SINS OF THE FATHER
It couldn’t have been easy being the son of a wound-up perfectionist like John Quincy Adams. Unfortunately, JQA had three of them—George, John, and Charles. And to make matters worse, none of them had JQA’s zest for extraordinary achievement. Their lack of academic excellence was particularly troubling to Dad, whose attempts to inspire could be borderline sadistic. Upon discovering that John ranked only 45th in a class of 85 at Harvard, JQA forbade him from visiting his family in the capital until he ranked among the school’s ten best students. “I would feel nothing but sorrow and shame in your presence,” was his response to his son’s desperate appeal. In the end, JQA’s efforts—both good and bad—were tragically in vain. Both George and John became alcoholics. George committed suicide by jumping off a ship bound for a meeting with his father, and John died of an illness fed by obesity and liquor. Only Charles lived to an old age.
RED, WHITE, AND BLUES
If antidepressants were available in the early nineteenth century, John Quincy Adams would have benefited from them. His diary entries abound with doom and gloom. “I have no plausible motive for wishing to live,” he wrote upon losing the election to Jackson in 1828. Another typical entry went on about his “uncontrollable dejection of spirits . . . a sluggish carelessness of life, an imaginary wish that it were terminated.” Although he engaged in various activities to brighten his mood (particularly gardening), he remained depressed until the end of his life.
BILLIARDS AND OTHER DEADLY VICES
JQA’s honesty and attention to detail got him into trouble in 1826, when he listed a billiard table he’d purchased in Europe within his lengthy report of expenses. He paid for the “gaming furniture” himself and sought no governmental reimbursement, but such details were lost on his notoriously scrappy Jacksonian opponents, who saw in this otherwise insignificant factoid an opportunity to smear the president as a depraved gambler. (Apparently, billiards was seen by contemporary Americans as a “gateway” game: One moment you’re chalking up a cue stick, and, before you know it, you’re whoring and betting your way into debtor’s prison.) Despite the fact that JQA was a New England Puritan who didn’t go a day without his Bible fix, the accusation stuck and became part of the cavalcade of bad press that helped Jackson boot him out of the White House in 1828.
Falling Close to the Tree
JQA had a lot in common with his dear ol’ dad, John Adams. They were both believers in a strong central government and were both accused of being monarchists as a result. They both made a point of leaving Washington, D.C., on the night before their successors’ inauguration (sour grapes, anyone?). Both were as inwardly repulsed by political campaigning as they were preoccupied with their own ambition and achievements. They were both accused of putting on airs and of being stubborn and needlessly confrontational. And, perhaps most tellingly, they were the only two of the first seven presidents to be summarily kicked out of the presidency after only one term.
FOUNDING FODDER
They never made it into the Oval Office—but each of these Founding Fathers played a role in the birth of our nation.
JOHN HANCOCK, first signer of the Declaration of Independence, had one of the largest fortunes in New England and an even larger taste for rum punch—he kept a huge bowl of it by his bedside at all times.
BEN FRANKLIN’s list of accomplishments is breathtaking, from inventing the Franklin stove and “taming the lightning” to setting Paris society ablaze with his scorching wit and wisdom. A shameless bon vivant, he freely and enthusiastically proffered advice on matters of the heart—and bedroom. He even had an illegitimate son who went on to become royal governor of New Jersey (and, unfortunately for their once-close relationship, an inveterate Loyalist). Ol’ Ben wrote plenty of books and pamphlets, too—including one little-known gem called Fart Proudly, in which he pondered, among other things, the possibility of sweetening the smell of people’s gastrointestinal expulsions.
ALEXANDER HAMILTON knew a lot about money. We have this first secretary of the treasury to thank for much of the centralized economic system we take for granted today. Which is why we know that he must have appreciated the market forces at work when one James Reynolds demanded money to keep quiet about Hamilton’s affair with his wife, Maria Reynolds. The Republicans, eager to seize on anything to discredit the Federalists in general (and Hamilton in particular), used the whole sordid mess to besmirch the treasurer’s character, creating what was the first real sexual scandal in American political history.
