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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 , 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- 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. 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, , on in the 1970s, and is now working on volumes 7 Americans, particularly Democrats. “What we November 10, 2007, drew both and 8. These volumes cover 1829 and 1830, the lovingly admire,” Parton declared, “that, to some and . 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, 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 thesis, like many other nian Democracy that was primarily an expres- of democracy.” Although Jackson’s attack on the historical generalizations, contained much truth sion of eastern workingmen’s resentments. Tak- Bank of the United States might seem similar to but did not comprehend the whole truth. ing some of Jackson’s class-conflict rhetoric with FDR’s denunciations of Wall Street, Hofstadter Turner himself wrote comparatively little, new seriousness, Schlesinger declared that Old emphasized the difference between them: Jack- but his outlook achieved wide currency and in- Hickory’s “war” on the national bank rallied son wanted to free the economy from the na- fluenced the brief but powerful portrait of An- eastern workers against the changes being pro- tional bank’s central control, not impose federal drew Jackson in the English professor Vernon moted by capitalism. Industrialization was ren- control. And Jackson, unlike Roosevelt, wanted Parrington’s Main Currents in American Thought dering their artisan skills obsolete and reducing to keep the federal government from building (1927). The Turner-Parrington interpretation once-proud craftsmen to the status of assembly- roads, bridges, and canals across the Union. of Jackson was nowhere more fully exemplified line wage earners. Jackson’s chosen successor in The next major critique of Schlesinger dealt than in the two-volume The Life of Andrew Jack- the , of New at length with the so-called and came son by Marquis James, which won the Pulitzer York, exemplified for Schlesinger the climax of direct from a scholarly banker: Bray Hammond, Prize for biography in 1938. James wrote beau- the transformation of the old agrarian republi- a member of the Federal Reserve Board from tifully and made extensive use of primary sourc- canism of Jefferson into a modern working-class 1944 to 1950. Hammond’s Banks and Politics in es. He sympathized more with Jackson than democracy (or rather, Democracy, for the ante- America from the Revolution to the Civil War won Parton had. Though he minimized the number bellum Democratic Party called itself “the De- the for history in 1958. It showed of federal office-holders Old Hickory had - re mocracy” with a capital “D.”) how the Second Bank of the United States, placed, still he judged that Jackson left the pub- Schlesinger took his refusal to acknowledge modeled on Alexander Hamilton’s original one, lic service “a great deal worse than he found it.” the role of the frontier to such an extreme that had served a useful purpose. Hammond argued Significantly, James cast Jackson as a defender he never even mentioned , the that the bank’s president, , had of the people against the cabal of capitalists who number one item on the agenda of Jackson’s behaved responsibly and honorably, and that ran the national bank. He celebrated Jackson’s first term in office. In a single allusion to the Jackson’s destruction of the national bank had stand against ’s attempted nul- Supreme Court decision in Worcester v. Georgia left the country prey to violent swings of the lification and portrayed his advocacy of “Indian (1832) that vindicated the Cherokee Nation’s business cycle until the present Federal Reserve Removal” (the expulsion of Native Americans treaty right to refuse removal—a decision that System was created in 1913. from east of the Mississippi to Oklahoma and President Jackson famously felt free to ignore— The 1950s witnessed the publication of two Kansas) as the best the Indians could hope for. Schlesinger simply calls it “the case of the Geor- more books about Jackson that have stood the Seemingly, James had defined a version of gia missionaries.” An unwary reader would have test of time remarkably well. John William Jackson for the New Deal generation. But things no inkling of all that the case involved. Indian Ward’s Andrew Jackson, Symbol for an Age (1953)

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Works discussed in this essay:

