1828 - AN ENDING

I can imagine what it was like to wake up every morning as a slave. Can you? Each dawn mocked you with a false promise of hope. Every evening, your future died again in darkness. Should your gaze fall upon your children you could not help but wonder if this day they would be sold away, because “masa'” lost a bet, or wanted to buy his child a present. Modern apologists for slavery may want to believe beatings were uncommon. But we know from personal letters by her master that for 30 years a woman named Betty was Rachel Jackson's personal slave, and that in the General's words, she “must be ruled with the cowhide” - meaning she was periodically whipped. What kind of a woman was this white slave master, Rachel Jackson, who could live every day with an intimate, and then coldly countenance her being beating?

On November 3, 1813, militia under General Andrew Jackson attacked the Creek Indian village of Talulshatche, and in the words of participant David Crockett, “We shot them down like dogs.” A child of eight months was found alive in the burning village, and was delivered to the General, evidently as a trophy. But the orphaned Jackson felt what he called “an unusual sympathy” for the orphaned child. Andrew sent the baby to his home, instructing Rachel, “I...want him well taken care of, (as) he may have been given to me for some valuable purpose.”

He was given the name of Lyncoya and raised in the main house at the Hermitage, along with Jackson's nephew, Andrew Jackson, Jr. He was the closest thing to her own child Rachel Jackson would ever have. At the age of five Lyncoya made himself a bow and arrows, and in full war paint would descend, issuing high pitched battle screams without warning on unwary visitors. At eight he began attending a local school, but rebelled, and ran away several times. His third year Lyncoya began to apply himself, and showed an aptitude for mechanical devices. He also began to spend much of his time alone. His academic improvements were so great that General Jackson began to think about sending his adopted son to West Point. But it was not to be.

It seems likely that after the General's loss in the Presidential election of 1824, the boy was seen as a political liability: Perhaps. But for whatever reason Lyncoya Jackson never applied to the military academy. Instead, in 1827, he became an indentured servant to a saddle maker in Nashville, Tennessee. For a child with understandable abandonment issues, his first time away from the only security he knew must have been stressful. The next winter Lyconia came down with a cold, which settled in his lungs. He told his employer he wanted to “go home” to the Hermitage (above). That winter and spring Rachel nursed him and was often seen with the 16 year old in her carriage, seeing he got fresh air. But the boy died on June 17, 1827. He was buried somewhere on the grounds of the Hermitage, in an unmarked grave. Perhaps his resting place would have been remembered if his adoptive mother, Rachel, had lived.

On the morning of Wednesday, December 17^th,  Rachel Jackson (above) was overseeing the slaves packing up her life for the move to Washington, when she suddenly issued a “horrible shriek” and grabbed at her heart. A slave woman known only as Old Hanna rushed to Rachel's side and found her struggling for breath. Hanna lowered her mistress into a chair, and began to desperately rub Rachel's side “till she was black and blue”. The General was sent for, and he sent for the family doctor. For the next three days and nights Andrew never left her side.

On the third day Rachel seemed to recover, and she urged Andrew to go to bed and get some sleep. Five minutes after he left her room, the slaves lifted Rachel up while they changed the sheets. And while sitting in a chair, in the arms of Old Hanna, Rachel Jackson suffered another heart attack. She issued a long, loud cry, followed by “a rattling in her throat”, and died in the arms of a slave, December 22, 1828.

It is an insight into generations of slave masters and mistress in the antebellum south, that their first human touch in their life was usually the rough working hands of slave women, and their last conscious touch with humanity was in the exact same way. They had no control over that first contact. But they did have control over the last.

Rachel was buried in the gown she had made for the inaugural ball. And on her tombstone, Andrew had caved the words, “A being so gentle and so virtuous slander might wound, but could not dishonor.”

Even in the words on his wife's memorial, Andrew Jackson managed to bury his own pain, beneath his hatred for those he held responsible. Many historians have suggested that Jackson's  anger over Rachel's death changed the man.  He wrote, “I can and do forgive all my enemies. But those vile wretches who have slandered her must look to God for mercy.” But Jackson was a hater long before he ever met Rachel. He was even a hater before his mother died while tending to others, rather than her own son. It almost seems Andrew Jackson was born hating.

On March 4, 1829, Andrew Jackson became President.  In a bit of stage drama, President. John Quincy Adams did not attend the ceremony, as Jackson had refused to visit him in the White House, despite having arrived in Washington days earlier. And so began the Presidency of Andrew Jackson: angry.  Henry Clay compared Jackson's administration to a tornado, destroying everything in his path. Well, not everything. When he left the White House eight years later, Andrew Jackson said two things of real import. One was purely personal, the other purely public. When asked if there was anything he regretted about his time as President, he admitted to two, “That I have not shot Henry Clay or hanged John C. Calhoun.”

But in his farewell address to the nation in December of 1837, the original small government revolutionary, warned the American public, “...unless you become more watchful...and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges, you will in the end find that the most important powers of Government have been given...away, and the control over your dearest interests has passed into the hands of these corporations.” That remark proved that whatever his personal failings, Andrew Jackson was ideologically a lot closer to Henry Clay than he would have dared to admit.

