#10 John Tyler Part 2

“The mild-mannered gentleman from Virginia, scorned by his contemporaries, neglected by today’s historians, and forgotten by his countrymen, deserves to be remembered and reexamined. There is much to be learned from his tumultuous presidency” (p. 151).

Really Cool Stuff about John Tyler
1. I have already mentioned that Tyler deserves recognition due to the fact that he was the very first vice president to assume the presidency after the death of the incumbent. Because the Constitution was purposefully ambiguous about the chain of power should something happen to the President, no one was really sure if the vice president became President in fact or only was ‘acting’ president until another election could be held. John Tyler believed that the Constitution gave him the right to assume the full powers of the presidency and this allowed him to take over as president in an as easy and as painless a manner as possible. In the future, this became known as the Tyler Precedent and was voted into the Constitution as the 25th Amendment. “By boldly assuming the full powers and prerogatives of the presidency upon Harrison’s death, he established what came to be known as the ‘Tyler Precedent,’ not only ensuring the orderly transfer of power in his time but, by making the office ‘independent of death,’ guaranteeing that future accidental presidents could govern with authority” (p. 149).
2. Another precedent was Harrison’s funeral. “And so another precedent was established—the presidential funeral, whose features were generally followed for the next 160 years” (p. 62).
3. With Tyler vetoeing everything in sight, it was to be expected that the Whigs, his erstwhile political party, would be unhappy with this manic behavior. Thus, in 1841, a truly remarkable event occurred. “What happened next was also expected, but it was still shocking because it had never before happened in American history: the president’s entire cabinet, save Daniel Webster resigned” (p. 74). The cabinet, composed of prominent Whigs, could not tolerate any longer John Tyler’s obvious un-Whigishness.
4. And from there, it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump to the next rational step taken by the Whigs. They disowned John Tyler. “At the conclusion of their ceremony, the Whigs formally expelled Tyler from their party. Never in American history had a president been ejected from the party that had brought him to power” (p. 76). This emancipation was huge because as Henry Clay put it, John Tyler was now a “President without a party” and this would inevitably hurt his chances for reelection.
5. The Whigs (and many others) hated John Tyler so much that they actually began impeachment proceedings against him (for the first time ever against a sitting president). “On July 10, following the veto of the latest tariff bill, Congressman John Minor Botts…introduced a resolution that would create a special committee to investigate whether the president should be impeached, the first time such an inquiry had been called” (p. 79). Nothing came of it since Congress preferred to have Tyler go out the natural way, allowing him to lose the popular vote in the next election.
6. When Letitia, John’s wife, died, she was actually the first sitting First Lady to do so. “She was the first First Lady to die, and the White House was draped in mourning and the East Room service on September 12 was large and appropriately dignified” (p. 81).
7. The president had, under his command, a ‘secret service contingency fund.’ This had originally been requested by Washington as a means for the president to have extra cash in national emergencies, primarily foreign policy ones. John Tyler, though, dipped into the fund pretty heavily for extremely sketchy projects in which he had covert agents working for him throughout the US. In one such case, his agents worked in Maine undercover to get the citizens there to uphold the new boundary line. May states that this was the first time “Americans were targets of their own government” and that “for a president who had morally opposed Jackson’s imperial presidency, Tyler was skating on the edge of legality” (p. 86).
8. Under John Tyler’s presidency, the United States would sign its first trade treaty with China. “The president also had ‘his eye fixed upon China’ and sent the first official envoy, Caleb Cushing, to open the Celestial Kingdom to US trade” (p. 91).
9. John Tyler purchased a new estate in Virginia and he aptly named it Sherwood Forest in honor of another outlaw. “A few days later, they set out for Charles City County, Virginia, where they honeymooned at Tyler’s new plantation, which he had named Sherwood Forest in honor of Robin Hood, a fellow political outlaw” (p. 116). Looks like Old Tyler had a sense of humor!
10. When John married Julia Gardiner, it was the first marriage of a current president. “The marriage of a sitting president was another first in American history, and the Tyler wedding drew a great deal of attention” (p. 116).
11. With the 1844 election on the horizon, John Tyler, sans political party, realized that his stock was too low for him to be reelected to the presidency. Thus he canceled any plans to run in the next election, throwing his support behind Democrat James K Polk. “And so Tyler became the first incumbent president to decline to seek a second term” (p. 120).
12. After Polk was inaugurated, Tyler and his new wife left the White House forever. At that same moment, another significant moment was occurring in the Congress. “The day was historic in another way: as he left office, Congress overrode Tyler’s last presidential veto. It was on a minor bill authorizing the construction of two vessels for the Revenue Cutter Service, but Congress had never before been able to amass enough votes to do it. Tyler’s unprecedented presidency ended as it began” (p. 126).
13. Tyler would have the most children than any other president in history. “All told, Tyler and his two wives produced fifteen children, a presidential record. Tyler, born the year after George Washington was inaugurated, produced a family that survived until 1947, when Harry Truman was president” (p. 129).
14. With the advent of the civil war, Tyler took his place alongside his home state and voted for secession from the Union. “On the afternoon of April 17 [1861], John Tyler joined eighty-seven other delegates to the Virginia state convention to approve an ordinance of secession and, in so doing, became the first president to betray the country he spent his life serving” (p. 142).

Even though this was a nice short book, I still probably would not recommend it as thrilling reading material. The reason I say this is that I can’t help but compare this book to the Martin Van Buren one and really there is no comparison. Gary May has none of the wit and charm that Ted Widmer relates in his biography. This book on John Tyler is really a pretty dry recitation of the facts on the 11th president’s life and times.

The book might have been a little dull but I’ll tell you who isn’t—John Quincy Adams. He might have been an abysmal president but that guy writes the funniest stuff in his diary! Because of his longevity in the world of politics and his voracious practice of keeping current in his journal, JQA is quoted in absolutely every single biography I’ve read since like the John Adams bio. He is misanthropic, crass, and derogatory to most people and I love it! Just in this book alone, JQA outshines even John Tyler in...Tyler’s own biography! Here’s a sample of John Quincy’s acerbic horror at the thought of John Tyler being called to Boston to dedicate the Bunker Hill memorial. “What a name in the annals of mankind is Bunker Hill! What a day was the 17th of June, 1775! And what a burlesque upon them by Daniel Webster, and a pilgrimage by John Tyler and his cabinet of slave drivers, to desecrate the solemnity by their presence!...Daniel Webster was spouting, and John Tyler’s nose, with a shadow outstretching that of the monumental column [ouch!]—how could I have witnessed all this at once, without an unbecoming burst of indignation, or of laughter. Daniel Webster is a heartless traitor to the cause of human freedom; John Tyler is a slavemonger…What have these to do with a dinner in Faneuil Hall, but to swill like swine, and grunt about the rights of man” (p. 104)? Oh man! Isn’t that classic? For a gentleman raised like a Puritan, John Quincy’s pen is really harsh. Here’s another example for all you JQA-philes, when John Quincy writes about Tyler after his marriage to Julia Gardiner. “Captain Tyler and his bride are the laughingstock of the city. It seems as if he was racing for a prize-banner to the nuptials of the mock—heroic—the sublime and the ridiculous. He has assumed the war power as a prerogative, the veto power as caprice, the appointing and dismissing power as a fund for bribery; and now, under circumstances of revolting indecency; is performing with a young girl from New York the old fable of January and May” (p. 117). I have to give you one more. When John Tyler signed the annexation of Texas before Polk was inaugurated, JQA was outraged. “John Quincy Adams growled that the Constitution had been made ‘a menstrous rag’” (p. 124). I’m sorry…I had to include a little more JQA because he made the book especially fascinating to me.


