1828 - Chapter Eight - ALLS WELL THAT ENDS

 

I mentioned earlier in these essays on the election of 1828 that it was the first million dollar campaign for President in American history, and the first campaign in which the jackass was used as the symbol of the Democratic Party (above, “Jackass Jackson”). But thanks to the elimination of many limits on male suffrage, it was also the first time the public (or half of it) became an active participant in the selection of their chief executive. Voter turn out in 1824 had been about 357,000. In 1828 it would nearly triple that,  to over one million (being still fewer than 6 in 10 eligible voters). 

And this growth spurt was adroitly exploited by Jackson's campaign manager, Martin Van Buren. Eight years hence, in 1836, when Van Buren ran for President himself, it would be “The Red Fox of Kinderhook” who would popularized the use of “OK” in English (“Old Kinderhook”). So it should come as no surprise Van Buren also played a part in naming the mass of average voters he manipulated in 1828.

Many historians have noted the way Van Buren created the impression of inevitability of Jackson’s election, using newspapers, parades and rallies. He also insisted on the universal repetition of the word “reform”, in speeches, handbills and even campaign songs - without specifying what it meant. In this “morality play” Jackson (above) was of course the hero. He was just an average Joe, like the average voter, with a few holes in his education, and a little quick to get angry with the mendacity of petty government bureaucrats. And the villain of this performance was equally obvious - John Quincy Adams.

John Quincy (above) defined himself to his long suffering wife, “I am certainly not intentionally repulsive in my manners and deportment.” But intentional or not he was a stuck up prig, more proficient in the stilted world of 18^th century diplomacy, than speaking in public in his own high shrill voice. The nicest thing you could say about John Q. was that he meant well. But even in a world without mass media, in the generation before even photography, the public recognized his reserve, even in his reprinted speeches, and in the language friends and enemies used to describe him. Ralph Waldo Emerson said Adams took his tea with “sulfuric acid”. Van Buren did not invent Adam's acidic image, but he did build on it. In personal correspondence Jackson derisively called his opponent “Johnny Q”. And Van Buren ensured that Jackson's supporters copied him, through broad sheets, hand bills, newspapers and “stump speeches” for the three long years of the campaign.

So it was in the election of 1828 that the average voter received his moniker – John Q. Public. The snide inside joke about one snobbish politician became, by familiarity, by repetition and loss of context, the name for a mass of persons. By using the phrase the speaker or writer acknowledges with a smirk that there is really no such thing as an average person, even while referring to them.  John Q. Public came into existence with John Q. Adams, but out lived him by almost two hundred years. Only when broadcasting (newspapers and books) morphed into narrow-casting (Internet), did the inside joke finally fade away.

I wish the campaign of 1828 had ended as melodramatically as the 2012 campaign, with Karl Rove's meltdown on FOX News - “I think this is premature.” Instead, the campaign described by Niles Weekly newspaper as the “the most rude and ruthless political contest that ever took place in the United States”, dripped to a close like a leaking facet, in a string of  24 separate drips. Of the 12 million Americans in 1828, there were 4 million John Q. Publics who were qualified to vote, meaning they were exclusively male, almost exclusively white, almost entirely Protestant and still largely property owners. It seemed that most Americans, the most powerful in particular, just didn't trust John Q. Public to govern.

The system left behind by the founding fathers in 1789 was designed to function in a narrow homogeneous environment. When Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1787, that “a little rebellion now and then is a good thing...” he was speaking of the 1,200 farmers in central Massachusetts who took part in Shay's Rebellion. But that stunted uprising was not about over turning the social order. It was male Protestant property owners protesting high taxes, just as their fathers had. That was the kind of rebellion Jefferson had in mind. And for all the talk about the revolutionizing effect of the frontier in America, in 1828 the population center was still south of the Mason/Dixon line, and well within 200 miles of the Atlantic ocean. The social structure of America was shifting, but slowly.

