Military Career
In September 1792, Governor William Blount appointed Jackson judge advocate of the Davidson County militia. It was his only military connection for a decade. The post carried the rank of captain, and its salary was in livestock, but it also came with significant political benefits. The militia’s rank and file elected their field officers, and those officers, in turn, chose their generals. Because frontier militia service bound together all able-bodied adult males, officers who secured their loyalty could also count on their political support when seeking public office. During these years, John Sevier’s military experience and command of the militia virtually assured a large bloc of reliable voters and allowed Sevier’s faction to challenge Blount’s. Sevier easily won the governorship and could have been governor for life had the Tennessee constitution not required him to step down after two consecutive terms. Forced to interrupt his political career in 1802, Sevier confidently ran for the post of major-general of the state militia, but so did Judge Andrew Jackson, and the election resulted in a tie. Governor Archibald Roane had the authority to cast the deciding vote and did so for his friend Jackson. Sevier’s anger over this and other points of friction eventually prodded him to disparage Jackson’s marriage, as already noted, and the two nearly fought a duel.
After Jackson retired from the bench in 1804, his military commission as a major general of the Tennessee Militia remained his only public post for the next ten years. It persuaded former vice president Aaron Burr that Jackson could be useful in a shadowy scheme, possibly for the conquest of western lands. The details of the “Burr Conspiracy” remain a mystery, but many at the time thought Aaron Burr a scoundrel, or worse. Jackson always denied any wrongdoing, but his entertaining Burr during 1805 and 1806 visits to Nashville later allowed Jackson’s political enemies to question his patriotism as well as his judgment.
In the near term, it was possibly why President James Madison ignored Jackson’s offer to help the United States invade Canada when the Anglo-British war began in the summer of 1812. In November 1812, the federal government called up Tennessee militia, ostensibly for the defense of New Orleans, but actually to invade Spanish West Florida. Jackson commanded the march, which only got as far as Natchez before being ordered to disband because the government had abandoned its offensive plans. Jackson refused to dissolve his command, however, and instead marched the whole of it back to Nashville, overcoming daunting terrain and unusual hardships in the process. It was on this march that his men dubbed Jackson “Old Hickory” in tribute to his fortitude and stoicism.
Only after Creek Indians had massacred settlers in the Mississippi Territory did Jackson have a meaningful field command. The federal government called on Tennessee to participate in a general campaign to quash the Indian threat, and the result was the Creek War of 1813–14. Jackson commanded Tennessee’s force of Indian allies, militia, and volunteers. That his troops were on short-term enlistments was a reflection of everyone’s confidence in quick victory, but the Creek country’s trackless wilderness made logistics difficult and supply nearly impossible. Commanders leading other forces found the task too daunting, but Andrew Jackson, though ill, fought Indians and destroyed their towns while quelling mutinies and punishing insubordination in his famished and ill-supplied army. By sheer force of will, he decisively closed the campaign on March 27, 1814, with a smashing victory at Tohopeka (Horseshoe Bend) on the Tallapoosa River. To the dismay of Jackson’s Indian allies, his Treaty of Fort Jackson (August 1814) ended the Creek War by confiscating 23 million acres of Indian lands from America’s Creek friends as well as its foes.
In a war with few American victories, the people celebrated Jackson’s triumph at Horseshoe Bend, and overnight he became a hero. The government appointed him a major general in the United States Army, and in that capacity, he defended New Orleans in the last battle of the War of 1812 on January 8, 1815. British tardiness and indecision gave Jackson time to prepare strong defenses on the Rodriguez Canal that commanded the Chalmette Plain south of New Orleans. His line—a mixture of militia, regulars, Creoles, free men of color, and Baratarian Pirates—cut to pieces the seemingly invincible British veterans who had defeated Napoleon, and Jackson saved the city.
Because the battle occurred more than two weeks after the Treaty of Ghent was signed (December 24, 1814), some have argued that it was not as important as it seemed at the time. However, a British victory at New Orleans would have given them control of the Mississippi River at its mouth, a bargaining advantage in postwar diplomacy that would have been inestimable. Britain’s extended occupation of Northwest posts after the American Revolution provided precedent for such behavior, and in light of that possibility, Jackson’s victory was consequential.
Moreover, victory in New Orleans created the impression for Americans that they had won the war and consequently amplified their adoration of Andrew Jackson to a level not seen since the days of George Washington. The adulation was fortunate for Jackson because it persuaded the government to overlook a series of incidents in New Orleans that could have withered his laurels. Jackson feared a British return and became obsessed with controlling the city’s inhabitants and maintaining its defenses. He refused to dismiss local militia and continued martial law. Distrusting the French population, Jackson announced plans to pull Francophones from their homes and banish them from the area. He regarded complaints about these dubious policies as seditious.
