WEBVTT

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- [Martin] He learned to fight
in the Revolutionary War.

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He used what he'd learned

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to kill a man over a gambling debt.

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He led the American Army

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to the most surprising
victory in its history,

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but he also launched an
unauthorized invasion of Florida.

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He added vast regions of the
South to the United States,

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but it was land he brutally
wrested from Native Americans.

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He was the champion of
the common white man,

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but he owned over 100 black Americans.

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He was the founder of
the Democratic Party,

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but his enemies accused him
of being an American Napoleon.

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His name was Andrew Jackson.

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- [Announcer] Andrew
Jackson is made possible by

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a major grant

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from The National Endowment
for the Humanities,

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democracy demands wisdom,

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by The Ahmanson Foundation,

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committed to the creative pursuit

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of quality education in the arts,

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by The Corporation for
Public Broadcasting,

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and by contributions to your PBS station

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from viewers like you.

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Thank you.

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(piano music)

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- [Martin] In 1859,

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as America was rushing towards civil war,

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James Parton,

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the first historian

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to attempt a biography of Andrew Jackson,

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arrived at the Hermitage,
Jackson's beloved home.

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He was escorted through the
mansion by Hannah Jackson,

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who had been Andrew Jackson's slave

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from the time she was
10 until Jackson died.

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Parton knew that many Americans
considered Andrew Jackson

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the country's greatest leader
since the Founding Fathers.

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Parton wrote...

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- [Parton] During the
last 30 years of his life,

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he was the idle of the American people.

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Columbus had sailed, Washington fought,

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Jefferson written.

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50 years of Democratic
government had passed,

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and the result of it all

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was that the people of the United States

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honored Andrew Jackson
before all over living men.

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- Andrew Jackson, in my mind,

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is one of the great presidents.

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And it's not surprising
that he was so loved.

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In fact, it is said,

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that when the Civil War broke out in 1861,

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people wanted to vote for Andrew Jackson,

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hoping he would come
back and save the Union.

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He was that beloved.

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- For all of his flaws,

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for all of his contradictions,

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Andrew Jackson did more

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than any other American of his generation

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to enlarge the possibilities
of American democracy.

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In doing that, and seeing
himself as president,

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as the tribune of the people,

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he did more than anyone to change,

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to enlarge the possibilities
of the American presidency.

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- [Martin] But Jackson was also

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one of the most controversial presidents

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in American history.

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His policies on issues like
Indian removal and slavery

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provoked fierce opposition,

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not only in his lifetime, but beyond.

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- Andrew Jackson, for African Americans,

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is not the sort of figure
as one holds very dear.

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He wouldn't form part of the,

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the ranks of the great
men of American society,

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because, never in his reign as president,

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in his terms as president,

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did he ever attempt to
expand rights of people.

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On the contrary, he did everything
he could, it seems to me,

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to constrict those rights,
to limit those rights.

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- People talk about Andrew
Jackson's black moods,

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people talk about Andrew
Jackson's red hot temper,

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but the color of this story is green,

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and it's the green of envy,

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and it's the green of
coveting Indian lands.

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- [Martin] At the Hermitage,

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Parton discovered a portrait of Jackson

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finished just before he died.

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It was completely unlike

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the many heroic portraits
of the great man,

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and the vulnerability it
captured brought to life

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Parton's most insightful
description of Jackson.

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- [Parton] He was a democratic autocrat,

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an urbane savage,

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an atrocious saint.

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- Americans have always
looked at Andrew Jackson

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and seen themselves.

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But, over the years, they've
looked at Andrew Jackson

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and seen different versions of themselves.

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At one time they saw the frontiersman,

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the poor boy made good,

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the classic self-made man.

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Today, some Americans look back at Jackson

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and they see the slaveholder,

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the Indian oppressor,
even the Indian hater.

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So, the debate about Andrew Jackson

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is a very contemporary one.

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He's an inescapable,
quintessential American,

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but of what kind?

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Is he a man whom we should admire,

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or is he a man whom we should despise?

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Is he a man whom we should celebrate,

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or is he a man for whom
we should apologize?

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- [Jefferson] Thomas Jefferson.

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He could never speak

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on account of the
rashness of his feelings.

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I have seen him attempt it repeatedly,

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and as often choke with rage.

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(folk music)

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- [Martin] In the 1760s,

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Andrew Jackson's parents traded
desperate poverty in Ireland

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for an equally hard life
on the Carolina Frontier.

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Andrew never met his father,

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for he died when his wife
was pregnant with Andrew,

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leaving the boy and his two older brothers

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to fend for themselves.

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When the Revolutionary War began in 1775,

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the Carolina Frontier
became a dangerous place,

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with one farmer siding with the patriots

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and his next door
neighbor with the British.

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- It was a brawling,
violent way to grow up.

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You made a living with your
hands and with your spirit,

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your military spirit to defend yourself,

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and your hands to pull
something out of the soil.

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So, you had a constant wariness

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and a constant threat of violence,

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and I think that's one of the many reasons

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Jackson became a man who
was so prone to violence,

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he grew up with it, he
didn't know anything else.

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(tense music)
(heavy breathing)

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- [Martin] During the Revolution,

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the fighting in the Carolinas

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was the most vicious of the entire war.

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(guns fire)

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Both sides executed men they captured,

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and committed atrocities
against civilians.

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Outnumbered and desperate,

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the patriots relied on young boys

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who knew every twist and turn in the woods

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to carry orders to the battle lines.

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One of them was Andrew Jackson.

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- There's a famous story about
young Andrew, 13 years old,

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being commanded by the British
officer who captured him

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to clean his boots,

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and Jackson refused to
take such a servile job,

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and the officer slashed him
across the face with a sword,

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and Jackson put his arm
up to defend himself,

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and he carried the scars all his life.

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- [Martin] The war inflicted other,

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even more horrible scars on Jackson.

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One of his brothers died of
heat stroke while in battle,

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and his mother and other
brother died of disease.

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(guns fire)

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In the boy's eyes,

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it was the British who were to blame

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for leaving him suddenly
alone in the world.

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- For Andrew Jackson,

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the American Revolution
was a formative psychic,

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as well as political event.

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For the rest of his life,

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he would despise the British Empire,

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he would grow up feeling
as if he owed the British

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a kind of repayment

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for all the British had
done to him personally,

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and to his family.

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(tense music)

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- Andrew Jackson, with
that kind of a background,

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you would expect him to be a very angry

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and frustrated young man, and he was.

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And he made quite a reputation for himself

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as a man who is getting into trouble,

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causing all kinds of problems.

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a fellow resident of the town of Salisbury

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described the young troublemaker this way.

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- [Resident] Andrew Jackson
was the most roaring,

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rollicking, horse-racing, card-playing,

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mischievous fellow that
ever lived in Salisbury.

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- He got a small inheritance

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from a grandfather back in Ireland.

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And he went down to
Charleston to collect it

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and spent the whole thing in a week,

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on horses and liquor and
maybe some girls too,

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but it was all gone pretty fast,

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and he had to trudge back to
the upcountry of South Carolina

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to somehow pull his life together again.

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There are a lot of 15 year olds
who would not have made it,

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and it wouldn't have surprised anybody

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if Andrew Jackson just went down the tubes

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and was forgotten at that point.

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But all the people who knew him

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when he was a boy and a young man,

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said he had passion, fire,
determination, audacity,

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and a refusal to be crushed
by the kinds of things

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that might wipe out anybody else.

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- [Martin] After
apprenticing with a lawyer,

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Jackson became a lawyer
himself at the age of 20.

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And when he was offered a job

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as a prosecutor on the frontier,

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he jumped at the opportunity

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to join the waves of
Americans heading west.

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- When the revolution ends,

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particularly for young men like Jackson,

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with very little going
for them in the East,

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there is this huge expanse of territory,

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Kentucky and Tennessee, to be precise,

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that was the place you could start over.

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One of the attractive features
of this frontier experience

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was that all of these new places were

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in need of founding fathers, so to speak,

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and, like a job placement,

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new founding father needed
for country in Tennessee,

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and people like Jackson could apply.

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And basically, you show up and say,

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"I'm here to create a new community."

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(folk music)

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- [Martin] In 1788,

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three months before George
Washington was elected

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the first president of the United States,

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Andrew Jackson arrived at a new settlement

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on the edge of the American West.

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Its name was Nashville, Tennessee.

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Besides practicing law,

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Nashville's newest citizen bred
horses, speculated in land,

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and, most significantly, fell in love

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with Rachel Donelson Robards,

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daughter of one of Nashville's
most prominent families.

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Rachel returned Andrew's feelings,

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but their relationship faced
an insurmountable barrier.

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Rachel was already married

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to a man from Kentucky
named Lewis Robards.

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- When Jackson arrives,
here's this wild kid,

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and Rachel, you know,
was sort of wild herself.

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She should never have
married Lewis Robards.

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And she finds, I think, companionship

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and a kind of kindred spirit in Jackson.

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And they fall in love.

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- [Martin] But in most of 1790s America,

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Women literally belonged
to their husbands.

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- I think it's very hard
for us to understand

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that there was a time in
the history of our country,

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where it was virtually
impossible for people to divorce.

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The woman became a part of the husband,

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and she had no separate
legal rights whatsoever

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from her husband.

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So in the event a woman
wanted to leave the household,

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she had to leave her children behind,

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because the children
did not belong to her.

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She had no legal ownership
to children, to property.

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A woman had no legal identity whatsoever,

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except as a part of her husband.

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- [Martin] Most unhappy couples
lived in loveless marriages

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rather than flout the law,

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but Andrew and Rachel were
not the kind of people

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who let social convention stop them

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from following their hearts.

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- These two hapless people,
up until this point,

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find each other, and the
opportunity and the desire

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merge for a really extraordinary decision,

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which is for the two to elope to Natchez.

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- [Martin] The two young
lovers headed south

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along the Natchez Trace Trail.

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Their goal was the wild
and wooly town of Natchez,

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on the Mississippi River,
which was governed by Spain.

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By running off with Andrew,
Rachel was making it clear

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that she was never going
back to her husband,

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no matter what the consequences.

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- For a woman to choose
to leave her husband,

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especially one who came from
Rachel Donelson's background,

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was an extraordinarily
courageous decision on her part,

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because, in Rachel's case,

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she knew that she was, essentially,

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setting herself up to be condemned

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by the society that she lived in.

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And the shadow of this decision

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would haunt them through
the rest of their days.

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- [Martin] In the beginning,

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the couple's daring
elopement was worth it,

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for they made an ideal match.

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- Where others could
not tame him, she could.

00:16:53.024 --> 00:16:54.711
There's one incident that occurred

00:16:54.711 --> 00:16:58.586
when they were floating
down the Mississippi River,

00:16:58.586 --> 00:17:02.580
and there were some people
that annoyed Jackson,

00:17:02.580 --> 00:17:04.608
I don't recall exactly
what it is they did,

00:17:04.608 --> 00:17:09.239
and he took a rifle, and
he starts shooting at them.

00:17:09.239 --> 00:17:10.306
And right away,

00:17:10.306 --> 00:17:14.009
they ran down into the
cabin and told Rachel.

00:17:14.009 --> 00:17:18.886
She said, "Please tell Mr.
Jackson I would like to see him."

00:17:18.886 --> 00:17:23.053
She could handle him, she
was the right person for him.

00:17:24.665 --> 00:17:27.286
- [Martin] With Nashville
still a frontier town,

00:17:27.286 --> 00:17:30.249
with few churches and fewer courts,

00:17:30.249 --> 00:17:34.576
Rachel and Andrew were able to
return home after six months

00:17:34.576 --> 00:17:38.743
and be accepted by most of
the community as man and wife.

00:17:41.250 --> 00:17:44.761
But Rachel's husband was not so forgiving,

00:17:44.761 --> 00:17:48.512
and he took his case against
her to the state legislature,

00:17:48.512 --> 00:17:51.664
where he won permission to sue for divorce

00:17:51.664 --> 00:17:53.914
on the grounds of adultery.

00:17:55.055 --> 00:17:59.937
In 1793, the courts granted
Lewis the first divorce

00:17:59.937 --> 00:18:03.270
in the history of the state of Kentucky.

00:18:04.788 --> 00:18:06.142
Not long after,

00:18:06.142 --> 00:18:10.309
Rachel and Andrew were
quietly married in Nashville.

00:18:11.331 --> 00:18:12.384
Rachel hoped

00:18:12.384 --> 00:18:15.993
that if she and Andrew
were loving and faithful,

00:18:15.993 --> 00:18:19.465
the fact that she had been
branded a scarlet woman

00:18:19.465 --> 00:18:21.465
would soon be forgotten.

00:18:22.990 --> 00:18:26.773
But her new husband was
interested in politics,

00:18:26.773 --> 00:18:30.568
and her adultery would
one day be a central issue

00:18:30.568 --> 00:18:34.485
in the race for president
of the United States.

00:18:38.339 --> 00:18:41.380
For all his wildness,
the young Andrew Jackson

00:18:41.380 --> 00:18:43.878
also had the determination, vision,

00:18:43.878 --> 00:18:47.461
and charisma of a born
leader, and in 1796,

00:18:48.854 --> 00:18:51.121
the state of Tennessee sent him

00:18:51.121 --> 00:18:54.371
as its lone representative to Congress.

00:18:55.559 --> 00:18:58.869
But the learned statesmen who
filled the nation's capitol

00:18:58.869 --> 00:19:03.036
didn't quite know what to make
of the fiery frontiersman.

00:19:04.124 --> 00:19:05.719
- Jackson was so passionate

00:19:05.719 --> 00:19:08.374
when he came to Congress in the 1790s,

00:19:08.374 --> 00:19:10.622
that Thomas Jefferson remembered

00:19:10.622 --> 00:19:12.533
that he would get on his feet

00:19:12.533 --> 00:19:15.071
and become overwhelmed with his emotions,

00:19:15.071 --> 00:19:18.876
literally choked with rage,
could not get out a word,

00:19:18.876 --> 00:19:22.804
and, red-faced, had to sit down again.

00:19:22.804 --> 00:19:23.943
- [Martin] If the Washington elite

00:19:23.943 --> 00:19:27.298
were unimpressed with the
passionate Mr. Jackson,

00:19:27.298 --> 00:19:29.215
the feeling was mutual.

00:19:30.240 --> 00:19:33.231
- Congress was stifling for Jackson.

00:19:33.231 --> 00:19:35.984
It was a place where
people met in committees

00:19:35.984 --> 00:19:37.715
and did backroom deals,

00:19:37.715 --> 00:19:40.237
and Jackson despised backroom deals.

00:19:40.237 --> 00:19:44.109
It was a place where people
traded favors with one another

00:19:44.109 --> 00:19:45.662
in order to get what they wanted,

00:19:45.662 --> 00:19:49.579
and Jackson thought that
was hideously corrupt.

00:19:52.530 --> 00:19:55.011
- [Martin] After just
over a year in congress,

00:19:55.011 --> 00:19:58.308
Jackson resigned, declaring...

00:19:58.308 --> 00:20:00.972
- [Jackson] I was born for the storm,

00:20:00.972 --> 00:20:03.305
and a calm does not suit me.

00:20:04.560 --> 00:20:05.750
- [Martin] Raising racehorses

00:20:05.750 --> 00:20:08.246
now became his favorite pastime,

00:20:08.246 --> 00:20:12.182
and betting enormous sums on
those horses in match races

00:20:12.182 --> 00:20:13.765
became his passion.

00:20:14.931 --> 00:20:18.890
- Andrew Jackson loved
horses, violence, whiskey,

00:20:18.890 --> 00:20:21.201
he was also someone who,

00:20:21.201 --> 00:20:24.180
if you were his friend, you
were his friend forever.

00:20:24.180 --> 00:20:27.180
If you were his enemy, God help you.

00:20:28.401 --> 00:20:32.241
- [Martin] In 1805, Jackson
won a huge sum of money

00:20:32.241 --> 00:20:36.179
when his opponent's horse came up lame.

00:20:36.179 --> 00:20:39.414
But a dispute over how
the payoff was made,

00:20:39.414 --> 00:20:42.471
led to an escalating series of insults

00:20:42.471 --> 00:20:45.331
between Jackson and a young Tennessean

00:20:45.331 --> 00:20:47.331
named Charles Dickinson.

00:20:48.340 --> 00:20:50.693
- Later, his friends insisted

00:20:50.693 --> 00:20:55.512
that Dickinson had said
something about Rachel Jackson.

00:20:55.512 --> 00:20:57.184
And here's something else

00:20:57.184 --> 00:21:00.062
that Jackson is very sensitive about,

00:21:00.062 --> 00:21:03.062
because his whole marriage to Rachel

00:21:04.065 --> 00:21:07.953
had been under a cloud from the beginning,

00:21:07.953 --> 00:21:10.703
and anybody, to raise that point,

00:21:12.081 --> 00:21:14.998
in any direct or even indirect way,

00:21:15.874 --> 00:21:19.041
would trigger a very violent response.

00:21:24.107 --> 00:21:26.437
- [Martin] On May 30, 1806,

00:21:26.437 --> 00:21:28.802
Charles Dickinson and Andrew Jackson

00:21:28.802 --> 00:21:30.802
met on a dueling ground.

00:21:32.542 --> 00:21:36.538
Dickinson was reputed to be
the best shot in Tennessee,

00:21:36.538 --> 00:21:40.615
and when the signal was given
to fire, he fired first.

00:21:40.615 --> 00:21:43.459
(gun fires)

00:21:43.459 --> 00:21:46.709
But to his shock, he apparently missed.

00:21:48.255 --> 00:21:51.608
Then, Andrew Jackson took careful aim

00:21:51.608 --> 00:21:53.120
(gun fires)

00:21:53.120 --> 00:21:55.703
and mortally wounded Dickinson.

00:21:59.810 --> 00:22:04.523
Only then did Jackson's second
notice that he was bleeding.

00:22:04.523 --> 00:22:07.627
Jackson had, in fact,
been shot in the chest,

00:22:07.627 --> 00:22:11.127
with the bullet lodging next to his heart.