SAMUEL ADAMS, often called the Father of the Revolution, was America’s first professional revolutionary—which was fortunate for him, because the man failed at everything else. He had no business sense, went through money as if he had a hole in his pocket, and couldn’t even succeed at tax collecting. When he went to the First Continental Congress in 1774, his constituents felt obliged to remedy his notoriously shabby appearance by buying him a new suit.
AARON BURR is in a class by himself. As if shooting and killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel weren’t enough, he did it while serving as vice president of the United States (under Jefferson, in 1804). After both New York (where Hamilton died of his wounds) and New Jersey (where the duel took place) issued charges of murder, Burr merely fled their jurisdiction by going back to Washington, D.C., to serve out his term as vice president.
He would go on to bigger and better things—namely, treason. With the help of sixty followers, he hatched a plot to create an empire beyond the Appalachian Mountains that would entail stealing territory from the United States and waging war on Mexico. When one of his cronies betrayed him to President Jefferson, Burr was tried for treason and acquitted. Not surprisingly, he fled the country for Europe.
7 ANDREW JACKSON
March 15, 1767–June 8, 1845
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Pisces
TERM OF PRESIDENCY: 1829–1837
PARTY: Democratic
AGE UPON TAKING OFFICE: 61
VICE PRESIDENT: John C. Calhoun (first term); Martin Van Buren (second term)
RAN AGAINST: John Quincy Adams (first term); Henry Clay (second term)
HEIGHT: 6′
NICKNAMES: “Old Hickory,” “Sharp Knife,” “King Andrew the First”
SOUND BITE: “If you have a job in your department that can’t be done by a Democrat, then abolish the job.”
It is fitting that the earliest surviving letter we have from Andrew Jackson is a demand for “satisfaction”: “Sir: When a man’s feelings and charector are injured he ought to seek a speedy redress. . . . My charector you have injured; and further you have Insulted me in the presence of a court and larg audianc. I therefore call upon you as a gentleman to give me satisfaction for the Same; and I further call upon you to give Me an answer immediately without Equivocation and I hope you can do without dinner until the business done . . .”
The man whose visage graces the $20 bill is rumored to have fought in more than 100 duels.
This letter tells us several important things about its author: that he was wrathful and argumentative, that nothing was as important as the settling of matters of honor through dueling, and that he couldn’t spell.
Andrew Jackson grew up in the Waxhaws, a region that straddled North and South Carolina and was populated by folks who tried, mostly in vain, to scratch a living out of the soil. His limited education didn’t make nearly as big an impression on him as his experiences in the American Revolution—by the time he was thirteen, he’d been captured by the British, barely survived smallpox, and lost his mother and two brothers to the conflict. Such trials forged his appreciation for tenacity, vengeance, and force.
After distinguishing himself in a legal career, he served in Tennessee’s Constitutional Convention, then briefly in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. He then went back to practicing law until finagling an officer’s commission in the Tennessee militia, beginning the military career that would make him a national hero. By the time of the War o
f 1812, he’d already made a name for himself as “Old Hickory” the Indian fighter, and in January 1815, he beat back a British invasion of New Orleans that remains one of the most one-sided victories (read “slaughter”) in American history.
It was Jackson’s reputation as an audacious battlefield commander that would eventually carry him to the White House. But first he had to suffer defeat at the hands of John Quincy Adams in the controversial election of 1824, a debacle that galvanized Jackson’s belief that Washington was run by a bunch of dandified, overeducated crooks. Fortunately for him, plenty of Americans agreed, and he waltzed into the presidency in 1828 on a populist platform that would come to be known as Jacksonian democracy. It was high time, he believed, for the “virtuous majority” to reclaim the principles of the American Revolution. He co-opted Jefferson’s Republican party, renamed it the Democratic party, and declared war on government corruption.
