The Soul of America

by Jon Meacham

  “EVERY HOPE AND” Harry S. Truman, Mr. Citizen (New York, 1960), 222.

  “I KNEW THAT” Johnson, Vantage Point, 157.

  PUBLISHED ON TUESDAY, MARCH 18, 1788 Alexander Hamilton, “The Executive Department Further Considered,” Avalon Project, Yale Law School Lillian Goldman Law Library, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/​18th_century/​fed70.asp.

  “ENERGY IN THE EXECUTIVE” Madison, Hamilton, and Jay, Federalist Papers, 402.

  “THE HISTORY OF HUMAN CONDUCT” Schlesinger, Imperial Presidency, xi. The quotation is from Federalist 75. Madison, Hamilton, and Jay, Federalist Papers, 424–28.

  “AS THE FIRST” George Washington to James Madison, May 5, 1789, Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/​documents/​Washington/​05-02-02-0157. See also, for instance, Glenn A. Phelps, “George Washington: Precedent Setter,” in Cronin, Inventing the American Presidency, 259–82—an illuminating essay.

  THAT “THE PRESIDENT WAS” Ford, Rise and Growth of American Politics, 277.

  IN 1792, WHEN FARMERS See, for instance, William Hogeland, The Whiskey Rebellion: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and the Frontier Rebels Who Challenged America’s Newfound Sovereignty (New York, 2006).

  “MODERATION ENOUGH HAS BEEN” Goldsmith, Growth of Presidential Power, 3:245. Hamilton also said: “The appearance of the President in the business will awaken the attention of a great number of persons…to the evil tendency of the conduct reprehended, who have not yet viewed it with due seriousness.” Ibid.

  “WHEREAS IT IS” Ibid., 244.

  “IN A GOVERNMENT LIKE OURS” Thomas Jefferson to John Garland Jefferson, January 25, 1810, Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/​documents/​Jefferson/​03-02-02-0145.

  BEFORE ANDREW JACKSON, FOR EXAMPLE I drew, in part, on my American Lion for my treatment of Jackson here.

  “THE HUMBLE MEMBERS” Andrew Jackson: “Veto Message [Of the Re-authorization of Bank of the United States],” July 10, 1832, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/​ws/​?pid=67043. The veto marked a critical moment in the history of populism in America as well as in the development of the presidency itself.

  “ONE GREAT FAMILY” Andrew Jackson, The Papers of Andrew Jackson, ed. Sam B. Smith et al., vol. 4, 1816–1820, ed. Harold D. Moser et al. (Knoxville, 1994), 476.

  JACKSON THUNDERED ON Meacham, American Lion, xv-xvii; 223–47.

  JACKSON WAS STANDING James Parton, Life of Andrew Jackson (Boston, 1866), 3:466–67.

  “WITH THE FEELINGS” Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Democracy, 1833–1845 (New York, 1984), 18. The phrase is included in notes Jackson made for Edward Livingston. Edward Livingston Papers, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

  WAS “incompatible with” Andrew Jackson: “Proclamation 43—Regarding the Nullifying Laws of South Carolina,” December 10, 1832, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/​ws/​?pid=67078.

  The final language in question read this way: “Fellow-citizens of my native State, let me not only admonish you, as the First Magistrate of our common country, not to incur the penalty of its laws, but use the influence that a father would over his children whom he saw rushing to certain ruin. In that paternal language, with that paternal feeling, let me tell you, my countrymen, that you are deluded by men who are either deceived themselves or wish to deceive you.” Ibid.

  HE WROTE SO QUICKLY Parton, Life of Andrew Jackson, 3:466. “A gentleman who came in when the President had written fifteen or twenty pages,” the nineteenth-century Jackson biographer James Parton reported, “observed that three of them were glistening with wet ink at the same moment.” Ibid. The pages were sent over to Secretary of State Edward Livingston, who had moved into Decatur House, on Lafayette Square, for the final drafting. Ibid.

  “THE PRESIDENT,” JACKSON WROTE Andrew Jackson: “Message to the Senate Protesting Censure Resolution,” April 15, 1834, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/​ws/​?pid=67039.

  THE CLAIM PROVOKED FURY The Papers of John C. Calhoun, ed. Robert L. Meriwether (Columbia, S.C., 1959–2003), 12:310.