When naturalized Frenchman and member of the Louisiana legislature Louis Louaillier published a critical editorial in the Louisiana Courier, Jackson had him arrested. Louaillier appealed to the United States District Court for relief, but Jackson not only ignored Judge Dominick A. Hall’s writ of habeas corpus that sought to free Louaillier but also arrested Hall for challenging military authority. On March 5, 1815, Jackson finally received confirmation from his government that the war had ended, and he released Louaillier. Restored to his court, Judge Hall cited Jackson for contempt and fined him $1000, which Jackson promptly paid. This belated act of contrition helped prevent these grave incidents from tarnishing Jackson’s image. (Congress in 1842 refunded the $1000 fine with accrued interest of $27.)
The durability of Jackson’s popularity was again tested when he exceeded his government’s instructions during an 1818 campaign in Spanish Florida. His orders to suppress Indian violence on the Georgia-Florida border gave rise to what would be called the First Seminole War, but Jackson’s actual goal was to wrest the province from Spain. He marched into Florida, attacked Spanish posts in direct violation of orders, hanged two British subjects under a flimsy pretense of legality, and forced the governor of Spanish West Florida to surrender. President James Monroe’s administration braced for the diplomatic and domestic repercussions promised by General Jackson’s making war on a foreign power without congressional authorization, but Spain was weak, and Congress was careful. Spain ended up ceding Florida to the United States, and both the president and Congress took the measure of Jackson’s popularity to excuse his improper behavior as an excess of zeal. As touchy about his reputation in old age as he had been in youth, Jackson years later claimed that Monroe had secretly authorized his campaign, but Monroe always denied doing so. No documentary evidence supports Jackson or refutes Monroe.
The Quest for the Presidency
Jackson did not long remain a soldier after the Seminole War controversy. Enacting a purported budget reform, Congress eliminated one of the two major-general slots in the U.S. Army, and Jackson as the junior had to resign. President Monroe offered him the territorial governorship of Florida as a consolation, but quarrels with former Spanish administrators rocked Jackson’s tenure. He clashed with West Florida’s last provincial governor Don José Maria Callava. Reprising his impatience at New Orleans, Jackson jailed Callava and intimidated a U.S. judge who planned to object to Jackson’s high-handed conduct. Jackson resigned the post after serving less than a year and returned to the Hermitage in 1821. Another congressional investigation, this time focusing on his behavior as governor of Florida, came to nothing.
Despite the embarrassments that seemed to follow Old Hickory, Tennesseans recognized Andrew Jackson’s popularity as a political asset. Jackson’s old friend John Overton certainly did, and his inherited leadership of the William Blount faction placed it squarely behind Jackson’s quest for the presidency. Overton also assembled an intimate political clique that came to be called the Nashville Junto. Its members included Tennessee’s important politicians, prominent businessmen, and influential newspaper editors. The Junto’s project nearly succeeded in 1824 and would help deliver the presidency to Old Hickory four years later. By then, it had been transformed into the Nashville Central Committee, and its primary purpose had become quashing attacks on Jackson’s personal life, including his history of violence and the origins of his marriage. Critics in 1828 derided it as the “Whitewashing Committee.”
The first step leading up to the presidential election of 1824 was to allay eastern fears that Jackson was a roughly hewn rube given to violent outbursts and improper behavior. By arranging his election to the U.S. Senate, the Junto hoped to provide a political forum for Jackson to display a statesmanlike demeanor while his courtly manners could impress Washington society. Until the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, state legislatures elected U.S. Senators, and the Nashville Junto managed the Tennessee legislature with a mixture of deft persuasion and blunt pressure. Placing Jackson in Washington worked, and support for his candidacy gradually spread beyond the South and the West.
Jackson routinely expressed little interest in political advancement and even conceded that he lacked the education and temperament for the presidency—a sentiment others, such as Thomas Jefferson, shared—but the caveat always qualified Jackson’s demurrals that he would not shirk his duty if called to serve. Even so, the Junto had a hard chore in promoting Jackson because of his potentially unpopular political positions. It would be strange that many later judged Jackson’s public ascendancy in tandem with the rise of the “Common Man,” because many of his views were at odds with those of ordinary citizens. The economic Panic of 1819 and the depression that followed left many Americans in hopeless debt, but Jackson opposed bankruptcy reforms and debt relief. He also seemed surprisingly apolitical. After the War of 1812, when members of the Federalist Party had become pariahs, he advised President James Monroe to appoint one to his cabinet. Finally, Jackson’s stint in the Senate featured a bland record, but his neutral opinion on the Bank of the United States (BUS) and his support of protective tariffs and federally funded internal improvements angered some people, particularly in the South.
When Jackson eventually and vehemently opposed the BUS and the other policies, critics pointed out the inconsistency. But even before that time, Overton and his Junto correctly judged that Jackson’s stands on various issues were likely to irritate only scattered constituencies. If properly handled, Jackson’s greatest strength as an honest outsider could marginalize opposition to him. Maryland’s Roger Taney typified the supporter encouraged by Jackson’s virtue as a man of proven mettle beholden to no political faction. That perception made Jackson a serious contender in the election of 1824 in which Washington insiders dominated the contest. One candidate, the Kentuckian Henry Clay, was Speaker of the House, and three others were members of Monroe’s cabinet: John Quincy Adams headed the State Department, William H. Crawford the Treasury, and John C. Calhoun the War Department.
