by Jon Meacham
“Yet to say that he transformed the presidency or became the first modern president is stretching the point” (Cole, Presidency of Andrew Jackson, 274). Dr. Cole’s argument is nuanced and thought-provoking, and I am grateful to him for discussing these matters with me. I believe, however, that Jackson’s was the presidency that set the pattern for all successive ones (if the president were willing and able to follow Jackson’s pattern), and was the first one that we would recognize as a White House like those of our own time.
On the question of those who surrounded Jackson, the “Kitchen Cabinet” is a complicated issue in the study of Jackson’s presidency. I have drawn much from Richard B. Latner’s sensible and scholarly treatment of the question. The essence of his verdict: “Historians have traditionally claimed that the term [Kitchen Cabinet] originated during Jackson’s presidency as a label derisively applied by the opposition to a group of aides, mostly outside the cabinet, who specialized in political manipulation, wire-pulling, and patronage. It is generally implied that these men shared similar goals and worked closely together in achieving them. There exists, however, a suspicion that the Kitchen Cabinet was largely a figment of the opposition’s imagination.… While the Kitchen Cabinet certainly lacked the institutional self-identification, established rules of procedure, and regularized patterns of interaction associated with the cabinet, it was also something more than an organization with the limited political purpose and power of a national party committee. Rather, it most resembles the modern White House staff, a group of aides personally attached to the president and having his special trust.” (See Latner, Presidency of Andrew Jackson, 51–57.) I share Professor Latner’s conclusion and believe the Kitchen Cabinet is best understood as one of the stars, along with the family group, which moved in orbit around Jackson.
33 role they were assigned at Philadelphia Wilentz, Rise of American Democracy, 32–33.
34 “My Country, ’Tis of Thee” and “Amazing Grace” took root Marc McCutcheon, Everyday Life in the 1800s (Cincinnati, 1993), 300. When Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., finished The Age of Jackson in 1944, the penultimate year of the global war between democracy and dictatorship, he was drawn to a speech President Franklin D. Roosevelt had given at a Jackson Day dinner in Washington in January 1938. Jackson’s legacy, FDR said, was “his unending contribution to the vitality of our democracy. We look back on his amazing personality, we review his battles because the struggles he went through, the enemies he encountered, the defeats he suffered and the victories he won are part and parcel of the struggles, the enmities, the defeats and the victories of those who have lived in all the generations that have followed” (Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Jackson [Boston, 1945], x).
35 take a bullet in a frontier gunfight Parton, Life, I, 386–98, is an engaging account of one of Jackson’s peacetime skirmishes.
36 to assault his own would-be assassin Parton, Life, III, 582–84. The episode took place on January 30, 1835, when an assailant attempted to shoot Jackson at the Capitol. “The President, the instant he comprehended the purpose of the man, rushed furiously at him with uplifted cane,” Parton reported (ibid., 582). The episode is treated more fully below.
37 imprisoning those who defied Matthew Warshauer, Andrew Jackson and the Politics of Martial Law: Nationalism, Civil Liberties, and Partisanship (Knoxville, 2006), 35–39.
38 a leading hostess was disturbed Louise Livingston Hunt, Memoir of Mrs. Edward Livingston, with Letters Hitherto Unpublished (New York, 1886), 52.
39 “wild man of the woods” Ibid.
40 stunned to find Jackson both elegant and charming Ibid., 53.
41 “Is this your backwoodsman?” Ibid. This happened all the time; people accustomed to hearing stories of the frontier Jackson were constantly being surprised by his bearing in person. Even his foes granted as much. Ohio senator Thomas Ewing was a John Quincy Adams man, but he was forced to acknowledge that Jackson, while perhaps not brilliant, was sociable and engaging, which is more than President Adams could grant about Jackson. In a letter to his wife about a White House dinner in December 1831, Ewing wrote: “I told you in a former letter that I had an invitation to dine with the President. I accordingly on Tuesday evening last repaired to the palace where I was received with much courtesy by the old chief.… I have already told you that the manners of the President are exceedingly fine. For a how dye-do salutation, or a sitting at table chit chat, I never met his superior. He is neither wise nor learned nor witty, but he converses with freedom and ease on light and ordinary topics.… He is exceedingly familiar though at the same time sufficiently dignified. Now and then, however, his want of general information will disclose itself, though not often. He gave me a seat … at his right hand. We had an excellent dinner—fine wine—Madeira of choice and very ancient vintage and some first-rate champagne. Enough to make one a Jackson man almost—not quite” (Donald J. Ratcliffe, “My Dinner with Andrew,” Timeline [October–November 1987], 53–54).
