Studying Andrew Jackson

Appositively, David O. Stewart writes about him in the Huff Po.  What Mr. Stewart is really doing in the article is running down the instances of violence committed by, and perpetuated upon, politicans.  This has never been much of a nation for civility in any of its national venues.

Andrew Jackson's great scholar is Robert V. Remini.  He's devoted his entire academic career to reading everything Jackson ever wrote, what has been written about him, what those around him wrote, and the eras in which Jackson not only lived (he was a British captive in the War of Independence when only 13; he was significantly mis-treated by his captors), but those that he shaped so much in his own character, which shaping endured long after the Jacksonian era concluded.

Jackson was there then, in the Era of Confederation, the Early Republic, the War of 1812 (which propelled him upon the national stage via the Creek and Seminole wars, not to mention the Battle of New Orleans), the so-called Era of Good Feeling, more accurately known, as Remini says, by Jackson and the country as the Era of Corruption, the Second Great Awakening (which Remini doesn't cover -- he's a political historian), Nullification, the Great Indian Removal; he died the year Texas entered the U.S. as a slave state, an issue very close to Jackson's heart.  He just missed the Mexican American War and the California Gold Rush which would have gratified his specie-loving, banks and soft money-hating, economic policies.

Back to Remini.  One of the pleasures of a scholar of that calibre devoting his energies to a very particular subject and period is that at a certain point he really knows it.  S/he knows it so well they can take complicated, subtle issues and synthesize their thinking in relatively few words, that are crystal clear to the rest of us.  Remini does this with three Jacksonian issues in a series of three lectures he gave in 1988 (the publication date for this slim volume -- 117 pages, including index -- published by the Louisiana State University Press).  The three issues are "Democracy," "Indian Removal" and "Slavery."

I learned something that I had no idea about previously.  It's easier to quote Remini describing it in the "Slavery" lecture than for me to try and describe it -- this is about the Nullification crisis during Jackson's presidency, which is connected to the southern imposed gag rule on any petition, report or discussion of slavery or abolition in Congress:

Although the abolitionist movement had long since been under way, it is interesting and important to note that Jackson and his spokesman regarded the introduction of the slavery question as a political issue in congress as having been conceived by the nullifiers to advance their efforts at disrupting the Union.  The position of the Jacksonians in 1833, therefore, was simply this: slavery was protected by the Consitution; only those intent on mischief seriously proposed that Congress could abolish slavery; and only nullifiers like Calhoun and his friends argued that there were irreconcilable differences between slave and nonslaveholding states, for the simple reason that they hoped eventually to establish a southern confederacy. (p. 92)

In other words, as Remini goes on to amplify, the stirring up of abolition controversy was manufactured by Calhoun and his ilk in hopes of so alarming the white men of the slaveholding states that they'd break away from the Union -- and make Calhoun their head. It was an imaginary movement, propelled by outright lies in the press Calhoun and his friends controlled and that supported them.

Now Jackson did see conspiracies in many places. It was a word he often employed, particularly in connection with those who opposed him.  But then, he had rather gotten sucked in by Burr back in the day during Burr's plotting to cut a personal domain for himself out of the Louisiana Territory.  Evidently that sort of power politic dreaming hadn't ended in 1806.

Now, there were indeed authentic abolitionist movements and organizations in play in the 1830's.  But for white men like Jackson -- and Calhoun -- they couldn't conceive there were any altruistic or humane ideals or concerns involved.  Any talk of abolition had to be for calculated political objective, because that is how they thought.  States rights, uselessness of central government except for national defense, no publicly funded projects even for infrastructure -- all of us are in this alone.  No one could actually give a damn about slaves and their condition within this democracy of rugged, self-sufficient individualists.

Slavery just was, and always would be. No problem. Except that for political and economic gain there were northern politicians who wanted to use them as an excuse to stirr up trouble for the south, just as there were southerners doing the same thing.

From my perspective here in the second decade of the 21st century this callousness about so many human beings, even among politicians, takes my breath away.