Ten states in 1828 allowed universal white male suffrage, eight states limited voting to tax payers, and five still imposed a property qualification. In several states Adams supporters tried to require voters to display an ability to read. But Jackson supporters were able to nullify that restriction by adding the stipulation that if your grandfather could read, then you would be accepted as qualified. This accepted the vote of uneducated whites while blocking otherwise literate qualified free born African Americans. And thus was born the idea of a current conditions being “grandfathered in” under new regulations. The outrider remained little  Delaware, which still denied the vote to the poor, the middle class, Catholics and Jews. Even the concept of “the popular vote” was new in 1828 – the phrase had first been used by Representative George McDuffie from South Carolina just two years earlier. And the secret ballot was unheard of, as yet. Like minded voters often marched to the polls en mass, where they publicly declared their choice (above). And that led to some very unpleasant situations.

A visitor to a Tennessee village on the evening of November 14^th, 1828, the last day for voting, found it largely deserted. The male residents, it seemed, were out hunting two of their neighbors, who had spoiled the town's Jackson unanimity by casting two lone ballots for John Quincy Adams. “As the day wore on, the whiskey flowed...and the result was a universal chase after the two voters, with a view to tarring and feathering them. They fled to the woods, however, and were not taken.” In New England, the same intimidation was seen against those who dared to vote for Jackson.

The end of the campaign began on Friday October 31^st with voting in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Then on November 3^rd Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, and Virginia cast their ballots. On November 4^th through November 14^{th, ,}voters in Alabama, Indiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Vermont had their say. New Jersey voters cast their ballots on November 4^th and 5^th . And on November 19^th it was the turn of Rhode Island, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Maryland. In Delaware, where John Q. Public had almost no voice at all, the campaign was so hushed, respectful and dignified that many failed to even noticed there was an election.

But none of these voters were casting ballots for President or Vice President. In 14 states the voters chose electors state wide, whose names and loyalties to either Jackson or Adams were listed on the ballot. In New York, each congressional district's  voters separately picked the electors, and then the electors elected two additional electors. But in Delaware and South Carolina, the legislators chose the electors, providing an additional layer of authority between John Q. Public and the vital choice of a new executive. Then on December 3^rd , 1828, the electors gathered in their various state capitals to directly cast their votes for President and Vice President. It was too convoluted to be called a democracy, but a sort of hybrid, democracy lite. In any case, the results were finally reported to Washington, D.C. on February 11^th, 1829. That night a cheerful mob sauntered into the unguarded White House to examine the furnishings, and had to be lulled back outside with free punch.

It was a good election for John Quincy Adams. He won two more states than he had in 1824. But the electorate had more than doubled, and Johnny Q's support had not. The result was that once again John Q. Adams lost the popular vote, as he had done in 1824. But this time he lost in a land slide, winning just 44% of the popular vote (500,000) to Andrew Jackson's 56% (642,000 votes) - a 12 point margin. In the electoral college it was even more decisive - 278 for Jackson, to 83 for Adams. And regionally the results were telling. Jackson won every state south of the Mason/Dixon Line, and the frontier bordering the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers. Johnny Q won every northern state, except Pennsylvania, which gave Jackson over 100,000 votes, and Van Buren's New York. The nation had taken the first step on the road that led to Fort Sumter, in April of 1861.

Secretary of State Henry Clay, whose deal making in 1825 had fueled the political debacle, grew increasingly despondent as the disaster approached. He could not even work up an anger when Adams (above) refused an invitation to speak at the opening of the first section of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, saying he considered such politicking undignified. "Adams", wrote Clay, "would rather be right than be President." It was a choice ambitious American politicians would have to make every four years for the next two hundred years. And the cost of deciding to pay that price would be painfully apparent to winner Andrew Jackson,  just before Christmas of 1828.

 - 30 -

1828 - Chapter Seven - UNFORTUNATLY

 

I hate to call her “The Unfortunate Rachel”, but she was. Her troubles started in the fall of 1779 when her father John Donelson, dragged his family along with about 600 other men, women and children through the 12 mile long Cumberland Gap to an outpost on the headwaters of the Tennessee River (above). From here most of the younger men set out cross country, aiming for the Cumberland River. 

