Andrew Jackson

by H. W. Brands

  Jackson’s anger at the Jay treaty might have passed without issue but for a political coincidence. A 1795 census of the Southwest Territory revealed that the region contained 67,000 free persons (not including Indians) and 11,000 slaves. As the threshold for forming a state was sixty thousand (“counting the whole of the free persons . . . adding three-fifths of all other persons,” in the slavery-obfuscating language of the day), the territory’s political classes set to work writing a constitution and otherwise preparing for admission to the Union. A constitutional convention gathered at Knoxville in January 1796. Jackson joined James Robertson and three other delegates representing Davidson County.

  Jackson’s decision to attend the convention marked a crucial turn in his career path, although it didn’t seem so at the time. Persons trained in the law were comparatively rare on the frontier, and Jackson would have seemed a shirker had he resisted selection to the Davidson delegation. Perhaps he sensed that a good showing at Knoxville would lead to greater things. More likely he went because his friends and colleagues urged him to, and he had nothing to keep him away.

  As matters developed, he made his presence felt from the start. The records of the convention are incomplete, leaving Jackson’s precise role uncertain. But the memories of his colleagues there indicated that he took an active, if sometimes indirect, part in the convention’s work. “Jackson, though exerting a paramount influence in its deliberations, made few important motions himself,” Francis Blair asserted. “His method was to have someone who agreed with him—always some earlier settler than himself—make the desired motion. Then he would second it and speak at once powerfully in its support.” Blair wasn’t at the convention and apparently had this from someone who was. Yet he spoke from his own personal observation of Jackson when he described the style that long characterized Jackson’s speech.

  He was not then or ever afterward what is commonly termed an orator. But he was a fluent, forceful and convincing speaker. When he addressed a body of men, whether jury, convention or political mass meeting, he talked to them. He did not orate. He had none of the arts of oratory, so-called. His voice, though strong and penetrating, was untrained. He had no idea of modulation, but let his inflections follow his feelings, naturally, as he went along. His gesticulation was even less trained and artful than his voice. About the only gestures he knew were the raising of both hands above his head to indicate reverence or veneration; the spreading of both arms wide out to indicate deprecation; and the fierce pointing of his long, gaunt forefinger straight forward, like a pistol, to indicate decision, dogmatism or defiance. And candor compels me to say that he used that forefinger more than any other limb or member in his gesticulation.

  His vocabulary was copious and he never stood at a loss for a word to express his sense. When perfectly calm or not roused by anything that appealed to his feelings rather than to his judgment, he spoke slowly, carefully and in well-selected phrase. But when excited or angry he would pour forth a torrent of rugged sentences more remarkable for their intent to beat down opposition than for their strict attention to the rules of rhetoric or even syntax.

  But in all situations and mental conditions his diction was clear and his purpose unmistakable. No one ever listened to a speech or a talk from Andrew Jackson who, when he was done, had the least doubt as to what he was driving at.

  At the constitutional convention Jackson argued against an early proposal for a unicameral state legislature. Whether from an honest admiration of Congress or from a calculated judgment that flattery would help the state constitution receive the required federal approval, he contended that what suited the national government ought to suit a new state. The convention swung to his side and approved a dual legislature.

  By at least one account, Jackson played a pivotal role in selecting the name of the new state. Several delegates from the region around Knoxville wanted to revive the name Franklin. Other delegates wished to honor Washington. Jackson thought too many states already had been named for individuals (Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia for English monarchs; New York, Pennsylvania, and Delaware for the favorites of monarchs). Four years earlier Kentucky had graced itself with an Indian name, and Jackson thought Tennessee should follow the example, keeping the name of the river that had made the first settlements possible. Years later, a Jackson partisan (who wasn’t at Knoxville) said Jackson had praised the melodiousness of “Tennessee” as a word that had “as sweet a flavor on the tongue as hot corn-cakes and honey.” Perhaps he did note the euphony, but simile wasn’t Jackson’s natural mode. Whatever his precise argument, after he seconded James Robertson’s motion that the state be called Tennessee, the motion carried by a large majority.

  The convention concluded its work in early February 1796 and sent the draft constitution east. Thomas Jefferson called it “the least imperfect and most republican of any of the American States’,” which was precisely why the same Federalists in Congress who supported the Jay treaty objected to it. The presidential election of 1796 was approaching, and unlike the uncontested coronations of George Washington, this one would be fought out. Tennessee leaned strongly Republican, which boded ill for the Federalist candidate, John Adams, and well for his Republican rival, Jefferson. The theory of self-government counted too heavily to keep a new state out of the Union indefinitely, but some Federalists hoped to keep it out till after the balloting for president. As things happened, the Republicans and republicanism got the better of the Federalists, and after some minor delay Tennessee was admitted. But in the bargain the Federalists limited Tennessee’s representation in the House of Representatives to a single congressman until after the census of 1800.