00:22:12.069 --> 00:22:14.350
When his shocked second asked how

00:22:14.350 --> 00:22:17.383
he could possibly have
fired back accurately,

00:22:17.383 --> 00:22:19.589
Jackson replied...

00:22:19.589 --> 00:22:21.851
- [Jackson] I should have hit him

00:22:21.851 --> 00:22:24.851
if he had shot me through the brain.

00:22:26.898 --> 00:22:28.444
- [Martin] Jackson carried the bullet

00:22:28.444 --> 00:22:30.982
for the rest of his life.

00:22:30.982 --> 00:22:34.477
It was unmistakable evidence
of how unsuited he was

00:22:34.477 --> 00:22:37.599
to the give-and-take of politics,

00:22:37.599 --> 00:22:40.078
but his future in a different arena

00:22:40.078 --> 00:22:42.495
could not have been brighter.

00:22:46.704 --> 00:22:48.952
- [Sam Houston] Sam Houston.

00:22:48.952 --> 00:22:51.400
The reputation of General Jackson

00:22:51.400 --> 00:22:54.337
will adorn the proudest, brightest pages

00:22:54.337 --> 00:22:56.681
in the nation's history.

00:22:56.681 --> 00:23:00.848
He wears the laurel wreath,
which his own valor won.

00:23:09.657 --> 00:23:12.074
(drums beat)

00:23:16.888 --> 00:23:18.341
- [Martin] In 1812,

00:23:18.341 --> 00:23:22.341
the United States declared
war on Great Britain.

00:23:24.374 --> 00:23:27.876
Andrew Jackson had been
yearning since he was 13,

00:23:27.876 --> 00:23:30.508
for another shot at the British,

00:23:30.508 --> 00:23:33.972
and, having been voted commander
of the Tennessee militia,

00:23:33.972 --> 00:23:36.305
his dream had now come true.

00:23:38.170 --> 00:23:41.488
To inspire fellow
Tennesseans to join his army,

00:23:41.488 --> 00:23:42.655
he declared...

00:23:43.871 --> 00:23:48.038
- [Jackson] Who are we, and
for what are we going to fight?

00:23:49.844 --> 00:23:53.810
Are we the titled slaves of George III,

00:23:53.810 --> 00:23:57.517
the military conscripts
of Napoleon the Great,

00:23:57.517 --> 00:24:01.287
or the frozen peasants
of the Russian Tsar?

00:24:01.287 --> 00:24:04.704
No, we are the free-born sons of America,

00:24:06.469 --> 00:24:10.644
the citizens of the only republic
now existing in the world,

00:24:10.644 --> 00:24:12.650
and the only people on earth

00:24:12.650 --> 00:24:16.003
who possess rights,
liberties, and property

00:24:16.003 --> 00:24:18.586
which they dare call their own.

00:24:21.444 --> 00:24:22.277
- [Martin] But the mission

00:24:22.277 --> 00:24:25.154
Jackson and his men were ultimately given

00:24:25.154 --> 00:24:28.595
was far from glamorous,
tramping and slogging

00:24:28.595 --> 00:24:31.885
through the forests and
swamps of the southeast

00:24:31.885 --> 00:24:35.594
until they had found and
defeated Creek Indian warriors

00:24:35.594 --> 00:24:39.141
who were allied with the British.

00:24:39.141 --> 00:24:42.390
- Well, Jackson is in
an unenviable position.

00:24:42.390 --> 00:24:45.704
He has one of four armies
assigned to punish the Creeks,

00:24:45.704 --> 00:24:47.196
he is poorly supplied,

00:24:47.196 --> 00:24:50.113
his troops are very poorly trained,

00:24:51.086 --> 00:24:52.589
they have very short enlistments,

00:24:52.589 --> 00:24:57.012
and it's cold and wet, and
they want to return home.

00:24:57.012 --> 00:24:59.911
Things are not going well.

00:24:59.911 --> 00:25:01.683
- [Martin] After months in the field,

00:25:01.683 --> 00:25:05.208
Jackson's supply lines broke down.

00:25:05.208 --> 00:25:08.553
Fearing starvation, some
of his soldiers mutinied

00:25:08.553 --> 00:25:11.553
and began to walk home to Tennessee.

00:25:12.550 --> 00:25:14.886
But Andrew Jackson threatened to kill them

00:25:14.886 --> 00:25:17.053
if they took another step.

00:25:18.349 --> 00:25:20.489
It was not an idle threat,

00:25:20.489 --> 00:25:22.330
for on two other occasions,

00:25:22.330 --> 00:25:26.402
Jackson had men under
his command executed.

00:25:26.402 --> 00:25:28.735
(guns fire)

00:25:29.746 --> 00:25:32.036
- I see, in Jackson's Indian campaigns,

00:25:32.036 --> 00:25:36.390
a ruthlessness that is
frightful to behold.

00:25:36.390 --> 00:25:38.554
He seemed possessed, almost,

00:25:38.554 --> 00:25:42.304
with a determination to
go on no matter what.

00:25:43.829 --> 00:25:46.698
- [Martin] Finally, in March of 1814,

00:25:46.698 --> 00:25:50.097
Jackson cornered the main Creek force.

00:25:50.097 --> 00:25:53.678
It was camped on a peninsula
called Horseshoe Bend,

00:25:53.678 --> 00:25:56.144
because it was protected on three sides

00:25:56.144 --> 00:25:58.144
by the Tallapoosa River.

00:25:59.184 --> 00:26:00.846
With the fourth side protected

00:26:00.846 --> 00:26:04.104
by a mammoth breastwork
of logs they had built,

00:26:04.104 --> 00:26:05.375
the Creeks were convinced

00:26:05.375 --> 00:26:08.375
that their position was impregnable.

00:26:12.783 --> 00:26:15.526
But then, Cherokee warriors
fighting with Jackson

00:26:15.526 --> 00:26:18.298
swam across the river to the Creek village

00:26:18.298 --> 00:26:19.881
and set it on fire.

00:26:21.205 --> 00:26:22.853
Jackson saw his chance

00:26:22.853 --> 00:26:26.409
and ordered his men to
storm the barricade.

00:26:26.409 --> 00:26:28.742
(guns fire)

00:26:29.585 --> 00:26:31.835
(shouting)

00:26:34.669 --> 00:26:37.002
(guns fire)

00:26:56.358 --> 00:26:58.600
After brutal hand-to-hand fighting,

00:26:58.600 --> 00:27:01.600
Jackson's forces took the barricade.

00:27:04.504 --> 00:27:07.117
- From that point on, after
the barricade was breached,

00:27:07.117 --> 00:27:08.676
it's no longer a battle.

00:27:08.676 --> 00:27:12.217
It is a search and destroy mission.

00:27:12.217 --> 00:27:13.717
It is a slaughter.

00:27:17.179 --> 00:27:21.346
- [Martin] Of the 1,000 Creek
warriors, not one surrendered.

00:27:25.054 --> 00:27:28.721
It was Andrew Jackson's
first great triumph,

00:27:30.010 --> 00:27:34.247
but to his friend Sam Houston,
who fought beside him,

00:27:34.247 --> 00:27:36.080
it was also a tragedy.

00:27:38.154 --> 00:27:40.305
- [Sam Houston] The sun was going down,

00:27:40.305 --> 00:27:43.972
and it set on the ruins
of the Creek Nation.

00:27:46.478 --> 00:27:48.442
Where but a few hours before,

00:27:48.442 --> 00:27:52.609
a thousand brave warriors had
scowled on their assailants,

00:27:53.737 --> 00:27:58.394
there was nothing to be seen
but volumes of dense smoke

00:27:58.394 --> 00:28:03.278
rising heavily over the
corpses of painted warriors,

00:28:03.278 --> 00:28:06.778
the burning ruins of their fortifications.

00:28:09.061 --> 00:28:11.172
- [Martin] More Native
Americans were killed

00:28:11.172 --> 00:28:13.524
in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend

00:28:13.524 --> 00:28:17.691
than on any other day in the
history of the United States.

00:28:21.914 --> 00:28:23.314
- One of the American participants

00:28:23.314 --> 00:28:26.543
who went down to the river
that night to fill his canteen,

00:28:26.543 --> 00:28:28.710
said it very, very nicely.

00:28:30.510 --> 00:28:34.491
The Tallapoosa might very well
be called a river of blood,

00:28:34.491 --> 00:28:37.934
because, as the dead and
dying made it to the river,

00:28:37.934 --> 00:28:40.434
the Tallapoosa was turned red.

00:28:45.608 --> 00:28:46.708
- [Martin] Horseshoe Bend

00:28:46.708 --> 00:28:49.330
was one of the only victories in a war

00:28:49.330 --> 00:28:53.497
that was turning out to be a
disaster for the United States.

00:28:54.959 --> 00:28:58.376
- The British had captured Washington, DC

00:28:59.874 --> 00:29:02.874
following the battle of Bladensburg,

00:29:04.058 --> 00:29:06.620
which military historians have called

00:29:06.620 --> 00:29:10.620
the worst disgrace in
American military history.

00:29:12.764 --> 00:29:16.097
When the American militia broke and ran,

00:29:17.870 --> 00:29:19.620
hardly firing a shot,

00:29:20.951 --> 00:29:22.797
the British then moved in,

00:29:22.797 --> 00:29:26.047
burned the White House and the capitol.

00:29:27.180 --> 00:29:30.347
So, the war had been going very badly.

00:29:36.860 --> 00:29:38.027
- [Martin] With Britain threatening

00:29:38.027 --> 00:29:41.979
to further humiliate America
by conquering New Orleans,

00:29:41.979 --> 00:29:44.528
the army was desperate to find a general

00:29:44.528 --> 00:29:47.945
who could get his men to stand and fight.

00:29:48.867 --> 00:29:52.958
The general finally chosen was
incredibly tough on his men,

00:29:52.958 --> 00:29:56.955
and yet his men were
fiercely loyal to him,

00:29:56.955 --> 00:30:00.955
a riddle explained by his
nickname, Old Hickory.

00:30:01.899 --> 00:30:03.705
- Andrew Jackson became Old Hickory

00:30:03.705 --> 00:30:07.616
when he was coming back from
the front down the Mississippi.

00:30:07.616 --> 00:30:12.387
And he decided that he would
walk while the wounded rode.

00:30:12.387 --> 00:30:15.567
And, so, he walked all the way home.

00:30:15.567 --> 00:30:17.690
And his men loved him for it.

00:30:17.690 --> 00:30:21.284
It was an example of amazing
spiritual leadership,

00:30:21.284 --> 00:30:23.191
and they started calling him Old Hickory,

00:30:23.191 --> 00:30:27.358
because they thought he was
as tough as a hickory stick.

00:30:28.430 --> 00:30:29.357
- [Martin] Old Hickory

00:30:29.357 --> 00:30:33.524
had never had a day of formal
military training in his life.

00:30:35.977 --> 00:30:37.809
And yet, the Battle of New Orleans

00:30:37.809 --> 00:30:40.961
would be depicted in song, story, and art

00:30:40.961 --> 00:30:42.878
for the next 100 years,

00:30:44.918 --> 00:30:47.587
for Andrew Jackson and his men

00:30:47.587 --> 00:30:50.087
were about to shock the world.

00:30:52.748 --> 00:30:55.432
To even out the odds with the British,

00:30:55.432 --> 00:30:59.906
Jackson enlisted the aid of
the French pirate Jean Lafitte,

00:30:59.906 --> 00:31:04.886
Choctaw Indians, and the
free blacks of New Orleans.

00:31:04.886 --> 00:31:07.159
Then he mashed them beside his men

00:31:07.159 --> 00:31:09.143
on a narrow stretch of ground

00:31:09.143 --> 00:31:12.643
between a swamp and the Mississippi River.

00:31:14.593 --> 00:31:16.176
On January 8, 1815,

00:31:17.348 --> 00:31:20.201
a huge wave of
battle-hardened British troops

00:31:20.201 --> 00:31:23.059
swept down on Jackson's irregulars.

00:31:23.059 --> 00:31:25.065
(guns fire)

00:31:25.065 --> 00:31:26.905
Instead of turning and running,

00:31:26.905 --> 00:31:29.455
as the British has
watched American troops do

00:31:29.455 --> 00:31:31.808
in numerous battles before,

00:31:31.808 --> 00:31:33.241
Jackson and his men

00:31:33.241 --> 00:31:36.824
marched into the pages
of American history.

00:31:38.291 --> 00:31:41.883
- They really thought that
once these professionals

00:31:41.883 --> 00:31:46.050
came marching towards these
frontiersmen, they'd all run.

00:31:49.379 --> 00:31:53.379
And to their surprise,
they not only didn't run,

00:31:54.481 --> 00:31:58.231
they stood and fired
one volley after another

00:32:00.482 --> 00:32:04.649
right into the faces of these
poor oncoming British soldiers

00:32:06.163 --> 00:32:08.246
and just mowed them down.

00:32:10.327 --> 00:32:12.851
- [Martin] Jackson had proved that America

00:32:12.851 --> 00:32:16.294
could stand up to the world's
greatest military power

00:32:16.294 --> 00:32:17.127
and win.

00:32:18.250 --> 00:32:22.560
- The victory that he won
was almost unbelievable.

00:32:22.560 --> 00:32:25.567
The British lost hundreds of
men dead on the battlefield.

00:32:25.567 --> 00:32:29.303
Jackson's casualties in the main battle

00:32:29.303 --> 00:32:31.834
were eight killed and 13 wounded.

00:32:31.834 --> 00:32:35.628
It was astonishing.
It's still astonishing.

00:32:35.628 --> 00:32:38.633
- [Martin] As news of the victory
spread across the country,

00:32:38.633 --> 00:32:41.924
America was swept up
in a wave of patriotism

00:32:41.924 --> 00:32:44.007
unrivaled in its history.

00:32:44.870 --> 00:32:49.037
- I think the whole character
of the American people changed

00:32:49.885 --> 00:32:51.718
after the War of 1812.

00:32:53.020 --> 00:32:54.962
Prior to that time,

00:32:54.962 --> 00:32:57.630
if you asked a person
who or what they were,

00:32:57.630 --> 00:32:59.766
they'd say, I'm a New Yorker.

00:32:59.766 --> 00:33:01.082
I'm a Virginian.

00:33:01.082 --> 00:33:04.884
I'm from Connecticut.
I'm from Massachusetts.

00:33:04.884 --> 00:33:08.967
After New Orleans, they
said, "I am an American."

00:33:09.856 --> 00:33:11.689
- [Martin] Americans pride in the victory

00:33:11.689 --> 00:33:14.885
was stoked by a flood
of images of the battle.

00:33:14.885 --> 00:33:17.908
For a new invention, aquatint engraving,

00:33:17.908 --> 00:33:20.853
enabled artists to make
multiple color copies

00:33:20.853 --> 00:33:24.770
of the same image must
faster than ever before.

00:33:27.201 --> 00:33:30.709
A delighted American public
bought up thousands of pictures

00:33:30.709 --> 00:33:34.709
of the glorious American
victory at New Orleans.

00:33:35.781 --> 00:33:38.869
And at the center of many
of these new engravings

00:33:38.869 --> 00:33:42.369
was the new American hero, Andrew Jackson.

00:33:47.032 --> 00:33:48.769
- [Historian] Andrew Jackson
was really one of the first

00:33:48.769 --> 00:33:51.212
national celebrities.

00:33:51.212 --> 00:33:54.919
Songs were written about him,
clubs were founded for him.

00:33:54.919 --> 00:33:57.433
January 8th, the anniversary
of the Battle of New Orleans,

00:33:57.433 --> 00:34:00.656
towns would have Jackson
dinners and banquets.

00:34:00.656 --> 00:34:04.823
He was a cultural force before
he was a political force.

00:34:06.481 --> 00:34:08.670
- [Martin] The festivities
were boisterous,

00:34:08.670 --> 00:34:10.063
for Americans had more

00:34:10.063 --> 00:34:14.181
than just the Battle of
New Orleans to celebrate.

00:34:14.181 --> 00:34:16.527
- After 1815, the Americans
were very much free

00:34:16.527 --> 00:34:18.286
to work out their own destiny

00:34:18.286 --> 00:34:21.321
without interference from Europe.

00:34:21.321 --> 00:34:25.337
This meant that they
were enthused, excited.

00:34:25.337 --> 00:34:27.973
They thought they could
accomplish anything they wanted.

00:34:27.973 --> 00:34:30.904
It also lent a sense of urgency.

00:34:30.904 --> 00:34:32.813
They believed that if they
didn't get it right now

00:34:32.813 --> 00:34:34.447
they might not get another chance.

00:34:34.447 --> 00:34:37.224
That this was the time, this was the place

00:34:37.224 --> 00:34:40.469
on which a new world
was going to be created.

00:34:40.469 --> 00:34:43.985
They had to make sure that
it was the right new world.

00:34:43.985 --> 00:34:45.663
- [Martin] This turbulent age

00:34:45.663 --> 00:34:48.782
would become the only
period in American history

00:34:48.782 --> 00:34:52.036
known by the name of a single man.

00:34:52.036 --> 00:34:53.619
The Jacksonian Era.

00:34:55.101 --> 00:34:56.900
Yet, as the era began,

00:34:56.900 --> 00:35:01.455
Andrew Jackson was once again
living on a farm in Tennessee

00:35:01.455 --> 00:35:04.955
with no clear future in American politics.

00:35:06.299 --> 00:35:09.658
For Rachel Jackson, having
Andrew home was a break

00:35:09.658 --> 00:35:13.241
from what was, in many
ways, a lonely life.

00:35:15.825 --> 00:35:19.239
She and Andrew had proven
unable to have children,

00:35:19.239 --> 00:35:21.090
and her dream of spending her life

00:35:21.090 --> 00:35:24.858
surrounded by a loving
husband and large family

00:35:24.858 --> 00:35:26.358
had not come true.

00:35:28.366 --> 00:35:31.267
- I think that when Rachel
ran off with Andrew Jackson,

00:35:31.267 --> 00:35:33.680
she thought that she
was gonna get a husband

00:35:33.680 --> 00:35:36.601
who was devoted to her, and
that they would have this

00:35:36.601 --> 00:35:40.092
warm circle around the
family fire every night

00:35:40.092 --> 00:35:41.867
with children running about,

00:35:41.867 --> 00:35:45.691
very similar to the household
she had grown up in.