That being said, of course, I was pleasantly shocked by what Tyler accomplished in his limited time as president. For a guy in office for just under the normal 4 years, he produced a truly magnificent stream of “firsts” that literally beat the pants off other presidents. Interesting.

Plus, you gotta feel a little sorry for the guy. He’s sandwiched in there between Jackson’s forceful personality and the Civil War and either way, he’s overlooked. I can understand why historians don’t jump on the John Tyler bandwagon, not only because he burned his bridges with the Whig party but because he also betrayed his country at the last and voted for secession. Unfortunately, history will be very, very slow to forgive him that last one. If the South had indeed won, Tyler might well have been our greatest hero; it is unfortunate that this is not the case and Tyler’s legacy is, perhaps, gone forever.

#10 John Tyler 1790-1862

Don’t you wish sometimes that we could have sound effects for use in real-life? Like when you throw something out of sight, wouldn’t it be nice to hear a cat yelp in indignation? Or a muted scream?

Right now, I would love to hear the sound of a record screeching to stop mid-song, complete with awkward silence afterwards. The reason that I could totally use this sound effect is due to my rather abrupt change of tactics when dealing with John Tyler. Here’s what happened…I was excited to discover a genuine, grown-up-sized John Tyler bio at my local library. It was called John Tyler: The Accidental President written by Edward Crapol and seemed a perfect fit for my exacting tastes. But I didn’t get one chapter into the book when I realized that this would never do—this book was only about John Tyler’s presidency and nothing else. Now you know how much I hate that. I want to read books about the lives of the presidents, not strictly their presidential years. (Not to mention, The Accidental President was written like a PhD dissertation so it wasn’t exactly light reading material. Besides you could just tell that Crapol really liked John Tyler, which sent me into a horrible flashback of James Monroe’s biographer.)

Well this demanded action. I wasn’t about to read this book since it didn’t fit the criteria anyway so I got online and found a John Tyler book that was part of the American Presidents Series. Now I have to be honest here—The American Presidents Series, bless its heart—is slowly becoming My Best Friend Ever. I’ve noticed a trend with these books—as succinctly as possible, they write about the presidents’ lives, including all the pertinent information and leaving out everything else. I have to say that I’m loving the stuff that they put out. For some obscure reason though my library doesn’t have their John Tyler book, which means (grrrr!) that I have to head to Amazon once more (sigh) and by it.

So let me introduce you to John Tyler by Gary May (New York: Times Books, 2008).

John Tyler was born to a prominent Virginian family on March 29, 1790 and was one of eight children. He grew up with his sisters and brothers on Greenway Plantation in the midst of the Virginia dynasty of the Presidents of the United States. “For the Tylers, Virginia was paramount. Not only was it the wealthiest, most populous, and most influential colony and then state, its sons led the fight for independence, wrote its most sacred documents, then dominated the new federal government. John Tyler grew up with a collection of heroes unsurpassed in America’s history—Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe; George Wythe, who taught Jefferson the law and signed the Declaration of Independence; Patrick Henry, the revolutionary firebrand, governor of Virginia, and Tyler family friend; Edmund Randolph, George Washington’s attorney general and secretary of state. Four of the nation’s first five presidents and Chief Justice John Marshall were Virginians” (p. 12).

At the ambitious age of 12, John went to William and Mary, where he was noted for being sickly and silent. He excelled in “ancient history, poetry, and the works of William Shakespeare” (p. 13) and eventually graduated in 1807. He proceeded to study law under the famed Edmund Randolph but he was never really excited about that line of work. He felt called to be a politician, like his father, and so in 1811, John ran and was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates.

The War of 1812 soon intervened in John’s life and a number of things happened to him around this time. First of all, his beloved father died of pneumonia. Then on John’s 23rd birthday, he married the girl next door, Letitia Christian of the Cedar Grove plantation. Finally, with the advent of the British in the area, he joined the Charles County Rifles as a captain but never actually saw any action. Through all this he continued to win election after election back into the Virginia House of Delegates. In 1815, though, he was finally elected onto a bigger stage when he became a Virginia congressman to the House of Representatives.

He became known as a fervent states rights man, voting against the Bank of the United States and Henry Clay’s American System. He also was fervidly pro-slavery. “Despite his efforts to mitigate its brutality Tyler, like other slave masters, could not prosper let alone survive without slavery” (p. 23). John ended up resigning from Congress due to a number of reasons: financial (he was broke), familial (he already had 3 small children at home), physical (he was always sickly), and futility (he felt like he wasn’t contributing to the government).

To enhance his economic status, Tyler went back to practicing law but it again did not thrill him. He even got into a fistfight in court with a witness for the other side (p. 27)! And sooner rather than later, he allowed himself to be pulled back into politics by being elected to the Virginia legislature in 1823. By 1825, he was elected governor of Virginia and by 1827, he was back in Washington as a senator. (To finance his way to Washington, Tyler sold an old family slave, “which would mean that Tyler began his Senate career with monies generated by the sale of a human being” (p. 30).)

As a senator, perhaps his greatest achievement was being the only one to vote against Andrew Jackson’s Force Bill. But in this, John Tyler was happy to do it—he couldn’t stand Andrew Jackson. In fact, when Jackson was censured by Congress and then made to expunge the record, Tyler resigned in lofty indignation. “In his formal letter of resignation, Tyler explained that he could not subscribe to such an unconstitutional resolution” (p. 46).

His retirement was again short-lived. In the 1836 election, he was nominated as a vice presidential candidate by the Whig party but lost to Richard Johnson of Kentucky who joined Van Buren on the presidential ticket. By the 1840 election, though, he was back in the game but this time paired with William Henry Harrison, the hero of Tippecanoe. With an Indianan running for president, it made sense to the Whigs to have a Virginian run with him. The campaign for Old Tippecanoe and Tyler Too was an amazing achievement for the fledgling Whig party and William Henry Harrison won by a pretty large amount.

No one could really have foreseen what happened next—one month after the inauguration, William Henry Harrison died; thus creating a political black hole for the United States. At this time in our history, no other president had died and since the Constitution was remarkably mum about the matter, no one really knew what would happen to the vice president. Tyler merely took over all the presidential duties, including the oath of office, and decided that he was, indeed, president of the United States. “By explicitly stating that he had inherited the office, Tyler undercut those who believed that he was only the ‘acting’ president. Although a few legislators raised questions about Tyler’s legitimacy, both the House and the Senate later formerly recognized his lawful right to the office” (p. 63).

So now we have John Tyler inadvertenly becoming the 10th President of the United States by default, while things soon began to spiral downward and out of his control. He had been added to the Whig ticket because of his hatred of Andrew Jackson but at heart he was really a Democrat. Thus, after his accession to the presidency, this partiality soon surfaced and it had the entire Whig party in an uproar. For instance, the Whigs (& previously John Tyler) had bemoaned the fact that Jackson took an almost monarchical pleasure as he vetoed bill after bill. As a reaction, the Whigs proposed a president who was more laissez-faire about the matter, which Tyler had agreed with also. However, as president, Tyler began to veto bills left and right, regardless of whether they were Whig or Democrat. “So frequent and regular were Tyler’s vetoes that this one was called ‘his veto of the month’” (p. 79). The Whigs formally disowned him and hatred for Tyler grew around the country. Threats were made against the President and his family until Tyler begged Congress for some sort of bodyguard.