Life of Andrew Jackson, by James Parton. Banks and Politics in America The Presidency of Andrew Jackson, 3 volumes. Kessinger Publishing from the Revolution to the Civil War, by Donald Cole. University Press of Company, 2,076 pages, $195 (cloth) by Bray Hammond. Kansas, 352 pages, $16.95 (paper) Press. 784 pages. $60 (paper) “The Significance of the Frontier Andrew Jackson, by Robert Remini. in American History,” in Rereading Andrew Jackson, Symbol for an Age, HarperCollins, 272 pages, $14 (paper) Frederick Jackson Turner: “The by John William Ward. Oxford Significance of the Frontier in American University Press, 304 pages, $20 (paper) Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times, History” and Other Essays, by Frederick by H. W. Brands. , Jackson Turner, with commentary by The Jacksonian Persuasion: 656 pages, $35 (cloth), $16.95 (paper) John Mack Faragher. Politics and Belief, by Marvin Meyers. Press, 276 pages, $22 American Council of Learned Societies, Andrew Jackson, by . 248 pages, $36 (cloth), $24 (paper) Times Books, 224 pages, $22 (cloth) Main Currents in American Thought, by Vernon L. Parrington. 2 volumes. Fathers and Children: Andrew Jackson and The Rise of American Democracy, University of Oklahoma Press, the Subjugation of the American Indian, by Sean Wilentz. W.W. Norton & 906 pages, $59.90 (paper) by Michael Paul Rogin. Transaction Company, 992 pages, Publishers, 373 pages, $24.95 (paper) $35 (cloth), $19.95 (paper) The Life of Andrew Jackson, by Marquis James. The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Andrew Jackson and the Search : Andrew Jackson in the 972 pages, out of print for Vindication, by James Curtis. White House, by . Longman, 194 pages, $20 (paper) Random House, 512 pages, The Age of Jackson, Arthur M. $30 (cloth), $17 (paper) Schlesinger, Jr. Little, Brown & The Passions of Andrew Jackson, Company, 577 Pages, $24.95 (paper) by Andrew Burstein. Alfred A. Andrew Jackson: Knopf, 320 pages, $15 (paper) Good, Evil, and the Presidency. The American Political Tradition Written and produced by Carl Byker. and the Men Who Made It, The Presidency of Andrew Jackson, Directed by Carl Byker by Richard Hofstadter. Doubleday, by Richard Latner. University of Georgia and Mitch Wilson. Red Hill 519 pages, $15.95 (paper) Press, 291 pages, out of print Productions and KCET.

treated not the man himself but the associations rather than reality or actions. “No man of his about economic progress. This, he demonstrat- he conjured up to his contemporaries: a success- time was at once so widely loved and so deeply ed, was the theme of Jackson’s famous message ful frontier farmer, the hero of New Orleans, hated” as Jackson, acknowledged Meyers, and in which he vetoed the re-charter of the national a man of iron will, an agent of providence, the he set out to learn why. The United States dur- bank. By contrast, the Whigs spoke to Ameri- natural man whose vigor contrasted with the ef- ing Jackson’s lifetime was evolving from an agri- ca’s hopes for the future and faith in economic fete intellectual (allegedly John Quincy Adams). cultural into a commercial nation, Meyers ob- enterprise. It seems relevant to point out that Added together, these various symbols go far served. Some Americans welcomed this change the Whigs took their name from the British po- to explain the power of Jackson’s appeal in the and urged government actions to facilitate eco- litical party that resisted executive usurpation young American republic. But while it captured nomic development and diversification. These and represented the freedom-loving, forward- well Old Hickory’s significance to his admir- optimists became Whigs, supporters of the na- looking middle class. ers, Ward’s book neglected Jackson’s symbolic tional bank, advocates of federal government aid meaning to his adversaries: a man governed by to transportation and education, and opponents Modern Interpretations passion rather than reason, a demagogue, a ty- of Andrew Jackson. Other Americans, howev- rant trampling on the Constitution and the laws. er, nursed misgivings about such changes, even n 1975 michael paul rogin’s fathers and Ward portrays a nation with a great deal more though they might actually profit from them. Children: Andrew Jackson and the Subjuga- cultural and political unity than the American They recalled Jeffersonian agrarianism with Ition of the American Indian startled readers. Union in fact had in the antebellum era. nostalgia and worried about the emergence of A highly speculative contemplation of Jackson’s A fitting companion to Ward’s book is Mar- a class society. They focused their fears on the personality, this book proved a precursor of two vin Meyers’s The Jacksonian Persuasion: Politics “monster” national bank—which they termed quite different historiographical