Which, naturally, was a farce, since his primary solution—a “rotation” of Washington bureaucrats that would replace old appointees with his own choices—suggests that he was merely rewarding his lackeys. He also unleashed an attack on the Bank of the United States, the sort of influential centralized institution he opposed on principle, and forced South Carolina to revoke its nullification of a national tariff in a conflict that presaged the coming strife over states’ rights. These kinds of measures earned Jackson the nickname “King Andrew the First” from opponents convinced he was overstretching executive authority. They responded by forming the Whig party, named after the old opponents of monarchy during the Revolution.
All of this, however, is less notable than the fact that the man whose visage graces the $20 bill got into the White House in the first place. For Andrew Jackson was essentially a madman . . .
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Hard Study
As a young man, Andrew Jackson “studied law” in Salisbury, North Carolina, adopting a curriculum of reading, clerking, fighting, drinking, and vandalism. Stories of his besotted hooliganism abound. When asked to organize the local dancing school’s Christmas ball, he secretly invited two of the town’s most experienced prostitutes, causing a scandal. On another occasion, he and his fellow miscreants, in an advanced and increasingly rampageous state of drunkenness, actually demolished a local tavern, beginning with the glassware, advancing to the furniture, and concluding their soirée by setting the building ablaze. (Boys will be boys!) Jackson was also known to complete many of his wild nights with a practical joke or two. His favorite: moving outhouses to where they couldn’t be found.
UNNECESSARY ROUGHNESS, EXHIBIT A
Andrew Jackson was a hard and driven man, ever willing to resort to cruelty in pursuit of his interests. While practicing law as a Tennessee prosecutor, he once cold-cocked a stubborn tax dodger with a piece of wood. As a military commander, he frequently executed those who disobeyed orders or displayed mutinous behavior. During the Creek War in 1813, an entire brigade of his men—officers included—threatened to march back north to Tennessee, exhausted by the campaigning and nearly starving for lack of proper provisions. Jackson promptly rode his horse to the head of the column, leveled his musket, and threatened to shoot the first man who made a move in the wrong direction. It worked. You didn’t call Andrew Jackson’s bluff.
UNNECESSARY ROUGHNESS, EXHIBIT B
Jackson displayed a similar lack of delicacy with his slaves. Here’s an ad he placed in the Tennessee Gazette in September 1804:
STOP THE RUNAWAY
Fifty Dollars Reward.
Eloped from the subscriber, living near Nashville, on the 25th of June last, a Mulatto Man Slave. . . . The above reward will be given any person that will take him, and deliver him to me, or secure him to jail, so that I can get him. If taken out of the state, the above reward, and all reasonable expenses paid—and ten dollars extra, for every hundred lashes any person will give him, to the amount of three hundred.
At least it featured correct spelling, no doubt thanks to the paper’s editor.
STICKING TO HIS GUNS
Everyone has a hobby, and men who become president are no different. Take Andrew Jackson, for instance: He liked to unwind by shooting at people. Whether because of his frontier environment, a tragic childhood, or some unknown frontal lobe damage, Old Hickory was overly fond of dueling. Here are the details surrounding three of the one hundred or so duels he was rumored to have fought:
His first known duel occurred in 1788 with a fellow attorney named Waightstill Avery, who had insulted Jackson in court. (The letter calling Avery out includes the passage mentioned earlier in this chapter.) Avery was no marksman, but it didn’t matter—both parties ended up intentionally firing into the air, thereby affirming their honor without shedding blood.
An 1806 duel with Charles Dickinson was much bloodier. The two men faced each other at roughly twenty-four feet, but Dickinson got off the first shot—it thumped dead center into Jackson’s chest. Incredibly, Jackson merely staunched the blood flow with his left hand while he calmly proceeded to take aim with his right. Dickinson found himself in the unenviable position of having to stand perfectly still and receive the bullet of a man he’d just shot. Jackson fired, hitting his mark below the ribs and killing him. The bullet that had struck Jackson lodged close to his heart and would remain there the rest of his life.