00:35:45.691 --> 00:35:47.370
But, instead, she's married a man

00:35:47.370 --> 00:35:50.659
who's got tremendous ambition.

00:35:50.659 --> 00:35:54.225
So, instead of having
this quiet family home,

00:35:54.225 --> 00:35:57.748
which, I think, was at the
heart of Rachel's desires,

00:35:57.748 --> 00:36:01.008
instead she's married
to a very ambitious man

00:36:01.008 --> 00:36:04.033
who pursues national politics,

00:36:04.033 --> 00:36:07.991
becomes a military leader,
and, in her own words,

00:36:07.991 --> 00:36:09.966
spends less than a fourth of his nights

00:36:09.966 --> 00:36:11.549
under his own roof.

00:36:14.501 --> 00:36:15.540
- [Martin] As he waited to see

00:36:15.540 --> 00:36:18.969
what avenue for his
ambition might open next,

00:36:18.969 --> 00:36:22.982
Andrew Jackson tended to
his farm and his horses

00:36:22.982 --> 00:36:25.065
and became a wealthy man.

00:36:26.139 --> 00:36:29.458
His admirers were soon
touting the political appeal

00:36:29.458 --> 00:36:30.850
of a penniless orphan

00:36:30.850 --> 00:36:35.109
who had pulled himself
up by his own bootstraps.

00:36:35.109 --> 00:36:37.588
But the real story of how Andrew Jackson

00:36:37.588 --> 00:36:41.088
became a wealthy man was more complicated.

00:36:45.595 --> 00:36:48.486
- [Frederick Douglass] Frederick Douglass.

00:36:48.486 --> 00:36:50.887
General Jackson has to own

00:36:50.887 --> 00:36:54.865
that he owes his farm on
the banks of the Mobile

00:36:54.865 --> 00:36:57.448
to the strong arm of the negro.

00:37:07.798 --> 00:37:10.215
(folk music)

00:37:12.945 --> 00:37:15.545
- [Martin] For millions
of poor, white Americans,

00:37:15.545 --> 00:37:19.410
many of whom had come from
Europe seeking a better life,

00:37:19.410 --> 00:37:23.577
the ideal America was one
in which they could prosper.

00:37:24.504 --> 00:37:26.296
To give them that opportunity,

00:37:26.296 --> 00:37:29.698
General Andrew Jackson had
forced the Creek Nation

00:37:29.698 --> 00:37:33.063
to cede vast amounts of
land in what would become

00:37:33.063 --> 00:37:36.813
Alabama and Mississippi
to the United States.

00:37:38.365 --> 00:37:41.348
The treasured myth was
that this was a place

00:37:41.348 --> 00:37:44.340
where white Americans
could improve their lot

00:37:44.340 --> 00:37:47.840
by relying solely on their own hard labor.

00:37:50.590 --> 00:37:54.121
The harsh reality was that
it was black Americans

00:37:54.121 --> 00:37:57.909
who were often doing much of the labor.

00:37:57.909 --> 00:38:01.982
Jackson himself founded a
plantation in Northern Alabama,

00:38:01.982 --> 00:38:06.095
on land from which he had
just driven the Creeks.

00:38:06.095 --> 00:38:09.345
To work the land, he brought in slaves.

00:38:11.040 --> 00:38:12.588
- Jackson firmly believed

00:38:12.588 --> 00:38:15.912
that slaves were put
on this earth to labor,

00:38:15.912 --> 00:38:18.286
and whites are here to rule and to govern

00:38:18.286 --> 00:38:20.180
and to lead society,

00:38:20.180 --> 00:38:23.307
and they are on the top
of the pecking order,

00:38:23.307 --> 00:38:25.792
they are at the top of the social order,

00:38:25.792 --> 00:38:28.027
they are at the top of
the political order,

00:38:28.027 --> 00:38:31.662
and, therefore, they
are the ones who rule.

00:38:31.662 --> 00:38:35.412
Superior whites lead,
inferior blacks follow.

00:38:40.066 --> 00:38:42.565
- [Martin] Jackson named
his biggest parcel of land

00:38:42.565 --> 00:38:44.982
near Nashville the Hermitage.

00:38:46.993 --> 00:38:48.827
At the height of its operation,

00:38:48.827 --> 00:38:51.940
well over 100 slaves at the Hermitage

00:38:51.940 --> 00:38:54.357
called Andrew Jackson Master.

00:38:56.428 --> 00:38:59.763
- He would've been a very
paternalistic person,

00:38:59.763 --> 00:39:01.806
and he would've made the slaves think

00:39:01.806 --> 00:39:05.973
he was their mother and father
and God all wrapped into one.

00:39:08.643 --> 00:39:12.253
But to enslave another
person, another human being,

00:39:12.253 --> 00:39:14.412
you can't be a good person.

00:39:14.412 --> 00:39:18.906
You have to be a pretty
tough, vicious, mean person

00:39:18.906 --> 00:39:23.692
to hold another person,
or 140 people, in slavery

00:39:23.692 --> 00:39:25.609
for all of their lives.

00:39:27.790 --> 00:39:30.513
- [Martin] When one of
Jackson's slaves escaped,

00:39:30.513 --> 00:39:32.364
he offered a reward to anyone

00:39:32.364 --> 00:39:35.197
who would give the man 300 lashes.

00:39:37.502 --> 00:39:40.190
- 300 lashes could kill a man,

00:39:40.190 --> 00:39:44.357
because of the infection
from 300 lashes on his back.

00:39:46.752 --> 00:39:51.144
Perhaps they would put
some grease into the wound,

00:39:51.144 --> 00:39:53.986
some ointment into the wound.

00:39:53.986 --> 00:39:57.052
They may pour some
whiskey on it, you know,

00:39:57.052 --> 00:40:00.675
which would make the man go into shock.

00:40:00.675 --> 00:40:04.050
But, he could die from those wounds.

00:40:04.050 --> 00:40:07.450
He certainly would be ill for a long time.

00:40:07.450 --> 00:40:10.532
And that would remind all the other slaves

00:40:10.532 --> 00:40:12.457
here's what you're gonna get

00:40:12.457 --> 00:40:15.707
if you try to run away from this place.

00:40:18.993 --> 00:40:20.640
- [Martin] Though a few white Americans

00:40:20.640 --> 00:40:24.584
were starting to question the
morality of enslaving blacks,

00:40:24.584 --> 00:40:28.751
the fact was that slavery was
vital to American prosperity.

00:40:29.807 --> 00:40:31.613
And men like Andrew Jackson

00:40:31.613 --> 00:40:34.780
could not envision a world without it.

00:40:36.355 --> 00:40:38.554
- Human slavery was the powerhouse

00:40:38.554 --> 00:40:41.054
of the early American economy.

00:40:43.124 --> 00:40:46.667
Slave-grown products were
the most valuable exports

00:40:46.667 --> 00:40:49.050
that the United States produced.

00:40:49.050 --> 00:40:52.661
Slave grown cotton, slave grown rice,

00:40:52.661 --> 00:40:54.616
slave grown tobacco

00:40:54.616 --> 00:40:57.506
spilled out of the
plantations of the South,

00:40:57.506 --> 00:40:59.331
crowded onto boats,

00:40:59.331 --> 00:41:03.048
enriched the harbors
of New York and Boston,

00:41:03.048 --> 00:41:07.890
and then fed an appetite of
a hungry and shivering world.

00:41:07.890 --> 00:41:10.973
And that's where the money came from.

00:41:12.157 --> 00:41:14.740
So, the people who owned the slaves,

00:41:14.740 --> 00:41:16.553
and the people who bought and sold

00:41:16.553 --> 00:41:18.405
the produce that the slaves made

00:41:18.405 --> 00:41:20.920
were the richest people in the country.

00:41:20.920 --> 00:41:25.003
And it was the desire to
get more of those riches

00:41:25.867 --> 00:41:27.499
that drove Americans

00:41:27.499 --> 00:41:29.873
into the best cotton country in the world,

00:41:29.873 --> 00:41:31.318
the country that was possessed

00:41:31.318 --> 00:41:33.797
by the Creek, and the
Choctaw, and the Cherokee,

00:41:33.797 --> 00:41:35.964
and the Chickasaw Indians.

00:41:37.534 --> 00:41:39.970
- [Martin] The relentless
demand for Indian land

00:41:39.970 --> 00:41:41.695
on which to grow cotton,

00:41:41.695 --> 00:41:45.612
created intense conflict
with Native Americans.

00:41:49.051 --> 00:41:51.997
Some of the bloodiest fighting
was in southern Georgia,

00:41:51.997 --> 00:41:55.845
where white settlers were
battling Seminoles and Creeks

00:41:55.845 --> 00:41:59.928
who were staging cross
border raids from Florida.

00:42:04.931 --> 00:42:07.656
With Florida still owned by Spain,

00:42:07.656 --> 00:42:10.320
president James Monroe called up a man

00:42:10.320 --> 00:42:14.487
he knew he could depend on
to defend America's borders.

00:42:15.609 --> 00:42:19.192
But, General Jackson
had even bigger plans.

00:42:20.821 --> 00:42:23.749
- Jackson really wasn't
simply concerned with

00:42:23.749 --> 00:42:25.734
Indian insurgency in Florida.

00:42:25.734 --> 00:42:27.645
He was really concerned
about the growing numbers

00:42:27.645 --> 00:42:30.116
of free and escaped blacks who were there,

00:42:30.116 --> 00:42:32.019
free and escaped slaves who were there,

00:42:32.019 --> 00:42:34.629
who were armed and potentially dangerous

00:42:34.629 --> 00:42:36.400
and a magnet for other slaves.

00:42:36.400 --> 00:42:40.309
It's a threat to the plantation economy.

00:42:40.309 --> 00:42:43.410
The combination of an
Indian-Slave alliance

00:42:43.410 --> 00:42:47.311
had haunted Americans from
the 18th century onward,

00:42:47.311 --> 00:42:51.478
and this was something that
concerned Jackson terribly.

00:42:52.515 --> 00:42:54.609
- [Martin] Without orders from Washington,

00:42:54.609 --> 00:42:58.776
Jackson launched an invasion
of Florida and conquered it.

00:43:01.724 --> 00:43:04.876
During the invasion, he
captured two British men

00:43:04.876 --> 00:43:08.769
who he believed were inciting
attacks on Americans.

00:43:08.769 --> 00:43:12.680
Ignoring the ruling of
his own military tribunal,

00:43:12.680 --> 00:43:14.763
he had both men executed.

00:43:18.562 --> 00:43:22.352
When news of the unauthorized
invasion reached Washington,

00:43:22.352 --> 00:43:24.987
the Speaker of the House, Henry Clay,

00:43:24.987 --> 00:43:26.416
declared that Jackson

00:43:26.416 --> 00:43:30.161
had the makings of an American Napoleon.

00:43:30.161 --> 00:43:33.578
He called on Congress to censure Jackson.

00:43:35.326 --> 00:43:38.600
Being censured would
have disgraced Jackson,

00:43:38.600 --> 00:43:40.503
but his conquest of Florida

00:43:40.503 --> 00:43:44.423
was enormously popular
with most Americans,

00:43:44.423 --> 00:43:48.590
and Congress refused to
censure the great war hero.

00:43:55.046 --> 00:43:57.172
- [Henry Clay] Henry Clay.

00:43:57.172 --> 00:43:59.363
I fail to see how the killing

00:43:59.363 --> 00:44:02.318
of 2,000 English persons at New Orleans

00:44:02.318 --> 00:44:04.539
qualifies a person for the difficult

00:44:04.539 --> 00:44:07.956
and complicated duties of the presidency.

00:44:17.005 --> 00:44:20.784
- [Martin] In 1824,
James Monroe was retiring

00:44:20.784 --> 00:44:23.201
after two terms as president.

00:44:24.221 --> 00:44:27.394
Andrew Jackson thought he
was an excellent candidate

00:44:27.394 --> 00:44:30.160
to be the next occupant
of the White House,

00:44:30.160 --> 00:44:34.327
but he was not the only one
with his eye on the job.

00:44:35.468 --> 00:44:38.415
John Quincy Adams was
the son of John Adams,

00:44:38.415 --> 00:44:40.973
America's second president.

00:44:40.973 --> 00:44:42.759
He had spent much of his childhood

00:44:42.759 --> 00:44:44.555
in Europe with his father,

00:44:44.555 --> 00:44:47.435
and was now Secretary of State.

00:44:47.435 --> 00:44:50.350
His worldview was as
different from Jackson's

00:44:50.350 --> 00:44:52.475
as his upbringing.

00:44:52.475 --> 00:44:55.975
- He was a politician with imagination.

00:44:55.975 --> 00:44:57.868
He imagined an America

00:44:57.868 --> 00:45:00.732
that was much more economically developed.

00:45:00.732 --> 00:45:02.469
He imagined an America

00:45:02.469 --> 00:45:06.636
with much broader educational
opportunities for everybody.

00:45:08.612 --> 00:45:10.641
He imagined an America

00:45:10.641 --> 00:45:15.207
in which the rights of
Indians and black people

00:45:15.207 --> 00:45:18.040
and women were actually respected.

00:45:20.482 --> 00:45:22.702
- [Martin] Treasury
secretary William Crawford,

00:45:22.702 --> 00:45:25.333
and Speaker of the House Henry Clay

00:45:25.333 --> 00:45:28.250
were also candidates for president.

00:45:29.117 --> 00:45:31.368
As in every previous election,

00:45:31.368 --> 00:45:33.956
the candidates did not campaign.

00:45:33.956 --> 00:45:35.256
And, in some states,

00:45:35.256 --> 00:45:39.288
residents did not even
get to vote for president.

00:45:39.288 --> 00:45:41.526
Instead, the state legislature

00:45:41.526 --> 00:45:45.693
chose that state's members
of the electoral college.

00:45:47.155 --> 00:45:49.835
- In the early years of the republic,

00:45:49.835 --> 00:45:51.747
voters were not called on

00:45:51.747 --> 00:45:55.087
to choose the president
of the United States.

00:45:55.087 --> 00:45:58.003
Choosing the president was,

00:45:58.003 --> 00:46:02.523
quite honestly and quite
deliberately, an elitist operation.

00:46:02.523 --> 00:46:04.651
The people who were thought to be

00:46:04.651 --> 00:46:06.576
the insiders in state government

00:46:06.576 --> 00:46:08.645
became the presidential electors,

00:46:08.645 --> 00:46:10.298
and they chose the president

00:46:10.298 --> 00:46:14.298
based on which set of Washington insiders

00:46:14.298 --> 00:46:16.449
they thought was the best.

00:46:16.449 --> 00:46:19.711
And the people were basically expected

00:46:19.711 --> 00:46:23.211
to accept that decision without complaint.

00:46:25.214 --> 00:46:26.399
- [Martin] In an election controlled

00:46:26.399 --> 00:46:28.687
by Washington politicians,

00:46:28.687 --> 00:46:30.913
the frontiersman from Tennessee

00:46:30.913 --> 00:46:33.413
seemed certain to finish last.

00:46:35.171 --> 00:46:37.482
- When Andrew Jackson's
name was first floated about

00:46:37.482 --> 00:46:39.240
as a candidate for the presidency,

00:46:39.240 --> 00:46:42.375
all kinds of leading
politicians were aghast.

00:46:42.375 --> 00:46:46.491
They understood him to be a
wild eyes military chieftain,

00:46:46.491 --> 00:46:47.839
a hot-tempered individual

00:46:47.839 --> 00:46:50.755
who had executed a couple
of Brits down in Florida

00:46:50.755 --> 00:46:53.838
without authority or apparent reason.

00:46:55.431 --> 00:46:56.536
And, as Jefferson said,

00:46:56.536 --> 00:46:58.909
he was the most unfit man imaginable

00:46:58.909 --> 00:47:01.894
for the office of the presidency.

00:47:01.894 --> 00:47:02.881
- [Martin] To counter the view

00:47:02.881 --> 00:47:05.644
that Jackson was unfit to be president,

00:47:05.644 --> 00:47:08.383
one of his advisors, John Eaton,

00:47:08.383 --> 00:47:10.257
published a series of letters

00:47:10.257 --> 00:47:13.629
that proposed an entirely new rationale

00:47:13.629 --> 00:47:16.959
for what was important in a president.

00:47:16.959 --> 00:47:18.044
- [Eaton] In the selection

00:47:18.044 --> 00:47:20.977
of a chief magistrate of this Union,

00:47:20.977 --> 00:47:24.573
it is not necessary that
we should look exclusively

00:47:24.573 --> 00:47:28.240
to the mental qualifications
of a candidate.

00:47:29.706 --> 00:47:32.090
It is strength of character,

00:47:32.090 --> 00:47:35.479
a perseverance and steadiness of purpose

00:47:35.479 --> 00:47:38.229
that makes the distinguished man.

00:47:39.763 --> 00:47:42.470
- What John Eaton does
in the Letters of Wyoming

00:47:42.470 --> 00:47:46.204
is simply stand on its head,
the conventional understanding

00:47:46.204 --> 00:47:49.387
of the qualifications of a president.

00:47:49.387 --> 00:47:52.012
The very qualities that
made a candidate before,

00:47:52.012 --> 00:47:54.283
John Quincy Adams being the ideal,

00:47:54.283 --> 00:47:56.115
experience in courts of Europe,

00:47:56.115 --> 00:47:57.636
experience in diplomacy,

00:47:57.636 --> 00:48:00.049
experience as his father's secretary

00:48:00.049 --> 00:48:02.743
in various offices of government,

00:48:02.743 --> 00:48:04.964
all of this is proof of corruption,

00:48:04.964 --> 00:48:07.361
proof of insider status,

00:48:07.361 --> 00:48:10.534
proof of being out of
touch with the people,

00:48:10.534 --> 00:48:14.590
whereas Jackson's complete
absence of a resume

00:48:14.590 --> 00:48:18.340
becomes his primary
qualification for office.

