American Lion

by Jon Meacham

  54 “I have great confidence” Correspondence, III, 412.

  55 the railroad was hardly more Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 562–63.

  56 workforce more than tripled Historical Statistics of the United States, Earliest Times to the Present, II, 110.

  57 iron wage earners Ibid.

  58 Immigration … rose steadily Historical Statistics of the United States, Earliest Times to the Present, I, 541.

  59 steamship travel began Ibid., 526.

  60 published his Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World James Turner, ed., David Walker’s Appeal (Baltimore, 1993). The full title of the essay is Appeal, In Four Articles: Together with a Preamble to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America.

  61 were “the most degraded” Ibid., 21.

  62 If an “attempt” Ibid., 45–46.

  63 “Now, I ask you” Ibid., 46.

  64 there were slave disturbances Historical Statistics of the United States, Earliest Times to the Present, II, 385.

  65 laws prohibiting teaching slaves to read Ibid., 390.

  66 Moral Physiology Feller, Jacksonian Promise, 154. See also Richard William Leopold, Robert Dale Owen: A Biography (Cambridge, Mass., 1940).

  67 Oberlin College … was founded Historical Statistics of the United States, Earliest Times to the Present, I, 5.

  68 the American Journal of Science and Arts explored George H. Daniels, American Science in the Age of Jackson (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1968), 38–39.

  69 “scientists” were distinct Ibid., 38.

  70 liberal arts colleges were founded Historical Statistics of the United States, Earliest Times to the Present, II, 875.

  71 Evangelical fervor was a constant force Feller, Jacksonian Promise, 95–117, is a terrific discussion of the issue. See also Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge, Mass., 1990); Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, 1989); Mark A. Noll, ed., Religion and American Politics, from the Colonial Period to the 1980s (New York, 1990); Martin E. Marty, Pilgrims in Their Own Land: 500 Years of Religion in America (New York, 1984); Conrad Cherry, ed., God’s New Israel: Religious Interpretations of American Destiny (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1998), 113–45; Mark A. Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1992), 219–44; William Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America (New York, 1996), 3–6; Jon Butler, Grant Wacker, and Randall Balmer, Religion in American Life: A Short History (New York, 247), 182–257.

  72 Joseph Smith believed he was told Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York, 2005), 31–57.

  73 “There is no country in the world” Feller, Jacksonian Promise, 95.

  74 For eight days in Cincinnati Ibid., 104–6. See also J. J. Haley, Debates That Made History: The Story of Alexander Campbell’s Debates with Rev. John Walker, Rev. W. L. McCalla, Mr. Robert Owen, Bishop Purcell and Rev. Nathan L. Rice (St. Louis, 1920), 57–115.

  75 Frances Trollope, a writer and mother Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans, 112–16.

  76 “All this I think” Ibid., 90.

  77 In domestic politics For the ensuing summary of the political surround and its personalities, I drew on: Howe, What Hath God Wrought; Peterson, Great Triumvirate; Weston, Presidential Election of 1828; Wilentz, Rise of American Democracy; Remini, Election of Andrew Jackson; Papers, V and VI.

  78 the familiar divisions since the Founding Woodrow Wilson, Division and Reunion: 1829–1889 (New York, 1961), 25–35, is a crisp summary written by the future president in 1898. For details on the Jefferson-Hamilton and Republican-Federalist divide, see Dumas Malone, Jefferson and the Rights of Man (Boston, 1951), 420–77; Malone, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty (Boston, 1962), 380–506. Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton (New York, 2004), is also excellent on the politics of the early Republic, as is McCullough, John Adams, and John Ferling, Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800 (New York, 2004).

  79 a hodgepodge of competing political and regional interests Wilson, Division and Reunion, 30–31.

  80 Monroe ran unopposed Harry Ammon, James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity (Charlottesville, Va., 1990), 366–95, covers the ideal and the reality of “the Era of Good Feelings.” Only one presidential elector had chosen to oppose Monroe’s reelection. As Ammon wrote of American politics in 1820–21: “Every sign indicated that party warfare on the national scene had ceased—by 1819 every New England state except Massachusetts was controlled by the Republicans, and in Congress there was only a handful of Federalists, who ordinarily supported the administration with more fidelity than many Republicans. The presidential election of 1820 with its lone dissident elector seemed to be the final proof, as Monroe commented in his second inaugural address, that powerful forces had drawn the people together in a lasting unity of sentiment” (ibid., 378). 48 the rise of democracy Wilentz, Rise of American Democracy, is an engaging and exhaustive examination of the course of American politics from Jefferson to Lincoln.