His problems had only begun though. Soon, Tyler’s wife, Letitia, died, leaving him a single father over 8 children. In 1843, Tyler’s attorney general died suddenly. Then, on board the Princeton, for a celebratory event, one of the canons exploded, killing several members of the President’s coterie, including his secretary of state, Abel Upshur and the father of his future wife.

Not everything was terrible for John Tyler however. He spent most of his energy on foreign policy and was able to conclude a remarkable treaty with England, the Webster-Ashburton Treaty that cleared up some boundary disputes in New England (and kept them from going to war.) Also John met and fell in love with a 22-year old socialite named Julia Gardiner. On June 24, 1844, they wed, even though there was a considerable span of years between them.

Tyler toyed with the idea of running for president in the 1844 election but nobody really liked him. Thus, he threw all his support behind James K Polk, which allowed that gentleman to become the next president. Before Polk was inaugurated, though, Tyler decided to act on behalf of Texas and on March 1st, 3 days before he left office, he signed the annexation of Texas into law. Most people decided that Polk should have had the recognition for annexing Texas (it was through his support that Congress agreed to it) but even as he began his presidency, Tyler would leave on a controversial note.

He and Julia retired to their Virginian estate to farm and to raise the seven children that they would have. John kept abreast of all that happened in the political world and even tried to get back into politics a time or two. He couldn’t have known that the next time he would be elected to anything it would be to the Congress of the Confederate States of America. Initially, Tyler did everything in his power as a former president to avert the civil war that seemed to be looming on the horizon. However, when it was made clear to him that it was war or abolition, he threw his support behind Virginia’s secession from the Union, earning himself the hatred of many thereafter. He died of a “bilious attack, united with bronchitis” (p. 144) on January 18, 1862 while he was in Richmond as a congressman. In the North, he was not mourned.

#9: William Henry Harrison Part 2

Really Cool Stuff about William Henry Harrison
1. After the Revolutionary War, the army, in repose, became quite addicted to the sport of dueling. In a time when dueling was all the rage, young William, an Ensign in Cincinnati, stood up to fashion and eschewed its practice as injurious to his health. “After witnessing a sorrowful scene at the bedside of a dying officer who whispered a few last words of forgiveness to his triumphant and unashamed slayer, Harrison vowed to take no part whatsoever in the pastime” (p.10).
2. While serving as aide-de-camp under Mad Anthony Wayne, Harrison struck up a friendship with two other young officers, Ensign Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark.
3. As staid and steady as Harrison was to become, he was young once too. In his youth, he met Anna Symmes and married her directly against the wishes of her father. “Despite the stern injunction from a man of influence in Northwest Territory Harrison still contrived to meet his love and after General Wayne gave the would-be bridegroom his blessing, a runaway marriage was agreed to. November 25, Symmes mounted his horse and rode from North Bend to Cincinnati on business and upon that day also a wedding party gathered at the home of Doctor Stephen Wood, a tenant of Symme’s. Wood, who was treasurer of the Northwest Territory and a justice of the peace, married William and Anna in the parlor of his log house and watched them ride away to Fort Washington” (p. 25).
4. When Harrison finally was able built a house for his family, he kept in mind his proximity to the frontier and constructed it primarily for safety. “Harrison paid particular attention to details of defense. The outer walls, eighteen inches of solid brick, were slit for portholes, the broad-silled attic windows designed for sharp-shooters…in the cellar was constructed a powder magazine with walls of heavy masonry and an arched brick ceiling, and a trap-door led to a look-out station on the roof” (p. 45).
5. With Vincennes, the capital of the Indiana Territory, becoming more cosmopolitan, Harrison, as Governor, tried to initiate a higher level of civility into peoples’ lives. “The town of Vincennes now contained nearly a thousand souls. With the arrival of a better class of immigrants from the East, the Governor and his associates, many of them Virginians, were endeavoring to introduce a degree of civilization to the frontier. During the sixth year of his rule, Harrison helped to establish a circulating library in the town…Plans for the organization of a university at Vincennes were also underway” (p. 51).
6. Like Andrew Jackson, Harrison was also approached by Aaron Burr, on his crazy scheme to take over Texas, but Harrison didn’t bite. “Some months before, Burr had visited Grouseland, apparently to enlist the Governor’s interest and aid, but he never returned a second time and the true purpose of the visit was left vague” (p. 56).
7. During the War of 1812, Harrison defeated the British at the Battle of the Thames and thereafter forced the British into a rout. Because of that, the British were unable to pack their bags, leaving a good amount of intelligence behind to fall into Harrison’s hands. “Most of Proctor’s [the British General] official papers may be found in the Library of Congress and War Department archives today” (p. 203).
8. As Ambassador to Columbia, Harrison proved that he was an avid gardener. “Harrison engaged a sizeable mansion, the Garden of James, and spent much time in cultivating rows of vegetables new to that country, the seed imported from North Bend. His garden flourished abundantly in a moist soil at some 60 degrees F. The produce, freely dispensed, was in great demand at legation dinners” (p. 267).
9. William Henry Harrison became a passionate prohibitionist. “Always a temperate man, Harrison had become something of a prohibitionist, abandoning the corn distillery common to every large western farm” (p. 280).
10. Harrison was the grandfather to United States President #23, Benjamin Harrison.
11. Harrison was the first president to die while in office. However, he did not die from his inaugural address as popular legend admits. I love being all Mythbusters around here! Move over, Dan Brown!

Well I can’t honestly say that I would recommend this book to anyone. On the one hand, it sucks having to read three hundred and fifty pages on William Henry Harrison (which is 250 pages too long) but it’s even worse with the scent of musty attic assailing your nostrils. I’m not kidding here…what kind of toxin in 1939 publishing ink produces such a terrible smell!?! The book is also pretty confusing. The author does not keep up with dates and sometimes I lost the thread of what was happening and when. Granted, I don’t go by dates normally but sometimes it does matter. For instance, Harrison resigning his commission of Commander of the Army in May of 1814 made a hellava lot of difference to Andrew Jackson who then reaped the benefits. You see? The dates in the book are very unclear and too ambiguous to give you a good account of the general’s life. I’m almost ashamed but I have to admit that I wikied him a good deal.

I know I have to take into consideration the 1939 publication date, but old Freeman Cleaves is…um…how do I put this…not very politically correct. Ha! When describing the Indians of the west, he uses some terms that are no longer quite in vogue. Here’s a great example on p. 66. “Harrison discussed with these painted savages the subject of present British kindness.[italics added]” When I read this sentence for the first time, I got that electric shock that I hadn’t felt since reading King Solomon’s Mines! Nowadays we’re so coddled that I can’t even read a good old-fashioned pejorative and not cringe. I thought that “painted savages” was just something made up for movies but apparently it was an indelible part of the vernacular of the 30s. In fact, Cleaves strews the word “savages” through the entire book and undermines the American Indians almost continuously. “Fourteen hundred savages, more or less, were now assembled about Fort Wayne, a treaty assemblage exceeding in numbers that of Greenville in 1795. A defeat for Harrison at this juncture would mean an unhappy loss of prestige. Was the government’s commissioner unable to cope with such a representative throng? Harrison talked for two hours in reply to The Owl, reviewing the known conduct of the British and Americans toward the savage tribes. The British, he reminded the savages, had always encouraged them to fight the Americans, yet, if the lands they had lost in these wars had been sold the annuities thus gained would have satisfied their every want” (p. 66-7). And it goes on, of course.