Once there, they bought land from the local Shawnee Indians at the head of a trail called the Natchez Trace. By winter they were warm and snug in their new fort, which they called Nashboro (sic). 

Unfortunately, on 22 December of that same year, John loaded 12 year old Rachel, her ten siblings and her mother, along with 300 other old men, women and children onto 30 flatboats and canoes, and began floating down the Tennessee River. John Donelson thought the women and children would have an easier time on the water. Boy, was he wrong.

Almost immediately 28 people contracted small pox and had to be isolated in a single boat. Then Indians attacked, killing all the small pox victims. What was left of the expedition repeatedly ran aground, some of the boats capsized, and the women were required to help steer the ungainly rafts, while Indians kept shooting the helmsmen. 

Eventually, the desperate band reached the Ohio River, at Paduca, Kentucky. They then laboriously poled ten miles against the current to the mouth of the Cumberland River, and then 160 miles up that stream until their joyful reunion on April 24, 1780, with their men at the new fort, now called Nashville. 

Of the roughly 300 women and children who began that four month 1,500 mile river voyage, 33 had died and nine arrived wounded – that was a better than 10% causality rate  They were literally decimated. It was a tough trip.

Eventually the families each established their own little fortresses in the wilderness. Unfortunately, five years later, on 1 March, 1785, the 18 year old Rachel Donelson married a 28 year old land speculator named Captain Lewis Robards. It was to prove a tough marriage. 

He owned land 150 miles to the northeast, around Harrodsburg, Kentucky, and the couple lived there with his widowed mother, Elizabeth, who took in boarders. Then, in the fall of 1788, Lewis returned home from a business trip to find Rachel on the porch talking with a boarder, a traveling lawyer named Peyton Short. 

According to another boarder, Judge John Overton (above), Lewis accused Short of flirting with his wife, and a heated argument developed. Elizabeth Robards was drawn outside where she took Mr. Short's side. Lewis then accused his wife of encouraging Short. When his mother supported Rachel, Lewis ordered his wife to leave and never show her face in “his” house again.

So the unfortunate Rachel returned to Nashville, where she met another young lawyer recently arrived at her own widowed mother's boarding house. His name was Andrew Jackson. The next year, Lewis arrived to patch up things with Rachel, but quickly decided Andrew Jackson was now flirting with his wife. And maybe he was. 

Anyway, Lewis outweighed Jackson by about 50 pounds, and threatened to beat him up. Instead Jackson offered to meet him “on the field of honor”, but then moved to a nearby trading post. However Lewis's behavior, and his new threat to “haunt” Rachel, convinced her that unfortunately Lewis was still crazy. And as soon as Lewis had returned to Harrodsburg for a quick business trip, Rachel took a boat up the Cumberland, then down the Ohio to the Mississippi River. She didn't stop until she got to Natchez, in Spanish territory.

The following year, an announcement appeared in a Kentucky newspaper saying that through the good offices of his brother-in-law Major John Jouett, Lewis Robards had been granted a divorce by the Kentucky Legislature. Reading this Jackson immediately took off for Natchez, where in the summer of 1791, he and Rachel were married.  Unfortunately, they did not live happily ever after. Because Rachel was unfortunate - remember? Even her divorce was going to be tough.

It was not until 1793 that the Jackson's, living as man and wife on land Jackson had purchased ten miles outside of Nashville, learned the newspaper story had been incorrect. Kentucky had not granted Lewis Robards a divorce from Rachel. All that Lewis' brother-in-law had got him was a bill which authorized him to seek a divorce in court. He had quickly started that process, but legally, he and Rachel were still married, making Rachel a bigamist. But then so was Lewis Robards, since in December of 1792 he had married Miss Hannah Winn. The Robards-Donaldson nuptials would not be legally ended until a year later – as of 27 September, 1793.