  “IF I CAN JUDGE” Correspondence of Andrew Jackson: 1829–1832, ed. John Spencer Bassett (Washington, D.C., 1929), 4:502.

  IN THE PROCLAMATION Andrew Jackson: “Proclamation 43—Regarding the Nullifying Laws of South Carolina,” December 10, 1832, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/​ws/​?pid=67078.

  From the adoption of the Articles of Confederation to the formation and ratification of the Constitution to New England’s Hartford Convention during the War of 1812 to the Missouri Compromise of 1820 to the crisis over nullification with South Carolina in 1832–33 to the cascading clashes of the 1850s, the country wrestled with federal authority and states’ rights. Put roughly, the issue was whether the Union was formed from “We the People” or “We the States.” As a matter of constitutional nuance, it was both. The framers, fearful of the power of passion, had carefully divided sovereignty not only among the central government and the states but among the branches of the federal establishment.

  There was a respectable argument that nullification and even secession were implied rights in the Constitution. Calhoun in particular devoted years of intellectual and political labor to formulating just such a doctrine. In the battle over South Carolina’s efforts to nullify a federal tariff, Senator Robert Hayne of South Carolina argued for Calhoun’s vision: “Sir, I am one of those who believe that the very life of our system is the independence of the States, and that there is no evil more to be deprecated than the consolidation of this Government,” Hayne told the Senate Tuesday, January 19, 1830. “It is only by a strict adherence to the limitations imposed by the constitution on the Federal Government that this system works well, and can answer the great ends for which it was instituted.” Herman Belz, ed., Webster-Hayne Debate on the Nature of the Union: Selected Documents (Indianapolis, 2000), 10.

  Among those listening to Hayne’s speech was Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, who took him on in what became a celebrated series of debates from Tuesday, January 19, to Wednesday, January 27, 1830. Meacham, American Lion, 127–30.

  Webster executed a brilliant rhetorical feat, attacking the South Carolina doctrine and investing the Union with a power at once real and mystical. What, Webster asked, was the “origin of this government and the source of its power”? He answered:

  Whose agent is it? Is it the creature of the State legislatures, or the creature of the people? If the government of the United States be the agent of the State governments, then they may control it, provided they can agree in the manner of controlling it; if it be the agent of the people, then the people alone can control it, restrain it, modify, or reform it. It is observable enough, that the doctrine for which the honorable gentleman contends leads him to the necessity of maintaining, not only that this general government is the creature of the States, but that it is the creature of each of the States severally, so that each may assert the power for itself of determining whether it acts within the limits of its authority. It is the servant of four-and-twenty masters, of different will and different purposes and yet bound to obey all. This absurdity (for it seems no less) arises from a misconception as to the origin of this government and its true character. It is, Sir, the people’s Constitution, the people’s government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people. The people of the United States have declared that the Constitution shall be the supreme law. We must either admit the proposition, or dispute their authority. Daniel Webster, “The Second Reply to Hayne,” http://www.dartmouth.edu/​~dwebster/​speeches/​hayne-speech.html.

  In a stirring peroration, Webster offered a prose poem to the virtues of Union:

&
nbsp; While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise! God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind! When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured, bearing for its motto, no such miserable interrogatory as “What is all this worth?” nor those other words of delusion and folly, “Liberty first and Union afterwards”; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all it sample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart—Liberty and Union, now and for ever, one and inseparable! Ibid.

  In his eloquence, Webster had defined the notion of a perpetual union. Jackson was grateful, and he put the senator’s oratory into action in late 1832 and early 1833.

  THE INTERVAL BETWEEN JACKSON AND LINCOLN Goldsmith, Growth of Presidential Power, 1:597–721.

  SERIES OF EXECUTIVE ACTIONS See, for instance, Schlesinger, Imperial Presidency, 58–67.

  “CERTAIN PROCEEDINGS ARE” Ibid., 61. Lincoln was even blunter on another occasion, saying: “I think the Constitution invests its Commander-in-Chief with the law of war in the time of war.” Goldsmith, Growth of Presidential Power, 2:964. Lord Bryce wrote, “In troublous times…immense responsibility is then thrown on one who is both the commander-in-chief and the head of the civil executive. Abraham Lincoln wielded more authority than any single Englishman has done since Oliver Cromwell.” Bryce, American Commonwealth, 1:65.