In 1813, two of General Jackson’s officers entered a duel that left them both wounded. Jackson had witnessed the duel as a “second,” which means he was there as an impartial witness on one of the parties’ behalf. When one of the wounded men’s older brother, Thomas Benton, discovered that Jackson had been irresponsible enough to allow this sort of reckless thing to happen, he publicly lambasted Jackson. The situation exploded when Jackson and two friends ran into Benton and his brother in the streets of Nashville. Jackson assaulted them with his whip, and the scuffle quickly erupted into a running gun and knife fight that engulfed much of the ground floor of the City Hotel. For his trouble, Jackson was rewarded with two gunshot wounds in the arm and shoulder, very nearly requiring doctors to amputate his arm. He would have the bullets removed twenty years later.
OLD SICKERY
Jackson was always rail thin, a man whose six-foot frame rarely carried more than 145 pounds. Though robust in his youth, years of hard living on the frontier and in military campaigns would take their toll. (Once, during the Creek War of 1813, he narrowly escaped starvation by eating acorns.) The bullet he’d taken in the duel with Charles Dickinson remained lodged near his heart and regularly led to inflammation, breathing problems, and other unpleasantries. By the time he was president, his battered body was falling apart. He suffered from persistent headaches and painful diarrhea. Afflicted with severe bronchial problems, he was often seized with coughing spells that produced frightful amounts of ugly, viscous sludge. His legs and feet swelled up, preventing him from getting around without difficulty. And his teeth were rotting out of his head. He only exacerbated his condition with alcoholic “tonics” and by chewing and smoking as much tobacco as he could lay his hands on.
Beating the Odds
In January 1835, while walking through the rotunda of the Capitol, Andrew Jackson very nearly met his maker at the hands of a would-be assassin. Richard Lawrence, who somehow had convinced himself that he was the rightful heir to the British throne and that Jackson was preventing him from getting it, approached the president and leveled a pistol at him. It misfired. By this time, Jackson was advancing on his assailant with his cane raised. Lawrence produced another pistol, and it also misfired. Lawrence was subdued by witnesses and taken into custody. He was acquitted of his crime on account of his insanity.
Both of Lawrence’s pistols were subsequently fired. The odds of two consecutive misfires were estimated at 1 in 125,000.
8 MARTIN VAN BUREN
December 5, 1782–July 24, 1862
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Sagittarius
TERM OF PRESIDENCY: 1837–1841
PARTY:
Democratic
AGE UPON TAKING OFFICE: 55
VICE PRESIDENT: Richard M. Johnson
RAN AGAINST: William Henry Harrison
HEIGHT: 5′6″
NICKNAMES: “The Little Magician,” “Little Van,” “Martin Van Ruin”
SOUND BITE: “As to the presidency, the two happiest days of my life were those of my entrance upon the office and my surrender of it.”
Martin Van Buren was a new kind of president. To begin with, he was the first to be born after the Declaration of Independence. But more important, he was a party man, an organizer who felt more at home pulling strings behind the scenes than he did giving speeches before the masses.
A protégé of Andrew Jackson, Van Buren was largely responsible for creating the Democratic party that Old Hickory came to symbolize. The two had a great admiration for each other, despite having virtually nothing in common. Jackson was a frontier legend who fit the image of charismatic hero, while Van Buren, an easterner from Kinderhook, New York, aspired to aristocracy and hated crowds. Together, however, they were more than a match for Jackson’s opponents, and Van Buren was handpicked by the general to succeed him in 1837.
“Little Van” fashioned the first statewide political machine in American history, the Bucktails of New York. He went on to work the same magic on a national scale with the Democratic party, earning him all manner of nicknames referring to conjuring and sorcery. He was sharp, imaginative, driven, and adept at bringing unlikely coalitions together, which earned him such positions as secretary of state, minister to Great Britain, and vice president.
Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents Page 4