Now, Rachel (above) was a devout Presbyterian, and would never have lived with a man without believing she was in a sanctified marriage. After all, marriage was the only financial security a woman had in 18^th century. And as soon as the Jacksons could verify the Robards divorce, they remarried, in January of 1794, in Nashville. After that, they settled down to live happily ever after - not. Because Rachel's unfortunate divorce was going to be very, very tough, especially on Andrew.

It is figured that Andrew Jackson fought at least 13 duels to “defend his wife's honor”. It wasn't that people did not understand the confusion distance and shoddy records could generate along the frontier. But it was common knowledge that if you were ticked off with the hot headed Jackson, just mentioning Rachel would instantly get his goat. In 1806 Tennessee Governor John Sevier and head of the state militia Andrew Jackson got into an argument in front of the courthouse in Knoxville. Jackson began to list his extensive record of service, and when Sevier got feed up he interjected, “I know of no great service you have rendered, except taking a trip with another man's wife.”

The duel with Governor Sevier ended with both men shooting into the air. But there was also the 1806 duel with Charles Dickinson, which started as an argument over a horse race, but came to a head when Dickinson called Rachel a bigamist. Dickinson was a well known duelist, a crack shot, who proceeded to lodge a musket ball in Jackson's lung. But Jackson's single minded fury kept him on his feet, and he put a bullet in Dickerson’s chest, killing him. Which is why Charles Hammond decided to bring up the tardy divorce as well.

Charles Hammond (above) had been a Virginia lawyer, who had even argued before the Supreme Court - where he earned Chief Justice John Marshall's praise for his losing arguments. In 1826 Charles moved to Cincinnati, Ohio and bought the failing Gazette weekly newspaper. He immediately turned it into a successful daily. Daniel Webster called him “the greatest genius who ever wielded the political pen”.  And in March of that year, Hammond produced a classic editorial about Presidential candidate Andrew Jackson, asking, “Ought a convicted adulteress and her paramour husband be placed in the highest offices of this free and Christian land?”

On 23 March, 1827, Hammond returned to the subject, informing the 15,000 residence of Cincinnati that “In the summer of 1790, General Jackson prevailed upon the wife of Lewis Robards...to desert her husband and live with himself in the character of a wife.” It wasn't true, at least not entirely. After all, Lewis had ordered the unfortunate Rachel out of his house, before she even met Jackson. In fact they never would have met, except Lewis was behaving like a jerk. But then the purpose of Hammond's insults was not to prove that Rachel had no honor, but to prove that Jackson had no sense - that he was a hot head, not to be trusted with the nation.

Jackson (above) did challenge Hammond to a duel after that first insult, but Hammond refused to even respond. And then Jackson was told that Hammond had met that summer with Henry Clay, of “the corrupt bargain” fame, and that it was Clay who had encouraged Hammond to write about Rachel. So Jackson challenged Clay, who answered by insisting he had never mentioned Rachel to Hammond. But Old Hickory decided he didn't believe Clay. From that day forward Jackson was “determined to...lay the perfidy, meanness and wickedness of Clay, naked before the American people...he is certainly the basest, meanest scoundrel that ever disgraced the image of God...nothing is too low for him to condescend to.”

In public Jackson remained calm, so Hammond decided to step up the attacks. He wouldn't fight to defend his wife's honor, then maybe he would reveal his real self to defend his mother. Wrote Hammond now, “General Jackson’s mother was a “COMMON PROSTITUTE” brought to this country by the British soldiers! She afterward married a MULATTO MAN, with whom she had several children, of which number General JACKSON IS ONE!!!”

In reality, the only one who was prostituting himself in this affair, was Hammond.

- 30 -

1828 - Chapter Six - DETAILS, DETAILS

I have respect for anyone who serves their nation, official heroes and average veterans alike. But it seems to me the official scapegoat makes an even greater sacrifice. They suffer only scorn and disgust for their public service, in proving a melodramatic contrast required to make the hero’s' medals shine that much brighter.  As just one example, you might say it took the scarifies of six men, executed as cowards, to burnish Andrew Jackson's medals bright enough to be seen in Washington, D.C. You could say that, but that would not be fair to either Jackson or the six dead men.

