American POTUS - The Life and Legacy of Andrew Jackson with Dr. Dan Feller

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Transcript

alan-lowe_1_12-12-2024_153210: 0:24

Welcome to American POTUS. I'm your host, Alan Lowe, and I thank you so very much for joining us. I have a very special guest today, my good friend, Dr. Dan Feller. At the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Dan served from 2003 until his retirement in 2020 as a professor in the humanities and as the editor and director of the Papers of Andrew Jackson. While he was there, he oversaw the editing of six volumes of those papers, spanning the years 1829 to 1834. Prior to Knoxville, Dan had taught at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and at Northland College in Wisconsin. has been very widely published, and his books include The Public Lands in Jacksonian Politics and The Jacksonian Promise, 1815 to 1840. Dan also, very importantly, serves on the board of American POTUS. Dan, it's so good to talk with you, my friend. Welcome to American POTUS.

squadcaster-3h9h_1_12-12-2024_153210: 1:17

I am delighted to be here.

alan-lowe_1_12-12-2024_153210: 1:20

I, you know, I've been a big fan of yours for many years now. I won't say how many years, but I remember you gave me the Jacksonian promise when I was director of the Howard Bakerson. And I looked at it today and your inscription says memorize every word. tried to do that, sir. So I love to talk about Andrew Jackson. You certainly already got to talk to let's go right to Uh, where he became a, national hero, a national name, his military successes in the War of 1812, the First Seminole War, he became a national hero. What skills did Andrew Jackson have that made him so very successful on the battlefield?

squadcaster-3h9h_1_12-12-2024_153210: 2:00

That's a good question. And you're going to hear me say that a lot. A good question is professor speak for, I don't have a simple answer. There is no simple answer, but with Jackson, nothing is simple. And it's a good question partly because it's not entirely clear what the answer is. There are some historians who would say he was just lucky. Jackson was unique or at least unusual among military, commanders, among celebrated commanders. He had no formal military training at all. He actually had. As a formal soldier and almost no experience at all, lowest formal rank he ever held in the army was general. So now

alan-lowe_1_12-12-2024_153210: 2:49

started high up. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah.

squadcaster-3h9h_1_12-12-2024_153210: 2:51

we did have experience, uh, as, as an irregular, kind of an errand boy during the American revolution. And then he was involved in various semi organized Uh, expeditions against the Indians, but he did not distinguish himself as say Winfield Scott did with success at various, ranks. So exactly why Jackson was so successful is not readily necessarily apparent. Uh, on the other hand, there is the fact, and it's in, in, uh, Inescapable fact that he kept winning as a general. He was always successful. And it's not like all American generals kept winning during the war of 1812. Jackson kept winning when most of the other generals kept losing. So I think there's some things that you can hypothesize about Jackson. He was very energetic. He was always decisive. Uh, he was not racked by indecision, nor as Abraham Lincoln said of George McClellan, he never had the slows. Uh, he was well attuned to questions of logistics and supply, and those mattered a lot. in the, the battles that Jackson was fighting, because he was fighting really beyond, the settled parts of the country where you could count on getting supplies. He was a strict disciplinarian, and you might ask, so what? One could suggest, I have suggested, that he falls into a, a group of people, George Patton is another one, Stonewall Jackson is another, who were notably successful battlefield commanders and inspiring leaders, men whom they're, troops trusted implicitly, perhaps despite or perhaps because of the fact that all three of those were, strident, you might even say vicious, uh, disciplinarians. Uh, for whatever reason, Jackson's troops did what he told them to, and the record kind of speaks for itself.

alan-lowe_1_12-12-2024_153210: 4:56

It's hard to argue with that success for sure. Uh, so he, he makes a national name for himself, sometimes controversially, and certainly one of the controversial topics that will always come up today with Andrew Jackson is the issue of slavery. Emerging as a significant point of contention in early America, one that we now know with hindsight will indeed lead to civil war. a slaveholder, was Jackson among those who said he hated the institution but didn't know how to do away with it, or was he among those trying to justify that institution?