trends. In the and Belief (1957). Like Ward, Meyers followed an unnatural, artificial institution for enriching first place it commenced a renewed examina- the general trend in the American history pro- the few at the expense of the many—and looked tion of Jackson’s psychology, for it was followed fession away from political history and toward to Jackson to save the country from the bank. by both James Curtis’s Andrew Jackson and the the history of broader cultural and social trends. Meyers saw the Jacksonian “persuasion” not as Search for Vindication (1976) and Andrew Burst- His subject matter was attitudes and feelings innovative but as fearful or at best ambivalent ein’s The Passions of Andrew Jackson (2003). One

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2009 Page 53 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm may justly wonder to what extent it is possible in 1790 young Jackson set up housekeeping with National Hero? to psychoanalyze the dead, but the outcome of another man’s wife, Rachel Donelson Robards. these studies would seem to confirm Jackson’s Rachel’s husband eventually divorced her. An- fter remini it took quite a while be- contemporary opponents’ estimate that he was drew and Rachel, after learning of the divorce, fore another major Jackson biography militantly self-righteous, obsessed with vindi- underwent a marriage ceremony in 1794. Dur- Amaterialized. Although New Deal lib- cating his honor, and able to falsify his memory ing the presidential campaign between Jackson erals had generally found Jackson (as portrayed of events. Second and more importantly, Rogin’s and John Quincy Adams of 1828, an Adams by Schlesinger) a congenial hero, a tribune of book called attention to the neglected subject of newspaper unearthed the old scandal that Ra- the common man, liberals of the 1960s and af- Jackson’s Indian policy. In the 34 years since, the chel and Andrew had “lived in sin” together for ter found it harder to overlook his slaveholding field of American Indian history has developed several years. Jackson’s campaign headquarters and his Indian wars. Then in 2005 two new bi- enormously, employing ethnographic as well responded that they had participated in a mar- ographies appeared. The prolific H.W. Brands as traditional methods. “Indian Removal” has riage ceremony in 1791 under the mistaken of the University of Texas undertook to change been placed in a whole new context, the history belief that a divorce had already been issued. Jackson from a liberal hero into a national one. of the Native American peoples themselves. In Remini, scrupulously investigating, concluded He devoted over half of his biography, Andrew addition, political histories of Jackson’s admin- that no such 1791 ceremony took place, and the Jackson: His Life and Times (2005), to the pre- istration, like Richard Latner’s The Presidency story that it had was an elaborately orchestrated presidential years and emphasized Jackson as of Andrew Jackson (1979) and Donald Cole’s lie. Still, whatever evidence of duplicity or ruth- soldier. While not blind to Jackson’s shortcom- The Presidency of Andrew Jackson (1993), have lessness Remini uncovers, he remains firm in his ings, Brands credits the Old Hero with concern given large consideration to this 19th-century overall judgment that Jackson was a very great for national security. Jackson achieved U.S. undertaking, over which the 21st century feels and noble American hero. In more recent years dominance over the North American continent shame. he has continued to defend Jackson’s policy of by fighting British, Spanish, and Indians. To a By far the most thorough examination com- Indian Removal as a rescue of the natives from considerable extent Brands returns to Turner’s pleted to date is Robert Remini’s three-volume aggressive white settlers. By expelling them from frontier thesis. Jackson leads hardy western biography, Andrew Jackson (1977–1984). A their homelands, “[h]e saved the Five Civilized pioneers against snobbish easterners like John forthright admirer of his subject, Remini is lau- Nations from probable extinction.” Remini has Quincy Adams. (Brands plays down Adams’s datory is his assessments of Jackson’s achieve- also minimized the importance of a document nationalism and his support for Jackson’s inva- ments. At the same time, he is also a meticulous from 1789, which scholars unearthed in 1995, sion of Florida.) In Brands’s hands, Jackson still scholar who does not allow his prejudices to get in which a young Andrew Jackson pledged his defends the common man, but he is no class in the way of the evidence he finds. For example, loyalty to the King of Spain! warrior.