  That single congressman was Andrew Jackson. The Knoxville convention had afforded the first opportunity for the politically ambitious of Tennessee to gather in a single place and size one another up, and they were sufficiently impressed by the young lawyer from Nashville to conclude that he ought to represent the new state at Philadelphia. Jackson later claimed that he could have been chosen senator had he wished but that he declined because he did not want to make a career in politics or be gone from Nashville for the length of a senator’s term. Perhaps he could have been chosen, but until March 15, 1797, he couldn’t have been seated in the Senate, as he lacked the required thirty years of age. In any event, his name was put forward for congressman, and in October 1796 he was elected, essentially without opposition.

  For the second time in a little over a year, he set out on the long ride to Philadelphia. He was forty-two days on the road and wore out two horses before entering Philadelphia on a third horse (which he kept for many years). He arrived in early December as Congress was convening for what in those days was its short term. He heard Washington’s farewell address, in which the departing president warned his compatriots against the poison of partisanship and the insidiousness of entanglements in the affairs of other nations. “’Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world,” Washington declared.

  Jackson endorsed these sentiments but took the highly unusual step of protesting the address. During Washington’s two terms till now, Congress had responded to the president’s annual message with an innocuous message of its own, passed by a pro forma voice vote. But the partisanship of the campaign for Washington’s successor inspired Republicans in Congress to make a fight over the gesture. Jackson joined eleven other members of the House in voting against accepting Washington’s speech. Jackson took issue with Washington on some substance. “From the president’s speech it would seem that the British were doing us no injury, committing no depredations, that all the depredations on our commerce was done by the French nation, when on the contrary from the best calculations that can be made the British capture twenty to one,” he wrote a friend. But his principal complaint was against the whole idea of the president’s speech, which aped, he thought, the English king’s speeches to Parliament. And the response by Congress simply ratified t
he practice, besides sounding too much like Parliament’s answer to the king. “In my mind, this address of Congress to the President was a servile imitation of that custom,” he said later. “My vote was not against the address as such, but against the custom, or the servile imitation of a kingly custom that it grew out of.”

  Jackson’s objection would resonate once the Republicans claimed the presidency, and Jefferson would abandon the practice of delivering the president’s annual message in person before Congress. (The practice would not be revived until the twentieth century, by Woodrow Wilson.) Meanwhile the freshman congressman from Tennessee made his presence felt on another subject. In 1793 John Sevier and the Tennessee militia had conducted a reprisal expedition against Cherokees who had attacked settlements in eastern Tennessee. The campaign had been successful but expensive, and Sevier and the others hoped for compensation from the federal government. Jackson sponsored a resolution authorizing payment.

  The War Department objected, claiming that Sevier and the militiamen had overstepped the bounds of frontier defense and conducted an unauthorized campaign of aggression. Jackson disagreed most vigorously. The measures taken against the Cherokees were “just and necessary,” he said. “When it was seen that war was waged upon the state, that the knife and the tomahawk were held over the heads of women and children, that peaceable citizens were murdered, it was time to make resistance. . . . I trust it will not be assuming too much if I say that, being an inhabitant of the country, I have some knowledge of this business. From June to the end of October”—in 1793—“the militia acted entirely on the defensive, when twelve hundred Indians came upon them, carried their station and threatened to attack the seat of government itself”—Knoxville. Jackson went on to say that even if the campaign had been unwarranted, the men who stood to lose should payment be denied were the rank and file of the militia, who put down plows and tools and risked their lives on behalf of their families and neighbors. “As the troops were called out by a superior officer, they had no right to doubt his authority. Were a contrary doctrine admitted, it would strike at the very root of subordination. You might as well say to the soldiers, ‘Before you obey the commands of your superior officer, you have a right to inquire as to the legality of the service upon which you are about to be employed, and until you are satisfied you may refuse to take the field.’” No army could operate on such a principle, and neither could a militia.

  Several senior members of the House, including James Madison of Virginia and Albert Gallatin of Pennsylvania, found Jackson’s case compelling, and with their support the measure passed. Congress appropriated $22,816 to reimburse the members of the Sevier expedition.

  As members of Congress have always known, taking care of their constituents is the surest route to reelection. And when Jackson returned to Tennessee in March 1797, following the adjournment of Congress, with nearly twenty-three thousand dollars for his constituents, they felt well taken care of.