I also find it interesting that even though Harrison lived through a rough part of our nation’s affairs regarding slavery, it is not even mentioned in the index.

Something else that bothered me about this book was that there was very little in it about Harrison’s private life or indeed, about himself at all. What I mean is that Harrison never really comes alive through the book. The author does all the right things by giving us a picture of Harrison’s life but he never really goes the entire distance. I don’t mean that I want the author to conjure up false emotions and ideas to make the general seem alive but I sit here today and really have no idea what this guy was like. I can say that he was an upright man, for the most part, but don’t really know for sure. Maybe he didn’t know for sure. “Harrison’s public letter explained his stand, distinguishing between his championship of ‘human liberty’ and his votes against restricting the spread of slavery” (p. 253). So, yes, the same guy who fought for human liberty also has no problem owning slaves. Maybe Freeman Cleaves just didn’t have any good information on the man inside the man. But I do know this—I barely got any information at all about his home life. I read about his runaway marriage (thrilling stuff) and that is positively the last thing you read about his wife. Anna is alluded to briefly and you really only hear about his children when they’re born….and that’s 10 kids he had! Plus the end of the book was rather abrupt. WHH died, there was a funeral, and…and the book ends there. It’s weird.

One good thing about the book is the plethora of maps, pictures and portraits sprinkled throughout it. I love being able to see the stuff that I usually have to imagine. Cleaves also gives a really detailed and interesting background on the Harrison family that brings a saga-like feel to the book. He starts with Benjamin Harrison the first and winds us up with Benjamin Harrison V and the birth of WHH. Being able to picture William within the context of the larger Harrison clan was really interesting from a psychological standpoint.

The author also goes into great descriptive narrative over the conditions of the common soldier during the War of 1812. It’s really rather horrific but I prefer this to the author ignoring it altogether. I enjoyed getting the western perspective during the War of 1812 and all the triumphs and defeats that were going on there while Washington burned and Andrew Jackson fought at New Orleans.

While William Henry Harrison was not president for very long, he played a major role in the course of our nation’s history, heavily influencing the events in the West. For that alone, we should always remember him.

#9: William Henry Harrison 1773-1841

I felt like screaming. No, No, NO! I didn’t want to buy a book on William Henry Harrison! It’s not faaaaiiiirrrrr…

But here I am without any other options.

Per usual, I headed to my library, but was stunned to discover the only William Henry Harrison bios were in juvenile literature. From thence, I recommenced my search on Amazon, only to learn there that really is only one adult biography on this man and it is Old Tippecanoe: William Henry Harrison and His Time by Freeman Cleaves (Newton, CT: American Political Biography Press, 1939). Gazing longingly at the juvenile books, I sigh as I press the “buy” button. Amazon has yet to let me down.

As I stared down at my new hardback (that’s all there was) from Amazon (they were the only one to sell it), I seriously questioned this single-minded pursuit of mine to read each presidential biography. First the James Madison tome and now this! And I can’t help but shutter as I look ahead at the no-names coming up. And I already know…I’m going to be dead broke because of these presidents! (Just to update you, I have just now pre-ordered my copy of Millard Fillmore. Library, you’re supposed to be in business to handle this sort of useless information so what’s happening?)

This book was written in 1939 and totally destroys my plan to keep current on these biographies. Not to mention, the books looks like it’s a first edition no less and I feel like I’m the Only One in the World to have opened it since its publication nearly a century ago (we hadn’t even gotten into WWII by that point!) It looks like Freeman Cleaves succeeded to “achieve the peculiar immortality we reserve for the writers of very long books that are never checked out of the library” (Widmer, 2005, p. 162). And I’m sure you’ll hear me grumble about this again but the book is freaking 340 pages and smells of my grandma’s winter coat closet. Gak! For the first time in my life, I’m seriously considering Kindle.

William Henry Harrison was born on February 9, 1773 to an old, aristocratic family from Virginia. The Harrisons had been in America practically since the British landed on these shores and had done extremely well thereby as farmers, soldiers, and the odd politician for the House of Burgess. “The Harrison family was one of the oldest in the Colony and was highly respected; none could boast of more extensive and influential connections” (p. 1). William’s father, Benjamin Harrison V, garnered fame as a signer of the Declaration of Independence, which allowed him to be away when the British burned the Harrison homestead during the War. William, one of seven children, was the third son and the beneficiary of nothing in particular. He was enrolled in University of Pennsylvania’s medical school but dropped out to join the army after his father’s death in 1791.

The United States Army was a shambles after the Revolutionary War due to the Founding Fathers’ fears of a dictatorship assumed by any military man. Also the army had relatively little to do after the Treaty of Paris except fight Indians in the West. Harrison, being one of the few recruits during this time period, was made an ensign and immediately set out west to the nascent town of Cincinnati where he won recognition from his superiors to his devotion to duty and calm good sense. He even served under “Mad” Anthony Wayne who grew to respect the young man. At one point while traveling in Kentucky for the army, Harrison came across a woman, Anna Symmes, who he determined to marry. They were married in North Bend, Indiana on November 25, 1796.

Harrison resigned from the army to make his home with new wife in what was then called the Northwest Territory. He was noticed by President John Adams and was appointed as Secretary of the Northwest Territory which paid an exorbitant salary of $1200 a year! But political interests beckoned and Harrison was elected the sole Congressman of the Territory to uphold small landowners in that area. He also had a hand in establishing the line between the Ohio and Indiana territories.

In one of his last acts as President, John Adams appointed Harrison as governor to the Indiana Territory and thus, Harrison moved with his growing family to the capital city of Vincennes, Indiana. It was considered a beautiful area on the edge of the wilderness but with its own issues inherent. “The inviting prospect was marred, however, by the rapacity of French and American traders, the drunkenness and degradation of the near-by tribes” (p. 34). As the newest American BMOC, Harrison was the point-of-contact between all the neighboring Indian tribes and the American settlers. In an effort to gain more land for settlement and thereby gain statehood, Harrison offered a bloodless solution to the tribes by having them sign a treaty in which the United States purchased the land. “If the rich country along the Ohio could be obtained from the Indians and immigration thus encouraged, it was argued, funds to bear the expense of second-grade government would be forthcoming from additional taxes on lands” (p. 41). Harrison was successful with this treaty, winning whole plots of land for American use.

But the Indian problem just wouldn’t go away. Even as Harrison lobbied each tribal chief for more land, a young Shawnee called Tecumseh became a thorn in the governor’s side. Tecumseh and his brother, the Prophet, were outraged at what the American’s were doing to the Indians and believed that the Indians, instead of fighting, were quietly selling away their birthrights. Slowly Tecumseh began amassing an Indian army which tried to break the precedent of peaceful American acquisition. “About the year 1805, Tecumseh adopted the principle that all the tribes should unite and that none should sell their lands without the consent of all” (p. 52). Plus the British were an added factor, giving the Indians succor, guns, and the promise of many scalps if they succeeded against the Americans. But the battle was premature. While Tecumseh was away, the Prophet decided to attack the American position, headed by William Henry Harrison, at Tippecanoe but lost.

