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 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 and you

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Channel: Truther TV

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Keywords: Rosicrucian, 1814, General, Federal Reserve, Rothschild, Martin sheen, 2nd bank of the united states, Ron Paul, Abraham Lincoln

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Length: 115min 5sec (6905 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 11 2012