OK

by Metcalf, Allan;

  Meanwhile, a doggerel poet for an anti-Jackson newspaper, the New Jersey Eagle, didn’t worry about authentic documents but invented these lines, as if in Jackson’s own words:

  Then a nice writing-man I have hired for my use,

  To hide the bad spelin I skrawl —

  And them are as says how my grammar is bad,

  Don’t know nothing of it at all.

  Jackson’s supposed inability to spell did not turn away every voter. A Jacksonian editor, writing for the New York Enquirer, told of a farmer who, having been lectured by an “exact orthographer” who “gave a long dissertation in favor of Adams,” commented, “I never found a dictionary man that was not half a fool—I’m for Hickory, I believe.”

  One more aspect of Andrew Jackson’s spelling ability, or lack of it, would turn out to be important for the development of OK more than a decade later: his misspellings were said to include K where C should be. A writer for the pro-Jackson United States Telegraph, also in 1828, claimed that Adams’s partisans were looking through Jackson letters in the War Office to find evidence of misspelling, and sarcastically added:

  We are positively assured the following will appear: that he spells C-oalition with a K; Hartford C-onvention after the same manner; likewise C-ongress; fails to dot his eyes and cross his teas; and withal is so wholly unacquainted with the simple words, bargain, intrigue and management, as not to be able to spell them at all.

  Nearly two centuries later, we can look more dispassionately at the evidence, which shows Jackson to be neither a terrible speller nor a perfect one. Here, for example, is the first paragraph of a private letter he wrote to his wife while negotiating an Indian treaty in Mississippi:

  CHIKESAW COUNCIL HOUSE SEPT. 18TH. 1816

  MY LOVE,

  I have this moment recd. your affectionate letter of the 8th. Instant, I rejoice that you are well & our little son. Tell him his sweet papa hears with pleasure that he has been a good boy & learns his Book, Tell him his sweet papa labours hard to get money to educate him, but when he learns & becomes a great man, his sweet papa will be amply rewarded for all his care, expence, & pains—how thankfull I am to you for taking poor little Lyncoya home & cloathing him—I have been much hurt to see him there with the negroes, like a lost sheep without a sheperd.

  But whether or not Jackson was a good speller is beside the point as far as OK is concerned. What matters is that the story of his cacography, including the substitution of K for C, was widespread, making possible, more than a decade later, the hoax that would make OK a permanent addition to our language.

  Just as we know the name of the creator of OK in Boston in 1839, so we have the good fortune to know who perpetrated the OK hoax in 1840. It was James Gordon Bennett, a man whose political position had changed between 1828 and 1840. In 1828, Bennett was the Washington correspondent for the pro-Jackson New York Enquirer. For the April 24, 1828, issue of the Enquirer he sent this dispatch, defending Jackson by the novel ploy of revealing the bad spelling habits of other notables. This is how he supported Jackson against those who were aghast at the general’s misspellings:

  You have doubtless read whole columns in the coalition papers attempting to show that General Jackson cannot spell, read, or write. I was amusing myself the other day in the Library of Congress, where the fine ladies and gentlemen congregate to talk politics, literature, fashion and dress, and, by chance, came to examine those fac-similes of several hand writings of men of renown, which are generally inserted in their biographies.

  Who would dare to say that Edmund Burke could not spell? Yet, I can prove it “by construction,” and following literally the exact form of his letters. In Prior’s Life of Burke, published in 1824, there are two fac-simile receipts in Burke’s autograph to Dodsley, in which, there are five words in forty misspelled—such as rejestir, for register, biy, for being, annial, for annual, &c. In Pope’s autograph of the translation of the Iliad, contained in D’Israeli’s Curiosities of Literature, several of his words could be “construed” into errors—such as illustrous for illustrious, bey for boy, Hecter for Hector, gental for gentle, and o thou at the beginning of a line of poetry. In an autograph frank of Joseph Addison, when Secretary of State, there is a mistake in his capital letters.