  81 an energetic president TGPP, I, 369–78; 438–50.

  82 when “measures otherwise unconstitutional” Ibid., xx.

  83 Jackson won 56 percent of the popular vote Remini, Election of Andrew Jackson, 187–88.

  84 “The Hickory is a tall” FPB, 27.

  85 “mortifying and sickening” PHC, VII, 515–16.

  86 “no greater calamity” Ibid., 536.

  87 “since we were a free people” Ibid.

  88 There were reports that Jackson was sick Wiltse, ed., The Papers of Daniel Webster, II, 394. This was something of a running theme in Webster’s mind. On February 5, 1829, he wrote his brother: “Gen Jackson will be here, in a day or two. I am of the opinion his health is very feeble, and that there is not much chance of his lasting long” (ibid., 395–96).

  89 “On Wednesday morning” Louisa Catherine Adams to Charles Francis Adams, February 1, 1829, Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

  90 “The rumour of Genl. J’s death” Wiltse, ed., The Papers of Daniel Webster, II, 394.

  91 Jackson, however, arrived safely in Washington on Wednesday, February 11 Edwin A. Miles, “The First People’s Inaugural—1829,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 37 (Fall 1978), 296.

  92 He was not entirely well Emily Donelson to Mary Donelson Coffee, March 27, 1829, Andrew Jackson Donelson Papers, LOC.

  93 “a very bad cough” Ibid.

  94 Cannon fire and a marching band Miles, “The First People’s Inaugural—1829,” 296.

  95 Alfred Mordecai, a West Point contemporary Sarah Agnes Wallace, ed., “Opening Days of Jackson’s Presidency as Seen in Private Letters,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 9 (December 1950), 367. Mordecai was class of 1823.

  96 through his window Ibid., 368.

  97 “a plain carriage drawn” Ibid.

  98 “demigod and Hero” Ibid.

  99 “What a spectacle must this present” Ibid.

  100 Once in the capital Memoirs of JQA, VIII, 101–3, is an interesting account of Jackson’s first days in Washington from the lonely perspective of the defeated President Adams.

  101 center of a swirl of office seekers … at John Gadsby’s National Hotel Parton, Life, III, 167.

  102 “motley host of greedy expectants” PHC, VII, 626.

  103 “My health was so bad” Emily Donelson to Mary Donelson Coffee, March 27, 1829, Andrew Jackson Donelson Papers, LOC.

  104 “Owing to the death” Ibid.

  105 Andrew Donelson and William Lewis were busy Satterfield, Andrew Jackson Donelson, 20.

  106 Donelson noted how Jackson W. M. Polk, Leonidas Polk, Bishop and General (New York, 1893), I, 69.

  107 Jackson’s Cabinet choices Cole, The Presidency of Andrew Jackson, 27–29.

  108 struck many as underwhelming Wiltse, John C. Calhoun, II, 19–25.

  109 Kendall personified much For my portr
ait of Kendall, I am indebted to AAK and to Cole, A Jackson Man.

  110 At a wedding party AAK, 279.

  111 They formed, Webster said, “a numerous” Wiltse, ed., Papers of Daniel Webster, II, 399.

  112 “always goes through everything ‘like a hero’ ” Emily Donelson to Mary Donelson Coffee, March 27, 1829, Andrew Jackson Donelson Papers, LOC.

  113 In interviews between the president-elect and visitors seeking a job Daily National Intelligencer, April 18, 1829. The writer, who signed his account “Aristides,” was describing a “visit to the Hermitage” after the election, but Jackson carried his air of formality to Washington with him as well.

  114 “Citizens who visit the President” Ibid.

  115 went shopping with Mary Eastin EDT, I, 165–66.

  116 splurged on expensive cologne, soap, jewelry Ibid.

  117 East Front of the Capitol Parton, Life, III, 169.

  118 unseasonably frigid Wiltse, ed., Papers of Daniel Webster, II, 404.

  119 “There has not been” Ibid.

  120 the chilly spell broke Ibid., 406. “On the Portico, in the open air, (the day is very warm and pleasant) [Jackson] read his Inaugural, and took the oath,” Webster wrote to his sister on March 4.

  121 Recording some “small gossiping anecdotes” Diary of John Quincy Adams, February 19, 1829, Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

  122 “When he comes” Wiltse, ed., Papers of Daniel Webster, II, 388.