With the War of 1812 imminent and discord along the frontier, Harrison became the sole commander of the Army of the Northwest, especially after the loss of Detroit to the British. As Major General, he resigned as governor and led the ragged American army against the best troops in the world. Harrison won a decisive engagement against the British and their Indian allies at the Battle of the Thames (now isn’t that ironic!?!) where Tecumseh was killed (some say he was killed by Martin Van Buren’s VP, Col. Johnson). Due to a variety of factors, Harrison suffered many defeats and disappointments thereafter, especially when John Armstrong bedame Secretary of War. Either distrustful of talent in general or of Harrison in particular, Armstrong started a smear campaign against him in Washington and with a revamping of the military hierarchy, Harrison decided to resign. Harrison himself wrote to the Secretary of War, “Having some reasons to believe that the most malicious insinuations have been made against me at Washington, it was my intention to have requested an Enquiry into my conduct from the commencement of my command. Further reflection has, however, determined me to decline the application because from the proud consciousness I have palpably done my duty, I can not believe that it is necessary either for the satisfaction of the government or the people that I should pay so much respect to the suggestions of Malice & Envy…I therefore pledge myself to answer before a court martial at any future period to any charge that may be brought against me” (p.222).

It just so happened that with Harrison’s resignation in May of 1814, Armstrong was able to promote Andrew Jackson to Major General in the West, leading him to events in New Orleans.

Don’t think that old Tippecanoe is out of the picture just yet though! First of all, James Madison appointed Harrison to extend peace treaties to the Indian tribes of the West which he accomplished with diligence. Secondly, Harrison was elected to Congress for the state of Ohio in 1819 where he proposed a bill (and it passed) extending the pension for war widows and orphans. The only problem that the state of Ohio had with their congressman was that Harrison was vehemently pro-slavery and Ohio wasn’t. This situation created a conundrum in which it was clear that one must eventually go: slavery or Harrison. Ohio chose the end of slavery and Harrison lost the election of 1822.

I’m convinced that nothing could keep this guy down for long. In 1824, he came back from the political grave and became one of Ohio’s senators. He resigned in 1828 to serve as minister plenipotentiary under JQA to the country of Columbia. His tenure in Columbia though was brief, only lasting a year because, under the “spoils system”, President Jackson recalled him and sent a Jacksonian Democrat in his place. It was probably for the best; Harrison had made enemies among the generals of Bolivar’s military dictatorship junta.

Harrison returned to the United States at a very low point in his life. He had a very large family of 10 children and some of them had gotten into debt. Not only that but he was badly in debt as well due to some faulty investments. In a nutshell, the needs of his family and farm far exceeded his governmental income. On top of all that, weather conditions were so poor for a couple years that it ruined the Harrison crops and the profits involved.

Slowly though Harrison again rose in the national esteem. He ran as a candidate in the 1836 presidential election against Clay and Van Buren but lost to Van Buren. However, the Panic of 1837 soon set in and Van Buren’s stock sunk to an all-time low. Harrison’s crowd gained momentum and they decided to try for the Whig nomination in the election of 1840. This goal was not an easy one however; the Whig party was hardly an organized mechanism. “With a Whig party made up of Federalists, Anti-Federalists, Masons, Anti-Masons, states’ rights men, free constructionists, slavery men and abolitionists, 1840 was to prove the year of the great straddle” (p. 312). But apparently Harrison straddled issues like a champ.

With renewed vigor, Harrison and his supporters won the Whig nomination and the fight was on from there. The famous “Hard Cider and Log Cabin” campaign began, depicting General Harrison as the down-home, American hero sent to battle the aristocracy, personified by Van Buren. “The log-cabin motif, incidentally, had originated in the remark of a Clay partisan at Harrisburg. Why not, the Clay man suggested, allow the General to enjoy his log cabin and hard cider in peace?” (p. 320). John Tyler was added to the Whig ticket as Vice President and the slogan “Old Tippecanoe and Tyler too” resounded across the nation. In fact, special songs about Harrison were written and their catchy tunes were heard ad infinitum by the nation’s youth. Glee clubs were de rigueur as well because “songs were written especially for them of the most patriotic and exciting character” (p. 325).

Van Buren never had a chance. In a huge victory, William Henry Harrison became the ninth President of the United States in 1840.

Did sudden glory finally turn the head of this remarkable man? No it didn’t. Harrison remained imperturbable, per usual, and made his way leisurely to Washington to pick up the reins of government. I think it says something about him that he easily disposed of an outdated taboo against the president-elect visiting the current president. “Harrison promptly placed himself on good footing with Martin Van Buren. Precedent was shattered when the President-Elect called at the White House to chat pleasantly with his late rival for half an hour. Properly consoled over his defeat, Van Buren dismissed the old rule that the President should not return visits, taking his entire Cabinet with his to call on the General at Gadsbys” (p. 333).

As the inauguration drew nearer, it only remained for Harrison to write the speech with which he would address a record crowd. “Secluded in his mother’s room at Berkeley, Harrison wrote an overlong inaugural message leavened with patriotic idealism and weighted with allusions to the ancient republics” (p. 335). On March 4, 1841, Harrison was sworn in as president and in the cold, windy winter afternoon, decidedly dishabille, he spoke to his people. “Early March weather in Washington has dimmed the glory of many an inaugural. A chilly northeast wind nipped the extremities off the shivering multitude yet Harrison stood there bareheaded and with gloves or overcoat, his address one hour and forty minutes long” (p. 336).

I know what you’re expecting. “And then….he died.” But no! He was president a good 3 weeks before he caught a cold by walking through the slush and was dead by April 4th from pneumonia and intestinal inflation.