  AT GETTYSBURG For the Gettysburg Address’s origins, development, and influence, see, for instance, Garry Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America (New York, 1992). For a thoughtful analysis of the speech and of Wills’s argument, see Gary W. Gallagher, The Union War (Cambridge, Mass., 2011), 87–92.

  “WITH MALICE TOWARD NONE” Abraham Lincoln, “Inaugural Address,” March 4, 1865, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/​ws/​?pid=25819. Lincoln added: “Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’ ” Ibid.

  The Biblical allusion was to Psalm 19, and Lincoln’s point was stark. If the war went on, if more men had to die, then so be it, for such was the will of the Almighty. Lincoln believed the war a mysterious inevitability in the Jeffersonian course of human events. It was like the Fall of Man: It was something to be regretted but endured. For Lincoln, the fact of the matter was straightforward—not simple, but straightforward: that because of slavery, the war came.

  LINCOLN RECEIVED FREDERICK DOUGLASS Lucas E. Morel, Lincoln’s Sacred Effort: Defining Religion’s Role in American Self-Government (Lanham, Md., 2000), 163. See also Donald, Lincoln, 568.

  HE HAD FEARLESSLY PRESSED LINCOLN Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore, 2008), 2:522–23. “My whole interview with the President was gratifying and did much to assure me that slavery would not survive the War and that the country would survive both slavery and the War.” Ibid., 523.

  “MR. LINCOLN,” DOUGLASS SAID Morel, Lincoln’s Sacred Effort, 163.

  IN APRIL 1876 Frederick Douglass, “Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln,” April 14, 1876, TeachingAmericanHistory.org, http://teachingamericanhistory.org/​library/​document/​oration-in-memory-of-abraham-lincoln/.

  TO BE KNOWN “Lincoln Park,” National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/​nr/​travel/​wash/​dc87.htm.

  “TRUTH IS PROPER” Douglass, “Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln.”

  “WHILE ABRAHAM LINCOLN” Ibid.

  “OUR FAITH IN HIM” Ibid.

  “HIS GREAT MISSION” Ibid.

  AN ADHERENT OF ULTIMATELY DISCREDITED THEORIES See, for instance, Evan Thomas, The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898 (New York, 2010), 43–44; Leroy G. Dorsey, We Are All Americans, Pure and Simple: Theodore Roosevelt and the Myth of Americanism (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 2007), 2, which offers a summary view; and Thomas G. Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race (Baton Rouge, La., 1980), 89–92.

  A “BULLY PULPIT” Edward S. Corwin, The President, Office and Powers: History and Analysis of Practice and Opinion (New York, 1941), 267.

  USED THE PHRASE ONE EVENING Lyman Abbott, “A Review of President Roosevelt’s Administration IV: Its Influence on Patriotism and Public Service,” The Outlook, February 27, 1909, 430.

  AS A FRIEND RECALLED Ibid.

  TR RECALLED THE TYPICAL AMERICAN Theodore Roosevelt, The Rough Riders and An Autobiography, ed. Louis Auchincloss (New York, 2004), 646–47.

  “I DECLINED TO ADOPT” Ibid., 614.

  “EVERY SUN, EVERY PLANET” Wilson, Constitutional Government, 55.

  “THE TROUBLE WITH” Ibid., 56–57.

  FORTUNATELY, THE DEFINITIONS Ibid., 57.

  “HIS POSITION TAKES” Ibid., 68.

  THE TWO MEN CHATTED Geoffrey C. Ward, A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt (New York, 1989), xi–xiii. Together with his volume Before the Trumpet: Young Franklin Roosevelt, 1882–1905 (New York, 1985), Ward has, I believe, produced the most psychologically astute portrait of FDR to date. I also drew on my “What a President Needs to Know,” Time, July 14, 2016, for this section.

  “YOU KNOW, HIS [COUSIN] TED” Ward, First-Class Temperament, xiii.