  Chapter 4: You Know Best, My Dear

  1 “He seems to have been” Leonidas Polk to William Polk, November 5, 1828, Leonidas Polk Collection: The University of the South, University Archives and Special Collections, Sewanee. A future bishop of Louisiana and Confederate general, Polk was a good observer of the Washington scene, noting that his perch at the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria “enables me to hear most of the things of interest that pass” (Leonidas Polk to William Polk, June 18, 1829, Leonidas Polk Collection, The University of the South, University Archives and Special Collections, Sewanee).

  2 “scarcely able to sit up” Gaillard Hunt, ed., The First Forty Years of Washington in the Family Letters of Margaret Bayard Smith (New York, 1965), 257.

  3 belongings were being boxed Ibid., 297.

  4 a crisis of corruption Jackson’s correspondence is replete with examples of his conviction that elites were hijacking the government from the people. “The eighteen-twenties were a decade of discontent, born in depression, streaked with suffering and panic, shaken by bursts of violence and threats of rebellion” (Schlesinger, Age of Jackson, 30). For Jackson’s political philosophy, see Feller, Jacksonian Promise, 160–84; Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It (New York, 1948), 59–86; and Wilentz, Rise of American Democracy, 240–329.

  5 Presided over by Nicholas Biddle Wilentz, Rise of American Democracy, 364–67. Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Bank War (New York, 1967), 15–48, is a good overview; see also Thomas Payne Govan, Nicholas Biddle: Nationalist and Public Banker, 1786–1844 (Chicago, 1959), which is essentially a brief for Biddle.

  6 the state’s cotton and rice planters Freehling, Prelude to Civil War, 7–176, brilliantly covers the background and emergence of the crisis.

  7 An early test of federal authority Freehling, Road to Disunion, 254–60.

  8 “duty to guard against insubordination” Ibid., 254.

  9 the time may be at hand Ibid., 257.

  10 raised duties from 33 percent Freehling, Prelude to Civil War, 138–39.

  11 “with the most melancholy feelings” PJCC, XI, 24.

  12 “revolutionary” talk Ibid., 47.

  13 Pickens denied that he was thinking Ibid., 46–47.

  14 “the greatest question” Lucy Maddox, Removals: Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Politics of Indian Affairs (New York, 1991), 15.

  15 an 1833 book entitled Indian Wars of the West Ibid., 19–20.

  16 advocates of removal “see the race” Ibid., 20.

  17 “Without religion” Henry Whiting Warner and Theodore Frelinghuysen, An Inquiry into the Moral and Religious Character of the American Government (New York, 1838), 133.

  18 called for the formation of “a Christian Party” Joseph L. Blau, “ ‘The Christian Party in Politics,’ ” The Review of Religion 11 (November 1946), 18–35.

  19 sought to impose a narrower religious agenda Charles I. Foster, An Errand of Mercy: The Evangelical United Front, 1790–1837 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1960), 54–60, 179–207, and 230–33, is good on these issues of Christian engagement in political life. See also Bertram Wyatt-Brown, “Prelude to Abolitionism: Sabbatarian Politics and the Rise of the Second Party System,” Journal of American History 58 (June 1971), 316–41.

  20 Ely wrote Jackson to pass along Papers, VII, 20–22.

  21 that “no Christian ruler” Ibid., 21–22.

  22 did not travel on Sundays Ibid., 22.

  23 more anticlerical than antireligious I am indebted to Daniel Feller for this insight. See Feller, “Rediscovering Jacksonian America,” in The State of U.S. History, edited by Melvyn Stokes (New York, 2002), 81.

  24 “the American System” Wilentz, Rise of American Democracy, 242.

  25 the sales of public lands Daniel Feller, The Public Lands in Jacksonian Politics (Madison, Wis., 1984), is an excellent examination of these issues.

  26 debt was dangerous Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Bank War, 20.

  27 well-armed pirates stormed the Attentive Washington National Journal, March 17, 1829. See also ibid., March 27, 28, and 31, 1829.

  28 Told of the Attentive incident Papers, VII, 97. The date was March 16, 1829.

  29 “These atrocities” Ibid.

  30 the USS Natchez, an eighteen-gun sloop of war Ibid.

  31 “The dictates of humanity” Ibid., 99.