00:48:20.042 --> 00:48:22.864
- [Martin] When the votes
were counted in 1824,

00:48:22.864 --> 00:48:25.827
the Washington establishment
was stunned to discover

00:48:25.827 --> 00:48:27.989
that Andrew Jackson had won

00:48:27.989 --> 00:48:31.489
both the most popular and electoral votes.

00:48:33.993 --> 00:48:37.459
But with four men dividing
up the electoral vote,

00:48:37.459 --> 00:48:40.116
Jackson did not win a majority,

00:48:40.116 --> 00:48:41.575
and the election was thrown

00:48:41.575 --> 00:48:44.408
into the House of Representatives.

00:48:46.049 --> 00:48:49.660
Speaker of the House, Henry
Clay, had finished last

00:48:49.660 --> 00:48:51.748
and was out of the running.

00:48:51.748 --> 00:48:55.718
But he had enough support
to play kingmaker.

00:48:55.718 --> 00:48:58.153
Clay believed with all of his heart

00:48:58.153 --> 00:49:01.546
that Andrew Jackson was
unfit to be president.

00:49:01.546 --> 00:49:05.111
So he threw his support
to John Quincy Adams,

00:49:05.111 --> 00:49:08.611
and, with it, Adams was elected president.

00:49:10.228 --> 00:49:13.061
Adams them immediately offered Clay

00:49:13.061 --> 00:49:15.561
the job of Secretary of State.

00:49:19.820 --> 00:49:22.055
Outraged Jackson supporters

00:49:22.055 --> 00:49:25.138
began railing against what
they were convinced was

00:49:25.138 --> 00:49:28.673
a corrupt bargain between
Washington insiders

00:49:28.673 --> 00:49:32.340
to steal the presidency
from Andrew Jackson.

00:49:34.170 --> 00:49:38.215
One newspaper which had
endorsed Jackson, declared...

00:49:38.215 --> 00:49:40.054
- [Man] Expired at Washington,

00:49:40.054 --> 00:49:43.091
on the 9th of February, 1825,

00:49:43.091 --> 00:49:47.258
the virtue, liberty, and
independence of the United States,

00:49:48.234 --> 00:49:49.795
caused by poison

00:49:49.795 --> 00:49:52.193
administered by the assassin hand

00:49:52.193 --> 00:49:56.360
of John Quincy Adams, the
usurper, and Henry Clay.

00:49:59.194 --> 00:50:01.225
- What they were absolutely convinced of

00:50:01.225 --> 00:50:03.698
was the popular will had been thwarted,

00:50:03.698 --> 00:50:05.857
the election had been stolen,

00:50:05.857 --> 00:50:10.024
Washington insiders had
cooked up the whole thing,

00:50:11.082 --> 00:50:15.489
and they had to make sure
it didn't happen again.

00:50:15.489 --> 00:50:18.197
- [Martin] By 1828, when Andrew Jackson

00:50:18.197 --> 00:50:21.556
ran against John Quincy
Adams a second time,

00:50:21.556 --> 00:50:23.596
the Jacksonians were ready to launch

00:50:23.596 --> 00:50:27.763
the first true political
campaign in American history.

00:50:29.839 --> 00:50:33.348
Their strategy was driven
by the fact that most states

00:50:33.348 --> 00:50:37.926
had finally given the
vote to all white males.

00:50:37.926 --> 00:50:39.245
To inspire those men

00:50:39.245 --> 00:50:42.776
to get out and vote for the
first time in their lives,

00:50:42.776 --> 00:50:44.744
Jackson's campaign took advantage

00:50:44.744 --> 00:50:48.765
of the latest media
revolution, lithography,

00:50:48.765 --> 00:50:51.064
to flood America with lithographs

00:50:51.064 --> 00:50:54.481
of the hero of the Battle of New Orleans.

00:50:56.476 --> 00:50:58.640
- If you're going to elect the president

00:50:58.640 --> 00:51:01.455
by appealing to the people as a whole,

00:51:01.455 --> 00:51:05.264
you change the ground rules completely,

00:51:05.264 --> 00:51:08.212
because you have to win the popular vote

00:51:08.212 --> 00:51:11.028
down there at the grassroots,
at the militia grounds,

00:51:11.028 --> 00:51:14.268
in the taverns, in the
fairs, in the streets

00:51:14.268 --> 00:51:16.185
all across the country.

00:51:17.151 --> 00:51:20.382
So, somehow you have to be
able to reach those people.

00:51:20.382 --> 00:51:22.931
You've got to fire them up.

00:51:22.931 --> 00:51:25.514
(parade music)

00:51:32.194 --> 00:51:33.669
- [Martin] The Jacksonians' plan

00:51:33.669 --> 00:51:38.065
was to rally average
Americans around a new idea,

00:51:38.065 --> 00:51:42.232
that they should choose the
president of the United States.

00:51:43.603 --> 00:51:47.258
- So, they organized all kinds
of popular demonstrations,

00:51:47.258 --> 00:51:50.829
rallies, conventions, assemblies of people

00:51:50.829 --> 00:51:54.662
who would get together
and hurrah for Jackson.

00:51:55.993 --> 00:51:57.947
They would pass a set of resolutions

00:51:57.947 --> 00:51:59.722
and then they would all have a barbecue,

00:51:59.722 --> 00:52:01.272
and they would all have a drink,

00:52:01.272 --> 00:52:02.746
and they would start to cheer,

00:52:02.746 --> 00:52:04.675
and, pretty soon, you'd get the sense

00:52:04.675 --> 00:52:06.777
that everybody in this
precinct is for Jackson,

00:52:06.777 --> 00:52:09.595
and they'd send the results
of that to the newspaper

00:52:09.595 --> 00:52:13.850
and try to publicize it
as much as they could.

00:52:13.850 --> 00:52:15.309
And this was the kind of tactic

00:52:15.309 --> 00:52:19.579
that didn't require finagling
behind closed doors.

00:52:19.579 --> 00:52:21.330
It could take place in the boondocks.

00:52:21.330 --> 00:52:24.588
It could happen in rural
Tennessee, rural Alabama,

00:52:24.588 --> 00:52:25.838
rural New York.

00:52:30.579 --> 00:52:33.996
And this kind of stirring up popular vote

00:52:35.901 --> 00:52:37.449
and giving the people the notion

00:52:37.449 --> 00:52:40.065
that they should choose the president,

00:52:40.065 --> 00:52:44.006
and not the caucus members in Washington,

00:52:44.006 --> 00:52:47.080
that revolutionized American politics.

00:52:47.080 --> 00:52:49.665
The people have not
been willing to give up

00:52:49.665 --> 00:52:52.582
the choice of president ever since.

00:52:53.766 --> 00:52:56.547
- [Martin] The revolutionary
new style of campaigning

00:52:56.547 --> 00:53:00.645
soon made Jackson into the heavy favorite.

00:53:00.645 --> 00:53:03.429
But, then his opponents
discovered the skeleton

00:53:03.429 --> 00:53:06.262
inside Andrew and Rachel's closet.

00:53:08.429 --> 00:53:11.994
The man behind the mischief was
a confidant of Henry Clay's,

00:53:11.994 --> 00:53:14.827
who edited a Cincinnati newspaper.

00:53:15.840 --> 00:53:18.610
He uncovered and printed the court record

00:53:18.610 --> 00:53:21.465
of Rachel Jackson's divorce proceedings,

00:53:21.465 --> 00:53:24.689
which revealed that Rachel
had lived with Andrew

00:53:24.689 --> 00:53:27.772
while she was married to another man.

00:53:29.983 --> 00:53:34.174
The story of Rachel's adultery
was soon on the front pages

00:53:34.174 --> 00:53:36.924
of newspapers across the country.

00:53:37.785 --> 00:53:40.161
- Jackson is called the western bluebeard.

00:53:40.161 --> 00:53:42.959
Rachel is the American jezebel.

00:53:42.959 --> 00:53:47.077
And, it's said, the touch of
a profligate women like Rachel

00:53:47.077 --> 00:53:48.833
is going to pollute anyone.

00:53:48.833 --> 00:53:52.253
How could someone like this
be put in the White House

00:53:52.253 --> 00:53:55.670
and over the women in Washington society?

00:53:57.802 --> 00:53:59.649
- [Martin] Jackson blamed Henry Clay

00:53:59.649 --> 00:54:01.584
for the attacks on Rachel,

00:54:01.584 --> 00:54:03.136
and he would later say

00:54:03.136 --> 00:54:05.878
that it was one of the
great regrets of his life,

00:54:05.878 --> 00:54:08.128
that he did not shoot Clay.

00:54:11.526 --> 00:54:15.454
Instead, Jackson's campaign
fired back with the charge

00:54:15.454 --> 00:54:18.362
that, while Adams was US envoy to Russia,

00:54:18.362 --> 00:54:22.529
he had procured an American
whore for the Russian Tsar.

00:54:25.035 --> 00:54:29.549
- This and other stories they
told about Adams were lies,

00:54:29.549 --> 00:54:31.873
whereas the story that the Adams people

00:54:31.873 --> 00:54:34.844
were telling about Jackson was true.

00:54:34.844 --> 00:54:37.218
But, taken together,

00:54:37.218 --> 00:54:42.002
they all made the campaign
of 1828 quite possibly

00:54:42.002 --> 00:54:45.919
the dirtiest campaign
in all American history.

00:54:45.919 --> 00:54:48.502
(somber music)

00:54:53.291 --> 00:54:55.107
- [Martin] The viciousness of the campaign

00:54:55.107 --> 00:55:00.012
would have consequences no
one could have foreseen.

00:55:00.012 --> 00:55:04.179
Rachel was now 57, and had
become deeply religious.

00:55:07.016 --> 00:55:11.664
She found it impossible to
accept that people across America

00:55:11.664 --> 00:55:15.664
were now publicly calling
her a whore and worse,

00:55:17.403 --> 00:55:21.258
just because she had fallen
in love with Andrew Jackson

00:55:21.258 --> 00:55:22.758
so many years ago.

00:55:26.777 --> 00:55:29.515
To a friend, she wrote...

00:55:29.515 --> 00:55:33.682
- [Rachel] Who has been so
cruelly tried as I have?

00:55:34.980 --> 00:55:39.147
Our enemies have dipped their
arrows in wormwood and gull

00:55:40.139 --> 00:55:41.806
and sped them at me.

00:55:43.295 --> 00:55:47.462
Almighty God, was there
every anything to equal it?

00:55:49.310 --> 00:55:52.227
To think that 30 years have passed.

00:55:56.442 --> 00:55:58.460
- I've come to see Rachel Jackson's life

00:55:58.460 --> 00:56:00.877
as the plot of a grand opera.

00:56:02.371 --> 00:56:03.997
You have a young woman

00:56:03.997 --> 00:56:06.677
who makes a mistake in her first marriage,

00:56:06.677 --> 00:56:09.602
and then chooses to escape that

00:56:09.602 --> 00:56:12.352
with a very courageous protector.

00:56:14.566 --> 00:56:15.846
But, by doing that,

00:56:15.846 --> 00:56:19.595
she's made, perhaps, the
biggest mistake of her life,

00:56:19.595 --> 00:56:23.634
because this whole story
of Rachel as a fallen woman

00:56:23.634 --> 00:56:25.810
explodes on the scene again,

00:56:25.810 --> 00:56:29.977
and becomes the moral wedge
issue of the 1820 campaigns.

00:56:37.752 --> 00:56:40.348
- [Martin] When the
election of 1828 was over

00:56:40.348 --> 00:56:42.133
and the votes were counted,

00:56:42.133 --> 00:56:44.415
Andrew Jackson, the war hero

00:56:44.415 --> 00:56:47.300
who had dramatically expanded America,

00:56:47.300 --> 00:56:50.383
was elected president in a landslide.

00:56:52.935 --> 00:56:56.435
In January of 1829, he boarded a steamboat

00:56:57.406 --> 00:57:01.573
to begin his journey from
Nashville to Washington, DC.

00:57:04.094 --> 00:57:06.378
At many stops along the way,

00:57:06.378 --> 00:57:09.179
the townsfolk planned joyous celebrations

00:57:09.179 --> 00:57:12.449
to honor the first man of humble origins

00:57:12.449 --> 00:57:14.116
to become president.

00:57:15.568 --> 00:57:17.353
But, Andrew Jackson declined

00:57:17.353 --> 00:57:20.353
every single invitation he received.

00:57:21.219 --> 00:57:24.302
For he was too bowed down with grief.

00:57:25.395 --> 00:57:27.572
Just after the election,

00:57:27.572 --> 00:57:31.072
Rachel Jackson had died of a heart attack.

00:57:35.329 --> 00:57:39.139
- [Historian] Jackson was
devastated by Rachel's death.

00:57:39.139 --> 00:57:43.155
From that day forward,
he carried her miniature

00:57:43.155 --> 00:57:45.837
and would speak to Rachel every night

00:57:45.837 --> 00:57:48.104
before he went to sleep,

00:57:48.104 --> 00:57:52.187
whether he was at the
Hermitage or in Washington.

00:57:53.707 --> 00:57:55.365
And when he was home at the Hermitage,

00:57:55.365 --> 00:57:59.532
each evening he would go
and visit Rachel's grave.

00:58:03.823 --> 00:58:06.633
- [Martin] And yet, Rachel's
death was seen by some

00:58:06.633 --> 00:58:09.550
as a political godsend for Jackson.

00:58:11.746 --> 00:58:13.982
- Everyone around Jackson knows

00:58:13.982 --> 00:58:16.196
Rachel is going to be a
problem in the White House

00:58:16.196 --> 00:58:19.021
because the women in Washington

00:58:19.021 --> 00:58:22.261
will not accept her socially.

00:58:22.261 --> 00:58:26.428
And, Rachel choosing, shall
we say, to die at that moment,

00:58:27.513 --> 00:58:31.321
frees him to focus on all the challenges

00:58:31.321 --> 00:58:34.161
he'll have in the White House.

00:58:34.161 --> 00:58:36.622
And, in many ways, she's
like Madame Butterfly,

00:58:36.622 --> 00:58:39.386
who realizes it's only through her death

00:58:39.386 --> 00:58:43.553
that she'll be able to give
her lover what he needs.

00:58:45.412 --> 00:58:49.157
- [Martin] But that was not
how Andrew Jackson saw it.

00:58:49.157 --> 00:58:50.266
In his eyes,

00:58:50.266 --> 00:58:54.433
his enemies had made an
unforgivable attack on his wife.

00:58:55.876 --> 00:58:59.568
- He blames John Quincy Adams
for not putting a stop to it.

00:58:59.568 --> 00:59:03.536
And he blamed Henry
Clay for initiating it.

00:59:03.536 --> 00:59:07.456
Jackson actually believed
that they killed her,

00:59:07.456 --> 00:59:10.323
and, so, as far as he was concerned,

00:59:10.323 --> 00:59:12.323
they were her murderers.

00:59:14.930 --> 00:59:16.981
- [Martin] Over the next eight years,

00:59:16.981 --> 00:59:19.248
Jackson's anger at his enemies

00:59:19.248 --> 00:59:21.982
would combine with his
passionate personality

00:59:21.982 --> 00:59:23.973
and strong convictions

00:59:23.973 --> 00:59:27.300
to produce one of the most
turbulent presidencies

00:59:27.300 --> 00:59:29.717
America has ever experienced.

00:59:36.633 --> 00:59:38.683
- [Webster] Daniel Webster.

00:59:38.683 --> 00:59:41.048
When General Jackson comes,

00:59:41.048 --> 00:59:44.012
he will bring a breeze with him.

00:59:44.012 --> 00:59:47.179
Which way it will blow, I cannot tell.

01:00:01.803 --> 01:00:04.648
- [Martin] On March 4th, 1829,

01:00:04.648 --> 01:00:07.041
thousands of farmers and tradesmen,

01:00:07.041 --> 01:00:10.182
who had never been to
Washington, DC before,

01:00:10.182 --> 01:00:13.327
poured into the White House.

01:00:13.327 --> 01:00:14.742
They had come to celebrate

01:00:14.742 --> 01:00:17.250
the inauguration of the first president

01:00:17.250 --> 01:00:20.809
who's life story they could identify with.

01:00:20.809 --> 01:00:22.059
Andrew Jackson.

01:00:23.823 --> 01:00:27.816
- His whole family is wiped
out in the revolution.

01:00:27.816 --> 01:00:29.889
He's an orphan,

01:00:29.889 --> 01:00:30.806
he's angry,

01:00:32.464 --> 01:00:34.863
but he decides to make
something of himself.

01:00:34.863 --> 01:00:39.544
And he becomes the president
of the United States.

01:00:39.544 --> 01:00:41.961
It's an extraordinary career.

01:00:43.068 --> 01:00:47.829
It's what America, we like
to think is all about.

01:00:47.829 --> 01:00:50.432
- [Martin] To Jackson's
working class supporters,

01:00:50.432 --> 01:00:54.265
their presence at the
inauguration celebration was proof

01:00:54.265 --> 01:00:59.192
that America was entering
a far more democratic age.

01:00:59.192 --> 01:01:03.359
And that was precisely what
worried the Washington elite.

01:01:05.359 --> 01:01:08.525
Prominent socialite Margaret Bayard Smith

01:01:08.525 --> 01:01:12.692
described how the inauguration
party turned into a riot.

01:01:14.210 --> 01:01:16.943
- [Margaret] What a scene we did witness.

01:01:16.943 --> 01:01:20.500
The majesty of the people disappeared,

01:01:20.500 --> 01:01:24.667
and a rabble, a mob, was
scrambling, fighting, romping.

01:01:25.989 --> 01:01:27.218
Cut glass and china,

01:01:27.218 --> 01:01:29.531
to the amount of several thousand dollars,

01:01:29.531 --> 01:01:33.198
was broken in the
struggle to get the punch.

01:01:34.236 --> 01:01:37.823
Ladies fainted, men were to
be seen with bloody noses,

01:01:37.823 --> 01:01:40.116
and such a scene of confusion took place

01:01:40.116 --> 01:01:43.273
as is impossible to describe.

