American Lion Read online

  ALSO BY JON MEACHAM

  American Gospel:

  God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation

  Franklin and Winston:

  An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship

  Voices in Our Blood:

  America’s Best on the Civil Rights Movement (editor)

  Copyright © 2008 by Jon Meacham

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Meacham, Jon.

  American lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House/Jon Meacham.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-1-58836-822-5

  1. Jackson, Andrew, 1767–1845. 2. Presidents—United States—Biography. 3. United States—Politics and government—1829–1837. 4. Jackson, Andrew, 1767–1845—Family. 5. Jackson, Andrew, 1767–1845—Friends and associates. I. Title.

  E382.M43 2008 973.5′6092—dc22 2008023466

  [B]

  www.atrandom.com

  v3.1

  To Mary, Maggie, and Sam

  The darker the night the bolder the lion.

  — THEODORE ROOSEVELT,

  Life-Histories of African Game Animals

  I was born for a storm and a calm does not suit me.

  — ANDREW JACKSON

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  A Note on the Text

  Principal Characters

  Prologue: With the Feelings of a Father

  The White House, Washington, Winter 1832–33

  I: THE LOVE OF COUNTRY, FAME AND HONOR

  Beginnings to Late 1830

  1. Andy Will Fight His Way in the World

  2. Follow Me and I’ll Save You Yet

  3. A Marriage, a Defeat, and a Victory

  4. You Know Best, My Dear

  5. Ladies’ Wars Are Always Fierce and Hot

  6. A Busybody Presbyterian Clergyman

  7. My White and Red Children

  8. Major Eaton Has Spoken of Resigning

  9. An Opinion of the President Alone

  10. Liberty and Union, Now and Forever

  11. General Jackson Rules by His Personal Popularity

  II: I WILL DIE WITH THE UNION

  Late 1830 to 1834

  12. I Have Been Left to Sup Alone

  13. A Mean and Scurvy Piece of Business

  14. Now Let Him Enforce It

  15. The Fury of a Chained Panther

  16. Hurra for the Hickory Tree!

  17. A Dreadful Crisis of Excitement and Violence

  18. The Mad Project of Disunion

  19. We Are Threatened to Have Our Throats Cut

  20. Great Is the Stake Placed in Our Hands

  21. My Mind Is Made Up

  22. He Appeared to Feel as a Father

  23. The People, Sir, Are with Me

  24. We Are in the Midst of a Revolution

  III: THE EVENING OF HIS DAYS

  1834 to the End

  25. So You Want War

  26. A Dark, Lawless, and Insatiable Ambition!

  27. There Is a Rank Due to the United States Among Nations

  28. The Wretched Victim of a Dreadful Delusion

  29. How Would You Like to Be a Slave?

  30. The Strife About the Next Presidency

  31. Not One Would Have Ever Got Out Alive

  32. I Fear Emily Will Not Recover

  33. The President Will Go Out Triumphantly

  34. The Shock Is Great, and Grief Universal

  Epilogue: He Still Lives

  Author’s Note and Acknowledgments

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Illustration Credits

  About the Author

  A NOTE ON THE TEXT

  In the interest of clarity, I have often taken the liberty of modernizing the (distractingly erratic) spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure in primary sources from Jackson’s era. On some occasions I have let the Ur-formulation stand to give readers a sense of the texture and style of correspondence in those years. In any event, the source for every quotation in this book is cited in the Notes. In no case has an edit altered the writer’s intention or meaning.

  PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

  John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) sixth president of the United States, he served as a congressman from Massachusetts from 1831 until his death

  Louisa Catherine Adams (1775–1852) wife of John Quincy Adams and a shrewd observer of Washington politics

  Thomas Hart Benton (1782–1858) onetime aide-de-camp to General Jackson, he later brawled with Jackson; in 1821 he was elected senator from Missouri, and was a Jackson ally on Capitol Hill during the White House years

  Nicholas Biddle (1786–1844) president of the Second Bank of the United States

  Francis Preston Blair (1791–1876) founding editor of the pro-Jackson Washington Globe and Jackson adviser

  John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) vice president of the United States under Adams and Jackson, senator from South Carolina during Jackson’s second term

  Henry Clay (1777–1852) Kentucky congressman and senator, secretary of state under John Quincy Adams, Jackson’s 1832 National Republican opponent for president

  John Coffee (1772–1833) Tennessee planter, military officer, and Jackson confidant

  Andrew Jackson Donelson (1799–1871) nephew of Rachel and Andrew Jackson, private secretary to President Jackson, husband of Emily Tennessee Donelson

  Emily Tennessee Donelson (1807–1836) niece of Rachel and Andrew Jackson, official White House hostess, wife of Andrew Jackson Donelson

  Mary Eastin (1810–1847) friend and cousin of Emily Donelson’s and member of Jackson’s White House circle; married Lucius Polk in the White House in 1832

  John Henry Eaton (1790–1856) Tennessee senator, Jackson adviser, secretary of war

  Margaret O’Neale Timberlake Eaton (1799–1879) widow of John Timberlake of the U.S. Navy and wife of John Henry Eaton