Jarring events soon damaged the viability of Calhoun and Crawford. The former was the first casualty of Jackson’s popularity when a Pennsylvania state convention cast him aside to endorse Old Hickory. The rebuke convinced Calhoun to seek the vice presidency. As for Crawford, ill health and an unwise political decision all but undid him. He was mildly sick when an inept physician overmedicated him and caused a crippling stroke, but the endorsement of the congressional caucus injured him just as much, and possibly more. By 1824, the caucus was at odds with the growing spirit of democracy, and the people associated it with the elitist, cliquish nature of Washington politics. The caucus’s selection of Crawford tainted him while contrasting him to “the people’s choice,” Andrew Jackson. Nevertheless, Crawford remained in the running and slowly if incompletely convalesced from his stroke. He never recovered from the stigma of the caucus’s endorsement.
Because few significant issues separated the four men seeking the presidency in 1824, Jackson’s supporters resorted to personal attacks to injure his rivals. They described Crawford as a corpse but for the dying, Clay as a libertine with a weakness for whiskey and gambling, and Adams as arrogant and heartless. It finally became apparent to these men that Jackson posed a real threat, but they were too late in trying to revive concerns about Jackson’s temperament and violent past. Attacks on him merely burnished his reputation as an outsider, which added to his appeal. When voting began in late October and continued to December 1, early returns from states such as Pennsylvania made Old Hickory the frontrunner. In the final vote tallies for all twenty-four states, however, Jackson won the popular vote but only a plurality in the Electoral College where a majority was required for victory.
When no candidate receives a majority in the Electoral College, the Twelfth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution authorizes the House of Representatives to select the president from the top three candidates with the highest Electoral College totals. In the process, each state delegation, regardless of size, has one vote. Jackson had won 99 electoral votes, Adams 83, and Crawford 41. Clay’s 37 voted eliminated him from consideration, but Clay’s position as Speaker of the House made him a key player in the decision. Friends of the three candidates sought his backing, but as soon as Clay knew he could not win, he had resolved to support Adams. It was an easy decision for the Kentuckian. Jackson’s behavior as territorial governor of Florida did not commend his executive temperament, and Clay’s views on protective tariffs, internal improvements, and foreign relations coincided with those of Adams, a fact confirmed for Clay after he and Adams had a lengthy private discussion.
The House of Representatives voted on February 9, 1825, amid considerable tension and uncertainty. Expectations that multiple ballots would be necessary to decide a winner gave rise to the idea that the process would feature shifts in momentum and evolving deals. To everyone’s surprise, the first ballot gave Adams thirteen of twenty-four states, making him the president-elect. Jackson was initially magnanimous in defeat, but Adams’s proffer of the State Department to Clay outraged Old Hickory and his friends. They immediately concluded that Clay and Adams had entered into a “corrupt bargain” to rig the House vote and deprive Jackson of four of the eleven states he had won in the general election. Worse for appearances, Clay had arranged Kentucky’s vote for Adams contrary to explicit instructions from the state’s legislature to support Jackson. Old Hickory privately railed that Clay was “the Judas of the West” who had accepted his thirty pieces of silver in the form of a cabinet post. Jackson soon went public with his accusations, and the impression that Adams and Clay had struck a “corrupt bargain” dogged the administration for the next four years.
Indeed, the Adams presidency never lived down this charge of corruption. John C. Calhoun, who had won election to the vice presidency outright in the general election, secretly abandoned what was ostensibly his administration to work with the Jackson movement, though the actions of Calhoun’s supporters soon made clear their leader’s loyalties. Crawford’s faction, untethered by their sickly head and ideologically opposed to the administration’s overt nationalism, also drifted into the Jackson camp. The shift of the Crawfordites brought to Jackson’s cause Crawford’s former campaign director, the politically astute New York senator Martin Van Buren. With a talent for organization that had earned him the nickname “the Little Magician,” Van Buren gradually coalesced Adams’s different opponents into a focused movement. In Congress, this resulted in a formidable opposition bloc that hobbled administration initiatives when it could not destroy them altogether.
In the states, Jackson’s numbers swelled as newspapers coordinated a program to stoke outrage over the “corrupt bargain” and kept alive through innuendo and fabrication impressions of the administration’s unethical conduct. The newspaper campaign was directed and led by the Washington-based United States Telegraph under the editorial leadership of Calhoun’s operative Duff Green. Even some disaffected remnants of the Federalist Party, still angry with John Quincy Adam for his 1808 defection to Thomas Jefferson, became avid Jackson supporters.