  “A SECOND-CLASS INTELLECT” Ibid. There is some debate about whether Justice Holmes, in rendering his “first-class temperament” verdict, was talking about Theodore rather than Franklin Roosevelt. See, for instance, Jonathan Alter, The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope (New York, 2006), 234; 375.

  POTTER STEWART’S DEFINITION OF HARDCORE PORNOGRAPHY John P. MacKenzie, “Potter Stewart Is Dead at 70; Was on High Court 23 Years,” NYT, December 8, 1985. The observation is found in Stewart’s concurring opinion, handed down on June 22, 1964, in the case of Jacobellis v. Ohio. See “Jacobellis v. Ohio,” Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, https://www.law.cornell.edu/​supremecourt/​text/​378/​184#writing-USSC_CR_0378_0184_ZC1.

  THE WORD ITSELF DERIVES The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., prepared by J. A. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner (Oxford, 1989), 17:747.

  ONCE, AFTER WATCHING John Gunther, Roosevelt in Retrospect: A Profile in History (New York, 1950), 62. For this section, I drew on my “Donald Trump and the Limits of the Reality-TV Presidency,” originally published in NYT, December 30, 2017.

  “YOU KNOW, ORSON” Gunther, Roosevelt in Retrospect, 62.

  “I GUESS THAT” Where the Buck Stops: The Personal and Private Writings of Harry S. Truman, ed. Margaret Truman (New York, 1989), 363.

  “I KNOW…THAT” F.D.R.: His Personal Letters, 1928–1945, ed. Elliott Roosevelt (New York, 1950), 1:466.

  “THERE IS ANOTHER THOUGHT” Ibid.

  “BAND OF BROTHERS” William Shakespeare, The Life of King Henry the Fifth, act 4, scene 3, http://shakespeare.mit.edu/​henryv/​henryv.4.3.html.

  “I KEEP TELLING YOU” Emmet John Hughes, The Ordeal of Power: A Political Memoir of the Eisenhower Years (New York, 1963),
131–32.

  SUBJECT TO “CLAMOROUS COUNSEL” John F. Kennedy, “Foreword to Theodore C. Sorensen’s ‘Decision-Making in the White House,’ ” September 23, 1963, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/​ws/​?pid=9421.

  “NOW, LOOK, I HAPPEN” Hughes, Ordeal of Power, 124.

  WELL, I HAVE BEEN PRESIDENT Theodore Roosevelt to Maria Longworth Storer, December 8, 1902, The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 3, The Square Deal, 1901–1903, ed. Elting Morison (Cambridge, Mass., 1951), 391–92.

  “VITAL CENTER OF ACTION” Kennedy, “The Presidency in 1960.”

  CHARACTER IS DESTINY The remark, also sometimes translated as “character is fate,” is attributed to Heraclitus. See Richard G. Geldard, Remembering Heraclitus (Hudson, N.Y., 2000), 85.

  “THE FORM OF GOVERNMENT” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays and Lectures, ed. Joel Porte (New York, 1983), 559.

  THE “PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS” This section on the pursuit of happiness is drawn from my essay “Free to Be Happy,” Time, June 27, 2013. See also Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., “The Lost Meaning of ‘The Pursuit of Happiness,’ ” William and Mary Quarterly 21, no. 3 (July 1964): 325–27; James R. Rogers, “The Meaning of ‘The Pursuit of Happiness,’ ” First Things, June 19, 2012, https://www.firstthings.com/​web-exclusives/​2012/​06/​the-meaning-of-the-pursuit-of-happiness; and A. J. Beitzinger, A History of American Political Thought (New York, 1972), 164–66.

  HIS RENTED SECOND-FLOOR QUARTERS “Declaration House,” National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/​inde/​learn/​historyculture/​places-declarationhouse.htm.

  “WHEN JEFFERSON SPOKE” Garry Wills, Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (Garden City, N.Y., 1978), 164.

  “THE ELEMENTARY BOOKS” Ibid., 172.

  HAPPINESS, HE WROTE Richard Kraut, “Aristotle’s Ethics,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Summer 2017, https://plato.stanford.edu/​archives/​sum2017/​entries/​aristotle-ethics/. See also “Aristotle’s Definition of Happiness,” The Pursuit of Happiness, http://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/​history-of-happiness/​aristotle/.