squadcaster-3h9h_1_12-12-2024_153210: 5:29

answer to that one is neither, which actually makes him almost unique among politicians of his day, among. Southern politicians, there were quite a few in the Jeffersonian tradition, and this includes not only Jefferson, but James Madison, George Washington, uh, later Henry Clay, men who were slaveholders, but who were at least publicly apologetic about it, who's Public position, at least, was we are slaveholders, but we would prefer to live in a world where we weren't. On the other, at the other end, you have overtly pro slavery politicians, most notably John C. Calhoun, who devised an entire social theory based upon the idea that slavery or something like slavery is what holds the world together. Calhoun pretty much said if slavery didn't already exist, we ought to create it. It's the basis for a sound society. Jackson, to my thinking, almost alone, and I only say almost because I'm, there may be somebody I'm not thinking of, never took either position. As a matter of fact, I cannot find any evidence that he ever thought about the, the abstract right or wrong about slavery at all. Which is highly unusual at the time. First Jackson, as we know, is not much of an abstract thinker anyway. Uh, he certainly opposed any efforts to upset the system, but he didn't oppose those on the grounds that anti slavery is evil, uh, because slavery is the basis of a sound society, which was Calhoun's. Instead he opposed, Abolitionist agitation just as he opposed pro slavery agitation on the grounds that it disrupted the Union and also disrupted his own political party. Jackson just took slavery as he found it. He certainly never felt guilty about it. He, uh, Was a slaveholder, he acquired slaves, bought slaves, sold slaves, grew rich partly off the labor of slaves, held a rather typical, somewhat, you might say affectionate, but condescending attitude toward his own slaves. He certainly believed in, the efficacy and the necessity of discipline, which means whipping, on his own plantations. So there's really nothing distinctive about Jackson as a slaveholder. Uh, the one thing for a national politician that's distinctive about it is that he just never seemed to have considered the right or wrong of slavery at all. He took it as he found it.

alan-lowe_1_12-12-2024_153210: 8:23

So within that ferment, which Jackson was not part of, the background of the growing abolitionist movement, That was of, connected to, this religious fervor, often called the Second Great Awakening. You talk about this in the Jacksonian Promise. A big, a big movement in America. Was, was Jackson himself a religious man?

squadcaster-3h9h_1_12-12-2024_153210: 8:47

Yes, though, of course, we always have to say he was religious by his lights.

alan-lowe_1_12-12-2024_153210: 8:53

Hmm.

squadcaster-3h9h_1_12-12-2024_153210: 8:54

He considered himself a committed Christian, whether you consider him a committed Christian is up for each of us to judge by our own standards. But yes, he was a religious man. It did not show up very overtly in his early life. He was, you might say, a conventional Christian. Rachel, his wife, was a deeply committed Christian, Presbyterian. And Jackson, partly at least at first, I think in remembrance of Rachel or in honor of Rachel, uh, but became more and more as he grew older, a serious Christian practitioner, uh, as president, he hauled himself out no matter the weather on Sundays to attend sermon. Uh, he, Paid pew rent and regularly attended and not one, but during much of his presidency to churches in Washington, he hung around a lot with clergymen. He read devotional literature. He quoted scripture, not always entirely accurately, uh, quoted it very freely. And one thing we may talk about later. He wound up infusing one of the great political struggles, of his administration, the bank war. with a religious and nearly apocalyptic significance. He did not himself join the church until he was an old man. And it was the Presbyterian church. I should say, the great awakening involved a lot of, uh, explorations of new methods of religious expression. And Jackson didn't really have anything to do with those. He was a traditional Protestant Christian. You know, you weren't going to find him at a camp meeting. Uh,

alan-lowe_1_12-12-2024_153210: 10:51

Did, did those, did those new movements support him politically? Did that benefit him? That growing movement of, of religion? new types of religions. I know my, uh, Disciples of Christ Christian Church was developed at this time, the Cain Ridge Meeting House in Kentucky. That's where that originated. Did they support by and large Andrew Jackson?

squadcaster-3h9h_1_12-12-2024_153210: 11:12

that's a complicated question. I would say overtly no. And you could even say, they overtly opposed Jackson. I'm not talking about the Campbellites here, the disciples, but many of the, uh, evangelically. Reform driven, Christian groups who believe not only in in a, uh, highly emotional, highly personal, form of Christianity, but also in using their faith to transform society. Uh, and, and that include, for instance, the Temperance Crusade, which Jackson actually lent some, support to, but also the Abolition Crusade, the Women's Rights Crusade. Jackson didn't have anything, obviously, to do with any of those. Now, some historians have suggested, as you may know, that the democratizing spirit of the Great Awakening had much in common with the democratizing spirit in politics, that both of them were kind of undergirded by a relatively novel idea that everybody ought to decide for themselves. And that my opinion, both on what the Bible says and what it tells me to do and on, what, uh, Correct. Public policy is, is as good as yours. And you could say that Jackson was certainly the beneficiary of that kind of democratic, equalizing leveling spirit. That some people may have found, restorationist Christianity and what they regarded as a restorationist Jacksonian politics as being part of the same enterprise. But I don't think you'd be surprised. find formal groups expressing support for Jackson on that grounds?