And closer to Johnny Q, as well. Three months after Jackson took the oath of office, at about one on the afternoon of June 8, 1829, in Providence, Rhode Island, John Quincy Adam's 28 year old eldest son, the handsome George Washington Adams (above), boarded the double wheeled steam ship, Benjamin Franklin. 

While Captain Eliuh S. Bunker guided the 144 foot long, 419 ton double deck packet boat down Narraganset Bay, the retired two term Congressman remained in his cabin, complaining of illness. As the sun set the Franklin slipped passed Block Island and entered Long Island Sound. They missed George in the forward bar that night, as he was a regular on every trip between the family home south of Boston, and New York City.

George did not leave his cabin until just about two in the morning of June 9, and was seen walking on the open deck wearing a hat and cloak. He was heard pacing for some little time, and then somewhere in the lonely dark, George lost his way. At about four in the morning,his outer garments were found lying on the deck. If he left a note of explanation, it was not found. Four days later his corpse washed ashore on Long Island. To compare the grief that now befell the John Quincy and Louisa Adams, against that felt earlier by Andrew and Rachel Jackson is pointless, and yet to the point. One of the things that binds all humans together is grief and its companion, love. We dream of the one, knowing it never arrives alone. It is our commonality, our shared heritage, which, it seems, we spend a lifetime denying.

And thus ended the campaign of 1828.

- 30 -

1828 - A CLEVER PLAN

I guess the 1828 campaign officially started on Saturday, December 29, 1827, because that was the day Andrew Jackson left his 1,000 acre plantation, The Hermitage, 10 miles east of Nashville, Tennessee, on the Cumberland River, bound for New Orleans. It was his abiding ambition for vindication that drove the 51 year old lean and craggy politician to leave his home and sickly wife at the start of winter. After snubbing him the year before, the state of Louisiana had invited Jackson back to the city he had defended in 1815 for a four day celebration. The trip was part of the master plan to give Jackson what he wanted most in the world – to defeat Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams, the men who had "cheated" him out of the White House four years earlier. But the plan was not Jackson's. It had come from the byzantine imagination of the “Little Magician”, Martin van Buren.

It was said of Martin van Buren (above) that he “learned his principals from Thomas Jefferson and his tactics from Aaron Burr.” Van Buren was the current leader of the Albany Regency, which controlled New York state politics. And two weeks earlier, on Thursday, December 13^th 1827 , he had written one of the most amazing letters in American political history. It was addressed to Virginia Senator Littleton Waller Tazewell, in which the little magician blatantly suggested a joining of "the planters of the South” and what he called “the plain Republicans of the North." Although this alliance had to begin with a cult of personality built around Andrew Jackson, wrote van Buren, eventually party ideology would allow the “clamor against Southern Influence and African Slavery” to be “made ineffectual in the North”. In other words, if the south allowed northern bankers to set the nation's economic agenda, then the bankers would defend the social agenda of slave owners. 

The offer electrified Senator Tazewell, and he forwarded its contents to the editor of the Richmond Enquirer, Thomas Ritchie. Tazewell explained to the newspaperman that the election of Jackson was of secondary importance, whereas “our great wish is to inculcate and to keep alive by frequent repetition and argument,” the constitutional rights of the slave owners, and “to support those who support them, and to oppose those who oppose them.” Tazewell then predicted, “ Should we then succeed... it is possible, nay probable, that our party will soon be in danger of separating...” In this Tazewell was quickly proven right, as this larger “corrupt bargain” would be the foundation of the Democratic Party. Tazewell then closed the letter; “Many reasons exist why this communication should be considered by you as strictly confidential for the present at least.”

On January 8^th  1828, Andrew Jackson (above) made his only campaign appearance that entire year, at the four day long 13^th anniversary celebration of the Battle of New Orleans. He had been coached by Andrew P. Haynes, from South Carolina, to make only three speeches during his four days in the city, in which he made only two points – First that like Cincinntus, the Roman Senator, he had left Tennessee only to defend his county, and second, he made mild reference to vicious attacks against his dear wife Rachel. The speeches, one delivered to the largest single crowd ever assembled in the United States up to that time, were written by Major Henry (Black Horse) Lee IV, son of the patriot “Light Horse” Henry Lee, and a speech writer for Vice\.President, John C. Calhoun.

The connection between Henry Lee (above) and Jackson was a bit complicated. See, Henry and his wife Ann had one child, a daughter, who fell down a stairway and died in 1820. Grief drove Ann to a morphine addiction, and it drove Henry into the bed of Ann's younger sister, Elizabeth, who was also his legal ward. That drove Ann to seek comfort with Rachel Jackson, Andrew's wife, at the Hermitage. Then, just to add insult to injury, Henry embezzled from Elizabeth's dowry. When that was discovered, Henry tried to marry the poor Elizabeth off, but it all exploded in scandal and law suits. In 1822 Henry had to sell the Lee Plantation to replace the money in his sister-in-law's dowry. Then he showed up at the Hermitage, hat in hand and contrite. Ann, who had gone cold turkey on her drug addiction, decided to return to her husband for whatever reasons... let's say love. But it all provided Andrew Jackson with a first class speech writer, and a connection with John C. Calhoun. It could almost be the origin of the phrase about politics and bedfellows. But it ain't.