01:01:43.273 --> 01:01:45.896
Those who got in could not
get out by the door again,

01:01:45.896 --> 01:01:48.449
but had to scramble out of windows.

01:01:48.449 --> 01:01:51.913
The president, after having
been nearly pressed to death,

01:01:51.913 --> 01:01:54.557
and almost suffocated by the people

01:01:54.557 --> 01:01:58.030
and their eagerness to shake
hands with Old Hickory,

01:01:58.030 --> 01:02:01.030
had to retreat through the back way.

01:02:03.471 --> 01:02:05.010
- [Martin] The riot deeply alarmed

01:02:05.010 --> 01:02:07.427
the Washington establishment.

01:02:09.376 --> 01:02:11.945
As men like Henry Clay saw it,

01:02:11.945 --> 01:02:13.880
Jackson's motley supporters

01:02:13.880 --> 01:02:16.667
had demonstrated why the Founding Fathers

01:02:16.667 --> 01:02:20.834
had not trusted the masses
to choose the president.

01:02:23.119 --> 01:02:26.632
Now, Clay and his allies
worried that Jackson,

01:02:26.632 --> 01:02:30.239
a man famous for his
dictatorial disposition,

01:02:30.239 --> 01:02:33.585
would use the support of
this same mindless mob

01:02:33.585 --> 01:02:37.752
to turn himself into America's
first imperial president.

01:02:39.426 --> 01:02:41.129
- It's hard for us to imagine

01:02:41.129 --> 01:02:44.135
how much that generation worried

01:02:44.135 --> 01:02:47.257
that a republic could
so easily be taken over

01:02:47.257 --> 01:02:51.582
by a strong man, by a military
chieftain, by an emperor.

01:02:51.582 --> 01:02:55.520
Napoleon, of course, had just
recently done that in France.

01:02:55.520 --> 01:02:58.937
Henry Clay was convinced that King Andrew

01:03:00.114 --> 01:03:02.915
was the farthest thing from
the deliberative statesman

01:03:02.915 --> 01:03:04.347
that a republic required,

01:03:04.347 --> 01:03:07.805
that he was, in fact, a
dangerous, egomaniacal,

01:03:07.805 --> 01:03:09.305
potential emperor.

01:03:11.677 --> 01:03:13.178
- [Martin] President Jackson's plans

01:03:13.178 --> 01:03:15.678
would only stoke Clay's fears,

01:03:16.935 --> 01:03:18.888
for, over the next eight years,

01:03:18.888 --> 01:03:20.967
he would attempt to do nothing less

01:03:20.967 --> 01:03:23.384
than reinvent the presidency.

01:03:24.796 --> 01:03:27.651
- Jackson as president was not
unlike Jackson as a general.

01:03:27.651 --> 01:03:29.014
He was the leader.

01:03:29.014 --> 01:03:30.538
He thought of himself as a leader.

01:03:30.538 --> 01:03:32.697
He understood the separation of powers

01:03:32.697 --> 01:03:34.017
under the Constitution,

01:03:34.017 --> 01:03:36.107
but, nevertheless, he
thought that the president

01:03:36.107 --> 01:03:38.192
had a very particular role

01:03:38.192 --> 01:03:41.091
as the man that had been
elected by all of the people

01:03:41.091 --> 01:03:43.121
to lead government in a way

01:03:43.121 --> 01:03:45.928
that no previous president
could have even thought of

01:03:45.928 --> 01:03:47.428
let alone execute.

01:03:48.979 --> 01:03:50.617
- [Martin] Jackson's first assault

01:03:50.617 --> 01:03:52.515
on the Washington establishment

01:03:52.515 --> 01:03:55.370
was to fire dozens of federal employees,

01:03:55.370 --> 01:03:58.026
including 13 district attorneys,

01:03:58.026 --> 01:04:01.311
charging that they were
either incompetent or corrupt,

01:04:01.311 --> 01:04:02.144
or both.

01:04:04.437 --> 01:04:06.458
- Most of these high level
government bureaucrats

01:04:06.458 --> 01:04:08.294
were regarded as untouchable.

01:04:08.294 --> 01:04:11.415
Some of them had been there
since George Washington's day.

01:04:11.415 --> 01:04:16.045
Jackson, within a few weeks,
fired a number of them.

01:04:16.045 --> 01:04:18.917
He removed more government officials

01:04:18.917 --> 01:04:22.210
than all of his predecessors put together.

01:04:22.210 --> 01:04:24.627
(folk music)

01:04:25.743 --> 01:04:27.184
- [Martin] But, while
the president claimed

01:04:27.184 --> 01:04:31.299
pure motives for the firings,
his opponents took one look

01:04:31.299 --> 01:04:33.614
at the replacements Jackson hired

01:04:33.614 --> 01:04:37.621
and proclaimed it the work of the Devil.

01:04:37.621 --> 01:04:41.621
- Some of these people
were personally unsavory.

01:04:43.217 --> 01:04:45.735
Some of them had scandals
in their backgrounds.

01:04:45.735 --> 01:04:47.198
And, as his opponents,

01:04:47.198 --> 01:04:50.620
and even some of Jackson's
own supporters thought,

01:04:50.620 --> 01:04:54.217
he was undercutting the competency

01:04:54.217 --> 01:04:58.736
and efficiency of government
by nakedly rewarding

01:04:58.736 --> 01:05:01.089
people for no virtue other than

01:05:01.089 --> 01:05:05.827
being willing to say and do
anything to get him elected.

01:05:05.827 --> 01:05:08.590
And, so, he was turning the
United States government

01:05:08.590 --> 01:05:11.923
into his own personal political machine.

01:05:16.583 --> 01:05:18.162
- [Martin] But, just as Andrew Jackson

01:05:18.162 --> 01:05:21.048
was starting to look invincible,

01:05:21.048 --> 01:05:22.366
the Washington elite

01:05:22.366 --> 01:05:25.949
snared his administration
in a sex scandal.

01:05:27.611 --> 01:05:30.444
(classical music)

01:05:32.486 --> 01:05:36.018
Jackson's friend and
Secretary of War, John Eaton,

01:05:36.018 --> 01:05:40.185
had long been friendly with
a woman named Peggy O'Neal.

01:05:43.212 --> 01:05:45.967
Peggy was married to
an officer in the navy,

01:05:45.967 --> 01:05:48.879
but it was whispered among
the ladies in Washington

01:05:48.879 --> 01:05:51.796
that she was not entirely faithful.

01:05:53.644 --> 01:05:57.144
In 1829, news arrived that Peggy's husband

01:05:58.142 --> 01:06:00.642
had died on board a navy ship.

01:06:01.541 --> 01:06:03.604
Instead of going into mourning,

01:06:03.604 --> 01:06:07.271
Peggy almost immediately
married John Eaton.

01:06:08.396 --> 01:06:12.259
And that was when the rumor
began racing through the capital

01:06:12.259 --> 01:06:15.074
that the naval officer
had committed suicide

01:06:15.074 --> 01:06:17.943
after finding out that
the Secretary of War

01:06:17.943 --> 01:06:20.610
was having an affair with Peggy.

01:06:21.605 --> 01:06:22.955
To the ladies of Washington,

01:06:22.955 --> 01:06:25.954
it was proof that
Jackson's depraved rabble

01:06:25.954 --> 01:06:27.575
was going to sully the cabinet

01:06:27.575 --> 01:06:30.825
just as it had defiled the White House.

01:06:31.740 --> 01:06:33.030
- Problem with Peggy Eaton,

01:06:33.030 --> 01:06:35.952
part courtesan, part common tart,

01:06:35.952 --> 01:06:38.952
is she had a scandalous sexual past.

01:06:39.911 --> 01:06:44.212
And, whenever you see women
and sex in this period,

01:06:44.212 --> 01:06:46.701
you know it's about fear.

01:06:46.701 --> 01:06:49.238
And, there was a lot
of fear in Washington,

01:06:49.238 --> 01:06:53.024
and anxiety about the coming of democracy.

01:06:53.024 --> 01:06:55.900
The ladies of Washington maybe
couldn't do much about that,

01:06:55.900 --> 01:06:58.782
but they could do something
about Margaret Eaton,

01:06:58.782 --> 01:07:02.931
and they decided to
close their doors to her.

01:07:02.931 --> 01:07:03.839
- [Martin] It was a decision

01:07:03.839 --> 01:07:06.922
with stunning political consequences.

01:07:08.322 --> 01:07:11.484
In the capitol's early
years, the social gatherings,

01:07:11.484 --> 01:07:13.792
hosted by politicians' wives,

01:07:13.792 --> 01:07:17.471
were a key venue for
Washington's movers and shakers

01:07:17.471 --> 01:07:20.721
to discuss politics and form alliances.

01:07:23.303 --> 01:07:25.982
But, now, prominent Washington wives,

01:07:25.982 --> 01:07:29.818
including those of other
Jackson cabinet secretaries,

01:07:29.818 --> 01:07:33.820
began demanding that their
husbands boycott all gatherings

01:07:33.820 --> 01:07:36.570
to which Peggy Eaton was invited.

01:07:38.665 --> 01:07:41.462
Suddenly, it became almost impossible

01:07:41.462 --> 01:07:44.639
to conduct politics in Washington,

01:07:44.639 --> 01:07:48.389
supposedly because of
a single scarlet woman.

01:07:49.968 --> 01:07:51.181
- If you read the press,

01:07:51.181 --> 01:07:54.467
you would imagine that
Margaret Eaton was some

01:07:54.467 --> 01:07:57.743
Cleopatra or Madame Pompadour.

01:07:57.743 --> 01:08:00.623
They called Peggy Eaton
the Doom of the Republic,

01:08:00.623 --> 01:08:02.808
and they imputed all kinds of power to her

01:08:02.808 --> 01:08:05.633
that she really didn't have.

01:08:05.633 --> 01:08:08.474
But what was behind not so much fact

01:08:08.474 --> 01:08:10.920
as this terrible anxiety and fear

01:08:10.920 --> 01:08:14.490
about this man who could abuse power.

01:08:14.490 --> 01:08:18.407
And, somehow, Peggy Eaton
symbolized that fear.

01:08:20.979 --> 01:08:22.069
- [Martin] The simplest way

01:08:22.069 --> 01:08:24.961
for the president to get
Washington functioning again

01:08:24.961 --> 01:08:29.127
was to tell John Eaton to
accept Peggy's social isolation.

01:08:31.785 --> 01:08:34.710
But for Jackson, the attacks on Peggy

01:08:34.710 --> 01:08:36.496
were painfully reminiscent

01:08:36.496 --> 01:08:39.412
of the mud-slinging against Rachel.

01:08:40.843 --> 01:08:43.376
The president's wounds
from the loss of his wife

01:08:43.376 --> 01:08:44.626
were still raw.

01:08:46.639 --> 01:08:49.144
Each night he read from her prayer book,

01:08:49.144 --> 01:08:53.035
and then went to sleep thinking about her.

01:08:53.035 --> 01:08:55.380
And the more he thought about Rachel,

01:08:55.380 --> 01:08:57.310
the more determined he became

01:08:57.310 --> 01:09:01.228
to stop the same thing
from happening to Peggy.

01:09:04.242 --> 01:09:06.264
And, so, for two years,

01:09:06.264 --> 01:09:10.274
the president spent more of
his time defending Peggy Eaton

01:09:10.274 --> 01:09:12.357
than on any other matter.

01:09:14.198 --> 01:09:15.048
- For us today,

01:09:15.048 --> 01:09:17.760
the Eaton affair can only be
compared to Monica Lewinsky.

01:09:17.760 --> 01:09:20.229
But, actually, it was even more serious,

01:09:20.229 --> 01:09:22.341
because, in the end, of course,

01:09:22.341 --> 01:09:24.359
President Clinton did not lose his office,

01:09:24.359 --> 01:09:28.005
but, as a result of, not
Margaret Eaton herself,

01:09:28.005 --> 01:09:31.537
but what she symbolized,
the cabinet broke up,

01:09:31.537 --> 01:09:33.345
which was the first time
this had ever happened

01:09:33.345 --> 01:09:36.929
in the United States
History, and the last.

01:09:41.590 --> 01:09:44.269
- [Martin] To put an end
to the scandal, John Eaton,

01:09:44.269 --> 01:09:48.191
and the other members of
Jackson's cabinet, resigned,

01:09:48.191 --> 01:09:50.243
enabling the president to replace them

01:09:50.243 --> 01:09:53.160
with men not caught up in the feud.

01:09:54.207 --> 01:09:57.358
The press lampooned
the cabinet secretaries

01:09:57.358 --> 01:10:00.608
as rats fleeing Jackson's sinking ship.

01:10:06.827 --> 01:10:08.786
- [Andrew Jackson] Andrew Jackson.

01:10:08.786 --> 01:10:11.703
Disunion by armed force is treason.

01:10:13.916 --> 01:10:16.666
Are you ready to incur its guilt?

01:10:28.645 --> 01:10:31.887
- [Martin] If the Eaton affair
had an air of melodrama,

01:10:31.887 --> 01:10:36.054
it was also a sign that tragedy
was waiting in the wings.

01:10:37.250 --> 01:10:39.745
Vice President John C. Calhoun,

01:10:39.745 --> 01:10:43.147
who's wife had battled
Jackson over Peggy Eaton,

01:10:43.147 --> 01:10:46.836
was simultaneously
involved in another crisis,

01:10:46.836 --> 01:10:51.003
one that threatened to bring
the nation to civil war.

01:10:52.286 --> 01:10:56.274
- John C. Calhoun, from about 1830 on,

01:10:56.274 --> 01:10:58.734
was obsessed for the remainder of his life

01:10:58.734 --> 01:11:01.151
with one fundamental problem.

01:11:02.903 --> 01:11:05.051
And that was the problem
of protecting slavery

01:11:05.051 --> 01:11:09.310
in a nation where slaveholders
were becoming a minority.

01:11:09.310 --> 01:11:11.984
How could slavery be perpetuated

01:11:11.984 --> 01:11:16.151
in the face of an indifferent
or even hostile North?

01:11:18.597 --> 01:11:21.468
- [Martin] The crisis was
triggered, not by slavery,

01:11:21.468 --> 01:11:22.301
but taxes.

01:11:24.768 --> 01:11:27.858
Congress, eager to protect
Northern factories,

01:11:27.858 --> 01:11:31.070
had passed a law which imposed a high tax

01:11:31.070 --> 01:11:33.384
on the cheap imported cloth

01:11:33.384 --> 01:11:37.551
used by Southern plantation
owners to clothe their slaves.

01:11:40.122 --> 01:11:43.971
Determined to eliminate the
tax and protect slavery,

01:11:43.971 --> 01:11:47.264
Calhoun began promoting nullification,

01:11:47.264 --> 01:11:50.754
under which every state
had the right to disregard,

01:11:50.754 --> 01:11:54.921
within its borders, any law it
considered unconstitutional.

01:11:58.626 --> 01:12:00.458
- Nullification appealed to Calhoun

01:12:00.458 --> 01:12:02.160
and other South Carolinians

01:12:02.160 --> 01:12:06.182
because it was a way of
asserting states' rights.

01:12:06.182 --> 01:12:09.189
And, clearly, that was
a fundamental threat

01:12:09.189 --> 01:12:11.801
to the entire idea of a federal system.

01:12:11.801 --> 01:12:14.345
And it went straight to the heart of

01:12:14.345 --> 01:12:18.265
the fundamental American
question of who was sovereign.

01:12:18.265 --> 01:12:19.756
Was the federal government sovereign?

01:12:19.756 --> 01:12:22.248
Were the states sovereign?

01:12:22.248 --> 01:12:24.899
Were the people sovereign?

01:12:24.899 --> 01:12:27.270
These were all incredibly
complicated questions

01:12:27.270 --> 01:12:29.706
that consumed the Jackson White House

01:12:29.706 --> 01:12:31.789
and Jackson's Washington.

01:12:35.650 --> 01:12:38.151
- [Martin] Nullification's
fiercest supporters

01:12:38.151 --> 01:12:41.234
were congressmen from South Carolina.

01:12:42.150 --> 01:12:45.091
It's bitterest opponents
were Northern congressmen

01:12:45.091 --> 01:12:46.863
who were convinced it would lead

01:12:46.863 --> 01:12:49.196
to the breakup of the Union.

01:12:51.199 --> 01:12:54.569
And then there were those
who's positions were unknown,

01:12:54.569 --> 01:12:57.486
including President Andrew Jackson.

01:12:59.297 --> 01:13:03.349
On April 13th, 1830, all three factions

01:13:03.349 --> 01:13:06.867
were represented at a
dinner in Washinton DC

01:13:06.867 --> 01:13:10.200
in honor of Thomas Jefferson's birthday.

01:13:11.306 --> 01:13:13.958
John C. Calhoun and the nullifiers

01:13:13.958 --> 01:13:16.706
had been plotting for
months to use the event

01:13:16.706 --> 01:13:21.381
to convert those sitting on
the fence to their cause,

01:13:21.381 --> 01:13:24.969
and, in their eyes, Jackson,
a fellow slave owner,

01:13:24.969 --> 01:13:26.552
was a natural ally.

01:13:29.826 --> 01:13:33.576
But, Andrew Jackson had his
own plans for the dinner,

01:13:33.576 --> 01:13:36.532
and, as he arrived, he
felt the same thrill

01:13:36.532 --> 01:13:39.449
he had always felt before a battle.

01:13:41.942 --> 01:13:43.447
As the evening began,

01:13:43.447 --> 01:13:46.262
the nullifiers endeavored to build support

01:13:46.262 --> 01:13:48.253
by making toast after toast

01:13:48.253 --> 01:13:51.253
to the importance of states' rights.

01:13:53.356 --> 01:13:57.523
Then, suddenly, President
Jackson raised his glass.

01:13:58.476 --> 01:14:02.002
Looking John C. Calhoun
straight in the eye,

01:14:02.002 --> 01:14:04.196
he made his toast.

01:14:04.196 --> 01:14:08.363
- [Jackson] Our federal
union, it must be preserved.

01:14:11.650 --> 01:14:13.117
- [Martin] Those seven words

01:14:13.117 --> 01:14:15.506
sent shock waves through Washington,

01:14:15.506 --> 01:14:19.173
for all now knew where
Andrew Jackson stood.