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The other 2005 biography came from the present-day Democratic Party even as he writes okees were too. At the end, Harry Watson, pro- Princeton professor Sean Wilentz, as part of about Jackson. fessor and director for the Center of the Study of the Times Books series of presidential biog- The newest significant book on Andrew the American South at the University of North raphies edited by Arthur Schlesinger. It was a Jackson is American Lion: Andrew Jackson in Carolina at Chapel Hill, argues that although much shorter biography than Brands’s, but it ar- the White House (2008) by editor blacks, Indians, and women remained outside rived on the heels of Wilentz’s massive political Jon Meacham. In his study of Jackson’s presi- Jackson’s own democratic vision, yet when they history, The Rise of American Democracy (2005). dency, Meacham negotiates his way carefully rose to defend their rights, they were embracing In both books, Wilentz re-states Schlesinger’s among the pitfalls of Jackson’s now-discredited “Jacksonian Democracy.” More logically, they thesis. He fully acknowledges changing liberal public policies. The expulsion of the Indians could be seen as embracing democracy as defined priorities and Jackson’s ambiguous status in from lands guaranteed by treaty was wrong, of by John Quincy Adams, who actually included current American opinion, both popular and course, but Meacham deftly observes that Jack- them in the defense of natural rights he made re- scholarly. Nevertheless he is determined to re- son probably believed his own explanation that peatedly in July 4th orations, in his fight against store Jackson’s image as a liberal hero. “Jackson “Removal” placed the natives out of harm’s way. the congressional gag rule, and in his once-famous aligned himself, in his own mind and those of his Censoring the mail to prevent criticism of slav- speech celebrating the Jubilee of the Constitution supporters, with the forces of movement rather ery is excused on the grounds that Jackson was in 1839. than of order, on the side of egalitarianism and just being a politician. Destroying the central Andrew Jackson was an important and in- against privilege,” writes Wilentz. Well, maybe bank was not in the national interest, but Jack- fluential president, and needs to be understood in his own mind and those of his supporters, but son could not brook interference with his will. if we are to understand the America of his time. not in the minds of the abolitionists whose mail- And, in the last analysis, for Meacham, Jack- But is Andrew Jackson really suitable for us as a ings Jackson ordered his Post Office to censor, son’s strength of will is what makes him, for all hero any longer? Today, Americans of all political nor in the minds of stout Yankee commercial his faults, a great president, a liberal hero, and a persuasions deplore white supremacy, accept the farmers or of enterprising traders who wanted great American. James Parton’s hope that the need for a central bank, and recognize the conve- the sound currency provided by the national American people would outgrow admiration for nience of paper currency. The spoils system Jack- bank. Not in the minds of the Native Ameri- Jackson’s combative nature has yet to be real- son practiced has long since been reformed by the cans and their Evangelical white allies, nor in ized. However, Meacham, like Marquis James, creation of a civil service. Yet Old Hickory has the minds of the free black men who, wherever dwells upon Jackson’s softer qualities in relating so captured the imagination—at least of partisan they were permitted the suffrage, voted solidly incidents from his domestic life. Democrats—that he keeps being reborn. Should against Jackson. he now be taken over by conservatives as their In his book on American democracy, Conflicted Images hero? Jackson’s strong concern for national secu- Wilentz is at pains to portray Abraham Lincoln rity and honor might seem to make him a plau- as the heir of Andrew Jackson, notwithstand- recent television program aired on sible candidate. But conservatives would be ill ad- ing the overwhelming fact that Lincoln opposed PBS, Andrew Jackson: Good, Evil, and the vised to shoulder the burdens of Jackson’s racism, the party of Jackson vigorously throughout his APresidency illustrates the present ambi- hatred of banks and bankers, demagogic class adult life. The only part of Jackson’s statecraft guity regarding Jackson’s image. Jackson’s wrongs warfare, and impatience with legal restraints. that Lincoln admired was his refusal to allow against African-Americans and Native Ameri- A much more suitable conservative hero South Carolina to “nullify” the federal tar- cans are admitted and deplored. The authorities would be Jackson’s longtime adversary John iff laws in 1832–33—and in that, Lincoln was interviewed give conflicting estimates of his other Quincy Adams, who was just as strong a nation- joined by his fellow Whigs, Daniel Webster policies. The program offers no new synthesis. alist and had a wiser vision for economic policy. and . Furthermore, Jackson had el- Meanwhile, it consistently identifies Jackson’s That, however, is another story. evated his friend and kitchen-cabinet member, white adversaries as “the Washington establish- Roger Taney, to be Chief Justice of the Supreme ment,” and portrays his opponent Henry Clay Daniel Walker Howe is the Rhodes Professor of Court. Taney was true to Jackson’s states-rights (a gregarious, poker-playing Kentuckian) with American History Emeritus at Oxford University and pro-slavery bias. Lincoln had serious doubts an inauthentic British, prissy accent. Evangelical and professor of history emeritus at UCLA. He about the man who put the author of the Dred Christianity, a prominent force in the politics of is the author most recently of the Pulitzer Prize- Scott v. Sanford (1857) decision on the Supreme Jackson’s time, is ignored completely. One would winning What Hath God Wrought: The Trans- Court. Wilentz imitates Schlesinger in life as never guess from the program that most white formation of America, 1815–1848 (Oxford Uni- well as art, becoming a public intellectual of the abolitionists were Christians, or that many Cher- versity Press).

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