Born Fighting

by James Webb

  He survived because he took the issue to the people rather than allowing it to remain simply in the press or in the back rooms of old-style politics. And his veto message was perhaps the strongest enunciation of Jacksonian democracy ever captured. As Parrington points out, Jackson “had come to associate aristocracy with the control of the economics of society. He was learning how aristocracies are built up through the instrumentality of the state; and as that lesson sank into his mind his opposition to class favoritism hardened into adamant. He would put a stop to such practices, cost what it might.”34

  Jackson’s veto message could well have emanated from a meeting of the Scottish Kirk two hundred years before. Its impact on ordinary Americans was so strong that the Congress did not dare overturn the veto. His summation is memorable and might apply to many aspects of American society today. “Equality of talents, of education or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions . . . to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of our society—the farmers, mechanics and laborers—who have neither the time nor the means of securing favors to themselves, have the right to complain of the injustice of their Government. There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.”35

  The second issue, although notionally over the introduction of legislation to extend tariff protection to industries in the North, pitted Jackson against many of his natural supporters. It was also a harbinger of the coming Civil War, which through the force of his leadership Jackson himself managed to avert. The debate that ensued was no more about a tariff than Moby-Dick was a story about a whale. At stake was the very definition of the role of government in modern societies as well as the distribution of powers in the new American federal system. Jackson’s political opponent was the legendary John C. Calhoun, another powerful Scots-Irish leader who in many ways represented the flip side of Andrew Jackson’s own personal journey. And the reduction in Jackson’s popular vote during the election of 1832 probably reflected the price of this essential victory more than it did his veto of the Bank Act.

  As the nineteenth century progressed, the Northern and Southern regions of the United States had steadily grown apart, not only in their ethnic and cultural makeup but also in their economic systems. The South, slave-based along its fringes and populated by small farms throughout its center, was thoroughly agrarian. The North had become steadily industrial, marked by heavier immigration patterns and increasingly large urban centers. A series of tariff acts, and particularly one in 1828 that became known as the Tariff of Abominations, had protected the emerging Northern industries from foreign competition by placing steep taxes on the importation of finished products, thus allowing Northern industries to charge more for those products at home. Sectional tensions were increasing as the Southern states felt doubly penalized. First, protection of Northern industries meant that Southern farmers had to pay artificially high prices for the manufactured goods that came out of Northern markets. Second, they themselves had to sell raw agricultural products in a competitive market both at home and overseas, particularly with respect to the growing cotton trade. The protective tariff, in the words of Schlesinger, “exasperated the Southern planters, who regarded it as a tribute levied upon them by Northern bankers and manufacturers.”36

  Jackson was no fan of tariff legislation, regarding tariffs as the “right arm” of America’s emerging “nobility system,” whose head had been the bank itself.37 In early 1832 he fashioned and shepherded through Congress a modified tariff bill that reduced many of the inequities of the 1828 law. But to Calhoun and his followers, this was not enough. Calhoun, who Vernon Parrington described as “the one outstanding political thinker in a period singularly barren and uncreative,”38 was seizing on the issue in an attempt to completely redefine the relationships between the federal government and the states. The lean, brooding South Carolinian, who had been John Quincy Adams’ vice president and had continued in the post during Jackson’s first term, had taken a long look at wealth flow and immigration patterns, and had seen that the South’s future in an age of pure democracy was bleak. A passionate advocate of the slave system, Calhoun sought to protect the region from future dominance through a political concept he termed “nullification.” The premise of this doctrine was that each state should have the power to veto any federal law that it deemed inappropriate. In Calhoun’s view, the principle of majority rule at a national level was dangerous to local justice, where a majority of the people in a state or region might strongly, and fairly, disagree with prevailing national majority sentiments.

  Calhoun was a formidable opponent. Parrington characterized him in terms of his family origins: “It was a hard, stern race—that Scotch-Irish—little responsive to humanitarian appeal; and Calhoun was harder and sterner than most. He held his emotions in strict subjection to his reason.”39 Although he agreed with Jackson that no government was capable of creating a true equality of conditions among its citizens, Calhoun was Jackson’s strongest opponent on the principle that all people are entitled to personal liberty, especially as Jackson himself was interpreting that concept. No doubt driven by his adamant support of slavery, Calhoun maintained that liberty, even among free whites, “is a reward to be earned, not a blessing to be gratuitously lavished on all alike;—a reward reserved for the intelligent, the patriotic, the virtuous and deserving;—and not a boon to be bestowed on a people too ignorant, degraded and vicious to be capable either of appreciating it or of enjoying it.”40

  Calhoun had supported Jackson’s election in 1828 in the mistaken belief that he might be able to control Old Hickory’s politics, but the two had quickly fallen apart. The Yale-educated South Carolinian was known as an intellectual descendant of John Adams, both of them believing in “the fundamental principle that property will rule by reason of its inherent power, and that political justice is attainable only by a nicely calculated system of checks and balances, which provides each important group with a defensive veto.”41 At the same time, in his nullification concept one cannot help but see the legacy of the Scottish Kirk, and especially of the Presbyterian nonconformism that evolved during the bitter decades in Ulster. But nonconformism was based on the principle that the individual had the right to rebel against a policy that he viewed to be immoral. While one might buy its logic when arguing the inequities of tariff acts, it is difficult to imagine those old Scottish Calvinists, fearsome though they were, supporting its usage when it applied to the continued enslavement of another human being.