01:14:20.210 --> 01:14:24.377
He would not tear apart the
nation he had helped build.

01:14:27.745 --> 01:14:29.564
For Vice President Calhoun,

01:14:29.564 --> 01:14:34.334
Jackson's opposition to
nullification was intolerable.

01:14:34.334 --> 01:14:37.167
The two men soon stopped speaking.

01:14:38.140 --> 01:14:40.307
Then, in November of 1832,

01:14:41.387 --> 01:14:45.111
the state of South Carolina
formally nullified the tax,

01:14:45.111 --> 01:14:47.391
and added, that if the federal government

01:14:47.391 --> 01:14:49.699
challenged its right to do so,

01:14:49.699 --> 01:14:53.449
South Carolina would
withdraw from the Union.

01:14:54.386 --> 01:14:55.702
- It's hard for us to understand

01:14:55.702 --> 01:14:58.683
how serious nullification was.

01:14:58.683 --> 01:15:00.930
It nearly led to civil war.

01:15:00.930 --> 01:15:04.525
Troops in South Carolina were marching.

01:15:04.525 --> 01:15:05.588
Jackson himself

01:15:05.588 --> 01:15:09.195
wanted to lead the federal
army into South Carolina.

01:15:09.195 --> 01:15:12.345
They were fortifying forts
in Charleston Harbor.

01:15:12.345 --> 01:15:16.760
This was very close to
an all out civil war,

01:15:16.760 --> 01:15:20.593
and it was Andrew Jackson's
duty to stop that.

01:15:21.890 --> 01:15:24.011
- [Martin] Instead of reacting in anger,

01:15:24.011 --> 01:15:26.153
as he had so often before,

01:15:26.153 --> 01:15:28.951
Jackson issued a presidential proclamation

01:15:28.951 --> 01:15:33.118
in which he appealed to the
people of South Carolina.

01:15:34.285 --> 01:15:37.525
- [Jackson] Seduced, as you
have been, my fellow countrymen,

01:15:37.525 --> 01:15:40.942
by ambitious, deluded, and designing men,

01:15:42.451 --> 01:15:46.264
I call upon you in the language of truth,

01:15:46.264 --> 01:15:49.408
and with the feelings of a father,

01:15:49.408 --> 01:15:51.241
to retrace your steps.

01:15:52.725 --> 01:15:55.892
Say, we, too, are citizens of America.

01:15:57.490 --> 01:16:01.090
Carolina is one of these proud states.

01:16:01.090 --> 01:16:05.186
Her best blood has
cemented this happy union.

01:16:05.186 --> 01:16:09.913
And then add, if you can,
without horror and remorse,

01:16:09.913 --> 01:16:12.746
this happy union we will dissolve.

01:16:13.925 --> 01:16:18.092
This picture of peace and
prosperity, we will deface.

01:16:18.941 --> 01:16:22.941
These fertile fields, we
will deluge with blood.

01:16:25.533 --> 01:16:28.450
Disunion by armed force is treason.

01:16:30.756 --> 01:16:33.506
Are you ready to incur its guilt?

01:16:36.845 --> 01:16:41.409
- And that's when he said
the Union is perpetual,

01:16:41.409 --> 01:16:45.576
it's not a union of states,
it is a union of people,

01:16:46.674 --> 01:16:50.539
and, once you're in that
union, you can't get out,

01:16:50.539 --> 01:16:52.885
and, I ask the chief executive,

01:16:52.885 --> 01:16:55.468
have sworn to enforce the laws.

01:16:56.634 --> 01:16:58.757
Both those ideas

01:16:58.757 --> 01:17:02.757
are adopted by Abraham
Lincoln in his inaugural.

01:17:04.777 --> 01:17:07.860
The whole thing is set up by Jackson.

01:17:12.347 --> 01:17:15.388
- [Martin] With both sides
preparing for civil war,

01:17:15.388 --> 01:17:19.273
the most skilled negotiator
in Congress, Henry Clay,

01:17:19.273 --> 01:17:22.452
succeeded in winning
passage of a compromise bill

01:17:22.452 --> 01:17:25.535
that dramatically lowered the tariff.

01:17:26.739 --> 01:17:30.870
Jackson signed it, South
Carolina agreed to abide by it,

01:17:30.870 --> 01:17:32.537
and war was averted.

01:17:37.646 --> 01:17:38.826
For Andrew Jackson,

01:17:38.826 --> 01:17:43.726
the story of nullification
contained a dire warning.

01:17:43.726 --> 01:17:46.961
If Americans kept arguing about slavery,

01:17:46.961 --> 01:17:49.211
a civil war was inevitable.

01:17:50.163 --> 01:17:53.272
And, so, the president began
appealing to Northerners

01:17:53.272 --> 01:17:56.105
to stop agitating against slavery.

01:17:57.995 --> 01:18:02.162
But that was not what the
abolition movement had in mind.

01:18:04.602 --> 01:18:09.587
In 1835, the New York abolitionist,
Lewis and Arthur Tappan,

01:18:09.587 --> 01:18:12.677
realized that the steam
powered printing press

01:18:12.677 --> 01:18:17.259
made something brand new in
American politics possible,

01:18:17.259 --> 01:18:18.509
a mass mailing.

01:18:21.332 --> 01:18:22.812
And so they sent pamphlets

01:18:22.812 --> 01:18:26.019
to thousands of influential
people in the South,

01:18:26.019 --> 01:18:27.470
such as ministers,

01:18:27.470 --> 01:18:31.637
to try and convince them to
speak out against slavery.

01:18:33.760 --> 01:18:35.807
The first batch of pamphlets arrived

01:18:35.807 --> 01:18:38.307
in Charleston, South Carolina.

01:18:39.825 --> 01:18:43.937
But the postmaster never
delivered them to the addressees.

01:18:43.937 --> 01:18:48.104
Instead, they were taken to
the town square and burned.

01:18:52.053 --> 01:18:55.344
- Jackson and the Jacksonians'
paranoia about slavery,

01:18:55.344 --> 01:18:58.488
as is seen in this whole incident about

01:18:58.488 --> 01:19:01.687
abolitionist literature
being sent into the South,

01:19:01.687 --> 01:19:06.469
like all paranoia, has
some foundation in reality.

01:19:06.469 --> 01:19:08.686
Their fear is that the word would get out

01:19:08.686 --> 01:19:10.042
to the slave population,

01:19:10.042 --> 01:19:12.313
and would incite slaves to revolt.

01:19:12.313 --> 01:19:16.644
And this is a concern that
they all have in this period,

01:19:16.644 --> 01:19:19.804
particularly as you get
into the early 1830s,

01:19:19.804 --> 01:19:23.137
in the wake of the Nat Turner Rebellion.

01:19:25.307 --> 01:19:27.627
Anytime rebellions have taken place,

01:19:27.627 --> 01:19:30.680
slave holders have become
increasingly paranoid,

01:19:30.680 --> 01:19:33.385
and their instinct is to squash

01:19:33.385 --> 01:19:36.205
the articulation of these
sorts of expressions

01:19:36.205 --> 01:19:38.372
as quickly as is possible.

01:19:40.102 --> 01:19:41.370
- [Martin] Tampering with the mail

01:19:41.370 --> 01:19:44.054
was a serious federal crime.

01:19:44.054 --> 01:19:48.246
But, President Jackson
tacitly encouraged postmasters

01:19:48.246 --> 01:19:50.967
to destroy the pamphlets.

01:19:50.967 --> 01:19:53.898
And he demanded that
Congress outlaw mailing them,

01:19:53.898 --> 01:19:56.231
saying they were incendiary.

01:19:58.478 --> 01:20:01.608
- The Tappan Fliers provide
an interesting insight

01:20:01.608 --> 01:20:03.187
into what we could say

01:20:03.187 --> 01:20:06.354
is the Jacksonians' view of democracy,

01:20:08.081 --> 01:20:11.669
because, of all things,
the ability to petition,

01:20:11.669 --> 01:20:15.334
the ability to get word
out about your position,

01:20:15.334 --> 01:20:19.894
is a fundamental tenant of
all democratic societies.

01:20:19.894 --> 01:20:22.580
So, in that sense, then,
Jackson and his people

01:20:22.580 --> 01:20:26.529
are attempting to squash
a clear democratic voice

01:20:26.529 --> 01:20:27.779
in this period.

01:20:34.095 --> 01:20:38.048
- [Elias] Elias Boudinot,
the Cherokee Nation.

01:20:38.048 --> 01:20:39.838
What sort of hope have we,

01:20:39.838 --> 01:20:42.601
from a president who has an inclination

01:20:42.601 --> 01:20:45.184
to disregard laws and treaties?

01:20:46.998 --> 01:20:50.998
We have nothing to expect
from such a president.

01:21:00.325 --> 01:21:02.742
(folk music)

01:21:06.014 --> 01:21:07.474
- [Martin] Like Thomas Jefferson,

01:21:07.474 --> 01:21:09.955
Andrew Jackson fervently believed

01:21:09.955 --> 01:21:12.647
that it was small, self employed farmers

01:21:12.647 --> 01:21:15.232
who had made America great.

01:21:15.232 --> 01:21:18.077
And, he believed that the
key to keeping it great

01:21:18.077 --> 01:21:20.591
was to continue expanding West,

01:21:20.591 --> 01:21:24.758
so that each new generation
could have farms of their own.

01:21:25.711 --> 01:21:26.869
- In Jefferson's vision,

01:21:26.869 --> 01:21:28.858
the frontier was the
place that each generation

01:21:28.858 --> 01:21:32.775
would replicate the ideal
republican community.

01:21:33.938 --> 01:21:34.936
The problem, of course,

01:21:34.936 --> 01:21:38.167
is that the native people
are already living out there,

01:21:38.167 --> 01:21:41.667
and, with one eye, Americans
managed to not notice them,

01:21:41.667 --> 01:21:44.102
but, with the other eye, they
couldn't fail to notice them.

01:21:44.102 --> 01:21:45.301
Because, as soon as you got there

01:21:45.301 --> 01:21:47.027
you were in conflict with them.

01:21:47.027 --> 01:21:49.938
And that creates the fundamental tension

01:21:49.938 --> 01:21:53.378
that becomes the story of Indian removal.

01:21:53.378 --> 01:21:57.203
- [Martin] In 1830, Jackson
won approval from Congress

01:21:57.203 --> 01:21:59.214
of an Indian Removal Act

01:21:59.214 --> 01:22:01.834
that appropriated half a million dollars,

01:22:01.834 --> 01:22:05.353
so that Native Americans
living east of the Mississippi

01:22:05.353 --> 01:22:09.436
could be removed to land
west of the Mississippi.

01:22:10.437 --> 01:22:14.246
In support of the act, Jackson said...

01:22:14.246 --> 01:22:15.423
- [Jackson] What good man

01:22:15.423 --> 01:22:18.136
would prefer a country
covered with forests

01:22:18.136 --> 01:22:21.136
and ranged by a few thousand savages

01:22:22.639 --> 01:22:24.806
to our extensive republic,

01:22:25.778 --> 01:22:30.379
studded with cities, towns,
and prosperous farms,

01:22:30.379 --> 01:22:34.772
occupied by more than
12 million happy people,

01:22:34.772 --> 01:22:37.690
and filled with all the
blessings of liberty,

01:22:37.690 --> 01:22:39.940
civilization, and religion?

01:22:45.623 --> 01:22:49.186
- [Martin] But Native American
tribes, such as the Cherokee,

01:22:49.186 --> 01:22:52.327
had an entirely different
view than white men

01:22:52.327 --> 01:22:54.744
of how to relate to the land.

01:22:56.579 --> 01:22:59.447
- The Cherokee way is to share.

01:22:59.447 --> 01:23:02.010
It is to be harmonious.

01:23:02.010 --> 01:23:04.638
They really were a spiritual people.

01:23:04.638 --> 01:23:06.556
They had a way of life

01:23:06.556 --> 01:23:10.556
that would perhaps put
most Christians to shame.

01:23:11.611 --> 01:23:14.778
They exercised that way of life daily.

01:23:16.853 --> 01:23:21.402
Every morning, the whole
village would go to the water

01:23:21.402 --> 01:23:22.652
for a blessing.

01:23:23.880 --> 01:23:26.797
And, at this going to water ritual,

01:23:28.211 --> 01:23:30.544
this old man sung this song.

01:23:32.300 --> 01:23:35.300
(sings in Cherokee)

01:23:56.919 --> 01:24:01.858
So, when I sang that song, it
would have been the same sound

01:24:01.858 --> 01:24:05.108
that you would have heard in the 1700s.

01:24:08.006 --> 01:24:09.620
So, that was all disturbed

01:24:09.620 --> 01:24:12.870
because of the contact with the whites.

01:24:15.925 --> 01:24:18.881
- [Martin] Soon after the
creation of the United States,

01:24:18.881 --> 01:24:20.367
many in the Cherokee tribe

01:24:20.367 --> 01:24:23.610
decided that their one
hope of saving their land

01:24:23.610 --> 01:24:26.236
was to take Thomas Jefferson's advice

01:24:26.236 --> 01:24:29.569
and embrace the white man's way of life.

01:24:31.696 --> 01:24:32.767
- The Cherokees, in fact,

01:24:32.767 --> 01:24:36.107
took exactly the advice
that Jefferson offered.

01:24:36.107 --> 01:24:38.226
They settled down, they
put on European clothing,

01:24:38.226 --> 01:24:41.066
they developed an alphabet,
they learned to read and write,

01:24:41.066 --> 01:24:43.736
they set up town meetings, and a mayor,

01:24:43.736 --> 01:24:47.115
and a city council and all those things,

01:24:47.115 --> 01:24:48.688
and they still had to go.

01:24:48.688 --> 01:24:52.296
Because the problem was they
were sitting in Georgia,

01:24:52.296 --> 01:24:54.681
and Georgia was to be ours, not theirs.

01:24:54.681 --> 01:24:56.598
They could not coexist.

01:24:57.947 --> 01:25:01.469
- [Martin] With Georgia
preparing to expel the Cherokee,

01:25:01.469 --> 01:25:03.050
two Christian missionaries

01:25:03.050 --> 01:25:05.498
brought a case to the Supreme Court

01:25:05.498 --> 01:25:07.902
that challenged Georgia's jurisdiction

01:25:07.902 --> 01:25:09.985
over the Cherokee Nation.

01:25:10.966 --> 01:25:15.590
The Supreme Court ruled
in the Cherokee's favor.

01:25:15.590 --> 01:25:18.612
But Andrew Jackson declared...

01:25:18.612 --> 01:25:21.235
- [Jackson] The decision
of the Supreme Court

01:25:21.235 --> 01:25:22.902
has fell, stillborn.

01:25:25.644 --> 01:25:29.214
- [Martin] Jackson encouraged
Georgia to ignore the verdict

01:25:29.214 --> 01:25:33.381
on the grounds that the Cherokee
were not really a nation.

01:25:35.095 --> 01:25:38.072
A writer to the Cherokee
newspaper, the Phoenix,

01:25:38.072 --> 01:25:40.757
remembering that warriors
from the Cherokee Nation

01:25:40.757 --> 01:25:44.486
had played a key role in
the Battle of Horseshoe Bend

01:25:44.486 --> 01:25:47.696
that had launched Jackson
on his road to fame,

01:25:47.696 --> 01:25:49.113
had this request.

01:25:50.482 --> 01:25:52.745
- [Cherokee Writer]
Ask of General Jackson,

01:25:52.745 --> 01:25:54.253
when the thunders of his cannon

01:25:54.253 --> 01:25:56.532
were heard in the Southern Forest,

01:25:56.532 --> 01:25:59.615
and he will say, "They are a nation."

01:26:01.957 --> 01:26:04.161
These unfortunate people,

01:26:04.161 --> 01:26:05.558
who flocked to the standard

01:26:05.558 --> 01:26:09.536
of the brave commander at
Horseshoe, and nobly fought,

01:26:09.536 --> 01:26:13.453
are now repaid with
ingratitude and oppression.

01:26:22.470 --> 01:26:25.689
- [Martin] Solely on the basis
of the color of their skin,

01:26:25.689 --> 01:26:27.774
thousands of Cherokee families

01:26:27.774 --> 01:26:31.761
were evicted from their
homes by American soldiers

01:26:31.761 --> 01:26:35.928
and forced onto what became
known as The Trail of Tears.

01:26:44.770 --> 01:26:46.173
One of the Christian missionaries

01:26:46.173 --> 01:26:49.289
who traveled with them, wrote...

01:26:49.289 --> 01:26:52.332
- [Missionary] I have no
language to express the emotions

01:26:52.332 --> 01:26:54.437
which rend our hearts to witness

01:26:54.437 --> 01:26:57.104
this season of cruel oppression.

01:26:58.726 --> 01:27:01.280
In Georgia, multitudes were not allowed

01:27:01.280 --> 01:27:06.167
to take anything with them
but the clothes they had on.

01:27:06.167 --> 01:27:09.344
Well-furnished houses were
left to prey to plunderers,

01:27:09.344 --> 01:27:13.349
who, like hungry wolves, follow
the progress of the captors

01:27:13.349 --> 01:27:17.099
and rifle the houses,
and strip the helpless.

01:27:18.421 --> 01:27:21.604
For what crime, then, was
this whole nation doomed

01:27:21.604 --> 01:27:24.604
to this almost unheard of suffering?

01:27:27.343 --> 01:27:28.459
- The period of Indian removal

01:27:28.459 --> 01:27:32.342
really is a black mark
on American history.

01:27:32.342 --> 01:27:35.801
America, which started out
as a shining city on a hill,

01:27:35.801 --> 01:27:39.968
sinks to the bottom of the
darkest depths in Indian removal.

01:27:42.225 --> 01:27:44.678
Andrew Jackson, and other Americans,

01:27:44.678 --> 01:27:46.478
were willing to do what it took

01:27:46.478 --> 01:27:48.561
to separate Indians from their land.

