The Ages of Jackson
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mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Essay by Daniel Walker Howe The Ages of Jackson he most common reminder of andrew provides by the House of Representatives (no Jackson today is his picture on the $20 candidate had received an absolute majority of TFederal Reserve note. The irony could the electoral votes in the 1824 election). Ap- hardly be greater: Jackson destroyed the nation- plying handwriting analysis, assistant editor al banking system of his own day and did not Tom Coens traced the letter to William B. believe in paper money. Nevertheless his face Lewis, a confidante of Andrew Jackson, Ad- has graced the Twenty since 1929, when it re- ams’s leading rival. Amazingly, Lewis also may placed Grover Cleveland’s. His engraved image have penned an anonymous letter to Jackson on the bill has evolved over time, recently in the himself in 1830, warning the then president direction of portraying a kinder, gentler Jackson. of assassination if he stood for reelection. The Historians’ images of the seventh president have editors suspect that Lewis wanted Jackson to changed too, as succeeding generations have re- seek another term and knew that nothing was interpreted him, usually but not always with an more likely to prompt the Old Hero to take eye to sustaining his stature as a national hero that decision than such a threat! or as a partisan symbol. To trace these changing I asked each of the three editors, so famil- images over time is to see a remarkable succes- iar with the documentary sources of Jackson’s sion of different Andrew Jacksons. life, which of the many Jackson biographies was From the start his public image generated their favorite. All picked the same one: Life of controversy. When first running for president Andrew Jackson by James Parton, published in in 1824, he campaigned as a military leader and three volumes between 1859 and 1861. as a man of the people, an outsider who would Parton wrote a number of biographies, best- redeem the nation’s virtue from a self-perpetu- sellers in their time, but Jackson’s has remained ating clique of elitists (for so his campaign de- his best known. He relied closely on documen- picted the James Monroe Administration and tary evidence, which he sometimes quoted at the rival candidates). Jackson’s opponents saw length and supplemented by interviewing sur- him as a violent, undisciplined, uncouth brute, viving participants. Every later biographer has ill-suited to supreme responsibility in a repub- relied considerably upon him. Parton was criti- lican government. During the 185 years since, cal of Jackson’s presidency, especially the “spoils rival groups have continued to portray contrast- system,” instituted by wholesale removals of ing images of Jackson. federal employees down to the level of local The Democratic Party has always maintained postmasters, whom Jackson replaced with his a certain proprietary interest in his image, com- own followers. Parton called this practice “an memorating him as its founder in “Jackson Day” evil so great and so difficult to remedy, that if dinners—traditionally held on January 8, the all his other public acts had been perfectly wise anniversary of his victory over the British at and right, this single feature of his administra- New Orleans in 1815. Frankin D. Roosevelt, an tion would suffice to render it deplorable.” Later admirer of Thomas Jefferson (perhaps a more in the 19th century, legislation would create the appropriate hero for a patrician), changed the tenured civil service to prevent wholesale parti- name of these events to “Jefferson-Jackson Day” him possible, independent of all stereotypes: the san removals of the kind Jackson practiced, and dinners. Tennessee and Louisiana Democrats, Andrew Jackson Papers project at the Univer- more meritorious kinds of removals as well. however, have continued to observe an undiluted sity of Tennessee in Knoxville, currently under Writing at a time when Jackson’s memory Jackson Day. In recent years such dinners no the able direction of Daniel Feller, a professor was still vivid, Parton took account of Old Hick- longer recur on any fixed schedule. A Jefferson- in the history department. The project started ory’s “invincible popularity” with multitudes of Jackson Day dinner in Des Moines, Iowa, on in the 1970s, and is now working on volumes 7 Americans, particularly Democrats. “What we November 10, 2007, drew both Barack Obama and 8. These volumes cover 1829 and 1830, the lovingly admire,” Parton declared, “that, to some and Hillary Clinton. first two of Jackson’s eight years in the White extent, we are.” He concluded that Jackson— House. Feller expects the project will total 16 military leader, frontier Indian fighter, and self- Uncovering Jackson volumes and