With such diverse elements working in concert, the Jackson’s camp management of the 1828 presidential contest resembled a modern political operation. Jackson’s campaign funded a partisan press, held parades, rallies, and banquets, and distributed canes, poles, and medallions made of hickory. Efforts by friends of Adams and Clay to counter the constant charges of fraud and dishonesty meant they had difficulty mounting an effective campaign. Instead, pro-administration newspapers resorted to personal attacks against Jackson that mixed justifiable concerns about his qualifications with sordid charges about his personal life, especially his marriage to Rachel. A popular backlash resulted that condemned the accusers and tacitly exonerated the accused, particularly the unoffending, pious, and victimized Mrs. Jackson.
Balloting began in late September 1828 and continued through November as states reported returns over the span of weeks. The question was never in doubt. Jackson’s early lead was the vanguard of a dramatic groundswell that gave him a decisive victory. His Electoral College majority of 178–83 was more than a triumph. It was a vindication.
President, First Term
Andrew Jackson’s election to the presidency signaled a significant change in American politics, and events in Washington on the day of his inauguration vividly revealed it. Thousands of Jackson’s supporters flooded the city, overwhelming accommodations and straining the capital’s basic services. On March 4, 1829, throngs crowded the streets and raised thunderous cheers at the sight of the new president as he took the oath of office. Jackson walked to the executive mansion for a formal reception where the behavior of guests confirmed the worst fears of Washington’s elite class. Raucous crowds barged into the White House and jammed public rooms, tipping over punch bowls, standing on furniture, and terrifying at least one congressman and his wife who had to escape by climbing through a window. Jackson himself was overwhelmed by the event and quickly retreated to his rooms at a nearby hotel. Servants finally saved the dwelling by moving refreshments to the front lawn.
The Spoils System
Throughout their campaign, Jackson’s supporters had promised to alter the status quo in the federal government by enacting a policy called “rotation in office.” They claimed it would remove entrenched elites who had come to regard their government posts as sinecures. In his inaugural address, Jackson emphasized “the task of reform” as necessary to stop appointment practices that “have placed or continued power in unfaithful or incompetent hands.” According to some scholars, rotation in office had merit by opening the door to ordinary Americans to participate in their government’s functions. And though turnover in the bureaucracy was higher than usual under Jackson, replacements were not as extensive as critics claimed. About a thousand people—a figure representing roughly 10% of the federal workforce—lost their government jobs and were replaced by Jackson loyalists.
Nevertheless, explanations about streamlining the government while overturning sclerotic bastions of privilege were belied by Jackson supporter William L. Marcy, a New York senator, who described the process with the simple declaration that “to the victor belongs the spoils.” Jackson’s antagonists took up the phrase to denounce “rotation in office” as a “spoils system,” but all parties used patronage for political purposes when they gained power. Indeed, in the half-century following Jackson’s presidency, the process of encouraging supporters with promises of office became routine, and office-seekers swarmed incoming administrations for slots on the government payroll. Meanwhile, turning people out of office to combat corruption never worked as touted. Petty venality and at least one case of spectacular misconduct riddled the Jackson administration. Samuel Swartwout, a Jackson stalwart, used his position as Collector of the Port of New York to steal more than one million dollars before fleeing to Europe to escape prosecution.
Cabinets
From the outset, Jackson’s cabinet appointments gave rise to criticism. In the main, it was undeserved. Pennsylvanian Samuel D. Ingham was a paper manufacturer who had served in the House of Representatives, and Jackson appointed him to head the Treasury Department because of his work in 1828 campaign. Some thought Ingham unqualified for the post, but he performed adequately. John Branch, North Carolina’s former governor and at the time its U.S. senator, would prove a competent Secretary of the Navy, and Georgian John Macpherson Berrien’s legal talent made him a suitable attorney general. Critics who complained that these men were not nationally prominent seemed eager to substitute celebrity for competence as a qualification for cabinet service. Otherwise, the award of the State Department to New Yorker Martin Van Buren angered southerners still smarting over Van Buren’s role in promoting the Tariff of 1828, but it was also Van Buren’s close relationship with Tennessean John Henry Eaton that portended trouble on several levels. Perhaps the most dubious of Jackson’s choices was his appointment of Eaton as Secretary of War. The move smacked of cronyism: Eaton was Jackson’s first biographer and a member of the Nashville Junto. But he was also widely disliked for reasons ranging from his involvement in Tennessee factional politics to his support of protective tariffs. John McLean, the postmaster general in the Adams administration, could have remained in that job, but he opposed the removal of capable men to make way for Jackson loyalists. Jackson appointed McLean to the Supreme Court soon after the inauguration, and Kentuckian William T. Barry was made postmaster general.