  The only question was whether he ought to be promoted to the Senate. On the road home he celebrated his thirtieth birthday, qualifying him by age for the upper house. Shortly thereafter the Senate career of Jackson’s former sponsor, William Blount, was cut unexpectedly short. Blount’s political intrigues had gone beyond defrauding Cherokees to a sin the government of the United States was forced to take seriously: private diplomacy. With others in Tennessee, Blount considered Spanish control of the Mississippi intolerable. (The Tennessee constitutional convention had taken upon itself to insert an affirmation of freedom of the great river into the state’s bill of rights. “That an equal participation in the free navigation of the Mississippi River is one of the inherent rights of the citizens of this State,” the Tennessee charter declared, “it cannot, therefore, be conceded to any prince, potentate, power, person or persons whatever.”) Blount allegedly plotted an attack against the Spanish in Louisiana and Florida, in order that those territories be transferred to Britain, which presumably would look kindlier on American navigational needs.

  The evidence adduced against Blount consisted primarily of a letter he wrote in April 1797 to James Carey, a federal agent to the Cherokees. In this letter Blount spoke vaguely about a “plan”—vaguely enough that the Senate committee investigating the matter was forced to concede that “the plan hinted at . . . is so capable of different constructions and conjectures that your Committee at present forbear giving any decided opinion respecting it.” But the very vagueness, and Blount’s unwillingness, when questioned, to enlighten the committee, made it appear all the more sinister. At a moment when war with either Britain or France appeared imminent, the administration of John Adams didn’t want Blount or anyone else embroiling the United States in troubles with Spain. Prodded by the president, the Senate voted to expel Blount. To ensure that he not return, the House moved to impeach him, but the Senate decided it would be silly to hold a trial in which the penalty upon conviction would be removal from the Senate of someone already removed.

  Expulsion from the Senate on grounds of defending the right of Tennesseans to navigate the Mississippi made Blount a hero in his home state. On his return from Philadelphia he was at once elected to the state senate and named its speaker. Jackson had defended Blount against his accusers, partly out of loyalty and partly because he agreed that Spain’s choke hold on the Mississippi must be broken. Blount appreciated the support and helped engineer Jackson’s election by the state legislature to the federal Senate.

  Where the Cherokees came from is a difficult question. One strain of Cherokee myth made them one of those tribes that didn’t come from anywhere: they had always lived in the southern Appalachian region, which the Great Spirit gave them at the creation of the earth. Another version related a migration from some forgotten former home. Linguistic and archaeological evidence points to the vicinity of the Great Lakes, as does a tradition among the Delaware Indians of having defeated the Cherokees there and driven them south.

  However they reached the highlands of what would become the western Carolinas and eastern Tennessee, they were firmly entrenched in that neighborhood when Hernando de Soto marched north from Florida in the spring of 1540. De Soto had helped Francisco Pizarro conquer Peru several years earlier, and he hoped to achieve a similar success in North America. De Soto picked up the name Chilakee (“other people”) for the Cherokees, apparently from their neighbors, but neither the name nor the people it signified helped him find what he was really looking for—gold—and so he marched off. The Spanish forgot the region and its inhabitants for more than a century, and no other Europeans followed them there.

  During this period the Cherokees perfected their mastery of their mountain home. They were the most aggressive people of the region, deeming war the sublime human endeavor. “War is their principal study, and their greatest ambition is to distinguish themselves by military actions,” observed an Englishman who encountered them in the eighteenth century. “Their young men are not regarded till they kill an enemy or take a prisoner.” The old men of the tribe, though long past fighting age themselves, “use every method to stir up a martial ardor in the youth.” More effective—youth being youth—were the urgings of the fair sex. “The women (who as among whites know how to persuade by praises or ridicule the young men to what they please) employ their art to make them warlike.” Every family vied for distinction on the warpath. “Those houses in which there’s the greatest number of scalps are most honored. A scalp is as great a trophy among them as a pair of colours among us.” The Cherokees themselves avowed their devotion to war. When whites attempted to arrange a peace settlement between the Cherokees and the Tuscaroras, the Cherokee leaders objected: “We cannot live without war. Should we make peace with the Tuscaroras, we must immediately look out for some others with whom we can be engaged in our beloved occupation.”

  The Cherokees’ penchant for war survived their first exposure to smallpox. In the 1730s the disease swept through the southern Appalachians, killing as many as half the Cherokees. Thi
s had predictably disruptive effects on the social life of the tribe, but the face the Cherokees presented to the world was nearly as formidable as ever. The French and British vied for their allegiance, causing the Cherokees to send diplomats to the European settlements and even to England itself. In London a Cherokee delegation arranged an alliance with the British Crown in exchange for firearms and ammunition. A young colonel in Virginia, charged with defending that colony against the French and France’s Indian allies, was delighted at the news. “They are more serviceable than twice their number of white men,” George Washington declared. “Their cunning and craft cannot be equaled. Indians are the only match for Indians.” On second thought revising his estimate upward, Washington added, “It is certain that five hundred Indians have it in their power to more annoy the inhabitants than ten times their number of white men.”