01:27:48.561 --> 01:27:50.277
If it meant ignoring treaties,

01:27:50.277 --> 01:27:53.293
if it meant ignoring principles
of international law,

01:27:53.293 --> 01:27:57.460
if it meant ignoring common
decency and a sense of justice,

01:27:58.545 --> 01:27:59.962
then it was done.

01:28:02.010 --> 01:28:04.380
- [Martin] With smallpox
and cholera rampant

01:28:04.380 --> 01:28:08.547
on the Trail of Tears, more
than 2,000 Cherokees died.

01:28:13.036 --> 01:28:16.276
Andrew Jackson had tried to
convince Native Americans

01:28:16.276 --> 01:28:19.359
that he was their great white father.

01:28:21.137 --> 01:28:25.511
But the Cherokee now had
a different name for him.

01:28:25.511 --> 01:28:28.297
- They called him Jacksena,

01:28:28.297 --> 01:28:32.464
and, other Cherokee people
hearing me say that would laugh.

01:28:35.191 --> 01:28:36.691
Jackson the Devil.

01:28:39.606 --> 01:28:41.689
Jacksena. He's devilized.

01:28:47.946 --> 01:28:51.107
(dramatic music)

01:28:51.107 --> 01:28:53.798
- [Jackson] Andrew Jackson.

01:28:53.798 --> 01:28:56.668
Unless you become more watchful,

01:28:56.668 --> 01:29:00.354
you will find that the most
important powers of government

01:29:00.354 --> 01:29:04.271
have passed into the
hands of the corporations.

01:29:14.763 --> 01:29:17.180
(folk music)

01:29:18.686 --> 01:29:21.621
- [Martin] When it came to
Indian removal and slavery,

01:29:21.621 --> 01:29:22.968
President Jackson's views

01:29:22.968 --> 01:29:26.218
mirrored those of many other Americans.

01:29:27.606 --> 01:29:32.151
But there was one issue where
he was truly a visionary

01:29:32.151 --> 01:29:35.751
in his concern for how
average Americans would fare

01:29:35.751 --> 01:29:39.668
as the economy became
ever more industrialized.

01:29:43.134 --> 01:29:47.420
- The world we know was
taking shape in those years.

01:29:47.420 --> 01:29:50.111
And the questions that were so urgent then

01:29:50.111 --> 01:29:51.706
continue to be urgent.

01:29:51.706 --> 01:29:53.559
It was the nature of capitalism.

01:29:53.559 --> 01:29:56.071
It was how people were
gonna make their livings.

01:29:56.071 --> 01:29:58.500
And there's nothing scarier,

01:29:58.500 --> 01:30:00.421
nothing more fundamental to people,

01:30:00.421 --> 01:30:02.426
then how they're going to feed themselves

01:30:02.426 --> 01:30:06.593
and clothe their families and
make their way in the world.

01:30:08.116 --> 01:30:09.300
- [Martin] For centuries,

01:30:09.300 --> 01:30:11.924
learning a craft, such a shoe making,

01:30:11.924 --> 01:30:15.531
had enabled workers to
make a decent living.

01:30:15.531 --> 01:30:18.877
But, across the country,
artisans like shoe makers

01:30:18.877 --> 01:30:23.110
were suddenly losing
their jobs to factories.

01:30:23.110 --> 01:30:24.334
- All of a sudden,

01:30:24.334 --> 01:30:27.368
it's a job that can be done
by a child, by a woman,

01:30:27.368 --> 01:30:30.035
by an unskilled man for pennies.

01:30:31.767 --> 01:30:33.972
But, think what happens to the shoe maker,

01:30:33.972 --> 01:30:36.296
the shoe maker who has
spent all of his life

01:30:36.296 --> 01:30:39.094
learning the skills of
making a whole shoe,

01:30:39.094 --> 01:30:42.332
his skills have become worthless.

01:30:42.332 --> 01:30:45.468
And, as a result, he feels worthless.

01:30:45.468 --> 01:30:49.583
And, if you look at how much
money he's got in his pocket,

01:30:49.583 --> 01:30:52.097
he may be worthless that way also.

01:30:52.097 --> 01:30:53.728
He's broke.

01:30:53.728 --> 01:30:56.311
(fiddle music)

01:31:04.563 --> 01:31:05.501
- [Martin] In the early years

01:31:05.501 --> 01:31:07.733
of Andrew Jackson's presidency,

01:31:07.733 --> 01:31:11.126
these working class
Americans created a new way

01:31:11.126 --> 01:31:13.959
of giving voice to their concerns.

01:31:14.905 --> 01:31:16.405
The minstrel show.

01:31:20.948 --> 01:31:24.932
On the surface, it was simply
an expression of racism

01:31:24.932 --> 01:31:27.346
and proof of how little white Americans

01:31:27.346 --> 01:31:30.179
really knew about black Americans.

01:31:35.150 --> 01:31:37.716
But the hidden secret of the minstrel show

01:31:37.716 --> 01:31:42.184
was that it was not just
about how whites saw blacks,

01:31:42.184 --> 01:31:45.434
but also about how they saw themselves.

01:31:47.961 --> 01:31:49.675
- Of course you're putting on that mask

01:31:49.675 --> 01:31:51.716
to make fun of African Americans,

01:31:51.716 --> 01:31:53.936
but, by virtue of putting on that mask,

01:31:53.936 --> 01:31:57.769
you also enable yourself
to speak of yourself.

01:32:01.473 --> 01:32:04.995
The songs of the theater
at the time reveal that

01:32:04.995 --> 01:32:08.955
the audience is feeling
squeezed by a new America.

01:32:08.955 --> 01:32:10.595
It's being squeezed by an America

01:32:10.595 --> 01:32:13.386
that seems to be coming
more and more for the rich

01:32:13.386 --> 01:32:15.968
instead of the common people.

01:32:15.968 --> 01:32:17.551
So, we can look to the stage

01:32:17.551 --> 01:32:21.338
and we can find a place
in American society

01:32:21.338 --> 01:32:24.914
where that working class could express,

01:32:24.914 --> 01:32:27.946
in a powerful and gripping way,

01:32:27.946 --> 01:32:30.117
what it felt about what this world

01:32:30.117 --> 01:32:32.450
was doing to them our there.

01:32:34.752 --> 01:32:37.226
- [Martin] For a working
class white American,

01:32:37.226 --> 01:32:40.586
putting on the mask of a
slave was a way of saying

01:32:40.586 --> 01:32:42.253
I feel like a slave.

01:32:44.880 --> 01:32:47.196
The minstrels also talked about the man

01:32:47.196 --> 01:32:49.631
they hoped would free them.

01:32:49.631 --> 01:32:53.915
They sang, there's some
who at our party rail,

01:32:53.915 --> 01:32:56.498
call us the ragtag and bobtail,

01:32:57.401 --> 01:33:00.098
but we have sung within our pale,

01:33:00.098 --> 01:33:04.265
who we are will never fail
to vote for General Jackson.

01:33:11.799 --> 01:33:15.626
For Andrew Jackson, the central
question of his presidency

01:33:15.626 --> 01:33:19.178
was what he could do to
prevent these average Americans

01:33:19.178 --> 01:33:23.011
from being exploited by
the rich and powerful.

01:33:26.151 --> 01:33:28.120
The answer Jackson hit upon

01:33:28.120 --> 01:33:31.072
was to destroy an
institution that he thought

01:33:31.072 --> 01:33:34.851
was giving the wealthy
an unfair advantage.

01:33:34.851 --> 01:33:39.645
It's real title was the Second
Bank of the United States.

01:33:39.645 --> 01:33:43.812
But, Jackson supporters
called it the Monster Bank.

01:33:45.022 --> 01:33:48.686
- Andrew Jackson dislikes all
banks, he said at one point,

01:33:48.686 --> 01:33:51.278
but he particularly disliked
the Bank of the United States

01:33:51.278 --> 01:33:54.729
as established by Congress
after the War of 1812.

01:33:54.729 --> 01:33:57.372
The reason was simple,
it had too much power

01:33:57.372 --> 01:34:01.795
outside of any kind of
public accountability.

01:34:01.795 --> 01:34:06.182
The bank was an enormous
economic institution.

01:34:06.182 --> 01:34:08.084
It could really control credit,

01:34:08.084 --> 01:34:11.741
and therefore control the
American economy itself.

01:34:11.741 --> 01:34:15.824
For Jackson, that meant
that the American economy

01:34:17.570 --> 01:34:20.256
was being run by people
who were not elected.

01:34:20.256 --> 01:34:21.497
That these unelected bankers

01:34:21.497 --> 01:34:24.346
had their hands on the levers of power,

01:34:24.346 --> 01:34:26.839
and could control people's
lives, their destinies,

01:34:26.839 --> 01:34:31.006
and indeed could control
the political system itself.

01:34:32.022 --> 01:34:35.552
- [Martin] To Jackson, one of
the Monster Bank's worst sins

01:34:35.552 --> 01:34:38.704
was that it was funding
new style businesses

01:34:38.704 --> 01:34:40.955
that were beginning to
wrap their tentacles

01:34:40.955 --> 01:34:45.170
around both the economy
and the government.

01:34:45.170 --> 01:34:49.003
These new businesses
were called corporations.

01:34:50.729 --> 01:34:52.773
- The problem with corporations

01:34:52.773 --> 01:34:55.165
as far as Jackson was concerned

01:34:55.165 --> 01:34:59.907
was they had no body to be
kicked or soul to be damned.

01:34:59.907 --> 01:35:03.074
They were faceless, anonymous machines

01:35:06.292 --> 01:35:09.116
that were motivated only by

01:35:09.116 --> 01:35:11.614
making profit for their shareholders,

01:35:11.614 --> 01:35:15.367
and, as a result, they
could grow much, much larger

01:35:15.367 --> 01:35:18.108
than the average consumer,
the average worker,

01:35:18.108 --> 01:35:19.775
the average citizen.

01:35:20.934 --> 01:35:23.506
- [Martin] But Jackson's
opponents thought corporations

01:35:23.506 --> 01:35:26.554
would help America become more prosperous.

01:35:26.554 --> 01:35:29.411
And they thought his
plan to blow up the bank

01:35:29.411 --> 01:35:31.641
verged on insanity,

01:35:31.641 --> 01:35:34.271
for it was the bank that guaranteed

01:35:34.271 --> 01:35:36.990
that the paper dollars
in Americans' wallets

01:35:36.990 --> 01:35:38.740
were worth something.

01:35:39.609 --> 01:35:42.059
- Jackson took a kind
of fundamentalist view

01:35:42.059 --> 01:35:43.699
of money and credit.

01:35:43.699 --> 01:35:45.993
Gold and silver dollars were real money.

01:35:45.993 --> 01:35:48.576
Paper was, in some sense, fake.

01:35:50.170 --> 01:35:54.924
Those who were perhaps more
astute economists than Jackson

01:35:54.924 --> 01:35:58.259
thought that this position
was just short of neanderthal.

01:35:58.259 --> 01:36:00.683
The United States had
been built on credit,

01:36:00.683 --> 01:36:02.457
as Henry Clay said in the Senate,

01:36:02.457 --> 01:36:04.776
"We have always been a paper money people.

01:36:04.776 --> 01:36:08.026
"We won the revolution on paper money."

01:36:10.361 --> 01:36:12.491
- [Martin] Clay and his allies in Congress

01:36:12.491 --> 01:36:16.329
decided to put some heat on Old Hickory.

01:36:16.329 --> 01:36:18.699
Near the end of Jackson's first term,

01:36:18.699 --> 01:36:22.980
they passed a bill extending
the bank's charter.

01:36:22.980 --> 01:36:25.829
Clay calculated that the
president would have no choice

01:36:25.829 --> 01:36:27.415
but to sign the bill,

01:36:27.415 --> 01:36:30.406
because a veto would be
seen by the American public

01:36:30.406 --> 01:36:34.573
as so irresponsible, it would
cost Jackson reelection.

01:36:41.470 --> 01:36:44.334
But Clay had made a
fundamental miscalculation

01:36:44.334 --> 01:36:47.990
about the character of Andrew Jackson.

01:36:47.990 --> 01:36:50.384
A character that was
exemplified by an event

01:36:50.384 --> 01:36:54.551
that took place in the midst
of the battle over the bank.

01:36:56.965 --> 01:36:58.678
At the president's request,

01:36:58.678 --> 01:37:01.051
a navy surgeon was
brought to the White House

01:37:01.051 --> 01:37:03.801
to operate on a painful shoulder.

01:37:05.932 --> 01:37:08.631
The problem was a simple one.

01:37:08.631 --> 01:37:10.714
There was a bullet in it.

01:37:11.913 --> 01:37:15.642
20 years before, during the War of 1812,

01:37:15.642 --> 01:37:18.936
Major General Jackson
became embroiled in a feud

01:37:18.936 --> 01:37:20.857
between one of his officers

01:37:20.857 --> 01:37:23.607
and a prominent Nashville family.

01:37:25.859 --> 01:37:27.841
Instead of mediating the dispute,

01:37:27.841 --> 01:37:30.676
as might have been expected
of a man of his stature,

01:37:30.676 --> 01:37:34.843
General Jackson took part
in a full scale gun battle.

01:37:37.777 --> 01:37:41.944
During it, he was shot at point
blank range and almost died.

01:37:45.631 --> 01:37:50.132
This saga defined the
character of Andrew Jackson.

01:37:50.132 --> 01:37:52.040
He could not pass up a fight.

01:37:52.040 --> 01:37:56.207
And, when he fought, he was
willing to risk everything.

01:37:57.337 --> 01:37:59.587
Of the bank, he declared...

01:38:00.750 --> 01:38:04.158
- [Jackson] The bank is trying to kill me,

01:38:04.158 --> 01:38:05.741
but I will kill it.

01:38:10.032 --> 01:38:12.778
- [Martin] On July 10th, 1832,

01:38:12.778 --> 01:38:16.695
Jackson vetoed the bill
reauthorizing the bank.

01:38:19.772 --> 01:38:22.212
The president's address
in defense of the veto

01:38:22.212 --> 01:38:25.874
was perhaps the most
important of his life,

01:38:25.874 --> 01:38:28.920
for he had to explain
to the American people,

01:38:28.920 --> 01:38:32.960
not with bombast, but
with words from his heart,

01:38:32.960 --> 01:38:36.043
why he so fervently opposed the bank.

01:38:37.623 --> 01:38:41.543
- Jackson] It is to be regretted
that the rich and powerful

01:38:41.543 --> 01:38:44.119
too often bend the acts of government

01:38:44.119 --> 01:38:46.286
to their selfish purposes.

01:38:48.138 --> 01:38:51.637
When the laws on the take
to make the rich richer

01:38:51.637 --> 01:38:54.569
and the potent more powerful,

01:38:54.569 --> 01:38:56.479
the humble members of society,

01:38:56.479 --> 01:38:59.309
the farmers, the mechanics, and laborers,

01:38:59.309 --> 01:39:01.650
who have neither the time nor the means

01:39:01.650 --> 01:39:04.394
of securing like favors to themselves,

01:39:04.394 --> 01:39:06.648
have a right to complain

01:39:06.648 --> 01:39:09.731
of the injustice of their government.

01:39:12.634 --> 01:39:14.445
We can at least take a stand

01:39:14.445 --> 01:39:17.943
against any prostitution of our government

01:39:17.943 --> 01:39:22.110
to the advancement of the few
at the expense of the many.

01:39:25.402 --> 01:39:27.985
(parade music)

01:39:29.647 --> 01:39:30.909
- [Martin] To help rally support

01:39:30.909 --> 01:39:34.620
for Jackson's reelection campaign in 1832,

01:39:34.620 --> 01:39:38.983
the president and his closest
advisor, Martin Van Buren,

01:39:38.983 --> 01:39:41.237
came up with one of the boldest strokes

01:39:41.237 --> 01:39:43.819
in American political history.

01:39:43.819 --> 01:39:46.652
They founded the Democratic Party.

01:39:47.848 --> 01:39:50.981
- Jackson thought of The
Democracy, as it was called,

01:39:50.981 --> 01:39:51.814
it wasn't called the Democratic Party,

01:39:51.814 --> 01:39:53.320
it was called The Democracy,

01:39:53.320 --> 01:39:56.133
thought of it as the association of

01:39:56.133 --> 01:39:58.503
the vast majority of Americans,

01:39:58.503 --> 01:39:59.989
the majority that should govern,

01:39:59.989 --> 01:40:03.348
to make sure that they would govern.

01:40:03.348 --> 01:40:04.458
There were all sorts of ways

01:40:04.458 --> 01:40:08.051
in which ordinary people can participate.

01:40:08.051 --> 01:40:09.478
Jackson thinks that's important,

01:40:09.478 --> 01:40:12.493
because the ordinary people
have to associate more

01:40:12.493 --> 01:40:14.407
because they don't have the resources

01:40:14.407 --> 01:40:17.324
that the rich and the well born do.

01:40:18.923 --> 01:40:19.838
- [Martin] For years,

01:40:19.838 --> 01:40:23.628
Jackson's opponents had
lampooned his frontier roots

01:40:23.628 --> 01:40:26.211
by portraying him as a jackass.

01:40:28.302 --> 01:40:32.469
To their shock, the Jacksonians
began embracing the symbol.

01:40:37.431 --> 01:40:39.205
- Well, the donkey as the
symbol of the Democratic Party

01:40:39.205 --> 01:40:40.834
started out as a satire,

01:40:40.834 --> 01:40:43.084
as an attack on the rubish,

01:40:44.494 --> 01:40:47.775
sort of Beverly Hillbillies nature of

01:40:47.775 --> 01:40:50.846
Jackson's Democratic Party.

01:40:50.846 --> 01:40:53.814
But, interesting that people
like Henry Clay and others

01:40:53.814 --> 01:40:56.342
didn't quite understand that

01:40:56.342 --> 01:40:59.871
in urban settings, the donkey
may have been a figure of fun,

01:40:59.871 --> 01:41:02.440
but for people in rural America,

01:41:02.440 --> 01:41:04.726
which was most of America at the time,

01:41:04.726 --> 01:41:07.328
the donkey was essential to daily life,

01:41:07.328 --> 01:41:09.294
and it was someone you could rely on.