  Jeremiah Evarts (1781–1831) corresponding secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, author of the “William Penn” essays opposing Indian removal

  Theodore Frelinghuysen (1787–1862) New Jersey senator, defender of the rights of the Indians

  Andrew Jackson (1767–1845) seventh president of the United States

  Rachel Donelson Robards Jackson (1767–1828) wife of Andrew Jackson

  Amos Kendall (1789–1869) Kentucky editor, Jackson adviser, Democratic strategist, postmaster general

  William B. Lewis (1784–1866) second auditor of the Treasury, Jackson adviser

  Edward Livingston (1764–1836) lawyer, Louisiana congressman, senator, secretary of state, minister to France, and Jackson friend

  John Marshall (1755–1835) chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1801 until his death thirty-four years later

  Joel R. Poinsett (1779–1851) world traveler, congressman, physician, botanist, and crucial Jackson ally in the nullification crisis with South Carolina in 1832–33

  Roger B. Taney (1777–1864) attorney general, secretary of the Treasury, chief justice of the U.S. after John Marshall

  Martin Van Buren (1782–1862) governor of New York, secretary of state, vice president after Calhoun, and eighth president of the United States

  Daniel Webster (1782–1852) lawyer, congressman, and senator from Massachusetts; a supporter of Jackson’s on the question of the Union, Webster opposed the pr
esident on almost everything else

  PROLOGUE: WITH THE FEELINGS OF A FATHER

  The White House, Washington, Winter 1832–33

  IT LOOKED LIKE war. In his rooms on the second floor of the White House, in the flickering light of candles and oil lamps, President Andrew Jackson was furious and full of fight. He had just been reelected to a second term as America’s seventh president, and South Carolina was defying him. He hated it, for he believed to his core that the state was about to destroy the nation. For Jackson, the crisis was not only political. It was personal. Four hundred and fifty miles down the Atlantic seaboard from Washington, in Charleston, radicals were raising an army to defend South Carolina’s right to nullify federal laws it chose not to accept—the first step, Jackson believed, toward secession, and the destruction of the Union. “I expect soon to hear that a civil war of extermination has commenced,” Jackson said, musing about arresting the Southern leaders and then hanging them.

  Gaunt but striking, with a formidable head of white hair, a nearly constant cough, a bullet lodged in his chest, Jackson, sixty-five years old that winter, stood six foot one and weighed 140 pounds. Over a midday glass of whiskey in the White House with an old friend, Jackson pounded a table as he pondered the crisis: “By the God of Heaven, I will uphold the laws.” Week after week, he threatened to field a formidable force, and he knew who should lead them. “When everything is ready, I shall join them myself,” Jackson said.

  At Boston’s Faneuil Hall, Daniel Webster, the great Massachusetts senator, rallied to the president’s defense, denouncing South Carolina’s defiance in epic terms: “It is nothing more nor less than resistance by force—it is disunion by force—it is secession by force—it is Civil War!” The danger was real, for there was nothing foreordained about the future of American democracy in the Jackson years. The nation itself, dating from the Declaration of Independence, was barely half a century old. Now, as Jackson began his fifth year in the White House, the United States might collapse into fratricidal conflict, and foreign powers—always a threat—watched with anticipation. In a private letter in the winter of 1833, Richard Wellesley, the Marquis Wellesley and elder brother of the Duke of Wellington, hoped for “the dissolution of the American confederacy, which I think would be a great benefit to the civilized world.”

  Dispatching troops and a warship, the Natchez, to Charleston, Jackson, the general whose steadfastness in adversity and against the British in the War of 1812 had earned him the nicknames “Old Hickory” and “the Old Hero,” was determined to keep America together. He loved the Union with a consuming devotion. In the radicals’ camp, Robert Woodward Barnwell, a South Carolina congressman, passed along reports that Jackson was set on war if the state defied him. “Nothing but blood will satisfy the old scoundrel,” Barnwell said. Jackson’s own vice president, John C. Calhoun, had resigned and taken up South Carolina’s cause. Though the immediate issue was money—South Carolina felt oppressed by federal tariffs, which it wanted to lower—the real question, everyone knew, was about power, and ultimately about slavery. If Jackson won the showdown, then Washington would be stronger and the South weaker, and a stronger Washington meant a greater threat to the future of what Calhoun called “the peculiar domestic institution of the Southern states.”

  Watching the crisis grow, Webster said, “I am prepared any day to hear that matters have come to blows in Charleston.” It was rumored that excited radicals in South Carolina were buying medals emblazoned “John C. Calhoun, First President of the Southern Confederacy,” and readers of the Columbia Telescope in the state capital considered this fiery plea: “The present is not a time for cold temporizing policy.… THIS UNION MUST BE DISSOLVED.”

  To save the country required strength, subtlety, and a sure sense of what the broader American public wanted. “I will meet all things with deliberate firmness and forbearance,” Jackson said, “but woe to those nullifiers who shed the first blood.” He would be patient, but he would do what it took. His blend of solicitude and sanction reflected his view that politics was at once clinical and human, driven by both principles and passions that he had to master and harness for the good of the whole. As president, Jackson believed he bore the duties of a father who alone carried the responsibility for protecting the nation.

