e> &
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ne of the supreme ironies about Andrew Jackson is that
although he was the first president to be born in a log cabin
* * * THE CANDIDATES * * *
and saw himself primarily as the champion of the common
man, his enemies in the 183? election claimed he was a dictator.
DEMOCRAT: ANDREW JACKSON In many ways, Andrew Jackson
After Jackson paid for the damage to the Executive Mansion
was a hollow man without his beloved Rachel. Although he could be chival-
caused by the Animal House—style antics of his inauguration, one of his
rous and courteous in private, his public persona was increasingly cold,
first acts was to try to rid the Civil Service of incompetent bureaucrats
unbending, and given to fits of rage. In fact, much of the time Jackson's
with lifelong sinecures. Claiming that "the duties of all public officers
opponents gave in to him because they were afraid of his temper.
. . . are so plain and simple that men of intelligence may readily qualify themselves for their performance" (translation: any idiot can do
these jobs), he initiated what he called rotation in office. His opponents dubbed it the spoils system since, naturally, any fired officeholder was replaced by a Democrat. Only some IO percent of federal
officeholders actually lost their jobs, but the new president became
feared throughout the bureaucracy.
The 1833 election would change the political landscape by introducing the first national party conventions—an attempt to regulate
NATIONAL-REPUBLICAN: HENRY CLAY Clay was the silvertongued senator from Kentucky who had been a bitter enemy of the
Democrats ever since the election of 1824. when Jackson accused him
of entering into a "corrupt bargain." He and Jackson had something in
common, however. Both were dueling men—Clay had fought one
against Senator John Randolph, while Jackson fought anywhere from
two to (if you believed the smears proffered by his opponents) more
than one hundred.
nominations currently being held by state legislatures, which tended to
fracture into local, sectional disputes.
The first convention was held by the Antimasons, a third political
* * * THE CAMPAIGN * * *
party that had sprung up in opposition to such powerful secret societies
as the Masons. Their candidate was the well-known orator William
The American public was decidedly uninterested in the election of 1832,
Wirt; the party was also the first to introduce such lasting convention
and for two reasons. First, a deadly cholera epidemic had struck the east-
features as the party platform and rules committee.
ern United States in the summer of 183?; most people found it hard to
The National-Republicans—soon to start calling themselves the
focus on politics with a plague in the land. Second, the main issue of the
Whigs—held their convention in December 1831. They nominated
election was Jackson's attack on the Bank of the United States—an
Congressman Henry Clay for president, with former Attorney General
important concern, but not something that really drove voter turnout.
Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the treasury, had estab-
John Sergeant as his running mate.
The Democrats met in a hotel saloon in Baltimore in May 1833,
lished the Bank of the United States to accept tax revenue deposits to
and naturally they renominated Jackson for president. Martin Van
fund the national debt and issue paper money. But Jackson liked coins
Buren was Jackson's handpicked VP. The Democrats also came up
that clinked and rattled in his pocket; he hated the Bank of the United
with an innovation
States and, in particular, its president, Nicholas Biddle, a Republican
in political conventions,
declaring that the
majority of delegates from each state would henceforth designate the
old-money man. Jackson (with some accuracy) felt the bank was an elit-
single nominee.
ist institution with too much power, one that made "the rich richer and
the potent more powerful."
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He vetoed the bank's recharter, essentially trying to put it out of
business. None of this made Republican Party hounds very happy. They
began baying. "A more deranging, radical, law-upsetting document was
never promulgated by the wildest Roman fanatic," wrote one New
England editor about Jackson's veto. Amob of anti-Jacksonians went to
the bank's headquarters in Philadelphia to announce that Jackson had
"wantonly trampled upon the interests of his fellow citizens." Noah
Webster proclaimed that in vetoing the Bank recharter, Jackson had
announced: "I AM THE STATE!"
But Jackson continued the attack. He hated banks that issued paper
money, or, as he put it, "wretched rag money." Jackson's followers made
toasts to "Gold and silver, the only currency recognized by the
Constitution." Jackson branded Nicholas Biddle as Czar Nick. (No wonder Biddle used funds from the bank—money deposited there by the U.S.
government—to support Jackson's enemies, including Henry Clay.)
Republicans responded by taggingjackson as King Andrew I. They
also spread stories about Jackson's illnesses —his health, in the blunt
phrase of former Vice President John G. Galhoun, was "deranged" —
and attacked him for traveling on Sunday (ironic, since the same slur
had been used against John Quincy Adams by the Democrats).
But Jackson's party organization won the day. One visiting French
official saw a torchlight parade for Jackson in New York City that was a
mile long. Jackson even won over Clay's home state of Kentucky, where
one disheartened Clay supporter reported that large crowds of people
held hickory bushes and sticks in honor of Old Hickory.
* * * THE WINNER: ANDREW JACKSON * **
In the end, Jackson ran away with the election—he won 701,780 votes to
Clay's ^S^.SOS- He had defeated "the overwhelming influence" of the
"corrupt Aristocracy" of the Bank of the United States and continued—
in a way that would influence the way Americans thought about their
future presidents —to amass executive power for himself.
Republicans accused Andrew Jackson of being a petty tyrant—but not to his face.
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LAMPOONING JACKSON
Commercial lithography had taken hold in
America in the 1820s, making it easier to turn out newspaper cartoons (before
that, all illustrations had to be engraved or cut into wood or copper). And something in Andrew Jackson's tall, spare demeanor, with his Woody Woodpecker
thatch of gray hair, made Republican cartoonists salivate.
During the campaign of 1832, Jackson was painted as a pig about to be dissected at a barbecue by a ravenous Clay and Webster; a decrepit old man playing
poker with opposition candidates Clay and William Wirt (the cards in Jackson's
hand read "Intrigue," "Corruption," and "Imbecility"); and as a king with a crown
and scepter and royal robes, stomping on the Constitution and Bank Charter,
under the heading "Born to Command."
ZOUNDS! Much likeThurston Howell III on the television show Glligan's Island,
Andrew Jackson was given to wonderfully apocalyptic oaths."By Almighty God!" "By
the Eternal!" and the Shakespearian "S'blood!" (God's Blood!).The only other president to match him for such rich cursing was probably Lyndon Johnson-—in some
ways, Jackson's twentieth-century counterpart—who was known to rip off a few
really choice phrases from time to time (see page 229).
THE GALLANT JACKSON During his first term, Jackson lost almost his entire
cabinet to the so-called Peggy Eaton Affair. When Jackson's close friend and
Secretary of War John Henry Eaton married Peg O'Neale, the beautiful but notoriously not virtuous daughter of a Washington tavern keeper, the wives of Jackson's
cabinet members and Vice President John C. Calhoun shunned her. Jackson—still
hurting from the attacks made against his wife, Rachel—defended Peg as "chaste as
a virgin," causing much hilarity among his enemies. However, Secretary of State
Martin Van Buren saw this as a wonderful opportunity to forward his own ambitions
for the presidency and so defended Peg Eaton at every turn.
The colorful Peg Eaton continued to be a legend in her own time. Her husband died, leaving her a fortune; later, as a much older woman, she married an Italian
ballet master who turned around and ran off with her granddaughter.
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