01:41:09.294 --> 01:41:11.782
And Jackson and the Democrats
were presenting themselves

01:41:11.782 --> 01:41:14.115
as people you could rely on.

01:41:15.702 --> 01:41:16.738
- [Martin] A second party

01:41:16.738 --> 01:41:20.063
quickly arose to oppose the Democrats.

01:41:20.063 --> 01:41:22.265
Called The National Republicans,

01:41:22.265 --> 01:41:26.369
they chose Jackson's
fiercest rival, Henry Clay,

01:41:26.369 --> 01:41:29.719
to run against him for president.

01:41:29.719 --> 01:41:32.588
- Henry Clay and Andrew
Jackson hated each other.

01:41:32.588 --> 01:41:36.505
Clay saw himself as a
great American statesman,

01:41:38.614 --> 01:41:40.292
and couldn't quite understand

01:41:40.292 --> 01:41:44.766
how this rube from the
Carolina back country

01:41:44.766 --> 01:41:46.142
who had never gone to school,

01:41:46.142 --> 01:41:48.520
who'd never read a book, in Clay's view,

01:41:48.520 --> 01:41:51.495
could possibly be so powerful

01:41:51.495 --> 01:41:54.086
and have such a hold over the people.

01:41:54.086 --> 01:41:57.966
Thereby ensuring that Clay
himself would never do that.

01:41:57.966 --> 01:42:00.922
Because he didn't appreciate, I think,

01:42:00.922 --> 01:42:03.545
Jackson's gifts of both charisma

01:42:03.545 --> 01:42:06.295
and the power of his personality.

01:42:07.884 --> 01:42:09.860
- [Martin] During the election campaign,

01:42:09.860 --> 01:42:14.044
Jackson and his advisors again
demonstrated complete mastery

01:42:14.044 --> 01:42:17.127
of the media tools available to them.

01:42:18.398 --> 01:42:21.987
- This man was sitting for his portrait

01:42:21.987 --> 01:42:24.334
again and again and again.

01:42:24.334 --> 01:42:26.102
Jackson had a sense

01:42:26.102 --> 01:42:29.685
that I want the American
people to know me,

01:42:30.870 --> 01:42:33.190
and to know what I look like.

01:42:33.190 --> 01:42:37.357
And, I think that says something
about his political sense.

01:42:40.584 --> 01:42:42.855
He's a first in many ways,

01:42:42.855 --> 01:42:45.801
and he's the first president that I know

01:42:45.801 --> 01:42:48.551
who had a desire to use the media

01:42:51.471 --> 01:42:54.804
to communicate with the American people.

01:42:55.646 --> 01:42:56.996
- [Martin] On election day,

01:42:56.996 --> 01:43:00.382
voters flocked to the
polls in record numbers.

01:43:00.382 --> 01:43:04.061
And, thanks to Jackson's
reputation as a military hero,

01:43:04.061 --> 01:43:07.333
and his continuing expansion of America,

01:43:07.333 --> 01:43:10.833
they gave Old Hickory a landslide victory.

01:43:14.708 --> 01:43:17.524
But what Andrew Jackson
read into the victory

01:43:17.524 --> 01:43:19.803
was that he now had a mandate

01:43:19.803 --> 01:43:23.220
to destroy The Bank of the United States.

01:43:24.694 --> 01:43:27.186
And so the president ordered
the government's money

01:43:27.186 --> 01:43:29.019
removed from the bank.

01:43:30.484 --> 01:43:32.557
But even some in his own cabinet

01:43:32.557 --> 01:43:35.196
thought such a step was illegal.

01:43:35.196 --> 01:43:38.722
And Jackson had to replace
two treasury secretaries

01:43:38.722 --> 01:43:42.222
before finding a third who would obey him.

01:43:43.486 --> 01:43:46.611
- Nothing like this would happen again

01:43:46.611 --> 01:43:50.210
until Richard Nixon, during
the Watergate Crisis,

01:43:50.210 --> 01:43:52.924
had to go through three attorneys' general

01:43:52.924 --> 01:43:56.203
to find one who would fire Archibald Cox

01:43:56.203 --> 01:43:58.036
as special prosecutor.

01:43:59.677 --> 01:44:01.971
- [Martin] On the floor of the US Senate,

01:44:01.971 --> 01:44:04.350
Henry Clay asserted that nothing less

01:44:04.350 --> 01:44:08.517
than the future of American
Democracy was at stake.

01:44:09.574 --> 01:44:12.473
- [Clay] We are in the
midst of a revolution,

01:44:12.473 --> 01:44:14.300
hitherto bloodless,

01:44:14.300 --> 01:44:17.913
but rapidly tending toward
the concentration of all power

01:44:17.913 --> 01:44:19.913
in the hands of one man.

01:44:23.474 --> 01:44:26.214
- [Martin] For the only
time in American history,

01:44:26.214 --> 01:44:29.047
the Senate censured the president.

01:44:30.608 --> 01:44:35.321
People throughout the nation
began calling it The Bank War.

01:44:35.321 --> 01:44:36.270
It was a war

01:44:36.270 --> 01:44:39.413
in which reason and economics
were the casualties,

01:44:39.413 --> 01:44:40.810
and the chief combatants

01:44:40.810 --> 01:44:44.977
were Jackson and the president
of the bank, Nicholas Biddle.

01:44:46.434 --> 01:44:48.173
- The confrontation between Andrew Jackson

01:44:48.173 --> 01:44:50.048
and The Bank of the United States

01:44:50.048 --> 01:44:52.074
escalated, you might almost say,

01:44:52.074 --> 01:44:54.817
beyond the bounds of sanity.

01:44:54.817 --> 01:44:56.785
From the point of view of Nicholas Biddle,

01:44:56.785 --> 01:44:58.881
president of The Bank
of the United States,

01:44:58.881 --> 01:45:00.106
this maniac president

01:45:00.106 --> 01:45:03.403
was going to destroy the American economy.

01:45:03.403 --> 01:45:05.388
And both sides got so wrapped up in it

01:45:05.388 --> 01:45:07.888
that they did reckless things.

01:45:09.596 --> 01:45:10.540
Nicholas Biddle,

01:45:10.540 --> 01:45:13.218
in an effort to procure a recharter,

01:45:13.218 --> 01:45:17.597
actually triggered what was
called a panic in those days,

01:45:17.597 --> 01:45:21.578
of a stock market crash
and a brief depression,

01:45:21.578 --> 01:45:23.779
not realizing that, in doing this,

01:45:23.779 --> 01:45:26.565
he was proving every point Jackson made

01:45:26.565 --> 01:45:29.540
about the reckless power that
The Bank of the United States

01:45:29.540 --> 01:45:32.540
held over ordinary Americans' lives.

01:45:34.765 --> 01:45:39.288
- [Martin] Finally, in 1836,
the bank's charter expired

01:45:39.288 --> 01:45:41.348
and its doors were closed.

01:45:41.348 --> 01:45:43.277
And Andrew Jackson, once again,

01:45:43.277 --> 01:45:46.027
emerged from a battle victorious.

01:45:47.579 --> 01:45:49.370
- An historian has written

01:45:49.370 --> 01:45:51.877
that every once in a
while in American history

01:45:51.877 --> 01:45:55.777
it becomes necessary to
save American capitalism

01:45:55.777 --> 01:45:57.180
from the capitalists.

01:45:57.180 --> 01:45:58.943
That, left to their own devices,

01:45:58.943 --> 01:46:01.157
they will so accrete power

01:46:01.157 --> 01:46:04.873
that they will end up ruining the economy.

01:46:04.873 --> 01:46:07.226
Well, Jackson in some ways saw that

01:46:07.226 --> 01:46:09.043
was the beginning of that process,

01:46:09.043 --> 01:46:11.743
as American capitalism was
just beginning to develop.

01:46:11.743 --> 01:46:14.111
He saw that, to keep the system going

01:46:14.111 --> 01:46:17.454
in a democratic fashion, as he saw it,

01:46:17.454 --> 01:46:20.972
it was necessary that accountability

01:46:20.972 --> 01:46:22.625
had to be there in the system

01:46:22.625 --> 01:46:27.173
in a way that it did not
seem to be as of 1832.

01:46:27.173 --> 01:46:29.673
(tense music)

01:46:32.929 --> 01:46:33.967
- [Martin] Jackson's battles

01:46:33.967 --> 01:46:38.134
during his second term in
office were not just political.

01:46:39.683 --> 01:46:42.791
One afternoon, as the president
was leaving the capitol,

01:46:42.791 --> 01:46:44.066
a mentally ill man,

01:46:44.066 --> 01:46:46.848
who believed that Jackson
had killed his father

01:46:46.848 --> 01:46:48.098
approached him.

01:46:49.070 --> 01:46:51.570
(tense music)

01:46:57.449 --> 01:46:59.782
(gun fires)

01:47:01.113 --> 01:47:03.751
The explosion of the
pistol's percussion cap

01:47:03.751 --> 01:47:07.968
convinced bystanders that
the president had been shot.

01:47:07.968 --> 01:47:12.135
But the gunpowder inside
the pistol failed to ignite.

01:47:15.764 --> 01:47:19.441
The assailant then drew a second pistol

01:47:19.441 --> 01:47:23.871
and fired point blank into
the president's chest.

01:47:23.871 --> 01:47:26.204
(gun fires)

01:47:27.114 --> 01:47:30.199
Miraculously, the powder
inside the second gun

01:47:30.199 --> 01:47:32.032
also failed to ignite.

01:47:34.981 --> 01:47:37.979
As a result, Andrew Jackson survived

01:47:37.979 --> 01:47:40.328
the first assassination attempt ever

01:47:40.328 --> 01:47:42.828
against an American president.

01:47:50.342 --> 01:47:54.081
Then, in the presidential
election of 1836,

01:47:54.081 --> 01:47:57.761
Jackson's hand-picked
successor, Martin Van Buren,

01:47:57.761 --> 01:48:01.535
rode Old Hickory's coat tails to victory.

01:48:01.535 --> 01:48:03.952
(folk music)

01:48:09.846 --> 01:48:11.429
On March 4th, 1837,

01:48:12.647 --> 01:48:16.814
Andrew Jackson's tumultuous
presidency came to an end.

01:48:19.154 --> 01:48:21.313
In a sign of the remarkable changes

01:48:21.313 --> 01:48:24.387
that had taken place
during his years in office,

01:48:24.387 --> 01:48:28.212
he left Washington, not in
a carriage pulled by horses,

01:48:28.212 --> 01:48:31.006
as he had arrived eight years before,

01:48:31.006 --> 01:48:35.173
but on a train car pulled by
a steam powered locomotive.

01:48:37.435 --> 01:48:39.935
To a reporter, Jackson said...

01:48:41.677 --> 01:48:43.669
- [Jackson] After eight
years as president,

01:48:43.669 --> 01:48:45.669
I have only two regrets.

01:48:47.070 --> 01:48:51.237
That I have not shot Henry
Clay or hanged John C. Calhoun.

01:48:58.498 --> 01:49:01.362
- [Martin] The legacy Andrew
Jackson left behind him

01:49:01.362 --> 01:49:03.195
was a complicated one.

01:49:04.089 --> 01:49:06.111
But, if there was one key feature

01:49:06.111 --> 01:49:10.398
that would allow future generations
to make sense of it all,

01:49:10.398 --> 01:49:12.685
it was the way in which Jackson's fight

01:49:12.685 --> 01:49:15.043
for the rights of the average white man

01:49:15.043 --> 01:49:19.210
pointed the way for others
to seek rights of their own.

01:49:22.428 --> 01:49:25.499
- Jacksonian democracy had no
room in it for black people,

01:49:25.499 --> 01:49:28.395
it was not willing to free the slaves,

01:49:28.395 --> 01:49:29.979
it had utter contempt

01:49:29.979 --> 01:49:32.285
for the political aspirations of women,

01:49:32.285 --> 01:49:33.881
and everybody knows it was

01:49:33.881 --> 01:49:37.631
utterly violent and
merciless to the Indians.

01:49:38.501 --> 01:49:41.503
But, look how the victims
of Jacksonian democracy

01:49:41.503 --> 01:49:43.403
defended themselves.

01:49:43.403 --> 01:49:45.785
They didn't go out and become monarchists.

01:49:45.785 --> 01:49:47.438
Instead, what they did

01:49:47.438 --> 01:49:50.523
was to take the principles
of Jacksonian democracy

01:49:50.523 --> 01:49:53.686
and demand that they
be applied to them too.

01:49:53.686 --> 01:49:54.959
When you look at the feminists,

01:49:54.959 --> 01:49:56.631
they used the Declaration of Independence

01:49:56.631 --> 01:49:58.762
to demand the right to vote.

01:49:58.762 --> 01:50:00.286
When you look at the abolitionists,

01:50:00.286 --> 01:50:03.405
they said the demand for human equality

01:50:03.405 --> 01:50:06.445
is good for the slaves as well.

01:50:06.445 --> 01:50:08.151
When the Indians wanted to

01:50:08.151 --> 01:50:11.321
defend themselves against
white encroachment,

01:50:11.321 --> 01:50:13.562
the Cherokees created
a written constitution

01:50:13.562 --> 01:50:16.320
and a democratic government of their own.

01:50:16.320 --> 01:50:21.149
So that the abolitionists,
the feminists, the Indians,

01:50:21.149 --> 01:50:25.316
all responded to this
aggressive Jacksonian democracy,

01:50:26.810 --> 01:50:28.685
not by becoming monarchists,

01:50:28.685 --> 01:50:32.185
but by saying, "We have to have some too."

01:50:36.632 --> 01:50:39.379
- [Martin] Jackson spent the
remaining years of his life

01:50:39.379 --> 01:50:42.239
at his beloved Hermitage.

01:50:42.239 --> 01:50:44.642
Though others would one
day see a connection

01:50:44.642 --> 01:50:48.452
between his quest for
opportunity for white men

01:50:48.452 --> 01:50:51.674
and the ideal of opportunity for all,

01:50:51.674 --> 01:50:54.424
Andrew Jackson himself never did.

01:50:57.089 --> 01:51:00.232
He continued to own dozens of slaves,

01:51:00.232 --> 01:51:04.100
never worrying that they
toiled from sunrise to midnight

01:51:04.100 --> 01:51:06.445
with no hope of a better life,

01:51:06.445 --> 01:51:10.612
or giving any thought to what
their opinion was of him.

01:51:12.724 --> 01:51:17.122
- Sometimes, when they had a
funeral for a fellow slave,

01:51:17.122 --> 01:51:20.895
like at The Hermitage, they would say,

01:51:20.895 --> 01:51:24.645
"One day, your head must
bow as low as ours."

01:51:25.630 --> 01:51:29.221
As they sang this funeral
march to the grave.

01:51:29.221 --> 01:51:32.804
One day, your head must
bow as low as ours.

01:51:35.470 --> 01:51:39.358
When they sang that song, they're
looking at Andrew Jackson,

01:51:39.358 --> 01:51:42.025
the master, as they march along.

01:51:45.538 --> 01:51:47.398
The whites think that
they're just singin' a

01:51:47.398 --> 01:51:49.688
great, melodious song.

01:51:49.688 --> 01:51:51.714
But it had a deep meaning,

01:51:51.714 --> 01:51:55.714
and, what it meant it,
one day you must die too.

01:51:56.809 --> 01:52:00.476
One thing that makes
all men equal is death.

01:52:01.333 --> 01:52:04.126
All men must die equally.

01:52:04.126 --> 01:52:07.626
One day your head must bow as low as ours.

01:52:10.427 --> 01:52:14.594
- [Martin] On June 8th,
1845, Andrew Jackson died.

01:52:20.385 --> 01:52:22.240
America's seventh president

01:52:22.240 --> 01:52:26.016
was laid to rest beside
his beloved wife, Rachel,

01:52:26.016 --> 01:52:28.599
in the garden at The Hermitage.

01:52:31.356 --> 01:52:36.061
14 years later, Jackson's
first biographer, James Parton,

01:52:36.061 --> 01:52:37.561
visited the grave.

01:52:39.599 --> 01:52:42.128
The historian had
already spent many months

01:52:42.128 --> 01:52:44.925
reading what hundreds of
Jackson's contemporaries

01:52:44.925 --> 01:52:46.675
had to say about him.

01:52:48.584 --> 01:52:51.568
But the writer still
found it nearly impossible

01:52:51.568 --> 01:52:53.401
to sum up Old Hickory.

01:52:57.343 --> 01:53:00.263
- [Parton] If anyone, at
the end of a year even,

01:53:00.263 --> 01:53:03.983
had asked what I discovered
respecting General Jackson,

01:53:03.983 --> 01:53:06.233
I might have answered thus.

01:53:08.718 --> 01:53:12.165
Andrew Jackson, I am given to understand,

01:53:12.165 --> 01:53:14.498
was a patriot and a traitor.

01:53:16.739 --> 01:53:19.023
He was one of the greatest generals,

01:53:19.023 --> 01:53:22.190
and wholly ignorant of the art of war.

01:53:24.367 --> 01:53:26.402
A stickler for discipline,

01:53:26.402 --> 01:53:29.985
he never hesitated to
disobey his superior.

01:53:30.895 --> 01:53:32.815
The first of statesmen,

01:53:32.815 --> 01:53:35.898
he never devised or framed a measure.

01:53:37.810 --> 01:53:39.870
He was the most candid of men,

01:53:39.870 --> 01:53:43.953
and was capable of the
profoundest dissimulation.

01:53:46.328 --> 01:53:48.745
He was a democratic autocrat,

01:53:49.689 --> 01:53:51.106
an urbane savage,

01:53:53.289 --> 01:53:54.872
an atrocious saint.

01:54:05.674 --> 01:54:07.985
- [Announcer] Discover
more about Andrew Jackson,

01:54:07.985 --> 01:54:11.037
explore the history of
the imperial presidency,

01:54:11.037 --> 01:54:14.481
and watch debates about
Indian removal, slavery,

01:54:14.481 --> 01:54:18.648
and other controversies from
the Jacksonian era at PBS.org.

01:54:20.166 --> 01:54:22.666
(folk music)