Andrew Jackson looked like a hero. He stood over six feet tall, and at 130 pounds was razor thin, with piercing blue eyes. In 1812 he had a head of bright red hair and the emotional responses of a fifteen year old juvenile delinquent. He was made a general of the Tennessee militia, by popular acclimation, and ordered to take his farmers down the Mississippi River to Natchez, where they would be enveloped into an army to defend New Orleans. 

Secretary-of-War John Armstrong (above) can be forgiven if he was anticipating a British move against the vital and vulnerable port. And upon learning the British were too busy in Europe to bother with America, his rational decision was to immediately send all the militia units home. But the way Armstrong went about it was typical of the man - petty and cheap. Upon reaching Natchez, Jackson was ordered to disband his men and sent them home without pay.

It was honorable that, in violation of his orders Jackson marched his men home, as a unit.  And he maintained such discipline on that march that he earned the title “Old Hickory”, after the wood that broke before it bent. And only when they were safe at home did Jackson release his men from their units, with the promise that they would be paid for the extra month of service on the march. It was a display of common sense and humanity worthy of a hero. And it got Jackson reprimanded, and left behind when the war heated up along the Canadian border.

The unanticipated result was that on 14 and 15 of September, 1814, when the British ships attacked Fort Bowyer at the entrance to Mobile Bay (above), there was nobody left in the south to command the defense of the New Orleans and the southern coast, except Andrew Jackson. 

The attack on Bowyer (above) was repulsed by Jackson, but the assault threw militia all along the coast into a panic....

.. especially the 500 or so members of the First Regiment of the West Tennessee Militia manning a run down outpost of Fort Charlotte (above), guarding the mouth of the Mobile River. The water in their fort was bad, the food was scarce and lousy, and disease was running rampant. And in a case of spectacular bad timing, many of the Tennesseans decided at this moment, to go home.

They had enlisted in June back in Nashville, for three months, and as they figured it, as of 20 September, 1814, their time was up. So that morning about 200 of them just left. Desertion was common, but Jackson could not tolerate organized desertion. The army offered a $10 reward for each man returned to his unit, and by 2 November, 166 men had come back, under arrest or voluntarily. Between 5 December and 18 December, 1814, those men were tried for  mutiny in Mobile , by officers of the Tennessee Militia. The verdicts was then sent for review to Andrew Jackson, 150 miles away in in New Orleans.

He was kind of busy at the time - recruiting, arming and drilling the local militia in New Orleans.  On  23 December Jackson led 2, 000 militia in a desperate night attack against an English advance guard of 1,800 regular soldiers at the Lacoste's Plantation, 9 miles south of New Orleans (above). Jackson's force was thrown back, but British causalities were heavy enough they were now cautious, giving Jackson just enough time to fortify the canal 4 miles south of town.

On 8 January, 1815, the 11,000 man British force attacked the 2,500 Americans. The result was decisive. The British lost almost 300 killed and 1,200 wounded, and were forced to retreat. American casualties were 13 killed and 39 wounded. Jackson's victory was nothing short of a miracle.

The day after - 9 January, 1815 - Jackson returned to his headquarters in New Orleans to find among other things waiting for him, the verdict from the court martial in Mobile. Jackson approved it and sent it back without comment. 

With Jackson's okay, two Tennessee officers were dismissed, and a third had his sword broken over his head, before being dismissed. Most of the 160 enlisted men lost half their pay, had half their head shaved before being drummed out of camp. The six seen as ringleaders were condemned to be executed by firing squad. 

But before that could happen,  on 12 February, the British captured the Andrew Jackson-less Fort Bowyer.  A British man-of-war carrying 1,400 infantry and 11 cannon now entered Mobile Bay, and prepared to attack the pitiable forts Charlotte and Mobile. 

