By Clyde Edgerton | Dec 08/Jan 09 | 

The Lion in the White House

How Andrew Jackson came up from the Carolinas and went down in history

Commentators from Jackson’s time might say this to us present-day Americans:

“We’re talking action politics. You should have been here when two pistols misfired in an assassination attempt and Jackson was beating the hell out of the guy with his cane when he was pulled away. You should have been here when it looked like South Carolina was about to secede, when there was almost a war with France, when Old Hickory refused to declare a day of prayer, when he fired his cabinet, and when he vetoed more bills than all the presidents before him combined. And, oh, yes—you want to talk about sex and stuff…Yep, you should have been here for all that. What a ride.”

A fair conclusion is that the Washington establishment was afraid of Jackson, that he saved the Union and in the process created an office that—rather than Congress—became the main power in national government.
Harry Truman, placing Jackson among Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln as one of our four greatest presidents, said about him, “He wanted sincerely to look after the little fellow who had no pull, and that’s what a president is supposed to do.”

What a read.

Two big impressions from this big story: 1) Gosh, we’ve come a long way, and 2) Gosh, we haven’t moved an inch in 180 years!

And a final note: Meacham writes that “on Wednesday, May 1, 1833, Jackson [speaking of Southern agitation] observed…that ‘the tariff was only the pretext [for splitting the Union]…The next pretext will be the negro, or slavery question.’ Six days later, the president named a postmaster for New Salem, Illinois, a twenty-four-year-old lawyer who had lost a race for the state legislature.” Abe Lincoln.