  Jackson valued two things in life above all others: his country and his family. He saw little distinction between the two, and his instinct to fight and to defend both—to be a father twice over—drove him from his obscure birth in the Carolinas to the pinnacle of power.

  Orphaned at fourteen, Jackson never knew his own father, who died the year he was born. “I have been Tossed upon the waves of fortune,” Jackson once said, and he spent his life seeking order amid chaos and authority among men. The Revolutionary War had claimed the lives of his mother and his brothers. Suffering those losses at such a young age, Jackson saw his life and the life of the country as one. America, he once said, was “one great family.” In a draft of his second inaugural address in 1833, he wrote, “I feel in the depths of my soul, that it is the highest, most sacred and most irreversible part of my obligation, to preserve the union of these states, although it may cost me my life.”

  The nation, then, played a decisive role in his emotional universe. Jackson carried an image of the Union around in his head, a vision of the United States and its people as an extension of his own clan in which he was alternately father and son. From childhood, Jackson was in search of a structure into which he could fit, find reassurance and stability, and come to control. In the midst of the crisis with South Carolina in the winter of 1832–33, in a draft of his proclamation on nullification to the people of that state, Jackson wrote, “I call upon you in the language of truth, and with the feelings of a Father to retrace your steps.”

  With the feelings of a father. Jackson’s familial vision had intriguing implications for the life of the nation. For General Jackson, it meant that in battle he was fighting not for a distant cause but for the survival of his own kin. For President Jackson, it meant that there was little difference between the personal and the political. His was a White House roiled by intrigue, war, and sexual scandal, and it left a permanent mark on the nation. This book is not a history of the Age of Jackson but a portrait of the man and of his complex relationships with the intimate circle that surrounded him as he transformed the presidency. The story of Jackson’s life and of his White House years is of his long, unrelenting war to keep his family and his country safe—a long, unrelenting war that helped shape the way we live now.

  ONE OF AMERICA’S most important and most controversial presidents, Andrew Jackson is also one of our least understood. Recalled mainly as the scourge of the Indians or as the hero of the 1815 Battle of New Orleans, he is only dimly remembered in the popular imagination, too far out of mind to be instructive or intriguing.

  Yet of the great early presidents and Founders, Andrew Jackson is in many ways the most like us. In the saga of the Jackson presidency, one marked by both democratic triumphs and racist tragedies, we can see the American character in formation and in action. To understand him and his time helps us to understand America’s perennially competing impulses. Jackson’s life and work—and the nation he protected and preserved—were shaped by the struggle between grace and rage, generosity and violence, justice and cruelty.

  A source of inspiration to Lincoln on the eve of the Civil War, revered by Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, and hailed by Harry Truman as one of the four greatest presidents—along with Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln—Jackson expanded the powers of the presidency in ways that none of his six predecessors had. He was the first president to come from the common people, not from an educated elite, and he never ceased to see himself as their champion. He was the first to build what we would recognize as a political party. He was the first to maintain a large circle of private advisers—what was called his Kitchen Cabinet—to help make policy. And he was the first to insist on the deference he thought due the c
hief executive as the only official elected by all the people. It was a distinction he believed made the White House, not Capitol Hill, the center of national power and national action.

  The country that Jackson presided over from 1829 to 1837 was smaller than one might think, surrounded by once and possibly future foreign foes. There were twenty-four states in 1828. Arkansas and Michigan would be admitted late in Jackson’s presidency, with Florida coming in just before his death in 1845 and Texas not long after. The British had the nation hemmed in to the north, in Canada; Britain and Russia had claims to the Pacific Northwest. The Gulf of Mexico worried Jackson as an invasion route for a foreign power.

  Beyond the physical threats, Jackson saw more oblique but no less dangerous perils. Before Jackson, power tended toward the elites, whether political or financial. After Jackson, power was more diffuse, and government, for better and for worse, was more attuned to the popular will. He may not have consciously set out to leave such a legacy, but he made the case for democratic innovation and popular engagement in politics at a time when many in Washington would have preferred that the people play the role they were assigned at Philadelphia in the summer of 1787: as voters who cast their ballots and then allowed intermediary institutions—from the state legislatures that elected U.S. senators to the Electoral College, which chose presidents—to make the real decisions. Jackson wanted to give the people a more dramatic part to play, and he rewrote the script of public life to give them one.

  It would be both glib and wrong to say that the Age of Jackson is a mirror of our own time. The cultural, political, moral, and intellectual universe Jackson inhabited has to be viewed on its own terms. Still, there is much about him and about his America that readers in the early twenty-first century may recognize. His was an age of fascination with politics, patriotism, gossip, and religion; both “My Country, ’Tis of Thee” and “Amazing Grace” took root in the popular culture during Jackson’s presidency. The America of Andrew Jackson was a country that professed a love of democracy but was willing to live with inequality, that aimed for social justice but was prone to racism and intolerance, that believed itself one nation but was narrowly divided and fought close elections, and that occasionally acted arrogantly toward other countries while craving respect from them at the same time.