“This,” said one acerbic observer about Jackson’s cabinet, “is the Millennium of the Minnows.” Even supremely gifted statesmen, however, would have found service in the administration a challenge. Jackson had promised “to select men whose diligence and talents will ensure in their respective stations able and faithful cooperation.” But the effort to reward supporters from a diverse and sometimes conflicted coalition hobbled the cabinet from the start, and the bitter rivalry between Martin Van Buren and Vice-President John C. Calhoun gradually divided it into quarreling factions. President Jackson found their disagreements distracting at first and then exasperating. A scandal stemming from John Eaton’s marriage intensified disputes and led to the first reorganization of the cabinet in the spring of 1831, but the subsequent controversy over the second Bank of the United States continued to unsettle the cabinet’s functions and caused additional changes in personnel. By the end of his eight years in office, Jackson had appointed four secretaries of state, five secretaries of the treasury, two secretaries of war, three secretaries of the navy, three attorney generals, and two postmaster generals. As with many aspects of the Jackson presidency, the high turnover in these executive departments was unprecedented.
Stories about cabinet contretemps led to rumors that Jackson was relying on an unofficial entourage of close associates to set policy. Critics of the administration eventually called this supposed shadow government the “Kitchen Cabinet,” but many historians doubt it existed, even as a semi-formal body. At most, they see it as an intimate circle of friends who provided Andrew Jackson solace and counsel during the turbulence caused by his official cabinet’s perpetual disagreements. The group of men that critics labeled a “Kitchen Cabinet” never resembled an institutional entity. Its membership was quite fluid with those in its circle wielding growing or ebbing influence according to changing circumstances. Some in Jackson’s cabinet, such as Eaton and Van Buren and later Roger Taney, were part of the “Kitchen Cabinet,” while it also included newspaper editors (such as Francis Preston Blair, Amos Kendall, and Isaac Hill) or political operatives (such as William B. Lewis and John Overton).
Nevertheless, at least one member of Jackson’s official cabinet believed there was an informal one with significant influence. Levi Woodbury, who served as Jackson’s second secretary of the navy and his final secretary of the treasury, confided to his journal that Jackson “shuns consulting all, as he is so military & dislikes councils of War & Cabinets.” Woodbury noted how even after Jackson had reorganized his troublesome first cabinet, he consulted subsequent ones only because “public opinion fav[or]ed Cabinet meetings & [they were] urged on him by us.”
The Petticoat Affair
Secretary of War John Eaton’s marriage to Margaret Timberlake, the widow of a Navy purser, caused a controversy that rapidly grew serious enough to preoccupy the president and disrupt the capital’s social interactions. (Her friends never called Margaret Timberlake “Peggy,” but she would become known to history under that diminutive.) A Washington innkeeper’s daughter, her relationship with Eaton before her husband’s death had caused gossip. Their marriage on January 1, 1829, came soon after her husband’s death, and the timing along with Eaton’s appointment to the cabinet magnified the problem. Vice President John C. Calhoun’s wife Floride (pronounced “Florida”) refused to visit or receive the Eatons. The wives of other cabinet secretaries along with other prominent Washington hostesses did the same and insisted that their husbands follow suit. As the so-called Petticoat Affair became the controversy known as the “Eaton Malaria,” social antagonisms even affected President Jackson’s family when Emily Donelson, serving as Jackson’s official hostess, made plain that she did not approve of Margaret Eaton.
Rachel Jackson’s ordeal made Andrew Jackson particularly sympathetic to Margaret Eaton’s plight. He blamed Rachel’s death on scandal mongering during the presidential campaign and consequently defended Mrs. Eaton with a resolve that was gallant but hardly prudent. He ordered his cabinet secretaries to accept Mrs. Eaton, even at the hazard of their wives’ displeasure. He sent Emily Donelson, whom he adored, and her husband, Andrew Jackson Donelson, one of his most trusted advisers as well as his nephew, home to Tennessee because they refused to comply.
The controversy was more significant than a squabble over social propriety. It became a part of the Van Buren–Calhoun rivalry when the secretary of state was able to exploit Jackson’s displeasure with Calhoun over the treatment of the Eatons. As a widower, Van Buren could join Jackson in championing the Eatons without crossing an angry spouse. He thus boosted his standing as a gentleman with Andrew Jackson while dismantling Calhoun’s reputation as a loyal lieutenant. Van Buren persuaded Eaton to resign on April 7, 1831, and Van Buren followed suit two days later, though both stayed in place until Jackson named their successors in May. Most important, however, their gestures gave Jackson the excuse to reorganize his cabinet, which resulted in the ouster of Calhoun’s allies Samuel Ingham, John Branch, and John Berrien. These three left their posts reluctantly and not without additional controversy. Reacting to public reports of their behavior and the reasons for it, Eaton called them out as cads and cowards and even challenged Samuel Ingham to a duel. Ingham icily refused the challenge, but the tawdry conclusion of the dispute undermined public confidence in the stability of Jackson’s presidency.