  I could enumerate many other instances of a like nature; but these will be, in part, sufficient, to expose the folly of attempting to show, that eminent men cannot spell, provided their words are fastidiously examined. I could prove in the same way that Canova, the celebrated Italian artist, and Sir Christopher Wren, the great English architect, could not spell their own names. Look at Napoleon’s handwriting, and it would appear that he could not spell a single word.…

  One of the most curious instances of bad spelling is contained in the Life of Elbridge Gerry, by James T. Austin, a work just published in Boston. In this volume there is a fac-simile of Gerry’s handwriting, in which carried is spelled carred, colonies spelled as colenies, besides several other words which could very easily be construed into blunders. The most curious is a mistake in Gerry’s own Christian name; for by an examination it will be found that he spells Elbridge by substituting an l for a b—thus, Ellridge. I have recently seen several manuscripts of other great men of this country. Jefferson begins no other sentence with a capital letter but the first word of a paragraph.

  This is also somewhat the practice of General Jackson, whose handwriting is rapid and flowing, and it has been imputed to him as a species of ignorance.

  The Legend of “Ole Kurrek”

  On and on Bennett’s report continues with other examples showing that Jackson, if he misspelled, did so in good company. But now jump a dozen years ahead to the election of 1840. This time James Gordon Bennett was editor of the New York Morning Herald, a highly successful penny newspaper he had founded in 1835. Instead of supporting Jackson’s Democratic successor Martin Van Buren for reelection, Bennett took Harrison’s side. But it doesn’t really matter whose side he was on. What matters is that just three days after OK entered the political fray in a pro-Jackson newspaper as a rallying cry for Tammany supporters of the president, Bennett responded with this story in his newspaper:

  THE O. K. CLUB— O. K. LITERATURE.—This gang of loafers and litterateurs, who broke in upon the Whigs at Masonic Hall on Friday evening last, and kicked up the row there, are said to number 1000 bravos, being the picked men of the old “huge paws”—“butt enders”—“roarers,” and “ball rollers.” The origin of their name, O. K. is curious and characteristic. A few years ago, some person accused Amos Kendall [a pro-Jackson newspaper editor and later Jackson’s postmaster general] to General Jackson, of being no better than he should be. “Let me examine the papers,” said the old hero, “I’ll soon tell whether Mr. Kendall is right or wrong.” The General did so and found every thing right. “Tie up them papers,” said the General. They were tied up. “Mark on them, “O. K.,” continued the General. O. K. was marked upon them. “By the Eternal,” said the good old General, taking his pipe from his mouth, “Amos is Ole Kurrek (all correct) and no mistake,” blowing the smoke up the chimney’s cheek. After this the character of Amos was established on the rock of Gibraltar. Harvard College, on hearing of this event, was thrown into extacies, and made the General an LL.D., which he is to this day.

  The O. K.s are now the most original and learned locofoco club of the day. Their arguments are the most convincing test logicians ever invented.

  Some of Bennett’s allusions need explication for modern readers. “Locofocos” was a nickname for the Democrats, especially the Tammany version, and their partisans went by the nicknames Bennett uses in his first sentence: “huge paws” referred to work-ingmen and farmers, for example, and “ball rollers” to men who literally rolled giant balls in political parades, another practice introduced in the presidential campaign of 1840.

  More relevant to OK is the reference to Harvard. In 1833, Harvard University awarded Jackson an honorary doctor of laws degree. This infuriat
ed ex-president John Quincy Adams, the rhetorician, who was still bitter about losing the 1828 election to a supposed illiterate. He wrote to the president of Harvard asking that the degree not be awarded, only to get this reply: “As the people have twice decided that this man knows law enough to be their ruler, it is not for Harvard College to maintain that they are mistaken.” Adams grumbled in his diary, “I would not be present to witness her [Harvard’s] disgrace in conferring her highest literary honors upon a barbarian who could not write a sentence of grammar and could hardly spell his own name.”