alan-lowe_1_12-12-2024_153210: 13:01

I see. I see. So I want to get to that Jackson administration where you see this work toward democracy, this leveling. But first we have to get through the very controversial election of 1824. And I will tell you as a Kentuckian, that's a very sensitive topic to me with Henry Clay. So, what is your opinion? Was the 1824 election stolen by John Quincy Adams through a corrupt bargain with Henry Clay?

squadcaster-3h9h_1_12-12-2024_153210: 13:27

Well, the simple answer to that, I would say is no. Some historians would say that there was a bargain, whether or not it was corrupt. Uh, I think there was an understanding though, not the same understanding that you usually read about in the textbooks. But the idea that it was stolen really, what was a convenient, Jacksonian rhetorical point. It's not even clear now that this is a little bit revisionist. The way the story usually goes is that Jackson won the popular vote and he won the electoral vote, but the election was taken from him. First, he didn't win the popular vote. He led in the popular vote. He got well under 50%. Uh, and that was true in the electoral vote also. Now, you might think, okay, well, the guy who leads in the popular and electoral vote has some kind of moral right to win, even if he hasn't won. Amassed the number of votes that give him a legal right to win, as has been pointed out, the popular vote in 1824 is about as close to meaningless as a national popular vote can get the turnout from one state to another varied wildly. There were four candidates in the race. There were only a handful of states in which you could even choose between electoral tickets for the four candidates. In most states, there were only two or three electoral tickets that you could choose from. So, If, for instance, you vote for an electoral ticket, and this happened in some states, that has pledged to support either Adams or Jackson, which one did you vote for? But the biggest hole in it all, there were 24 states in the union. Six of them didn't have any popular vote at all. Five of those were pretty small states, and the sixth one was New York, which is by far the largest state in the union. There was no popular vote there at all. If you want to take a guess at what the popular vote might have been, it's quite possible. Now, this is a hypothetical argument. It's a, if pigs fly argument, based on the fact that John Quincy Adams was, uh, the apparent choice in New York and that Andrew Jackson in 24 had no Organization and almost no support there at all. Uh, if you hypothesize what the popular vote might've been in New York, uh, Adams might well have carried it by such a large margin that Adams instead of Jackson would have won the national popular vote.

alan-lowe_1_12-12-2024_153210: 16:07

So, so Van, Van Burem wasn't an ally yet of

squadcaster-3h9h_1_12-12-2024_153210: 16:11

But no,

alan-lowe_1_12-12-2024_153210: 16:11

in New

squadcaster-3h9h_1_12-12-2024_153210: 16:11

Van Buren was an ally of the third guy who nobody remembers anymore, William Harris Crawford of Georgia, who both Adams and Jackson were actually leagued against, which is why you could run Adams and Jackson fusion tickets in some states. So, and even Jackson didn't think that there was anything. Nefarious going on in Adams, possibly looking forward, surpassing him, in the House of Representatives. What got him was not that Adams, was elected president, but that it was Henry Clay. Because during the campaign, Henry Clay and Adams, uh, using surrogates on Adams part had, I'm sorry, on Clay's part, had really gone after each other. And the idea that Henry Clay would support Adams seemed so outlantish that you think there's got to be a deal here. Now, I should say from Clay's point of view and Adams point of view, what happened is, as you may know, Clay announced before the vote in the House of Representatives that he was going to support Adams, that he was going to do everything he could to encourage others to support Adams. And Adams then appointed, after winning the election, Adams appointed him Secretary of State. If you break apart those two things, treat them not as part of some deal, but just as two separate decisions sequentially. Henry Clay had perfectly good reasons. compelling reasons for supporting Adams, which were exactly the reasons that he had announced publicly. And once Adams was president, he had perfectly good reasons to appoint Henry Clay. In fact, Henry Clay was so obvious a choice for secretary of state that it would have been weird If Adams hadn't appointed him. Clay had wanted to be Secretary of State for a long time. He had hoped James Monroe would appoint him back in 1816. He had a good record as a diplomat. So, simple answer, no, there was no corrupt bargain. There didn't need to be a corrupt bargain. Both Adams and Clay had perfectly good reasons for doing what they were doing. At the same time, to someone outside that circle. Like Andrew Jackson, the whole thing looked rigged.

alan-lowe_1_12-12-2024_153210: 18:36

Yeah. I like to hear you say that, Dan Feller, because again, I'm a good Kentuckian. Going to Ashland this holiday season, the great Henry Clay home up there. So I love hearing that perspective. Now you mentioned you, you started to talk a bit about this earlier, I do believe when Jackson does become president, one of his big campaigns is against the second bank Of the United States. Why was he so opposed to that bank that he ultimately destroyed?