  32 sunlight poured down on the city Wiltse, ed., Papers of Daniel Webster, II, 406. For detailed accounts of the inauguration, see Parton, Life, III, 169–70; James, TLOAJ, 493–95; Remini, Jackson, II, 173–77.

  33 It was, Emily reported home, “by far” Emily Donelson to Mary Donelson, March 27, 1829, Andrew Jackson Donelson Papers, LOC.

  34 Jackson left Gadsby’s Hotel Remini, Jackson, II, 173–74.

  35 “the Servant” Hunt, ed., First Forty Years of Washington Society, 293.

  36 “There, there, that is he” Ibid. Remini, Jackson, II, 175, also quotes this account of Mrs. Smith’s.

  37 “not a ragged mob” Hunt, ed., First Forty Years of Washington Society, 293.

  38 “It is beautiful!” Ibid., 294.

  39 went inside to the Senate chamber Remini, Jackson, II, 174.

  40 where the president pro tempore Wiltse, John C. Calhoun, II, 12.

  41 at his Fort Hill estate Freehling, Prelude to Civil War, 158–59.

  42 the South Carolina Exposition and Protest Calhoun, Union and Liberty, 313–65. Though commonly referred to as the Exposition and Protest, the tract is actually two documents: the Exposition enumerates the state’s grievances against the tariff system, while the Protest lists the General Assembly of South Carolina’s formal resolutions. Calhoun titled the draft of the Exposition as “Rough Draft of What Is Called the South Carolina Exposition”; no draft of the Protest in his writing still exists (ibid., 311–12). See also PJCC, X, 442–43.

  43 “the absurd and wicked doctrines” Correspondence, V, 75.

  44 “We cannot and ought not” Freehling, ed., The Nullification Era, 206.

  45 kept his authorship of the 1828 document secret Freehling, Prelude to Civil War, 154–59; George Dangerfield, The Awakening of American Nationalism, 1815–1828 (New York, 1965), 284–87.

  46 He believed that Ellis, Union at Risk, 53–54, is a strong summary of Calhoun’s political position, ambitions, and motives at this time.

  47 Emily, who had watched Remini, Jackson, II, 174, reports that the “invited ladies” were in the gallery with the members of the House.

  48
“one dense mass of living beings” Emily Donelson to Mary Donelson Coffee, March 27, 1829, Andrew Jackson Donelson Papers, LOC.

  49 “Thousands and thousands of people” Hunt, ed., First Forty Years of Washington Society, 290–91.

  50 he bowed to the people Ibid., 291.

  51 “the shout that rent the air” Ibid., 294.

  52 Cannons boomed Ibid., 291.

  53 the sounds of the salute Ibid.

  54 “the spirit of electioneering” Clement Eaton, ed., The Leaven of Democracy: The Growth of the Democratic Spirit in the Time of Jackson (New York, 1963), 49.

  55 “The large masses act in politics” Douglas T. Miller, ed., The Nature of Jacksonian America (New York, 1972), 121. The quotation is from the work of Francis J. Grund, a German who wrote Aristocracy in America.

  56 “It would seem to me” Messages, II, 1000.

  57 “Internal improvement” Ibid.

  58 a promise of “reform” Ibid., 1001.

  59 “unfaithful” and “incompetent” Ibid.

  60 “on the goodness of that Power” Ibid.

  61 He bowed once more Hunt, ed., First Forty Years of Washington Society, 294.

  62 took the oath … kissed a Bible Ibid., 291.

  63 mounted a white horse Remini, Jackson, II, 176.

  64 “Country men, farmers, gentlemen” Hunt, ed., First Forty Years of Washington Society, 294.

  65 Jackson had refused to call on Memoirs of JQA, VIII, 97, 99–102.

  66 had moved out the night before Ibid., 102–4.

  67 learned of the moment of the transfer of power Benjamin Perley Poore, Perley’s Reminiscences of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis (Philadelphia, 1886), 94.

  68 a crowd trashing the White House This is one of the most oft-told tales in the Jackson canon. See, for instance: Parton, Life, III, 170–71; James, TLOAJ, 494–95; Remini, Jackson, II, 177–79; Edwin A. Miles, “The First People’s Inaugural—1829,” 293–307.

  69 “No arrangements had been made” Hunt, ed., First Forty Years of Washington Society, 295.

  70 “The Majesty of the People” Ibid.

  71 “Here was the corpulent epicure” Miles, “The First People’s Inaugural—1829,” 305.

  72 “Orange punch” Ibid., 305–6.