Biographers and historians have weighed the enduring significance of the Petticoat Affair from different perspectives. In a 1931 biography of Margaret Eaton (Peggy Eaton: Democracy’s Mistress), Queena Pollack believed Margaret revealed the tensions between the classes in Washington society that made her the victim of haughty capital elites. In a similar vein, John Marszalek’s study, The Petticoat Affair: Manners, Mutiny, and Sex in Andrew Jackson’s White House (2000), regarded Margaret Eaton as a pioneer for feminist activism who fought against class and status as essential for participation in society and public discourse. Taking a contrary view, Daniel Walker Howe, in his monumental examination of the period, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (2007), saw the women who objected to Margaret Eaton as the vanguard of a unique type of American feminism. Their rejection of Europe’s indifference to casual immorality promoted a strict code of conduct to ensure national virtue and public rectitude.
Van Buren versus Calhoun
Whatever its social and cultural implications, the Eaton controversy’s most notable political consequence was its pretext for ousting Calhoun from the administration while more securely installing Van Buren in Andrew Jackson’s inner circle. Rather than Floride Calhoun ruining her husband’s career, Calhoun’s actions, especially those while in service as President James Monroe’s secretary of war, had already made him suspect in Andrew Jackson’s estimation. In the aftermath of Jackson’s 1818 invasion of Florida, Calhoun had recommended punishing Jackson for his unauthorized act, a position that Calhoun later tried to hide. By the time of Jackson’s presidency, though, Calhoun’s behavior had become something of an open secret. And though Calhoun as John Quincy Adams’s vice president had broken with the Adams administration to support Jackson as early as 1825, Jackson’s closest advisers never trusted the South Carolinian. Van Buren doubted Calhoun’s loyalty not only to Jackson but also to the American Union when southern anger over the Tariff of 1828 compelled Calhoun to abandon his earlier nationalism. He adopted increasingly pro-South positions that favored the region’s economic and political interests, particularly those related to slavery. Before the election of 1828, Calhoun drafted the “South Carolina Exposition and Protest,” a pamphlet espousing the doctrine of nullification as a way for a state to defy federal law. Calhoun tried to keep his authorship of this tract secret, but by 1830, Jackson knew the truth of the matter, likely because Martin Van Buren had revealed it to him.
The break between Jackson and Calhoun became public at the Jefferson Birthday Dinner of 1830 when the two exchanged hostile toasts. Jackson raised a glass while glaring at his vice president to declare: “Our federal union: it must be preserved!” Calhoun answered, “The Union: next to our liberty, most dear.” The tensions between the two were further strained when Calhoun tried to counter the president’s criticisms by publishing correspondence, an act that reflected poorly on him. Against the backdrop of the controversy over Margaret Eaton, the cabinet reorganization clearly defined the antagonists as Calhoun and Van Buren, and an outright contest between them ensued. Calhoun as the presiding officer of the Senate blocked Jackson’s plan to make Van Buren minister to Great Britain. Instead of thwarting Van Buren, he opened the way for Van Buren to replace him as vice president on Jackson’s 1832 ticket. In the aftermath, Van Buren became Jackson’s chosen successor for the presidency in 1836.
Indian Removal
The most controversial policy of Andrew Jackson’s presidency was Indian removal, which has tarnished his reputation among both historians and subsequent generations of Americans. Even at the time, Indian removal’s humanitarian and legal implications troubled many citizens who objected to uprooting large native populations and marching them to alien climes and dangerous lands. The treks of these people could be grueling and deadly in and of themselves. The Cherokee route to the West would be dubbed the “Trail of Tears” because almost a third of the Cherokee nation perished on it.
Indian removal stemmed from the complaints of southeastern states that saw Indians as obstacles to settlement. The states saw the federal government as obstructing state governments’ plans to take possession of Indian lands. As Jackson sought the presidency, part of his appeal in those states was the near certainty that he would push for a program to relocate Indian tribes west of the Mississippi River. Shortly after he assumed office in 1829, Jackson used part of his first annual message (the equivalent of today’s State of the Union address) to describe the removal of native populations as a humanitarian initiative. Jackson insisted that the government’s decades-old program of assimilation—the policy since George Washington’s administration in the 1790s—had made the Indians vulnerable to white hostility while jeopardizing the survival of their culture. Isolating Indians from white interference by resettling them on western lands, explained Jackson, would provide them the opportunity both to sustain their traditions and to practice them unmolested.
Though many whites and almost all Indians rejected this reasoning, Jackson’s supporters in Congress secured the passage of the Indian Removal Act following a series of fierce debates. The margin of victory for the measure was narrow in the Senate (28–19) and razor thin in the House (102–97). Jackson signed removal into law on May 30, 1830. It authorized the negotiation of treaties, particularly with the “Five Civilized Tribes” of the Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole, Choctaw, and Cherokee tribes, who lived primarily in Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. Such negotiated agreements could portray resettlement as voluntary, but treaties only partly masked the reality of coercion. The truth emerged when segments of the Creek nation and almost all Seminoles refused to submit. The Second Seminole War in Florida was to be among America’s most protracted military conflicts, stretching beyond Jackson’s second term and ending with many Seminoles remaining in Florida.