#8 Martin Van Buren Part 2

Really Cool Stuff About Martin Van Buren
1. He was the first president to write his own memoirs. “Yes, his autobiography is arguably the first presidential memoir, and for that reason alone it holds real interest” (p. 4). (There aren’t many other reasons though.)
2. He is most likely the president with the most nicknames. “The Red Fox of Kinderhook. The Little Magician. The Enchanter. The Careful Dutchman. The Great Manager. The Master Spirit. The American Talleyrand. King Martin. Matty Van. This surfeit of sobriquets suggest both a familiarity with Van Buren and an ultimate failure to catch him. The names cancel each other out, they disagree with each other, and they suggest an inscrutability still hangs like Spanish moss around him” (p. 4)
3. He was good friends with the contemporary author, Washington Irving, dating from his brief sojourn in London as Ambassador.
4. He invented the word “noncommittal” (p. 5).
5. He was the first president born to the post-Revolutionary period and fully American. “There was something to the claim—Van Buren was the first president who was technically American, and not the bastard offspring of the British Empire” (p.125).
6. He was the first president not distinctly Anglo-Saxon. “Van Buren was also our first president (and our last, save Kennedy) without a trace of Anglo-Saxon bloodlines. In our putative nation of nations, every other president has come from an English-speaking household, and rather high English at that. Van Buren grew up speaking Dutch, a relic of the time before the Revolution when the inland waterways of North America were a polyglot blend of non-Anglophile communities” (p. 6-7).
7. He was the first president from the state of New York.
8. He was the first presidential candidate to run on a third party ticket. “Still, he had made history one more time. The Free Soil campaign was America’s first great third-party effort” (p. 155).
9. During his presidency, Van Buren would commission the United States Exploring Expedition in the summer of 1838. “The United States Exploring Expedition, or the US Ex Ex, was the largest effort that had ever been mounted by the American government to advance human knowledge, and a worthy ancestor to the NASA missions of the 1960s. its mission, no less daunting at the time, was the exploration of the little-known Southern Hemisphere and the remote reaches of the Pacific Ocean…Despite considerable adversity, the US Ex Ex would make history in a number of ways: the first oceangoing voyage of discovery by the US government, the last all-sail naval squadron to circumnaviagate the world, and a crucial extension of American force into Pacific regions that might as well have been extraterrestrial for their distance from the Yankee republic. All in all, before returning in 1842, the expedition logged 87,000 miles, mapped 800 miles of Oregon territory, and explored 1,500 miles of Antarctic coastline. Its Pacific charts were still being used a century later, in World War II” (p. 129-30).
10. He is credited for creating the 10-hour workday to aid those hit hardest by the Panic.
11. His presidential campaign for the 1840 election created the popular term “Ok” as “shorthand for ‘oll correct,” a slangy way of saying ‘all right.’ Early in 1840, Van Buren’s supporters began to use the trendy expression as a way to identify their candidate, whom they labored to present as ‘Old Kinderhook,’ perhaps in imitation of Jackson’s Old Hickory. Van Buren even wrote ‘OK’ next to his signature. It spread like wildfire, and to this day it is a universal symbol of something elemental in the American character—informality, optimism, efficiency, call it what you will. It is spoken seven times a day by the average citizen, two billion utterances overall. And, of course, it goes well beyond our borders; if there is a single sound America has contributed to the Esperanto of global communication, this is it. It is audible everywhere—in a taxicab in Paris, in a café in Istanbul, in the languid early seconds of the Beatles’ ‘Revolution,’ when John Lennon steps up to the microphone and arrestingly calls the meeting to order. There are worse legacies that a defeated presidential candidate could claim” (p. 140.)
12. He met and hung out with Abraham Lincoln on one memorable night. During Van Buren’s tour of the US in preparation for the 1844 election, he was accidentally stranded in Rochester, IL. In order to impress their surprise visiting dignitary, the local officials brought along a young man by the name of Abraham Lincoln. “All evening the young Abraham Lincoln and Martin Van Buren delighted each other with their stories. Van Buren took the crowd back to his earliest days in New York politics, when Hamilton and Burr circled each other. According to a lucky witness, Lincoln responded with an endless supply of stories, ‘one following another in rapid succession, each more irresistible than its predecessor. The fun continued until after midnight, and until the distinguished traveler insisted that his sides were sore from laughing.’ Van Buren later claimed that he had never ‘spent so agreeable a night in my life.’ That is no small claim from someone who had been listening to and telling the tallest tales in American politics for more than three decades…Their evening together, two ships passing in the prairie night, offers one of the more intriguing chance meetings in American history” (p. 146-47).

I am not sure whether it’s due to the fact that Martin Van Buren is a relative nobody in the American presidential pantheon of today or if it’s because Seinfeld worked him into the series but I really enjoyed reading about him! I can almost picture him—a small man, dandified and bewhiskered—becoming the intellectual architect behind the entire political party organizational movement. And, in a way, this is the American Dream at its most charming. That a Dutch-speaking, physically unattractive dude should become the president of our great nation—well that speaks volumes. He seemed to be an amusing, socially adept man, nancing his way through the rough-and-tumble of politics in a more rustic Washington setting. “A widower, blond and charming, in control of thirty-six electoral votes, he was bound to be popular in the Washington scene. The Democratic Party may have begun, in fact, as a party—or at least an extension of the idea that like-minded people enjoy being together” (p. 58). Van Buren seems like he stepped right out of fiction.

Ted Widmer does a great job of painting the picture of this very odd little mastermind. He combines an irresistible pairing of old concepts with newer ideas, an anachronistic view of the turbulent 1830s. For instance, I like how he juxtaposes characters from The Scarlet Letter with real people of that time and uses modern day wording to explain phenomenon from the past. Speaking about a book written in 1842 detailing New York politics, Widmer writes “Aaron Spelling could hardly ask for more: colossal egos in conflict, visionary acts of statecraft, and the petty acts of villainy that no less truly define our politics” (p. 39). Widmer makes that time period live for us in his very potent descriptions and I would recommend this book as a good read into the political side of our nation’s history.

#8: Martin Van Buren (1782-1862)

I can’t say that I’ve honestly thought about Martin Van Buren before in my life. I mean I know I must have at one point, having taken long hours of American history, but for all I know, he never existed. No—wait a minute—that’s not true. I have thought about Martin Van Buren before but I’m almost embarrassed to admit that it was more due to a popular television sitcom rather than anything that he may have done. One of the more hilarious Seinfeld episodes is about the Van Buren boys and Kramer’s accidental discovery of their existence by holding 8 fingers in the air! So now I remember—Van Buren must be the eighth President of the United States 

There was not much going on for him, book-wise, at the library so I was forced to read the American Presidents Series book, Martin Van Buren by Ted Widmer (New York: Times Books, 2005). However, this time I was more excited about it because they had done such a good job on John Quincy Adams that I was no longer in apprehension over its size (it’s only 172 pages.) Ted Widmer, the author, was a senior advisor to Clinton and although he has not written very many books, I was curious to see how he would treat this practical non-entity.

Martin Van Buren was born at the tail end of the Revolutionary War on December 5, 1782 in Kinderhook, NY. Martin’s parents were of Dutch origin, his father being a tavern keeper, and they had a total of eight children altogether. Martin was very conscious of his place in Kinderhook society and ended up dropping out of school at age 13 due to financial considerations. He would never go back to school and would never attend college. He got into the law profession though and due to his excellence there, was apprenticed to some of the most prominent men in his area, including the wealthy Van Nesses. “His nose for research, his memory, and his shrewd common sense endowed him with a formidable ability in the courtroom” (p. 33). In 1807, he married Hannah Hoes, a worthy Dutch lady, who then proceeded to give him four sons.

Slowly, and this was so true for many lawyers of this age, he drifted into politics on the side of Jefferson and the Anti-Federalists. Now here was an arena in which the little man would shine (he was only 5’6” and quite dapper.) “Preparation, hard work, and plain language—those were the earthy ingredients in the Little Magician’s alchemical brew” (p. 35). By 1812, he was elected to the state senate where he threw his support behind the incipient War of 1812. “After the war broke out, Van Buren quickly threw himself into the defense of New York, America, and democracy—and an address he gave in 1813 shows that he considered all three to be one and the same” (p. 41).

Behind the scenes, Van Buren was also working on giving his political party some structure. “Van Buren set about building a disciplined political organization, driven by strict loyalty, careful working out of positions, and reasonable meritocracy” (p. 44) which would, in turn, be known as the Albany Regency. Gradually, he revolutionized the Anti-Federalists in his state into the yet-nascent Jacksonian Democrats and propelled himself into New York’s Attorney General office in 1815.

