferson wasn't bluffing.)  Jefferson and Old Man Adams later became good friends again.  Both of them died on July 4, 1826, exactly fifty years after the Declaration of Independence (and a year and a half after the Stolen Election of 1824).  Adams' last words were, "Thomas Jefferson still lives."  Indeed he does.

Anyway, Old Hickory went on to cleanse the moneychangers from the temple of American democracy.  And when John C. Calhoun - his vice president during the first term - incited the South Carolina secessionists to a confrontation with the federal government, Jackson squashed that little exercise in treason very effectively. 

That fight was a real turning-point in the development of a sense of American as a unified, democratic nation.  So the fact that most Americans have a sense today that a commitment to democracy is a part of American patriotism - "one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all," as the saying goes - is due in major part to Andrew Jackson.

It wouldn't be right, though, to leave anyone the impression that John Quincy Adams is somehow analogous to George W. Bush.  I mean, Adams certainly deserves criticism for allowing his presidential administration to be the tool of reactionary economic royalists.  But fair is fair.  He can hardly be considered in the same dimension as George Bush and Dick Cheney.  After he left the presidency, he served for years in the House of Representatives, where he distinguished himself forever as an early advocate for the anti-slavery movement. 

I can't end this without throwing in a bit of political trivia.  Jefferson was the founder of the party that today is called the Democratic Party.  It'soriginal name was the Democratic-Republican Party.  But it was commonly called the Republican Party during Jefferson's day and, well, up until Jackson's era, when it became known as the Democratic Party.  The Republican Party of today was founded in 1854.

Also on the General, see my index of Old Hickory posts.

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