squadcaster-3h9h_1_12-12-2024_153210: 19:03

Well, part of it you can trace back to the fact that opposition to the previous Bank of the United States, there were two, had been a founding principle of the Jeffersonian, so called Democratic Republican Party. Jefferson and his ally, James Madison, way back in the George Washington administration. Had really defined themselves as opponents to George Washington's administration over Alexander Hamilton's Secretary Treasury plan for a Bank of the United States. So Jackson, even though he did not act like a. Old style Jeffersonian throughout the 1820s. As president reverted more and more back to what he regarded and Jeffersonians regarded as the true Jeffersonian faith and opposition to the bank of the United States was a, a core element in that. But I'd say there was more to it than that. And unfortunately, this is not a simple question. The bank of the United States was immensely powerful. And it's easy to lose sight of how powerful it was. It was by far the largest, financial entity in the country. Indeed, it was the only national financial entity in the country. It had branches all over everywhere. It had a capitalization that dwarfed that of anything else in the country. Financially, it was more important than the federal government, and to a large extent, it actually governed the government. It printed the government's money. It handled the government's loans. It moved the government's money back and forth. These are things that the United States Treasury does today, some of them, and some of them are done by the Federal Reserve. Well, at that time, the Bank of the United States did all of them. The Treasury Department was a handful of clerks in Washington and customs officers and land officers spread throughout the country. There was no financial apparatus spreading the country in the Treasury Department. So The key point here is that with all this, the Bank of the United States, despite all this, and it had these powers according to its charter, and these are the words of the charter, it had exclusive privileges and benefits, exclusive privileges and benefits. It was, and it is, an incorporated private bank. It had stockholders. It paid dividends. It had a board of directors, five of whom were appointed by the president of the United States, and the other 20 were elected by the stockholders. And it ran the country's finances. Now, if you can imagine a financial institution that, that wields all the powers of government, And is run by private people, rather nakedly to their own benefit. The question that Jackson posed, and he posed it rather starkly, is who governs this country? Do the people of the country govern the country through their duly elected government? Or does the Bank of the United States govern the country? And he thought that kind of power in a republic was illegitimate and dangerous. Not only a threat to people's financial well being, because the bank could, and sometimes did, act capriciously and unlawfully, but a threat to republicanism itself.

alan-lowe_1_12-12-2024_153210: 22:47

Well, I will say Dan, I've never heard it more clearly stated than that It makes so much more sense to me now, of course though when he leaves office and the bank is gone. are some real issues that result from that, right?

squadcaster-3h9h_1_12-12-2024_153210: 23:00

Yes, and Jackson's, you might say, problem was, if you are going to disentangle, and in fact completely de sever, the workings of government from the Bank of the United States, but you still have things that need to be done. The federal government literally needs somewhere to put its money and, and it needs somebody to move its money around and it needs somebody to print its money. And if you're going to destroy the bank of the United States, what are you going to replace it with? And Jackson's answer, not because it was, you might say, the correct answer, but because there was no other existing answer, was state chartered banks, uh, who proved to be not always trustworthy custodians, of the government's money.

alan-lowe_1_12-12-2024_153210: 23:57

Well, for a military man, we're going to talk a lot about economics here because now I'm going to turn to tariffs, another big topic during the Jackson administration and a growing source of sectional discord. Why was so controversial the tariff and how did Jackson view it?