  And even with the issue of unfair tariffs, Calhoun pushed Jackson too far. Under his leadership, in November 1832, South Carolina adopted an Ordinance of Nullification, “declaring the Tariff Acts of 1828 and 1832 null and void and forbidding the collection of duties required by these laws within the state of South Carolina. Also it warned the federal government that if force were used to coerce the state, South Carolina would secede from the Union.”42

  The issue had been boiling for years, and Jackson was ready for the fight, both politically and literally. He had not backed down from John Sevier, the great war hero of King’s Mountain. He had not backed down from Charles Dickinson, even after the best shot in Tennessee had put a bullet near his heart. And he was not going to back down from the fierce brilliance of John C. Calhoun. He quickly positioned a strong federal military force in and around South Carolina, quietly letting it be known that he could have fifty thousand troops inside the state within forty days and another fifty thousand shortly after that. He sent trusted advisers into South Carolina to bolster the support of community leaders who did not agree with Calhoun. He then pushed a bill through Congress that authorized him to use force in South Carolina if it became necessary to enforce the tariff laws.

  And finally, a
s with his veto of the bank charter, Jackson issued a proclamation directly to the people of South Carolina, at the same time circulating its language throughout the country. “The laws of the United States must be executed. I have no discretionary power on the subject. . . . Those who told you that you might peaceably prevent their execution deceived you. . . . Their object is disunion. . . . Disunion by armed force is treason. Are you really ready to incur its guilt?”43

  As with the veto of the bank charter, Jackson’s proclamation stirred up strong emotions throughout the country, serving clear notice to Calhoun and his group that if they continued, they would see war, with wide support even in the South. South Carolina’s leadership backed down, at least for the moment. Within a few weeks of Jackson’s message, Calhoun resigned from the vice presidency, taking a seat in the Senate, where he would remain his generation’s most forceful champion of local and states’ rights. But Andrew Jackson had set a clear precedent through his insistence that the Union of the states was inviolable and that if necessary its integrity would be preserved through the use of force. And his eminent military record left no doubt that he would follow through if Calhoun called his bluff.

  In 1837 an unprecedented twenty thousand devoted followers traveled to Washington to say good-bye when Jackson yielded his presidency to Martin Van Buren. But those who had opposed him were ecstatic, for although Van Buren was Jackson’s personal choice to succeed him, the success of Old Hickory’s presidency was measured more by the force of his personality than by the popularity of any specific agenda. Jacksonianism was intensely personal, built around the force of one man’s leadership and personality. Its negative legacy was the centralization of power into the hands of lesser men who did not deserve it and who did not wish to use the power of the central government in such an altruistic manner. And the governing class had now learned well the political tactics of mass appeal without needing to adopt the honesty of his personal connection to the common American.

  As Parrington put it, in terms that again echo into our own era, “The evils entailed on America by the Jacksonian revolution . . . came in spite of him, not because of him, and they came as a result of the great object lesson in the manipulation of the majority will that his popularity laid bare. . . . The later Whigs . . . had discovered that business has little to fear from a skillfully guided electorate; that quite the safest way, indeed, to reach into the public purse is to do it in the sacred name of the majority will. Perhaps the rarest bit of irony in American history is the later custodianship of democracy by the middle class, who while . . . exploiting the state and outlawing all political theories but their own, denounce all class consciousness as unpatriotic, and agrarian or proletarian programs as undemocratic.”44

  Old Hickory had brought the core values of the Scots-Irish culture to the center of American politics, never losing the confidence of the previously powerless people whom he championed. In the process, he forever changed the face of the American system. Many later presidents would attempt to emulate both his direct approach to the voters and his boldness, with mixed success. The emphasis on—and sometimes an exaggeration of—one’s humble origins became a staple of political campaigns. Forceful solutions to crises, both domestic and foreign, appealed to the “Jacksonian” sense of honor and combativeness.

  Indeed, a close look at Theodore Roosevelt’s more highly celebrated political career could lead one to conclude that the cerebral “TR” had assiduously studied the keys to Andrew Jackson’s success and then deliberately followed in Old Hickory’s path. Roosevelt’s Georgia-born mother was principally of Scots-Irish descent, mixed with a bit of English and Huguenot French, and he frequently praised the contributions of that “bold and hearty race.” His self-invented obsession with physical challenge, his flamboyant “trust-busting” battles against powerful corporations, a messianic nationalism characterized by his single-minded pursuit of war with Spain during his time as assistant secretary of the navy, and his obsession with categorizing his own military exploits all hint at what might be called a derivative Jacksonianism.