take until about 2030 to complete. described champion of the common man—was As they go along, Feller and his assistant the “representative man” of what he termed “the n our own day, even as the political use editors make startling discoveries. In January combative-rebellious period of American histo- of Jackson continues, we are also fortunate 1825, John Quincy Adams received an anony- ry.” Parton’s choice of words implied an expecta- Ito have at least one small group of scholars mous letter threatening civil war if he did not tion that America would evolve away from an conscientiously dedicated to uncovering and withdraw from the presidential race rather identification with Andrew Jackson. Neverthe- preserving the most authentic knowledge of than allow it to be decided as the Constitution less, Jackson’s political admirers have contrived Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2009 Page 51 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm to keep his image before us, even as we move did not turn out that way. James was a profes- Removal was by no means overlooked by histo- away from his times. (How they have done so is sional writer (like Parton), not an academic. He rians at this time; Marquis James had recently worth investigating.) went on to take commissions to write official -bi treated the subject. Similarly, Schlesinger also ographies of businessmen and official histories ignored Jackson’s personal slaveholding, public Land of Frontiersmen of business corporations. Although these books support for slavery, and attempts to ban criti- sold well, they evidently cost James credibility cism of slavery from circulating through the n the closing decade of the 19th century, with the liberal intelligentsia. His biography of mails. Schlesinger preferred to avoid any topic Frederick Jackson Turner announced his Jackson disappeared from their canon. that might cast doubt on his characterization Ifamous thesis on “The Significance of the of Jackson as an appropriate hero for New Deal Frontier in American History.” Turner claimed The Court Historian liberals. His work on Jackson became the first that the western frontier of white settlement had of a long series of volumes that established been the primary determinant of American his- eplacing james’s biography in liber- him as the more or less official historian of the tory down to his own time, although with the als’ affections soon appeared another Democratic Party. closing of that frontier he foresaw that a new kind RPulitzer Prize winner, The Age of Jack- of America would emerge. American character, son (1945), by a 28-year-old prodigy, Arthur M. No Coonskin Democrat according to him, had been shaped both by the Schlesinger, Jr., son and namesake of a Harvard ability of people to escape from the East coast to professor who had also been a liberal icon. As its chlesinger’s interpretation of jack- the frontier and by the experience of life on the title indicated, this book offered a sweeping in- son and the Jacksonian movement as frontier. He described frontier life as individu- tellectual and political portrait of America from Sforeshadowing the New Deal provoked alistic, strong, inquisitive, acquisitive, pragmatic, the 1820s through the 1840s, emphasizing par- criticism very quickly, and from a variety of and optimistic. Andrew Jackson could plausibly allels with the New Deal. Jackson’s personal bi- sources. In The American Political Tradition be taken to personify the American as Turner ography was of interest only insofar as it related and the Men Who Made It (1948), Richard conceived of him. Turner’s famous thesis laid the to public policy; indeed Schlesinger reproached Hofstadter pointed out that Jackson was no foundation for a vision of “Jacksonian America” a historian named Thomas Abernathy for pay- simple “coonskin” frontier democrat, but a self- as a land of self-made frontiersmen—ignoring ing too much attention to Jackson’s early life in made planter aristocrat with “the habit of com- such other inhabitants as women, blacks, In- his entry on Jackson for the Dictionary of Ameri- mand.” (This was precisely the point Abernathy dians, Hispanics, city-dwellers, sailors, inves- can Biography. Schlesinger created “Jacksonian had been making in his account of Jackson’s pre- tors, college professors, social reformers, factory America” anew. presidential career that irritated Schlesinger.) workers, recent immigrants, and members of Explicitly breaking with Turner’s emphasis Jackson campaigned for president as a military the Whig, Antimasonic, and “Know-Nothing” on the western frontier as the origin of Ameri- hero, not on economic issues; his election in parties—many of whom actually opposed Jack- can democracy, Schlesinger promoted a Jackso- 1828 was “more a result than a cause of the rise son politically. Turner’s