The Presidency of Andrew Jackson

352 Pages·1993·9.526 MB·English

by  Donald B. Cole

The Presidency of
ANDREW
JACKSON
AMERICAN PRESIDENCY SERIES
Donald RMcCoy, Clifford S. Griffin, Homer E. Socolof.sky
General Editors
George Washington, Forrest McDonald
John Adams, Ralph Adams Brown
Thomas Jefferson, Forrest McDonald
James Madison, Robert Allen Rutland
John Quincy Adams, Mary W. M. Hargreaves
Andrew Jackson, Donald B. Cole
Martin Van Buren, Major L. Wilson
William Henry Harrison & John Tyler, Norma Lois Peterson
James K. Polk, Paul H. Bergeron
Zachary Taylor & Millard Fillmore, Elbert B. Smith
Franklin Pierce, Larry Gara
James Buchanan, Elbert B. Smith
Andrew Johnson, Albert Castel
Rutherford B. Hayes, Ari Hoogenboom
James A. Garfield & Chester A. Arthur, Justus D. Doenecke
Grover Cleveland, Richard E. Welch, Jr.
Benjamin Harrison, Homer B. Socolofsky & Allan B. Spetter
William McKinley, Lewis L. Gould
Theodore Roosevelt, Lewis L. Gould
William Howard Taft, Paolo E. Coletta
Woodrow Wilson, Kendrick A. Clements
Warren G. Harding, Eugene P. Irani & David L. Wilson
Herbert C. Hoover, Martin L. Fausold
Harry S. Truman, Donald R. McCoy
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Chester J. Pach, Jr., & Elmo Richardson
John F. Kennedy, James N. Giglio
Lyndon B. Johnson, Vaughn Davis Bomet
James Earl Carter, Jr., Burton I. Kaufman
The Presidency of
ANDREW
JACKSON
Donald B. Cole
UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KANSAS
To my grandchildren,
Nathan, Andy, Matt, Tim, Nessie,
Madeline, and Sam
© 1993 by the University Press of Kansas
All rights reserved
Published by the University Press of Kansas (Lawrence, Kansas 66049),
which was organized by the Kansas Board of Regents
and is operated and funded by Emporia State University, Fort Hays State
University, Kansas State University, Pittsburg State
University, the University of Kansas, and Wichita State University
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cole, Donald B.
The presidency of Andrew Jackson / Donald B. Cole,
p. cm.—(American presidency series)
ISBN 0-7006-0600-9
1. Jackson, Andrew, 1767-1845.
2. United States—Politics and government—1829-1837.
I. Title. II. Series.
E382.C69 1993
973.5'6—dc20 92-43377
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.
Printed in the United States of America
10 987654321
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements
of the American National Standard for Permanence of Riper
for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984.
CONTENTS
Foreword vii
Preface ix
Part 1:The Jackson Coalition, 1829-33
1 An Anxious Republic 3
2 An Uncertain President 23
3 Facing Congress 51
4 Seeking Harmony 79
5 The Bank Veto and Indian Removal 95
6 Foreign Policy 121
7 A Jackson Victory 137
8 Defending the Union 153
Part 2:The Democratic Party, 1833-37
9 Renewing the Bank War 183
10 Two-Party Politics 201
11 A Violent Democracy 217
12 Democratic Administration 229
13 A Democratic Victory 245
14 An Ambivalent Presidency 269
V
Notes 279
Bibliographical Essay 321
Index 331
VI
FOREWORD
The aim of the American Presidency Series is to present historians
and the general reading public with interesting, scholarly assessments of
the various presidential administrations. These interpretive surveys are
intended to cover the broad ground between biographies, specialized
monographs, and journalistic accounts. As such, each will be a compre­
hensive work which will draw upon original sources and pertinent sec­
ondary literature, yet leave room for the author's own analysis and
interpretation.
Volumes in the series will present the data essential to understand­
ing the administration under consideration. Particularly, each book will
treat the then current problems facing the United States and its people
and how the president and his associates felt about, thought about, and
worked to cope with these problems. Attention will be given to how the
office developed and operated during the president's tenure. Equally
important will be consideration of the vital relationships between the
president, his staff, the executive officers. Congress, foreign representa­
tives, the judiciary, state officials, the public, political parties, the press,
and influential private citizens. The series will also be concerned with
how this unique American institution—the presidency—was viewed by
the presidents, and with what results.
All this will be set, insofar as possible, in the context not only of
contemporary politics but also of economics, international relations,
law, morals, public administration, religion, and thought. Such a broad
approach is necessary to understanding, for a presidential administration
vii
