He engineered a jury of 12 of his most trusted officers to court-martial the two Brits. The fact that the trial was unlawful did not faze Jackson, who justified himself by saying, "The laws of war did not apply to conflicts with savages." When even his hand-picked jury failed to reach the conclusion he desired, Jackson simply ordered Arbuthnot hanged and Ambrister shot. In essence, Jackson executed two British subjects on Spanish land in the absence of authorization or precedent, despite the fact that the United States was technically at peace with both Great Britain and Spain at the time.
Arbuthnot believed that Jackson was the architect of the entire border crisis, a renegade aiming for U.S. possession of both native and Spanish land. the Heidlers agree. To use the words of Alabama territorial Gov. William Bibb, "no man should be permitted to usurp the whole powers of the whole government and to treat with contempt all authority except that of his own will." Yet the Andrew Jackson of Old Hickory's War did so time and time again, often for indefensible reasons. Through this glimpse into Jackson's pre-White House days, the reader learns how Jackson's military career sowed the seeds for the kind of president he eventually would become.
Despite the different approaches taken by the Heidlers and Bur-stein, their characterizations offer a complementary portrait of Jackson. Unsurprisingly, both works have drawn fire. Certainly, neither is flawless: Burstein attempts to reimagine Jackson as a tragic Shakespearean figure, for example, an effort that is sometimes strained and distracting. Much of the criticism, however, focuses on the mere fact that these scholars reveal a less than likable, less than heroic Andrew Jackson. Biographers, some reviewers suggest, should be in the business of building up larger-than-life heroes rather than analyzing real, fallible individuals.
Publishers Weekly editor Mark Rotella and four co-authors, for example, blame Burstein for "tattering Jackson's repute more successfully than most of the president's 19th-century enemies." In fact, Bur-stein is one of the few historians to consider and investigate the personal side of Jackson since the 19th century. If he, like Jackson's so-called enemies, found little praiseworthy in Jackson after uncovering the man's more private side, that is hardly grounds for complaint.
In Presidential Studies Quarterly, Russ Braley, former foreign correspondent for the New York Daily News, accuses the Heidlers of seeing Jackson "with the eyes of the peace loving post-Vietnam war generation." But the real problem is that Braley sees Jackson with the eyes of the uncritically patriotic, WASP-loving World War II generation. Braley's defense of Jackson, based on the fact that "Jackson was so admired that the song 'The Battle of New Orleans' can still be heard wherever radios play," proves merely that Braley feels secure getting his historical analyses from Johnny Horton -- and that he hasn't listened to many radios lately.
More serious is the implication that a mainstream (as opposed to "minority studies" or self-labeled "multicultural") work of history cannot incorporate the Native American position -- or even consider crimes against Native Americans as "real crimes" -- without losing its credibility and being tarred as politically correct revisionism.
The image of Jackson that emerges from Old Hickory's War and The Passions of Andrew Jackson is both compelling and, on the whole, convincing. This Jackson was a charismatic loose cannon, a leader with the makings of greatness repeatedly brought low by his own untamed passions and headstrong impulsiveness. This Jackson, controlling and uncontrollable, made a likelier tyrant than a democrat. (Perhaps there was something to Schlesinger's comparison between Jackson and FDR after all.) This Jackson was a man who exemplified characteristics later associated with other national leaders: before Abraham Lincoln, he represented selective adherence to the Constitution; before William McKinley, energetic imperialism; before Teddy Roosevelt, the cult of personality; before Bill Clinton, the personal made political.
In short, the Andrew Jackson described by Burstein and the Heidlers was an imperial president in the making long before imperial presidents were cool.
Ironically, this portrait, while not as personally flattering to Jackson, in reality grants him more importance -- for, if nothing else, the poor example he set -- than does the naive "Champion of the People" caricature. Considering the overwhelming affection scholars have shown Jackson, it perhaps is unsurprising to note that Old Hickory remains a fixture on most historians' lists of great presidents. Nearly all the so-called great presidents routinely named by U.S. historians were imperial presidents to one degree or another, consolidating authority in the executive and treating the letter of the Constitution as a suggestion rather than a command. The only imperial presidents routinely omitted from the "top 10" lists are those like Richard Nixon -- those who abused the power of the White House and got caught.
Mainstream accounts of Jackson's accomplishments have endeared him to generations, not least to many libertarians. But how accurate are the common conceptions of Jackson's contributions to his office and country? He was certainly a son of the frontier. He was also a military hero, at least to the masses who did not have to clean up after his insubordination and unauthorized activities. These credentials helped him claim the mantle of champion of the common man. But the reform movements that thrived in the resulting language of egalitarianism -- movements for the abolition of slavery and the rights of women, for example -- had little to do with the real Andrew Jackson, who was both an unrepentant slave-owner and a devotee of an already antiquated cult of masculinity.
The National Bank, which represented a gross overstep of the federal government's powers, did indeed meet its doom at Jackson's hands. Burstein suggests that Jackson's fervor came more from personal animosities than sound economic policy. More to the point, Jackson overreached his own constitutional limits in attacking the bank, fighting one wrong with another.
Likewise, his position against state nullification seems to have been less a matter of principle than a consequence of his personal split with nullification advocate John C. Calhoun, who resigned as Jackson's vice president and became a senator representing South Carolina. At any rate, Calhoun's states' rights decentralism is arguably more amenable to libertarian ideas than the evolution of an all-powerful national government undergirded by unflinching military suppression, a hallmark of the Jackson administration.
Jackson's embrace of the spoils system bolstered his power further. And his policy of compulsory removal of American Indians -- besides enacting a national plan for what was essentially ethnic cleansing, coupled with the forcible redistribution of property from its rightful owners to those who had not earned it -- was wildly at odds with the checks and balances inherent in the federal system, directly defying the Supreme Court's ruling in the 1831 case Cherokee Nation v. State of Georgia. Jackson's taunting response to Chief Justice John Marshall spoke volumes: "Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it."
Ever the frontiersman, ever the general, Jackson believed that might made right and that the U.S. Army answered to him, not to the Supreme Court. Insisting that he personified the people, much as Louis XIV insisted that he was France, did not make Jackson an advocate of individual human rights; on the contrary, it earned him the title "King Andrew I" from his opponents. From such legacies libertarian heroes are not made.
A corrected image of Jackson shows readers why some of the Framers of the Constitution were concerned about the authority of the executive branch and how it might evolve. James Madison knew that human beings were not angels and anticipated that presidents would be swayed by their personal agendas, passions, and lesser natures. Burstein offers a case in point to demonstrate the validity of that anxiety -- a welcome reminder as the nation enters presidential election season once again.
The Passions of Andrew Jackson, like Old Hickory's War, is an impressive presentation of a little-studied side of Andrew Jackson, and a welcome corrective to the uncritical praise he has received for so long. Just don't expect to find copies of either in the Hermitage gift shop.
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