42 “there was more of the woman” Parton, Life, III, 602. The secretary is Nicholas Trist.
43 “He lived always in a crowd” Ibid., 596.
44 “I have scarcely ever known a man” AMVB, 403. Van Buren was impressed by Jackson’s encompassing notion of family: “I have scarcely ever known a man who placed a higher value upon the enjoyments of the family circle or who suffered more from interruptions of harmony in his own; feelings which are more striking in view of the fact … that not a drop of his own blood flowed in the veins of a single member of it.”
45 “She was a beautiful, accomplished” EDT, I, 172.
46 journalists Amos Kendall and Francis Preston Blair I depended on AAK as well as Donald B. Cole, A Jackson Man: Amos Kendall and the Rise of American Democracy (Baton Rouge, La., 2004). FPB and William E. Smith, The Francis Preston Blair Family in Politics (New York, 1933), were crucial.
47 A shrewd New York politician I found John Niven, Martin Van Buren: The Romantic Age of American Politics (New York, 1983), Ted Widmer, Martin Van Buren (New York, 2004), and AMVB essential to understanding the elusive eighth president.
48 to think of him as the “Old Lion” Poughkeepsie Journal and Eagle, June 28, 1845; “General Jackson,” Goshen Democrat and Whig, July 4, 1845. I am indebted to Matthew Warshauer for his guidance on this point.
49 “the lion of Tennessee” House of Representatives, Congressman Dickinson of Tennessee on the Fine on General Jackson, 28th Cong., 1st. Sess., Congressional Globe (6 January 1844), 13, appendix: 3. Also see Matthew Warshauer, “Contested Mourning: The New York Battle over Andrew Jackson’s Death,” New York History 87 (Winter 2006), 29–65.
50 Holmes’s lion is “the terror” Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes (Boston, 1908), 75–76.
51 “I for one do not despair of the Republic” Papers, VI, 477.
52 “My hopes of a long continuance” Allan Nevins, ed., The Diary of John Quincy Adams, 1794–1845 (New York, 1951), 434.
53 “I was born for a storm” Heiskell, AJETH, III, 166.
Chapter 1: Andy Will Fight His Way in the World
1 “How triumphant!” Andrew Jackson Donelson to John Coffee, November 15, 1828, Andrew Jackson Donelson Papers, LOC.
2 was known to serve guests whiskey EDT, II, 55–56; James, TLOAJ, 609. Strong drink and good wine were hallmarks of Jackson’s hospitality wherever he was, from Nashville to the White House to his summer retreats as president at the Rip Raps on Old Point Comfort. His friend General Daniel Smith was known to have one of the finer stills in the region (EDT, I, 76). The cellars at the Hermitage were a source of great pride and interest to Jackson. As noted below, when the house burned in 1834, he gloomily wrote: “I suppose all the wines in the cellar have been destroyed” (EDT, II, 71). Jackson’s traveling liquor case—a handsome artifact—is still in his study next to the room in which he died at the Hermitage in Nashville (Author observation).
3 was sitting inside the house Papers, VI, 545–46.
4 answering congratulatory messages Andrew Jackson to John Coffee, December 11, 1828, Andrew Jackson Papers, Scholarly Resources Collection, Reel 12, LOC. In this letter, Jackson laments the postelection “press of business.”