is more than the elected and appointed officers composing it, since its
work so often reflects the major problems, anxieties, and glories of the
nation. In short, the authors in this series will strive to recount and
evaluate the record of each administration and to identify its distinctive­
ness and relationships to the past, its own time, and future.
The General Editors
PREFACE
In the preface to his biography of Andrew Jackson, published in
I860, James Parton posed the enigma of the man:
The first of statesmen, he never devised, he never framed a measure.
He was the most candid of men, and was capable of the profoundest
dissimulation. A most law-defying, law-obeying citizen. A stickler for
discipline, he never hesitated to disobey his superior. A democratic
autocrat. An urbane savage.
Ever since this assessment, historians have tried to unravel the mystery
of a man whom, in Parton's words, "two thirds of his fellow-citizens
deified, and the other third vilified." Although the interpretations have
varied greatly, the writers have almost always portrayed Jackson as big­
ger than life, so dominant a figure that his era was named for him. No
other American—not even Washington or Lincoln or Franklin D. Roose­
velt—has been accorded this honor. Parton himself wrote that Jackson's
will "tyrannized . . . over his friends, over Congress, over the country."
Writing more than a century later, Jackson's foremost biographer, Rob­
ert V. Remini, concludes his life of the Old Hero with the words of Her­
man Melville, "Thou great democratic God! . . . Thou who didst pick up
Andrew Jackson from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a warhorse;
who didst thunder him higher than a throne!" Even writers who have
emphasized ideas more than the man have presented Jackson as some­
one who knew what he was doing. He has been pictured alternately as
one who led the people "out of captivity and bondage," or was respon-
ix
sible for the "Rise of Liberal Capitalism/' or adhered to the states'-rights
tradition.1
In this book I present a different Jackson, a man less sure of himself
than imagined, a man more controlled by the political and economic
forces of his age than the reverse. Brought to the presidency by a broad
coalition of conflicting interest groups, Jackson was involved in constant
battles not only against his opponents but also among his supporters.
One by one leaders of the coalition rose and fell—John C. Calhoun,
John H. Eaton, Louis McLane—leaving Amos Kendall and Martin Van
Buren as the men of influence during Jackson's second term. The greatest
accomplishment of his administration was not an act proposed by Jackson
but the rise of a new institution, the mass political party. The dominant
theme of his presidency was his inconsistent and unsuccessful battle to
resist the market revolution, which was transforming America. Though
he believed in states' rights and yearned for a bygone Arcadia, he was also
entranced by the prosperity and the rise of commerce brought on by the
market economy. His ambivalence toward the new politics and the new
economy and the ambivalence of his followers is the story of this book.
In reaching these conclusions I am indebted to many Jacksonian
scholars but to three in particular. Although I do not carry my analysis
of Jackson's uncertainties as far as James C. Curtis, I have been guided
by the insights in his Andrew Jackson and the Search for Vindication. My
thinking has also been stimulated by Marvin Meyers's portrayal of the
Jacksonian "effort to recall agrarian republican innocence" in The Jackso­
nian Persuasion: Politics and Belief Throughout the book I have been helped
in many ways by the works of Robert V. Remini.2
Two scholars whose views differ from mine have helped me im­
mensely in preparing this study. Richard B. Latner read and commented
on an early version, and Richard E. Ellis did the same for the first half of
a later draft. Daniel Feller also provided a careful reading of an early
draft. My debt to John J. McDonough of the Library of Congress, for his
advice, his editing, and his friendship, knows no bounds. Nor do my
obligations to my late friend and neighbor Richard F. Niebling, who ed­
ited and cared about the manuscript. The general editors of the American
Presidency Series, Donald R. McCoy, Clifford S. Griffin, and Homer E.
Socolofsky, reviewed the manuscript thoroughly and offered many con­
structive suggestions. I am especially grateful to Jacqueline Thomas and
the staff of the Phillips Exeter Academy Library, who have always made
the library my second home. And Tootie knows how much I owe to
her. The book is dedicated to our grandchildren, who would have liked
the Old Hero.