The Cherokees’ sincere efforts to adopt white culture made their fate especially poignant. They lived in orderly communities that mirrored the customs as well as the architecture of white neighborhoods; they adopted a native alphabet, published a newspaper, and some embraced Christianity through the teachings of resident missionaries. When confronted with the plan to evict them from their homes, the Cherokees did not take up arms but sought relief in the courts. In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), however, Chief Justice John Marshall declared that because Indian nations were dependent entities, they had no standing before the judiciary. The Court, therefore, lacked jurisdiction to exempt the Cherokees from Georgia law. More promising was the case arising from Georgia’s use of onerous regulations to diminish the prominent missionary presence in the Cherokee nation. Worcester v. Georgia (1832) concerned Georgia’s arrest and conviction of Samuel Worcester, an American citizen, for his refusal to submit to a law requiring non-Indians residing on Indian lands to obtain a state license. Worcester had clear standing before the Court, and Marshall’s decision voided his conviction under the claim that states had no criminal jurisdiction within Indian nations. It was in response to this ruling that Andrew Jackson was alleged to have said, “John Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it!” The statement is almost certainly apocryphal, but the Jackson administration reflected its sentiment. Perhaps fearing a disastrous clash between the judicial and executive branches of the government, Marshall did not press for the enforcement of his decision. Consequently, nothing came of the Cherokee court challenges, and the ruling in Worcester did not impede the government’s removal policy.
The consequences of Indian removal make it impossible to defend, even conceding the most charitable judgment of it as well-meaning but misguided. Arguments over submission or resistance to removal fractured Indian tribal councils. Congressional debates ended old friendships, shattered old coalitions, and were a precursor to wider public revulsion over the rigors of many grueling treks of which the Trail of Tears is just the most notorious. The human toll on Indian populations was significant, and the blemish on a nation that prided itself on fair dealing and honest accord was conspicuous and shameful.
Vetoes
On May 27, 1830, President Jackson vetoed congressional legislation to invest federal funds in a Kentucky company planning to build a road from Lexington to Maysville, a distance of fewer than seventy miles (approximately 112 kilometers). Jackson argued that because the road would fall within the state of Kentucky, it was wrong to use federal money for an entirely local project. Critics countered that the Maysville road was a segment in the interstate Cumberland Road, a truly national project. Also, Maysville’s location on the Ohio River made it part of an immense commercial network dependent on riverine navigation including many interior states. The veto was popular in northern states that had funded their own road and canal construction projects as well as with southern states concerned in general about the expanding power of the federal government.
More significant than the effect on the Maysville Road project, though, was Andrew Jackson’s novel application of the veto in general. American dissatisfaction with the veto as an instrument of executive power dated from the colonial period when royal governors had broadly used their authority to strike down legislation and discipline colonial assemblies. The feeling persisted during and after the American Revolution. By the time the Constitutional Convention met in 1787, only Massachusetts and New York had given their governors the veto, but the delegates to the Constitutional Convention used these two states, especially Massachusetts, as the model for the executive’s veto power in Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution. Beginning with George Washington, American presidents had used the power sparingly. The first six administrations during the first forty years of constitutional governance vetoed only ten bills. Washington vetoed two bills in eight years; John Adams and Thomas Jefferson did not strike down any legislation; James Madison vetoed seven bills in eight years; James Monroe vetoed only one bill; and John Quincy Adams, like his father and Jefferson, did not veto anything.
Presidential restraint with vetoes had almost always limited them to legislation the executive deemed unconstitutional. In this fashion, the veto functioned as another check on the potential for legislative excess in the same way that judicial review did. In the ten vetoes before Jackson’s presidency, only two occasions slightly departed from the routine of a president exclusively citing constitutional objections. George Washington vetoed a bill that cut military spending because he thought it would jeopardize national security. James Madison vetoed a bill establishing a national bank because he thought the institution would be ineffectual. Otherwise, presidents did not veto legislation over policy disagreements because to do so would have thwarted the will of the people as expressed by their congressional representatives.
Jackson’s presidency was unique in both the number of vetoes and his justifications for them. He vetoed twelve bills over his eight years in office, more than all his predecessors combined. He also cited his judgment on policy as the grounds for striking down legislation he found disagreeable. The most obvious instance of this was Jackson’s veto of a bill rechartering the Second Bank of the United States (the BUS).