5 friends in town were planning a ball Nashville Banner, December 16, 1828. The newspaper notice of the events tried to encourage an atmosphere of unity after the divisiveness of the campaign. “These are judicious arrangements,” the paper said of the dinner and the ball, “and we hope that a liberal and magnanimous spirit will characterize all the proceedings. The object is the manifest feelings of personal attachment to Andrew Jackson, on the part of those who have been in the habit of associating with him in the various relations of private life, as well as to pay him that respect which is due to the individual selected by the people as the chief magistrate of the nation.” Interestingly, the organizers were clearly worried that the Jackson or Adams forces might treat the day as yet another skirmish in the campaign—a sign of how vicious the 1828 race really was, and might still be, even though it had been decided. “In these testimonies, even those who preferred his competitor and were opposed to his election, may consistently and appropriately join,” the Banner went on. “As a neighbor and personal acquaintance, and as the elected President of the United States, he is entitled to marks of attention, even from such as were themselves desirous of retaining in office the present incumbent. Nor can it be either necessary or proper on such occasion for the zealous supporters of the General’s election, to indulge in acrimonious feelings towards the unsuccessful candidate or to recall any of the unpleasant emotions connected with the late bitter electoral contest. The battle has been fought and the triumph signal. Let us hope that the wounds unhappily inflicted will be permitted to heal.…”
6 Led by a marshal Nashville Republican and State Gazette, December 16, 1828.
7 drafted a letter Papers, VI, 545–46. The note, dated December 18 from the Hermitage, was written to Francis Preston Blair. Given the postscript reporting Rachel Jackson’s collapse (see below), it seems to have been composed on December 17, the day she was stricken (Papers, VI, 547); Jackson apparently dated it incorrectly on the seventeenth (which is understandable, given the crisis in the house) or waited until the next day to date it.
8 “To the people, for the confidence reposed in me” Papers, VI, 545.
9 went outside to his Tennessee fields Parton, Life, III, 154. Hannah, one of the Jacksons’ slaves, is the source for this detail.
10 The 1828 presidential campaign … had been vicious Remini, Jackson, II, 116–42; Parton, Life, III, 137–50; James, TLOAJ, 461–72. See also Robert V. Remini, The Election of Andrew Jackson (New York and Philadelphia, 1963), and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., The Election of 1828 and the Administration of Andrew Jackson (Philadelphia, 2003).
11 Adams was alleged to have Remini, Jackson, II, 133.
12 his wife a bigamist and his mother a whore Paul Johnson, The Birth of the Modern, 930–31. Johnson offers a useful summary of the less savory aspects of the 1828 campaign, citing the pro-Adams National Journal (“General Jackson’s mother was a Common Prostitute, brought to this country by British soldiers! She afterwards married a Mulatto Man, with whom she had several children, of which number General Jackson is one!”) (ibid., 930), and Charles Hammond’s A View of General Jackson’s Domestic Relations, which asked: “Ought a convicted adulteress and her paramour husband to be placed in the highest offices of this land?” (ibid., 931).
13 alleged atrocities Remini, Jackson, II, 122–24.
14 “Even Mrs. J. is not spared” “Letters from Andrew Jackson to R. K. Call,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 29 (April 1921), 191.
15 “The floodgates of falsehood” William B. Lewis to John Coffee, July 27, 1828, Dyas Collection–John Coffee Papers, 1770–1917, Tennessee Historical Society War Memorial Building, Nashville, Tennessee. Papers housed at the Tennessee State Library and Archives.
16 Some Americans thought See, for instance, Elizabeth Parke Custis to Andrew Jackson, December 25, 1828, Andrew Jackson Donelson Papers, LOC. Among Jackson partisans there was much talk of the connection between the era of the Founding and the incoming administration. Writing to the man he saluted as “Respected Genl,” Patrick G. C. Nagle of Philadelphia told Jackson: “It has been my determination and has been a long time back to make you a pair of waterproof boots (in order to keep your feet dry and warm when walking the muddy streets of Washington in the winter season).” These were no ordinary boots, but symbols tying Jackson to another, earlier savior of the nation: the Marquis de Lafayette. “I have had the honor,” Nagle wrote, “of making a pair of the same kind for the nation’s guest, the great and good Lafayette” (Patrick G. C. Nagle to Andrew Jackson, November 18, 1828, Andrew Jackson Papers, Reel 72, LOC).