Anyway, Jackson's supporters had won big in the 1826 mid-term elections. Sworn in on March 4, 1827, the 20^th congress had 111 Jackson supporters in the House, to 101 Adams men, and Jackson had a 27 to 21 majority in the Senate. Andrew Stevenson (below), a Jackson supporter representing Virginia's ninth district, was even elected Speaker of the House. For the next year President Adams had found himself living in what was referred to as “The Era of Hard Feelings”. The 20th Congress treated Adams much as the 113^th Congress would treat President Barack Obama. Anything he liked, they hated. Anything he opposed, they insisted on.

But for this election year of 1828, Speaker Stevenson (above) came up with a clever plan. He would allow a bill raising tariffs by up to 48%, to finally make it out of committee. If enacted the new taxes on imported goods would protect New England manufacturers, and would provide money for Henry Clay's “American System” of infrastructure improvements - canals, roads, even filling in the Dismal Swamp. The Jackson men in Congress even agreed to block any attempts to amend the bill, to keep it pure. Now, why would a southerner like Stevenson support a bill that seemed to offer President Adams and his allies everything they wanted?

You see, the bill did not raise tariffs as much as New England manufactures wanted, and Stevenson figured the western frontier states and the south would say it raised them too much. But then the 1828 Tariff bill was never supposed to become law. It was merely a theatrical performance. After shepherding the bill through committee, the Jackson men intended to force Adam's men to vote for the "tariff of abominations”, revealing the most unpopular parts of their agenda, and then the Jackson supporters would very publicly kill the unpopular bill, for a grateful nation.

Except the strategy seemed to backfire. The South and New England voted against the bill as expected, but it passed the house anyway, 105 to 94. Congressmen from the west and the mid-Atlantic states saw investing in the future as making the nation stronger, not weaker. And then the tariff passed the Senate, as well. Now, if Adams vetoed it, he would be the hero. And then, just when it looked like the whole thing would blow up in Stevenson and Jackson's face, Adams (above) swallowed the poison. He signed the bill. He signed it because he felt the nation needed it. He saw the trap and stepped in it anyway. And thus he saved Stevenson and Jackson's political careers.

But just when the Jackson cabal was about to breathe a sigh of relief, another problem dropped into their laps – Adam's Vice President, John C. Calhoun (above), of South Carolina. He looked like a madman, and in some ways he was. He had already agreed to serve as Andrew Jackson's Vice President. And to provide his support, like approving his speech writer, Henry Lee IV, going to work for Jackson. But he didn't just dislike this new tariff, he hated it. It was supposed to have gone down in defeat. And Calhoun felt betrayed by his Virginia allies, like Stevenson.

Those who knew Calhoun called him the “cast-iron man”, because, like Jackson, he refused to bend. He had been born in South Carolina, educated in Connecticut, and elected by the plantation owners of his home state to the Senate because they could trust him. Historian Richard Hofstadter observed half a century ago that Calhoun always sought to protect their privileges. And the powerful in South Carolina were so outraged by the tariff, they refused to collect it for any goods imported through Charleston harbor. Years later, Calhoun would claim that he had voted against this “tariff of abominations” - his description – but as Vice President, he had no vote except in a tie. But his frustration about the betrayal over the 1828 tariff, and its renewal in 1832, would spur Calhoun to write and distribute 5,000 copies his “Exposition and Protest”. In this paper he argued that any state could nullify any vote of Congress it considered unconstitutional. This would serve as the core of States Rights philosophy, which for the next two hundred fifty years would persist, despite Andrew Jackson's denunciation of it, despite the deaths of 750,000 in a civil war sparked by it, through the civil rights movement in the 1960's which defeated it through non-violence, and into its Tea Party manifestations in the new century. It is disturbing the consistency with which states rights has always been argued in conjunction with racism.

But lost in the “nullification crises” sparked by the tariff was its economic impact. The gross Domestic Product of the United States in 1828 was about $888 billion dollars. Four years later, in 1832, the GDP had jumped to over one billion. Partly this burst of growth occurred because the tariff forced Southerners to buy American goods rather than European. And partly it was because the funds collected were being used for infrastructure, the roads and canals that spurred economic development. And partly it was because of the industrial revolution was energizing manufacturing, the very thing measured by GDP.

Politically, the tariff was most popular in those regions where the powerful had the least control over the population, where suffrage was the most universal. And yet the public image of Andrew Jackson was that he was a man of the people. So the tariff helped fuel economic growth, and that growth benefited a politician who was ideologically opposed to high tariffs - Andrew Jackson. The election of 1828 was beginning to look more modern the closer it got to election day 

- 30 -