Andrew Jackson (64 page)

He didn’t exactly get it, although he got something similar. Henry Lee, the son of Revolutionary War general Lighthorse Harry Lee (and the father of Confederate general Robert E. Lee) and a strong Jacksonian, visited Jefferson on July 1. “As soon as I arrived, he sent for me,” Lee told Jackson. “And though he seemed to look upon his end as approaching, he spoke of it as an event rather unpleasant than terrible—like a traveler expressing his apprehension of being caught in a rain. I was surprised at the energy of his grasp and the alacrity of his conversation, and could not but admire the general predominance of mind over matter in all his words and actions in so trying a moment.” Jefferson didn’t speak directly of politics to Lee, but he did to his daughter and other members of the household. “I learn from his family that he holds in contempt and abhorrence the men and measures of our present administration, and that his opinion as to the necessity of change at the next presidential election concurs with mine and that of the great mass of our countrymen.”

With the rest of the nation, Jackson was astonished to discover two weeks later that Jefferson and Adams had lived till the fiftieth Fourth, then died that very day. “What a wonderful coincidence that the author and two signers of the Declaration of Independence, two of the ex-Presidents, should on the same day expire, a half a century after that that gave birth to a nation of freemen, and that Thomas Jefferson should have died the very hour of the day that the Declaration of Independence was presented and read in the Congress of 1776,” Jackson wrote. “Is this an omen that Divinity approbated the whole course of Mr. Jefferson and sent an angel down to take him from the earthly tabernacle on this national Jubilee, at the same moment he had presented it to Congress? And is the death of Mr. Adams a confirmation of the approbation of Divinity also? Or is it an omen that his political example as President, and adopted by his son, shall destroy this holy fabric created by the virtuous Jefferson?”

J
ackson’s enemies soon mobilized to deny him any claim on Jefferson’s mantle. Administration allies began circulating stories that Jefferson had registered concern at Jackson’s strong showing in the 1824 election. By one version Jefferson said that Jackson’s popularity was “an evidence that the Republic would not last long.” By another he declared, “There are one hundred men in Albemarle County better qualified for the Presidency.”

Jackson couldn’t convincingly dispute that Jefferson had said such things, as he hadn’t been present at the purported utterance. But he did counter them by circulating a letter from Jefferson complimenting him on matters relating to the Seminole War. And he relayed the message from Henry Lee regarding Jefferson’s hope that the current administration be removed.

Yet the reported Jefferson thrust was only a small part of what became a broad-front campaign of slander, slight, and innuendo. Jackson’s rivals searched every part of his biography for openings. Owning slaves was no disqualification for high office and in southern states was nearly a prerequisite, but slave trading was considered low and disreputable; consequently Jackson was charged with “negro
speculation
.” Though dueling still had its advocates and practitioners (including Clay), the ranks of its opponents continued to grow; for these, Jackson’s dueling past was resurrected and related in bloody detail, and embellished to show that he took liberties with the code of honor and therefore with the lives of his antagonists. An old affidavit from Thomas Benton was published to cast the shooting affair at the Nashville City Hotel in the most unflattering light for Jackson. Copies of his old letters were obtained and published (and in some cases forged) to show that he couldn’t spell. The Burr conspiracy was recounted to question Jackson’s loyalty to the Union or at least his judgment of men. His military record, which his supporters portrayed as his strength, came under assault for his unmerciful treatment of subordinates. The John Wood execution was recapitulated, emphasizing the youth and innocence of the unfortunate soldier.

The most notorious, and widely reprinted, piece of literature from the 1828 election season was the “coffin handbill,” a broadside topped by the silhouettes of six coffins in heavy black ink, representing six soldiers executed by Jackson’s order near the end of the southern campaign of the War of 1812. The soldiers had been among some two hundred militiamen charged with mutiny, desertion, and other offenses related to abandonment of their posts at Fort Jackson in September 1814. The two hundred claimed that their term of service was three months, that it was over, and that they had the right to go home. Their commanding officers replied that the term was six months, that it was but half over, and that they must stay. Jackson was at Mobile at this time, preparing for the British invasion of the coast, and he naturally backed the officers. When the mutineers were arrested he ordered a court martial. Nearly all the prisoners were simply fined and ordered to be dishonorably discharged at the end of their terms of service. Six, however, the apparent leaders of the insurgency, were found guilty of the most serious charges and sentenced to death.

Jackson received the court’s verdict at New Orleans in early January 1815, under the very cannons of the British. Not till after the great battle of January 8 did he have a chance to examine it. He didn’t know that the peace treaty had been signed at Ghent or that the British would soon sail away. As far as he could tell, the war was still on and discipline was as crucial as ever. With no reason to question the verdict of the court, he signed it and ordered the sentences carried out.

The executions evoked little notice at the time. If any persons in the East even knew of the incident they kept their secret from the newspapers. But as the election of 1828 approached, the anti-Jacksonians resurrected the story and replayed it in detail, down to the last words of the condemned men. Jackson was portrayed as a vindictive monster, a despot who crushed the innocent beneath his boot heel. The “coffin handbill” summarized the case for the prosecution (that is, the posthumous defense). “The act was as cruel as uncalled for,” the text said of Jackson’s acceptance of the court’s verdict, “and appeals to every man’s best affections, and sympathies, for the meting out of retributive justice at the ensuing election, against the man who had no pity for his fellow man.” A poet was pressed into service to provide a heart-wringing elegy for the condemned.

See six black coffins ranged along,
Six graves before them made;

Webb, Lindsey, Harris, Lewis, Hunt,
And Morrow kneeled and prayed. . . .

Sure he will spare! Sure JACKSON yet
Will all reprieve but one—

O hark! Those shrieks! That cry of death!
The deadly deed is done!