squadcaster-3h9h_1_12-12-2024_153210: 24:16

It was controversial and there were a couple of other issues that were linked to it. There was kind of a triad of economic development issues. One of them was the tariff, which is a tax on imported goods. And the part of it that was really controversial was the tax on manufactured goods. especially imported from Great Britain. Uh, the second issue was so called internal improvements, and that was whether the federal government should fund and perhaps plan a national transportation system, what today we would call infrastructure, roads and canals, a little bit later on railroads, but at this time just roads and canals. And the third issue was public lands. The federal government had this massive public domain in the West. What ought it to do with it? Should the lands be given away to settlers? Should they be sold, uh, to raise a revenue? Should they be doled out as kind of subsidies to roads and canals? And those issues all intersected each other. Jackson's position on this, you have to say when, because Jackson's position on these issues actually changed, during his administration. Jackson came into office as a definite supporter of a protective tariff, and really that stemmed from his years as a military man. I should say underneath this all, Jackson was a nationalist. Uh, and if we're talking about first principles, Jackson's first principle was a fervent, I would say religious, familial, devotion to the federal union. He revered the federal union. And so he tended to view economic issues in terms of what is best for the union. Now, if this sounds high minded, I'll own it and say, thinking in that view and in Jackson's part, we gave him a little bit of distance from issues that some other politicians didn't have. Jackson, from his experiences, a military man had, had thought and said, we need better transportation and, and I'm quoting him now, we need to be more Americanized. Meaning we have to be more self reliant, for producing goods, including, implements of war, and in our ability to move things around the country. And so throughout the late 18 teens and 1820s, Jackson was a supporter of a tariff on those nationalist grounds. And he continued in the first couple of years as president to support the tariff on those grounds. Now, I should say the tariff was becoming in the 1820s a sectional issue, with the growth of manufacturers in the northeastern part of the country, many of the manufacturers fledgling manufacturers in competition with Britain, and Britain had the advantages of it. More capital, American manufacturing was always scrounging for capital, uh, more capital, more advanced technology, and cheap labor. So how as an American are you going to compete? Well, the only way you're going to compete is if you get an assist from government in the form of tariff. On the other hand, down in, the southern, the cotton planting states especially, and these were states that, especially South Carolina, North Carolina, were kind of in the economic doldrums of the 1820s, and as they saw it, the tariff was something that was subsidizing, the North at the expense of themselves. Ostensibly, the tariff is a tax. What Southerners, John C. Calhoun most prominently saw it as, was really a subsidy to the North, and you can sneak the words anti slavery North in there, at the expense of the South.

alan-lowe_1_12-12-2024_153210: 28:17

Mm

squadcaster-3h9h_1_12-12-2024_153210: 28:18

of a gigantic Northern scheme, first to impoverish us, and then to overthrow our society. And so some southerners regarded the tariff as an existential issue. Jackson supported the tariff in a limited way, his first couple of years as president, and then he backed off from that. Partly because the South Carolinians were getting ready to, uh, to nullify the tariff and force a confrontation. And Jackson thought, well, if I drop my advocacy or my support for a tariff I'll cut the ground out from under them. And he said that very explicitly, though, of course not publicly. Uh, but the other thing was that Jackson. Was coming to the view that the tariff both in northern, insistence upon it and in southern denunciation of it. Both sides were really overplaying it. Uh, and I think modern economists would tend to agree with him that the tariff was neither as Destructive to southern interests, nor as necessary, to northern manufacturing, as both sides were making it out at the time. Jackson pretty much, by the end of his administration, was saying this. And as he saw it, the sectional divisiveness, the threats to the Union that it was created, just weren't worth it.

alan-lowe_1_12-12-2024_153210: 29:47

Well, so, so interesting as just about everything about Andrew Jackson is, but when we talk about Andrew Jackson today, usually what you hear is a lot of criticism of his policies toward Native Americans. It's a topic we obviously need to talk about today. Uh, what defined his approach to the Native Americans and why did he pursue that policy now that's so criticized a relocation of, them to the Western lands?

squadcaster-3h9h_1_12-12-2024_153210: 30:14

Relocation is a politic term. Uh, and even the term that was used at the time, removal, was Something of a euphemism. This is a complicated question. And that's the first thing I, I should say about it. I don't think that one can simply say that Andrew Jackson grew up hating Indians as a frontiersman, and so of course he just wanted to kill them all or shove them out of the way, drawing upon his makeup as a frontiersman. In fact, Jackson did not grow up, fighting Indians. The people he really grew up fighting and hating were the British, though we did do some Indian fighting, did quite a lot of Indian fighting once he was a grown man. Jackson shared some suppositions, which were more widespread among the American white population than we would like to admit, and I'm suggesting a little bit that putting this off on Jackson, not that we shouldn't put it off on him, but it's easy to demonize one person and say it's all his fault. White Americans generally. Uh, viewed Indians as being less civilized, perhaps, though this was always kind of an open question, less capable of civilization, as they defined it, and viewed the replacement of Indian nations by white American civilization as progress.

alan-lowe_1_12-12-2024_153210: 31:52

Mm hmm.

squadcaster-3h9h_1_12-12-2024_153210: 31:53

And Jackson was not alone in thinking that. So the question is, what do you do with the Indians? Well, American policy long before Jackson had been kind of, uh inherently self contradictory. You even move them out of the way, which you can justify as being good for them as well as good for us. Uh, or else you try to absorb them in. Thomas Jefferson's famous idea that we'll intermarry till Indians as a separate group of people cease to exist. Jackson. imbibed all those we might say, uh, culturally derogatory ideas.