  Learning of this, legend says, Jackson supposedly retorted, “It is a damn poor mind indeed which can’t think of at least two ways to spell any word.” But whether or not Jackson actually made that remark, the Harvard degree kept the accusation of Jackson’s illiteracy before the public. It led easily to Bennett’s 1840 embellishment of the legend by the addition of OK.

  That this story of Bennett’s was meant as a joke and not an actual historical account is confirmed by another spoofing item in the same vein, a purported letter to the editor in response to his article that Bennett published in his Morning Herald three days later:

  O.K.

  NEW YORK MAR 27TH 1840

  MR BENETT

  Sir—You have taken the leborty to Slander us most publickly in this mornings paper. the O.K. Institute which you hav so falsely represented was established for our own pleasure and enjoyment and was never intended for sich a d—d Rascale as your self

  J A MEMBER

  WHICH YOU WAS MEAN ENOUGH TO PURSENATE.

  ANSWER. —I cry you mercy, O.K. I have no wish to depreciate from the high reputation of so erudite a Society. Nor shall I ever interfere with your amusements in knocking down people. Col. Webb and you may enjoy a monopoly of that business.—Ed. Herald.

  This is further confirmation that Bennett, like Charles Gordon Greene when he invented OK a year earlier, was attempting humor rather than history.

  However, it is easy to see why others would believe Bennett’s tale of Jackson’s “Ole Kurrek.” It was the first attempt to explain the origin of OK, and it did so in a way that made sense. True or not, the claim that Jackson couldn’t spell was well known; Bennett’s story merely added another instance. Although he didn’t give a date, he was quite particular about the occasion, as if he had exact historical knowledge. And after all, who would spell the initials of “all correct” as OK? Only a really bad speller, not the editor of a newspaper, for goodness’ sake. And the best-known of all purported illiterates in America was Andrew Jackson. Q.E.D.

  Furthermore, who wouldn’t prefer a colorful story about a word’s origin to a lame one?

  In short, Bennett’s is a much better story than the one about a Boston newspaper in 1839. It is amusing and logical. It just happens not to be true.

  More than a century and a half since Bennett’s story was printed, not a scrap of evidence has turned up to confirm it. There is no evidence of OK before Boston 1839 anywhere, whether in the papers of Andrew Jackson, the newspapers of the day, or anywhere else. Thanks to the extensive newspaper evidence unearthed by Allen Walker Read, we now know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that OK sprang as a joke from the mind and pen of a Boston editor whose orthography was impeccable. But even in 1840, barely a year after the birth of OK, that explanation must have seemed less likely than the one attributing it to Andrew Jackson.

  It was quickly adopted by other newspapers. By early April 1840, two newspapers in New York City and another in Albany had already picked up Bennett’s story and offered it as a more or less authoritative explanation for OK, as in this report in the New York Commercial Advertiser:

  “O.K.”—The meaning of these mysterious letters, the power of which, when exerted, is so fatal to the peace and harmony of the city, is a question of grave deliberation in certain quarters. We are not proficients in cabalistic puzzles; but it is asserted that these letters constituted the endorsement of General Jackson upon papers that he had examined and found right—thus, O.K.—Oll Korrect.

  Two things about this report show the development from initial joke to established (though false) explanation. First, the mere existence of the report indicates that an explanation is needed. A simple parenthetical gloss of “all correct” for OK no longer would do, thanks to the Tammany appropriation of OK for political purposes. And as is often the case, a question about the meaning of a word has led to a desire to know its origin. Second, there is no indication that the author suspects the story to be anything but the truth. If Bennett’s article had been taken as a joke, the writer likely would have been tempted to improve on it for humorous purposes, as we can surmise from the humorous exaggerations of “grave deliberation” and “cabalistic puzzles.”

  Major Jack Downing

  By the summer of 1840, the story of the Jackson origin of OK had been enhanced by attribution to “Jack Downing,” the pseudonym used by Seba Smith of Maine for humorous newspaper columns in a New England rustic dialect. “Downing,” who was supposedly a confidant of President Jackson, indeed would have been a likely candidate to tell of Jackson’s OK, whether as a true story or an invented anecdote. Someone likely said, “This must have come from Jack Downing,” and before long that speculation became accepted as fact. This is how the Boston Atlas explained it in August 1840:

  O.K. These initials, according to Jack Downing, were first used by Gen. Jackson. “Those papers, Amos, are all correct. I have marked them O.K.,” (oll korrect). The Gen. was never good at spelling.