Continuously working on the efficiency and diligence of his political party, Van Buren’s life was momentarily turned upside down when his wife, Hannah, died of TB in 1819. Bereft, Van Buren nearly gave up politics altogether but in 1821, he was voted in as a United States Senator from New York. He traveled down to Washington DC where he would proceed to make his place in the wider political world. “Within seven years, he created the modern Democratic Party, anointed Andrew Jackson as its standard-bearer and revolutionized American politics forever” (p. 53).

But first, he hit a hiccup when he decided to throw his political weight (and the support of the state of New York) behind William Crawford in the 1824 election. Van Buren was aware that his state was quickly becoming the most powerful state in the Union and used his power accordingly. However, Crawford was an unfortunate choice. In the race between Crawford, JQA, and Henry Clay, Crawford suffered a severe stroke, which almost made it impossible for him to speak, stand or even, move! Van Buren went ahead anyway, tendering Crawford’s bid for the presidency which threw the vote into the House of Representatives and ultimately gave JQA the presidency.
Temporarily bested, Van Buren immediately began plotting for the 1828 election in which he joined forces with the highly popular military hero, Andrew Jackson. “Van Buren planned a campaign for Jackson that was no less uproarious, and across the Union there were deafening parades, gaudy souvenirs, and drunken songs without end. The dour Adams never had a chance” (p. 71). Andrew Jackson did win the presidency and appointed Van Buren, as a reward, to his most important cabinet position, Secretary of State.

Before Jackson was elected though, Van Buren served a brief stint as Governor of New York but quickly gave it up to follow Jackson into the White House. However, all was not well and within the first few weeks of the Jackson presidency, it was obvious that the entire cabinet was in league against each other. The Eaton Affair was the newest scandal with Andrew Jackson determined to stand by his Secretary of War. In a prescient bid for presidential approval, Van Buren, disregarding the gossips and the wives of the other cabinet members, made friends with Peggy Eaton and thereby, cemented his place in the President’s esteem. He and Jackson became quite close, edging out the increasingly tense John Calhoun in the process.

It was Van Buren who concocted the plan to resign from office so that Jackson would have the chance to get rid of other undesirable elements. In gratitude, Jackson appointed Van Buren as ambassador to the Court of St James. Van Buren immediately left for London, but in a backhanded maneuver, Calhoun, as the head of the Senate, managed to defeat Van Buren’s appointment, leaving him stranded across the Atlantic. Popular sentiment veered strongly toward Van Buren from this treatment and he returned the United States knowing that he would soon be included in Jackson’s government once again. Sure enough, during the 1832 election, Jackson had Van Buren join him on the presidential ticket as Vice President.

With Jackson’s endorsement and as his sanctioned successor, Van Buren, in the 1836 election, ran on his own and won the eighth presidency of the United States, becoming the youngest president thus far at 56 years old. It was a major coup by this pleasant, easygoing dandy and the attainment of all that he desired. After all the hard work on creating a national political party, he reaped the benefits and stood supreme.

However, the honeymoon was short-lived. Due to some questionable financial strategies by Jackson (the death of the Bank of the United States and the Species Circular act), an economic maelstrom was brewing and would hit only weeks after Van Buren’s accession. It was the Panic of 1837 and would be the worst economic disaster for the United States until the Great Depression of 1929. Banks closed, unemployment ran rampant, money was scarce, many were starving and angry, and Van Buren was the target. Although he tried to help, he would never really recover from these devastating economic effects. “Bad luck always seems to attract more bad luck, and the Panic weakened him in two particular ways. It brought the Whigs exactly what they had been lacking—a unifying idea (that the Democrats had ruined the economy). And it chipped away at the adhesion that was so important to the Democratic cause” (p. 103).

Not only that but Van Buren frustrated many Americans due to his political chameleon act, leaving the voters with no idea how he felt on many important issues of the day. For instance, the issue of slavery was becoming increasingly incendiary but Van Buren insisted on walking the tightrope between the North and the South by not proclaiming his allegiance either way. “The central problem that now lay before him was brutally difficult: how to preserve the great Democratic coalition and move beyond the slavery debate, while assuring followers that ‘democracy’ actually meant something, and that dissenting views were taken seriously; how to show people that America stood for meaningful ideals while, there in broad daylight, slaves were sold as chattel within shouting distance of Congress” (p. 116-17). Van Buren couldn’t help but notice the slavery paradox operating right outside his door but he also did not want to offend his fellow Southern democrats.

All these problems would add up to a major loss in the 1840 presidential election. The Whigs accused Van Buren of being pro-slavery (even though he didn’t want to admit Texas to the Union since they were a slave state), of being anti-slavery (because he prosecuted the Amistad case), of being extravagant during the Panic (because he liked nice clothes and wanted to improve the White House), of being a slick politician (for maneuvering his way into the White House), of being immoral, and of being a pro-Catholic supporter. Van Buren did not care and he let the whole nation know that he wanted another crack at the presidential job. “For the first time, a president was striving openly for reelection, breaking a taboo that would remain in place until the early twentieth century” (p. 139). Van Buren had also extended voting suffrage so the election of 1840 was to be the largest so far with William Henry Harrison coming out the clear winner.

This was probably of no surprise whatsoever to Martin Van Buren. “The result, which came in November, was a foregone conclusion” (p.139) with Van Buren winning on six states total. He concluded his term though with gentlemanly tact and dignity worthy of a former president. He returned back to New York City and then Kinderhook with plenty of fanfare and admiration from the people of his home state. Years earlier, he purchased the family home of the Van Nesses which he renamed Lindenwald to which he retired sooner than he had expected.

But retire he didn’t. Soon enough he had determined to try again for the presidency in the 1844 election and so took himself off for a long tour of the United States to generate support. For the time period, it was an amazing journey, even encompassing the city of Chicago, which would make Van Buren, the first (or in this case former) president to visit this great city. “Van Buren finally returned home on July 28, 1842, having traveled more than seven thousand miles and shaken two hundred thousand hands. He had shored up his credentials, renewed his interest with local bosses, and emerged deeply energized by his contact with the far-flung American people” (p. 147).
However, the election of 1844 was to be even dirtier than the last for it was the Democratic Party itself, Van Buren’s brainchild, which turned its back on its creator and chose James K Polk as its representative. Van Buren’s lack of backing however was probably due to the fact that he decided to finally speak out against slavery and thus lose all his southern support. Polk, on the other hand, took a firm stand with the slave states and advocated annexation of Texas. And you know Americans—we can’t withstand the promise of more land!

Van Buren ran one last time for president and surprisingly, he did so under as a third party candidacy, now eschewing the Democratic Party of his own making. Under his son, John’s, influence, Van Buren ran as the Free Soil party candidate with Charles Francis Adams, JQA’s youngest son, as VP, where he spoke out broadly against slavery but for economic opportunity. “Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men!” Van Buren would also lose this election but what he couldn’t know at that time was that the Free Soil party would, in turn, become the modern Republican Party. So you can say that singlehandedly, Martin Van Buren had a hand in inventing both political parties that we see today.

After this Martin really did retire. He returned to Lindenwald where he took up farming and other rustic pursuits. He traveled to Sorrento Italy with another son and wrote his Memoirs. Martin Van Buren died in the midst of the Civil War, even as he had arrived during the Revolution, on July 24, 1862. Abraham Lincoln, even in the middle of a horrendous war of secession, honored the old president with cannon fire and flags at half mast. “For six months following his death, through some of the bloodiest fighting of the war (Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg), all officers in the US Army and Navy wore black crape on their left arms in tribute to the eighth president” (p. 165).