alan-lowe_1_12-12-2024_153210: 32:28

hmm. Mm hmm. Mm

squadcaster-3h9h_1_12-12-2024_153210: 32:31

He also felt, and here perhaps his own background did have something to do with this, uh, he felt the grievance of Southern whites who wanted land that Indians had and of Southern state governments, that wanted control over their own, territory, their own domain, more than he did, of Indians. So Jackson's solution, was to get the Indians out of the way. He managed to justify it by saying that it will be there to their own benefit. As a matter of fact, he said to the Indians themselves, move to the West. Uh, there you won't be under the jurisdiction of any state government. The land will be yours forever. He even used those phrases that we always thought came out of a B movie about, uh, it will be yours as long as the grass shall grow in the river shall run. Did he really believe that? Uh, hard to say. And part of the problem in evaluating Jackson is, as we now know, removal, so called, of the Indians westward, in the long range of things just looks like another step in the long term process of not only removing them, but confining them and ultimately dissolving their future. own societies. Did Jackson anticipate that? You know, did he, to put it bluntly, did he know he was lying when he said it'll be yours forever? Who can say? The idea of the policy of removing the Indians for their own benefit, supposedly, certainly for our benefit, and doing it through a legal process by treaty and offering them all kinds of inducements and benefits and annuities and help in getting themselves established in, a new Western locale that had been federal policy before Jackson, uh, James Monroe announced back in 1824 that not only was this federal policy, it had always been federal policy, and it would remain federal policy because it was good for the Indians themselves. The question is, what if the Indians don't want to move? And here is where Jackson differed from his predecessors, firmly convinced, and I am not saying this in praise, of the rectitude of his own intentions and of the benefit of his own policies. Jackson's attitude toward Indians who would not accept the terms he was offering them. was, well, if they don't know what's good for them, I do. And if I have to bribe them, if I have to browbeat them, if I have to double cross them, if I have to cultivate what amounts to an overthrow of their own governments to get people in them who will sign the things that I want them to sign, I'll do it. And he did all of those things.

alan-lowe_1_12-12-2024_153210: 35:47

So we've talked a bit about some of the controversial topics surrounding Jackson issue of slavery and certainly Native Americans, but it's not called the age of Jackson for nothing. You know, uh, you talk about the Jacksonian revolution. You say he single handedly reordered the political landscape. So. What, what actions define that revolution and what is their legacy today in our political system?

squadcaster-3h9h_1_12-12-2024_153210: 36:12

Wait, did I say that?

alan-lowe_1_12-12-2024_153210: 36:15

Me to memorize every word, Dan, and I did.

squadcaster-3h9h_1_12-12-2024_153210: 36:18

Uh, first look at that, look at things in 1828 1828, uh, the presidential campaign was Jackson against Adams. And though historians have been sloppy about this, it wasn't national Republicans against Democrats. It was Jackson against Adams, or it was. The Adams people called themselves administration, the Jackson people called them the coalition against the Jacksonians. By 1836, we're on the edge of it being Democrats against Whigs, uh, so Jackson took his own personal following because that's what it was in 1828. and reshaped it into a national political party, which it definitely was by 1836. And in response to that, his various opponents, including a lot of former Jacksonians, there were a lot of people who were for Jackson in 1828, weren't for him anymore. Uh, Jackson not only defined a policy and a party and a really a political ethos for himself and doing that he drove out a lot of people, and by 1836, they were in the process of coagulating themselves into an opposition political party. And so you might say the two party system as we have it today is Jackson's legacy. The Democratic Party, of course, is still there. It's changed a lot. It's still there. Uh, it still likes to regard itself as the party of the true popular majority against what the Jacksonians called the aristocracy, against what Arthur Schlesinger and Franklin Roosevelt called business classes. or the malefactors of great wealth. There's a long legacy there for the Democratic Party. And then the Whig Party, obviously as a party didn't last, but the idea of a opposition party to the Democrats, there's always been a brief period of muddle in the 1850s. But aside from that, there's always been the Democrats and one other political party. And there's some continuity in there too. Of course, the man who, We think of a, as the Andrew Jackson of the Democratic Party, that's Abraham Lincoln grew up as a wig, uh, in fact cut his political teeth in Illinois fighting Jacksonian Democrats. So the the two party system, you could say was a legacy of Jackson's administration. Many of the policies, specific policies of the Democratic Party that Jackson inaugurated, can readily be traced. Through the Civil War, down to William Jennings Bryan, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson. Being a historian, I regard everything since Lyndon Johnson as current events, so I won't go further than that.