Only the arrival of word of the peace treaty signed in Ghent (and negotiated by John Quincy Adams) two months earlier (on 24 December, 1814) saved the sad fort, and maybe New Orleans and maybe Andrew Jackson's career. The treaty was ratified by the U.S. Congress on 16 February, 1815. But the end of the war did not save the six condemned men. The vindictive Jackson never even thought about commuting their sentences.

On 21 February, 1815, the six men were brought to the scene of execution, and made to kneel on their own coffins. In charge of the detail was Colonel William Russel, U.S, Army. He urged the condemned to, “Die like men – like soldiers....Meet your fate with courage.” That would certainly make it easier for him and the firing squad. When asked if they had any last words, a Baptist preacher who had been hired as a substitute, and was now about to die, began to sob. Private Henry Lewis said nervously,  "I have fought bravely, you know I have...I would not wish to die this way. I did not expect it.” 

On command, 36 regular soldiers fired, six aiming at each of the condemned militiamen. In checking the bloody results, five were dead, and Sargent David Morrow was found to have four musket ball wounds. He pleaded with Russel, “Have I not atoned for this offense? Shall I not live?” The colonel allowed him medical care, but the answer was no. He died four days later, “in great agony.”  All at the insistence of General Andrew Jackson.

To those involved it was a very terrible affair and likely produced more than a few nightmares over the lifetimes of the executioners. History barely took note, until late January of 1828 when, in Philadelphia, Irish transplant John Binns reprinted an anti-Jackson item (above) which he labeled “Monumental Inscriptions”.  Originally he had created it as what we might call a one page “blow in” for his newspaper, the Democratic Press during the 1824 election. Reprinted in 1828 it was a 15 X 24 inch woodcut, displaying six coffin woodcuts in two rows.  Instantly it became infamous as the “Coffin Handbills”, plural because in the end there would be 26 versions of it.

It was a “Swift Boat” attack, hitting Jackson in his strongest position, his military record. The body of most of the “Coffin Handbills” carried a poem, “Gen Jackson and the Six Militiamen.” It read, in part, “Twas on the twentieth day of June, Their three months tour began; And when the ninety days were done, Their thoughts all homeward ran...Then General Jackson called a court, These citizens to try. Three officers of every sort Determined they should die...Then General Jackson issued out, An order from his pen, That in four days they should be shot - These six militia men..  And God forbid, our President This Jackson e'er should be; Lest we should to his camp be sent , And shot for mutiny.”

John Binns had to endured picketing of his shop and home, and rocks thrown through his windows.  But his friends defended his property, stopping arsonists and vandals. His fellow Irish American William Duane from Philadelphia, and a Jackson supporter, declared that Binns “now hangs, gibbeted in the pillory of public opinion” Another Adams newspaper, The United States Gazette, responded for Binns, dismissing Duane as behaving with “his accustomed egotism, and pomposity.” Things were getting personal.

By March the Coffin Handbills were virtually flooding New Hampshire. And Isaac Hill, who had published the smear that John Quincy Adams had pimped for the Czar, was forced to spend several issues of his weekly Concord “Patriot”, defending Jackson. In one issue he dismissed the attack by pointing out that Jackson “...On the 8th of January, 1815 ...murdered in the coldest blood 1,500 British soldiers Fair's fair, I guess.”  Hill's exasperated comment went national in the Jackson Press. But by June the anti-Jackson handbills were being reprinted in Henry Clay's old newspaper, the Kentucky Reporter, in Lexington.

An editorial in the Nashville Republican and State Gazette, published the year before, now seemed prophetic. “If one half or less of the evil told of them is true”, wrote the generally neutral newspaper, “they deserve to be objects of universal repulse and scorn.... A stranger might say to an American, “Am I or am I not, to believe your political writers? If I may credit them, your nation must be degenerate indeed” Indeed.

Jackson's approval of the execution after the peace was cold and callous.  And while it is true that all wars are made up of immoral actions and unproductive sacrifices, two centuries later it must be said there was no justice for the six men executed on Jackson's order. Because this act of arrogance and cruelty did not hurt Jackson's election hopes in 1828 at all. 

- 30 -