  When Andrew Jackson died in 1845 at the age of seventy-eight, it was still difficult for either critics or supporters to categorize him, for his life had been an uncharted and unguided study in contrasts. The orphaned teenage soldier had literally fought his way to the highest office in the land and had used that office for the common good. The Indian-fighter (and supposed Indian-hater) had rescued an orphaned Indian child from the battlefield and raised him in his own home. The slave-owner (and supposed racist) had defied the aristocrats and welcomed free blacks as soldiers during the defense of New Orleans. The supposedly unsophisticated and hot-tempered backwoods duelist had smashed the power of a monopolistic banking system and then smoothly guided several competing political factions through the nullification debate, in the process both preserving the Union and preventing the outbreak of civil war.

  The issues that marked Andrew Jackson’s presidency survived him, with sectional rivalry and antagonistic philosophies of governance continuing to divide the country. The “emerging nobility” persisted in its view that property ownership rather than simple suffrage should define political power. The slave states grew more restless in the Union. And with Jackson gone from the helm, there was no Great Captain with the force of personality to keep the ship of state from cracking up against the shoals.

  3

  The Winds of War

  DURING THE FIFTEEN years that followed Andrew Jackson’s death the nation was on an unstoppable path to war. Historians have spent entire careers characterizing the divisions that led to this national tragedy, for in truth an astounding mix of emotions and rationales has always fed the whole. The eminent Civil War historian Henry Steele Commager’s words of more than fifty years ago still ring true today: “No other war started so many controversies and for no other do they flourish so vigorously. Every step in the conflict, every major political decision, every campaign, almost every battle, has its own proud set of controversies, and of all the military figures only Lee stands above argument and debate.”45

  Recent years, however, have seen a new kind of nastiness emerge in these disputes. Even the venerable Robert E. Lee has taken some vicious hits, as dishonest or misinformed advocates among political interest groups and in academia attempt to twist yesterday’s America into a fantasy that might better serve the political issues of today. The greatest disservice on this count has been the attempt by these revisionist politicians and academics to defame the entire Confederate Army in a move that can only be termed the Nazification of the Confederacy. Often cloaked in the argument over the public display of the Confederate battle flag, the syllogism goes something like this: Slavery was evil. The soldiers of the Confederacy fought for a system that wished to preserve it. Therefore they were evil as well, and any attempt to honor their service is a veiled effort to glorify the cause of slavery.

  This blatant use of the “race card” in order to inflame their political and academic constituencies is a tired, seemingly endless game that is itself perhaps the greatest legacy of the Civil War’s aftermath. But in this case it dishonors hundreds of thousands of men who can defend themselves only through the voices of their descendants. It goes without saying—but unfortunately it must be said—that morality and decency were traits shared by both sides in this war, to an extent that was uncommon in almost any other war America has fought. It was “a curious war,” as Commager pointed out, “one in which amenities were preserved.” Commager went on to mark the essential truth that, “The men in blue and gray . . . had character. They knew what they were fighting for, as well as men ever know this, and they fought with a courage and tenacity rarely equaled in history. . . . Both peoples subscribed to the same moral values and observed the same standards of conduct. Both were convinced that the cause for which they fought was just—and their descendants still are.”46

  At the same time, the path that led to this war was more complicated than any other in the nation
’s history. This is one reason that the war and the era that surrounded it is the subject of such constant reinterpretation.

  Some see the controversy leading up to the Civil War as a continuation of the old English conflict between King Charles’s Cavaliers, whose descendants had been granted large tracts of land in Virginia, and the Puritan forces of Oliver Cromwell, whose religious and intellectual descendants had settled New England. Some see the war, and particularly how it was fought, as going back in time even further, to the great fights between the top-down, plodding Norman English and the bottom-up, rebellious Celtic Scots. Some see it in economic and sectional terms, the result of an inevitable split between an increasingly industrial and more populous North and a persistently agrarian, rural South that did not wish to be economically dominated but had lost its political options. Some see it in constitutional terms, a war that eventually became necessary in order to resolve once and for all the issue of whether the Tenth Amendment allowed a state to secede once it entered the Union. And some—in modern times, probably most—view it in a purely moral context, with the slavery issue so compelling in and of itself that it justified both enormous bloodshed and the conquest of the Southern territories.

  The whole truth was in all of these things mixed together, considered at different levels of importance among differing constituencies, so that even today, more than 140 years after the fact, intelligent and well-meaning people might still argue over the motivations and conduct of the leaders on both sides. Any effort to reach a consensus on the war is made even more difficult by the reality that certain portions of these truths burned more brightly than others in different ethnic and regional groupings, depending on the nature of their involvement. And no one camp held a monopoly on strong views or in the sincerity of their beliefs, even though they were in deep moral disagreement.