alan-lowe_1_12-12-2024_153210: 39:35

Very good. Very good. So let

squadcaster-3h9h_1_12-12-2024_153210: 39:37

and, uh, there are some other things as well. Uh, Jackson changed the relationship between the President and the people. And this was partly stylistic and partly substantive. If you read Jackson's presidential messages. They were meant for popular consumption. They were his annual message, what today we call the State of the Union message, which today is also, you know, it's televised. Jackson's messages weren't televised. By the way, Jackson was a lousy public speaker and avoided Public speaking whenever he could do it and all of his famous messages to Congress, and this was true from actually had been since Jefferson's day were delivered in writing, but they were written for a public eye, his famous message vetoing the recharter of the Bank of the United States. It was sent, as a veto message had to be, to Congress, but it was meant for public consumption. Jackson cultivated a rhetorical style, a political style, uh, that was aimed at mustering support in the hinterlands, not merely convincing Congress. And part of the idea of building a political party, Was so you could connect directly between the president and the people back home and get them to turn up the heat on Congress and particularly on the United States Senate. Jackson warred with the United States Senate almost to the end of his administration. Uh, because senators thought that they were fairly independent. They were elected by state legislatures, not by the people. And, uh, they thought they were elected not to do the bidding of a president, not to do the bidding of a party, uh, but to exercise their own, they wouldn't have said aristocratic, but their own independent judgment. In order to affect his own political agenda, Jackson had to build a grassroots organization, which he did. The irony is that this is a grassroots organization, which Jackson always said, sprung up from the people naturally. Jackson loved to use the phrase, voices fresh from the people, which they were. But of course the people were advised on what they should do, um, that they should get up local meetings and pass resolutions and send them on to the state legislature and send them on to the state party convention and lean on their congressmen and their senators. They were advised all this. from Jackson's White House.

alan-lowe_1_12-12-2024_153210: 42:28

Dan, you begin the Jacksonian promise by assessing America at its 50th birthday, the golden Jubilee, Back in 1826 and now, uh, believe it or not, we're approaching our semi quincentennial in 2026. It feels like the bicentennial since yesterday. Uh, what will America in 2026 share with that America that you talked about at the Jubilee and what will be different? And, and the same kind of question. What will be the same about the presidency and what's changed since that Golden Jubilee?

squadcaster-3h9h_1_12-12-2024_153210: 43:01

Well, in order to preserve my well earned reputation for never being wrong, I am strenuously going to avoid political prognostications, uh,

alan-lowe_1_12-12-2024_153210: 43:14

please.

squadcaster-3h9h_1_12-12-2024_153210: 43:14

where we are in 2026. I will venture to say this, in preparing for this session, you told me you were going to ask that question, and I immediately thought, wow, We are almost at the, is it sesquicentennial,

alan-lowe_1_12-12-2024_153210: 43:32

So quincentennial, I've learned how to say that.

squadcaster-3h9h_1_12-12-2024_153210: 43:35

semi, I'm sorry, I got the wrong one. Yes, and I thought, wow, that's coming up on us, and maybe I've just been living in a cave, but I haven't heard anything about it, which is really kind of startling. Because 250 is a big anniversary. It's a quarter of a millennium. And it reminded me that at the Bicentennial, which I can well remember in the 1970s, there was all sorts of celebration and commemoration. And it started early. I spent a lot of the year 1975 in the Boston area. And as you know, the American Revolution starts in Boston and in and around Boston in 1775 and everybody was involved in this. It was big news and, and books were being published and commemorations were being planned. Uh, so we're only a few months away. From what, four months away now from the 250th anniversary of Bunker Hill. I'm sorry, of Lexington and Concord. Bunker Hill a couple months after that. And while I don't live in Boston now, I think I would have heard If, uh, if those kinds of celebrations were being mustered, uh, now, so far as I know, they're not, I'm sure something will happen, uh, but

alan-lowe_1_12-12-2024_153210: 45:05

I do know. I was just recently in Washington for my day job. the American Museum of Science and Energy, um, we're a Smithsonian affiliate and part of our directors meeting up there was talking about the Smithsonian plans for the 250 so that, you know, there are a whole host of plans kind of percolating right now and we're doing some things, through the museum here as well about American innovation since the founding and so forth. So I think there are those things out there, but you're right. I remember in 1976, I had the full range of bicentennial paraphernalia, uh, cups, mugs, flags. because zoos, whatever with the bicentennial logo on it. So I imagine by the time we get to we'll have more like that, but we'll see.