  The story is now a little different from Bennett’s, as one might expect of an anecdote told and retold. Amos Kendall is now Jackson’s interlocutor rather than the recipient of the OK mark, and Downing is the authority who vouches for the origin of OK. But the essential story has been firmly established.

  The story of Jackson’s OK made such sense that it was accepted, complete with attribution to the fictitious Major Jack Downing, in the authoritative book Americanisms: The English of the New World by Maximilian Schele de Vere, published in New York in 1872.

  American politics abound in catch-words, the great majority of which pass away with the accident that gave them birth, while others please the fancy of the populace, or acquire, by an unexpected success, such a hold on the public mind as to secure to them a longer lease of life. One of these is as ludicrous in its origin as tenacious in its persistency in the slang of the day. The story goes that General Jackson, better known in American history as Old Hickory, was not much at home in the art of spelling, and his friend and admirer, Major Jack Downing, found therefore no difficulty in convincing the readers of his “Letters,” that the President employed the letters O. K. as an endorsement of applications for office, and other papers. They were intended to stand for “All Correct,” which the old gentleman preferred writing Oll Korrect, and hence they are used, to this day, very much in the sense of the English “All Right.” To the question how a convalescent is, the answer comes back: “Oh, he is quite O. K. again!”

  As befits a careful scholar (an immigrant from Sweden, Schele de Vere was a professor of modern languages at the University of Virginia), Schele de Vere qualifies his account with “The story goes,” but he tells it with gusto and offers no alternative.

  Prompted by such stories, researchers have scoured the “Jack Downing” papers without finding any mention of OK. It’s such a good story that, if true, Jack Downing surely would have told it. Evidently, however, OK is too outlandish to have been inadvertently invented by Old Hickory or anyone else. It could only have been invented as a joke, as it was, and then after the fact attributed to Jackson.

  Enough of This Nonsense

  OK. It remained for someone who actually knew how Jackson actually wrote to weigh in. This we find in an 1882 letter to the St. Louis Globe-Democrat by a man who had been a State Department clerk during Jackson’s first term.

  TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK SUN.

  In your Saturday’s issue “Jackson” says: “Gen. Jackson,
when President, had certain papers laid before him, and marked them O.K., and when asked what it meant said, ‘All correct.’” … From a very close and intimate connection with Gen. Andrew Jackson during his whole Presidency, from 1829 to 1838, I know that no such mode of indication inured to Gen. Jackson at all, and confident I am that he never could possibly have made use of such expressions. He was a very courteous and gentlemanly person, of much refinement and elegant expression. He retained his military habit of devolving all epistolary matters upon his Secretaries, and therefore left behind him very brief writings of any kind.

  Someone who nowadays knows about Jackson’s writing habits echoes this view. Thomas Coens, an associate editor of the present-day edition of Jackson’s papers, states:

  Jackson was orthographically challenged, but knew how to spell “correct,” even on his worst days; and there’s no evidence that he ever endorsed anything “all correct,” however spelled. And Jackson never once, as far as I can tell, endorsed a document with an abbreviation—not with “A. C.” or “O. K.” or anything else.

  It is quite possible, indeed likely, that Andrew Jackson went to his grave (he died in 1845) without ever uttering or writing OK. There is no record that he ever noticed the attribution of OK to him or responded to it.

  Abraham and Zachary

  Nevertheless, on the basis of that story, OK went to work. The Jackson hoax, even though it was laughable, put OK to serious use. At some point, Bennett’s story, with its repetition and permutations by other hands, must have been the impetus and inspiration for the first person to imitate Jackson’s supposed practice of marking papers with OK—for real. Perhaps it was a proofreader, or a scrivener like Herman Melville’s Bartleby.