“In certain ways, he had brought the future into existence, removing the old-fashioned politicians who failed to get it and helping America grow from infancy into something like adolescence—a perfect word to convey the turbulent mood swings, lingering pustules of animosity and general bad hair of the Van Buren era” (p. 17).

#7 Andrew Jackson Part 3

American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham.
New York: Random House, 2008.

I know that some of you are wondering what Andrew Jackson has to do with the current events in our nation. You may be thinking that he lived almost 200 years ago and therefore has very little impact on what or who we are today. This is an incorrect assumption because Andrew Jackson, for better or for worse, was a prime factor in shaping the executive branch into what it looks like nowadays. If we complain about too much executive control, we can thank Jackson; if we are happy about the strong leadership in our government, we can also thank Jackson. Jackson, in so many ways, embodied who we were collectively as Americans and steered us towards the place we would eventually reach. In fact, Meachum remarks on the fact that Andrew Jackson is America. “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 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” (p. xx).

The story of Andrew Jackson is one of surmounting seemingly impossible odds. “Yet Jackson endured and conquered. He knew how to make amends when he had to and possessed enough charm to turn longtime enemies into new friends. Jackson, could, of course, lapse into alarming violence, but he also had a capacity for political grace and conciliation when the spirit moved him” (p. 38). As you can see, the General had a mercurial temperament but also had the political savvy to when to blow hot and when to blow cold. In some ways, he’s the perfect politician—he had concrete morals and ethics (to himself) but was able to use a myriad of ways to accomplish them. Machiavelli would have been so proud! Unlike Jefferson, who was an enigma through and through, Jackson had a method to his madness.

For instance, take the Trail of Tears debacle. I think that most people read about Jackson’s inhumanity towards the Indians and this causes many to hate him outright. I disagree. Jackson merely had an idea on how the Indian question could best be solved and he stuck to it for the rest of his life. I really can’t see Jackson as the diabolical tyrant, setting out to destroy the Indians en toto. No, I see him as a man who made an incorrect assumption based on his knowledge, his perceptions, and his prejudices, which led inevitably to an incorrect decision. And since he was president, that incorrect decision affected thousands.

Let us remember that Andrew practically grew up on the frontier in Nashville, TN where the threat of Indian raids and scalpings were of very real concern. As he grew older, he watched the Americans slowly chase the Indians off their land; he also saw the deadly interactions between the two groups (including some battles that he was present at). Plus with the advent of the cotton gin, cotton was the New Big Crop in Town and that meant more slaves and more importantly, more land was needed. The Americans then started branching out and they greedily eyed the wild land of the Indian tribes. Jackson, in his mind, decided that the best policy for keeping the Indians whole and the Americans happy was to send the Indians west of the Mississippi. Sure, now it looks completely heartless and Jackson was certainly at fault in the matter. However considering that I too am an American, I understand how desperately and pointedly those Americans back then would have salivated over all that deliciously, unused land. So here’s Jackson’s plan: there would be no more fighting between the Indians and the Americans because he would give the Americans the land they wanted and send all the Indians across the Mississippi to keep them whole and to give them the land they enjoyed (unmolested).

Jackson’s mind was made up on this matter (it seemed so obvious) so he pushed the bill through Congress and that was that. As we all know in retrospect that the Indians were forced onto the Trail of Tears over thousands of miles, ending with one-fourth of them dying. Even though Jackson was no longer president when this occurred, I definitely think that he could have and should have taken greater steps to see that the Indians were treated more humanely under the circumstances. I am not defending all his actions, but Jackson’s reasoning does make some sense. “For Jackson the primary duty of federal power once invoked, was to protect the many from the few. Like the Bank, like the radicals of South Carolina, like the Washington elite, the Christian movement for justice for the Indians and for public purity posed a threat to Jackson’s vision, which held that the people (or at least white male people) were sovereign and that intermediary forces were too apt to serve their own interests rather than the public’s. Jackson’s solution? Jackson. On the Indian question, he was determined to have his way, and few doubted that he would prevail” (p. 76-77).

In other words, “Jackson was neither a humanitarian nor a blind bigot. He thought of himself as practical” (p. 96).

In his paradoxical way, he espoused rights of man but continued to own slaves and saw nothing wrong with it. In the South, slaves were owned as a way of life, end of story. Even though Jackson believed in the Declaration of Independence and fought for the idea of Union, he was particularly blind to the idea that slavery was repugnant to all these vaunted ideals. At one point, he actively worked against the Constitution to suppress abolitionist mailings in South Carolina. “If Jackson had been a president of consistent principle, the issue [slavery] would have been clear. He was the defender of the Union, the conqueror of nullification, the hero of democracy. An American organization was exercising its constitutional right to free speech and was using the public mails—mails that were to be open to all—to do so. But Jackson was not a president of consistent principle. He was a politician, subject to his own passions and predilections, and those passions and predilections pressed him to cast his lot with those with whom he agreed on the question at hand—slavery—which meant suppressing freedom of speech” (p. 304). Jackson can be very, very hard to understand at times but I believe that he was acting off a set of his own guiding principles.

When I look back to Andrew Jackson, though, I see that his main impact on us today was the establishment of the executive branch as the strongest of the three. No longer would the president bow before whims of Congress! He revolutionized the presidency through his belief that the president was a direct representative of the people of the United States, which was more than Congress could claim at the time. “Patronage, the Bank, nullification, Indian removal, clerical influence in politics, internal improvements, respect abroad—these were the questions that would define Jackson’s White House years. They were questions about power, money, God, and Jackson’s answers were linked to his expansive view of the office of president” (p. 57). Only a month in office and Jackson had vetoed his first bill. During his presidency, Congress raged at him for his tyrannical stronghold on what he believed was right. And you know what? The people loved him. I mean, absolutely loved him! He went straight to the people on any major issues, having his party-friendly newspapers print what he wanted them to say. No president had claimed to be the people’s direct representative but that is what Jackson did and nobody could stop him. “’King Andrew the First,’ as his foes styled him, was the most powerful president in the forty-year history of the office, but his power was marshaled not for personal gain—he was always in financial straits—but, as Jackson saw it, for what he believed was in the best interest of the ordinary, the unconnected, the uneducated. He could be brutal in his application of power, but he was not a brute. He could be unwavering, but he was not close-minded. He was, rather, the great politician of his time, if success in politics is measured by the affirmation of a majority of the people in real time and by the shadow one casts after leaving the stage” (p. 230).

And that, I think, is his greatest legacy—the “shadow” that he has cast ever since on our great nation. After all, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, and Truman all looked to Jackson and the precedents that he set. He was needy and selfish and vain and opinionated but he cared about people and he could make decisions when they were necessary. Not great decisions sometimes but he didn’t waffle. Whether you love him or hate him (there’s really no middle ground here), Andrew Jackson was and still is one of our greatest Presidents.

“In Nashville, according to legend, a visitor to the Hermitage asked a slave on the place whether he thought Jackson had gone to heaven. ‘If the General wants to go,’ the slave replied, ‘who’s going to stop him’” (p. 346)?