17 One Revolutionary War veteran, David Coons David Coons to Andrew Jackson, November 19, 1828, Andrew Jackson Papers, Reel 72, LOC. “Permit an anxious friend unknown to you but to whom you are not unknown, to introduce himself thus to your notice,” Coons’s letter begins. “I am an old man who in my youth stood forth at my country’s call, and have always cherished that affection for my country and her defending which I consider due from every man, I could wish the same for all. The object of my introducing myself thus, plainly, to your notice is this. Through motives of the purest friendship,” Coons wanted to advise Jackson of the “hard threats.” Closing the letter, Coons added: “I may be unnecessarily alarmed, yet I cannot consider it a trespass in giving you this caution.”
18 the draft of a speech “Speech [undelivered] for December 23 Celebration in Nashville,” Andrew Jackson Papers, Reel 36, LOC. The draft is in Andrew Jackson Donelson’s handwriting.
19 While Jackson was outside Parton, Life, III, 154. I have drawn on several different accounts of Rachel Jackson’s death to tell the story of her collapse, final hours, and funeral: Wise, Seven Decades, 113–17; Parton, Life, III, 154–64; James, TLOAJ, 478–82; Remini, Jackson, II, 150–55; EDT, I, 155–59.
20 collapsed in her sitting room, screaming in pain Parton, Life, III, 154.
21 “a black wench,” a “profligate woman” John William Ward, Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age (New York, 1953), 196. There is also a reference to Rachel as a “whore” in the correspondence of Henry Clay (PHC, IV, 553).
22 short and somewhat heavy Vincent Nolte, Fifty Years in Both Hemispheres (New York, 1854), 238–39. Here is Nolte’s acidic account of the Jacksons’ dancing together at a ball in New Orleans in 1815: “After supper we were treated to a most delicious pas de deux by the conqueror and his spouse.… To see these two figures, the General a long, haggard man, with limbs like a skeleton, and Madame la Generale, a short, fat dumpling, bobbing opposite each other like half-drunken Indians, to the wild melody of ‘Possum up de Gum Tree,’ and endeavoring to make a spring into the air, was very remarkable.…” I am grateful to Marsha Mullin, the chief curator of the Hermitage, for bringing this quotation to my attention.
23 melancholy and anxious “For four or five years the health of Mrs. Jackson had been precarious,” wrote Parton. “She had complained, occasionally, of an uneasy feeling about the region of the heart; and, during the late excitements, she had been subject to sharper pains and palpitation. The aspersions upon her character had wounded deeply her feelings and her pride. She was frequently found in tears” (Parton, Life, III, 154). According to Remini, “Rachel … had no taste for public life, and after what had been said about her in the campaign she shivered at the thought of what lay ahead.” She was, Remini added, suffering from “poor health and sagging spirits” (Remini, Jackson, II, 149).
24 “The enemies of the General” EDT, I, 154.
25 Rachel was devastated to overhear EDT, I, 157. There are different versions of the episode triggering Rachel Jackson’s death. Mary Donelson Wilcox, a child of Emily and Andrew Jackson Donelson, is the source for the version I have told. Another account holds that while she was shopping in Nash
ville for clothes to take to Washington, Rachel Jackson found a pamphlet defending her character and was crushed. This is possible, of course, but we know that Rachel was already aware of the charges from the letter (noted above) she wrote in July 1828: “the enemys of the Genls have dipt their arrows in wormwood and gall and sped them at me … to think that thirty years had passed in happy social friendship with society, knowing or thinking no ill to no one—as my judge will know …” (EDT, I, 154). See Remini, Jackson, II, 150, for an account of the pamphlet scene, as well as his note (tracing the story through Major Lewis down to John Spencer Bassett) on page 415 of that work.