| * Denotes a “pocket” veto, i.e. a bill that does not become law because the president receives it after congressional adjournment and does not sign it within ten days of that adjournment, excluding Sundays. ** Technically not vetoes of legislation but protests deeming the Senate censure resolution of March 28, 1834, unconstitutional and a clarification that followed. On May 7, 1834, the Senate rejected these communications and refused to enter them in its journal. | |
| Maysville, Washington, Paris, and Lexington Turnpike | May 27, 1830 |
| Washington Turnpike Road Company* | May 31, 1830 |
| Light Houses and Harbor Improvements* | December 7, 1830 |
| Louisville and Portland Canal Company* | December 7, 1830 |
| Extension of the Bank of the United States Charter | June 10, 1832 |
| Interest on State Claims* | December 6, 1832 |
| River and Harbor Improvements* | December 6, 1832 |
| Proceeds of Land Sales* | December 5, 1833 |
| Protest against Senate Resolution of Censure | April 15, 1834 |
| Explanation of Previous Message** | April 21, 1834 |
| Wabash River Navigation* | December 1, 1834 |
| Regulation of Congressional Sessions | June 9, 1836 |
| United States Revenues* | March 3, 1837 |
The Bank Veto
Jackson was ambivalent about banks and paper currency in general. He believed banks tended to favor the rich and exploit the poor while paper currency encouraged reckless spending and ruinous debt. He had no plans, however, to assail the BUS when he assumed office. It was unpopular with many of his supporters who blamed it for the economic Panic of 1819 and the depression that followed, but financial circles uniformly praised the BUS’s performance under the leadership of Nicholas Biddle. The Supreme Court had affirmed the bank’s constitutionality in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), and by the late 1820s, the BUS had established sound credit and a stable currency.
The BUS was not only politically popular but also economically vital, which counseled against any attempt to undermine it. Jackson’s advisers cautioned him to move slowly, if at all, especially in the absence of a viable institutional alternative. In his first Annual Message on December 8, 1829, Jackson actually spoke approvingly of the BUS and Biddle, although with a caveat about his abiding concern over the bank’s constitutionality. The BUS continued to enjoy strong support in Congress, but within the administration Jackson found himself divided between those who praised the bank as a crucial part of the economy and those who characterized it as corrupt and manipulative. The president gradually embraced the latter view and came to believe that the bank’s charter, set to expire in 1836, should not be renewed. His attitude was evident in his second Annual Message on December 7, 1830, which contained more strongly stated criticisms of the bank as unconstitutional. These sentiments and the emergence of a concerted effort in Congress to undermine the bank’s legitimacy alarmed its supporters.
The cabinet reorganization caused by the controversy over Margaret Eaton brought in a new secretary of the treasury, Louis McLane, who was positively disposed to the BUS, as was the new secretary of state, Edward Livingston. McLane even took the lead in trying to satisfy Jackson’s objections to the BUS with a compromise he worked out with Nicholas Biddle. Apprehensive that the bank’s popularity would force him to consent to recharter during his bid for reelection, Jackson insisted that bank proponents would not move on the matter until after the 1832 election.
Despite McLane’s efforts, Jackson’s anti-bank advisers, especially his new attorney general Roger B. Taney, pushed him to include criticisms of the bank in his Annual Message of December 6, 1831. The move coincided with Jacksonian attacks on McLane in Congress. These events convinced the bank’s supporters to seek recharter before the 1832 election, a move sure to be interpreted as bad faith by the president. Recharter was also tied to the presidential nomination of Kentucky senator Henry Clay, a stalwart champion of the BUS, who sought to make the bank a central issue of the election. Clay’s supporters helped to eliminate conciliatory gestures in the recharter bill with the aim of forcing Jackson to veto it. Clay was certain that such a veto would politically damage Jackson.
The move to recharter the BUS began in earnest on January 9, 1832. It commenced the first phase of what would later be called “the Bank War.” After a lengthy and heated congressional debate, recharter passed both houses of Congress in the summer of 1832. Jackson vetoed the bill on July 10, 1832.
For the message accompanying the veto, Jackson relied heavily on his unofficial advisers, particularly the journalist Amos Kendall, who drafted a message that criticized the bank as a privileged institution advancing the interests of elites over those of ordinary people. The appeal to class envy was a remarkable shift in the tone of presidential state papers. The veto message claimed that because the president represented all the American people, the power of the people as centered in the executive did not compel deference to Supreme Court decisions or the acceptance of congressional legislation that the people, as represented by the president, found repugnant for social, political, or economic reasons.
The executive veto had always placed the president at the conclusion of the legislative process, but Jackson’s claim to such extensive authority moved the president to the center of that process in all its stages. Congress had to take into account the president’s opinion when considering legislation. Moving forward in the face of presidential disapproval risked a veto that would require a super majority of two-thirds to override and enact legislation. It meant the mere threat of a veto could cause the radical alteration or even the absolute elimination of legislative proposals.
Jackson’s political opponents loudly objected to this cavalier assumption of unprecedented power, the beginning of their charge that such executive usurpation was the behavior of a king. Those objections helped to coalesce opposition into a new political party, the Whigs, so named because their opposition to “King Andrew” was seen as comparable to the loyal opposition to the British Crown in the eighteenth century. Yet, Clay’s calculations about the injurious nature of the bank veto proved wrong. With its appeal to the rights of ordinary people against interests portrayed as manipulative and predatory, the veto was popular and did not hurt Jackson politically in the least. Indeed, it was central factor in securing Jackson’s reelection in the autumn of 1832.