squadcaster-3h9h_1_12-12-2024_153210: 45:45

we'll, we'll see. And my guess would be that there's not going to be that much of a to do in 2026, because, uh, a full throated celebration in 2026 would bring to the fore, uh, a question that today seems unavoidable. And that is, what are we celebrating? Or should we or should we even be celebrating? And

alan-lowe_1_12-12-2024_153210: 46:14

And I

squadcaster-3h9h_1_12-12-2024_153210: 46:14

while that may seem like a question that answers itself, I'm not sure it is. And in this respect, going, trying to get back to your question, I think we are at a very different place. Uh, then we were in 1826 because the, the theme of that book that you've, you've mentioned that I wrote too long ago now, uh, the Jacksonian promise was that if there was a common feeling, a common ground, a common ethos, a common zeitgeist, in 1826, it was the widespread feeling, nearly consensual feeling. Uh, that the United States was still fresh and young and new, that it was blessed with circumstances that could only be regarded as providential, that Americans held their future entirely in their hands and could do with it whatever they wanted, uh, and, and that there was no limit, to the glorious, uh, Prospects looming off in the immediate future. If only we knew exactly what we needed to do to reach them. Now, whenever one talks about a national feeling, or as I guys, you can always these are broad, amorphous generalizations, and you can always find exceptions to them. Things are never perfect. Simple that way, but I think that feeling there. Certainly I can find plenty of people from all broad spectrum of situations and, uh, and viewpoints expressing that kind of Confident optimism about the country and its future. Uh, I'm not sure you'd find that today.

alan-lowe_1_12-12-2024_153210: 48:05

I will say American POTUS, what I hope as we get toward 2026 is to talk even more about the semi quincentennial and, and changes in the office of the presidency and so forth over those 250 years. I've got to say, Dan, you can, you can call me naive. You know, I'm always the eternal optimist. I, I have the spirit of 1826 in me, Dan, and I, have great hope for the future, but, we're going to keep talking about that history and that future here in American POTUS. And I really want to thank you for joining us today. Tell me what do you, right now, what's, what's got your interest? What are you researching? What are you writing?

squadcaster-3h9h_1_12-12-2024_153210: 48:39

Well, I am still decompressing from all those years of editing the Jackson Papers. Uh, but there's a project. I hesitate to mention it because at some point, you know, uh, you gotta quit talking and do it. There's a project that I dropped. I UT because other things were Demanding my attention and paying my salary. And that was a, uh, a book. I don't want to call it a simple biography, a book about an Ohio United States Senator who was also a conchologist, and an educational reformer. And earlier in his life, a pioneer, and a judge and a whole spectrum of activities, uh, named Benjamin Tappan, oh, and a free thinker, a, an overt scoffer at Christianity and the, the scriptures, which he referred to charmingly as all damn nonsense. Uh, he was one of the founders of the Smithsonian Institution, believe it or not. Uh, was a United States Senator, was, in his own peculiar way, a leading anti slavery man, I can't remember if I've mentioned his name, was Benjamin Tappan. He was the older brother of Lewis and Arthur Tappan, who were two of the leading evangelical Moral reformers and abolitionists, in the country next to William Lloyd Garrison. And today we would say Frederick Douglass of the Tappans were the two probably most prominent abolitionists and abolitionists in the country. What interests me is that Benjamin, their brother, was engaged in a whole bunch of different enterprises in things that we would not see any connection between, What's the connection between being a Jacksonian democratic politician, and a conchologist? Conchology is the study of shills. And a Pestalozian educational reformer, and, what interests me is that To him, these were all part of the same project, uh, and to the people he associated with, they were all part of the same project. And what I've been trying to do is to, through him, is to resurrect the world view of people who could see all those things as being part of the same project, who could see their political convictions as being um, Integrated with really inseparable from a worldview that range through a whole panoply of other. endeavors.

alan-lowe_1_12-12-2024_153210: 51:19

Sounds like a really fascinating man. Of course, when Dan, you publish that, I will memorize every word of that book as well. I want, I want to

squadcaster-3h9h_1_12-12-2024_153210: 51:27

The problem with it is, is that in order to handle this, I have to, uh, and it's always been a challenge for me as, as, because I came out of a background as a political historian. This means I have to, if I'm going to write about Pestalozian education and conchology and a bunch of other things I have to actually learn about them.

alan-lowe_1_12-12-2024_153210: 51:45

Yeah. Well, can maybe help with the conchologist, just give me a call, uh, Dan, thank you so much. Fascinating conversation about old Hickory and such an important time in American history. And I want to thank all of you for listening. Please check out org for even more episodes. And make sure you listen to the new podcast, American FLOTUS, all about the First Ladies, which we're developing with our friends at the First Ladies Association for Research and Education. find American FLOTUS at AmericanPOTUS. org, flair net. org, or on your favorite podcast platform. So thank you all so much, and I'll see you next time on American FLOTUS.