H
ad more of substance separated Jackson from Adams, the contest between the two might not have become so personal. In foreign affairs the two saw eye to nationalist eye, each deeming American security, assertively defined, the sine qua non of American diplomacy. Domestically, Adams backed federal spending on such internal improvements as the National Road, which Jackson didn’t; but the country’s depression-induced caution left the administration without traction on the issue. The most controversial matter of Adams’s tenure was the tariff, but the controversy was so convoluted as to give voters little to choose between the candidates. Jackson had sufficiently waffled on the tariff while in the Senate that no one knew just where he stood; Adams was hardly more consistent. The only sizable group that took a straightforward stand on the tariff was the bloc of southern planters, who depended on exports and wanted a low tariff to prevent other countries’ being tempted to erect barriers to American cotton. Yet even this position failed to translate cleanly into election-year politics. The chief spokesman for the South was John Calhoun, who had run for vice president in 1824 with support from both the Adams and the Jackson camps and naturally won. He currently served under Adams, but he favored Jackson for 1828.

Lacking issues, the Jacksonians ran on symbols. One symbol—a negative one—was the “corrupt bargain” between Adams and Clay. Like any other symbol, this suggested far more than it denoted. In the Jacksonian view, the theft of the 1824 election was emblematic of a deeper corruption that undermined American liberty and prevented the ordinary people of America from controlling their government and their lives. The anointing of successors by several presidents was one aspect of the corruption; the attempt by the Republican caucus in Congress to monopolize nominations was another; the trading of offices for political support—most notoriously in the Adams-Clay deal but practiced for years throughout the executive branch—was a third. For the people to take power, they must pierce this ring of corruption; for the people to maintain power, they must shatter the ring of corruption forever.

A second symbol, the antithesis of the first, was Jackson himself. Jackson didn’t have to say a word to represent everything the incumbents were not. His biography spoke for itself: victor of New Orleans, savior of the nation, man of the people. Votes for Jackson were votes against corruption, votes for the principle of democracy, votes for the people by the people themselves.

The theme of democracy against corruption was hammered home again and again by the Jacksonians. In nearly every city, town, and county seat in America, Jackson committees held rallies for their hero, hosting speakers who waxed long and florid for the people’s right to choose one of their own for president. Jackson papers reprinted the speeches, amplifying the praise and adding rebuttals of attacks from the Adams side. An inner circle of Jacksonians, consisting of Sam Houston, William Lewis, and a few other Tennesseans, formed a “whitewashing committee” devoted to neutralizing the Adamsite libels. They enlisted witnesses, took depositions, and drafted editorials. Occasionally they pleaded guilty: Jackson papers ran a squib, “C
OOL AND
D
ELIBERATE
M
URDER
: Jackson coolly and deliberately put to death upward of fifteen hundred British troops on the 8th of January 1815, on the plains below New Orleans, for no other offense than that they wished to sup in the city that night.”

J
ackson remained above the fray. He resented the attacks on his character, especially those that touched his wartime conduct. Where had the critics been at the hour of peril? Who had then made it possible for them now to enjoy the constitutional freedom to assassinate his character? But while the attacks were sharper and more concentrated than they had ever been, they didn’t differ materially from what he had endured over the years, and he refused to dignify them with public answers. “Truth is mighty, and will prevail,” he promised Felix Grundy.

Yet there was one class of slanders he couldn’t ignore. Public-opinion polls didn’t exist in the 1820s (and wouldn’t for another century), but Jacksonians around the country reported confidently that the general had never been more popular with the ordinary people of America, who wouldn’t tolerate another stolen election like that of 1824. Adams’s partisans must have agreed, about Jackson’s popularity if not about the legitimacy of the 1824 election, for they resorted to a risky tactic designed to shake the equanimity of the people’s favorite. Stealthily at first, then more openly, they resurrected the tales of the irregularity in Jackson’s early relationship with Rachel. The insatiable Jackson, as they portrayed things, had violated the sanctity of marriage by stealing another man’s wife. Rachel was cast as an adulteress, in the milder accounts, and a whore, in others. More than a few papers crossed the color line in their treatment of Rachel. The
Commentator
of Frankfort, Kentucky, likened her to a “
dirty, black wench!
” Other editors reprinted the remark, giving it wide circulation.

It was a maneuver fraught with peril for Adams. Voters might well recoil from the dragging of Rachel through the mud. But the Adams men could think of nothing else so likely to provoke the general into doing something that would make him appear unpresidential.

Jackson was certainly provoked. To William Lewis he confessed “such feelings of indignation that I can scarcely control.” To another associate he said, “When the midnight assassin strikes you to the heart, murders your family, and robs your dwelling, the heart sickens at the relation of the deed; but this scene loses all its horrors when compared with the recent slander of a virtuous female propagated by the minions of power for political effect.” Jackson understood his enemies’ aim. “It is evident that it is the last effort of the combined coalition to save themselves and destroy me,” he told Richard Call. “They calculated that it would arouse me to some desperate act by which I would fall prostrate before the people.” Jackson realized he could do nothing at once that wouldn’t simply expose Rachel to additional insult. “For the present my hands are pinioned.” But he vowed that the evildoers would be punished. “The day of retribution and vengeance must come, when the guilty will meet with their just reward.”

P
olitically speaking, the day of retribution came in the autumn of 1828. Not till decades later would Americans agree on the first Tuesday of November as the time to cast ballots for president. In 1828 they were still getting used to the idea that the people—as opposed to the state legislatures—should vote for the highest office in the land. Technically, of course, they still voted for electors, and substantial variation persisted regarding the manner in which the popular vote in a state bound its electors. Some states applied a rule of winner take all, with a popular majority for one candidate producing a unanimous vote for that candidate among the state’s electors. Other states allowed split decisions.