In Defense of Andrew Jackson by Bradley Birzer

Author:Bradley Birzer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regnery History

Chapter Six

The World Is Governed Too Much

As a Scotch-Irish and southwestern American frontiersman, Jackson had always held women in the highest esteem. White women, black women, Indian women—their race didn’t matter to Jackson. There was something special about them, and he—an imagined and actual knight of buckskin—believed he had a duty to protect them everywhere. He had learned this from his mother, and Rachel, the abused wife of a bastard, had only strengthened his resolve on this matter. As a young man, he had invited a prostitute and her daughter to a ball. Some of Jackson’s biographers have explained this as a childish prank.1 However, given his behavior toward women of every standing throughout his life, it is far more likely that Jackson’s invitation was not meant to demean but to uplift.

Jackson was beyond livid when the governor of Georgia sanctioned a massacre of Indian women and children in 1818 during the Seminole campaign of the late 1810s. “It is still more Strange that there could exist within the U. States, a cowardly monster in human Shape, that could violate the Sanctity of a flag,” he wrote the governor. “Such base cowardice and murderous conduct as this transaction affords has not its paralel [sic] in history and should meet with its merited punishment.”2 For Jackson, it was one thing to meet a man, voluntarily, on the battlefield and kill him. It was quite another to attack the innocent and the defenseless.

Rachel Jackson had herself been a mortal victim of men who did not abide by Jackson’s standard of chivalry. Gravely wounded by her loss, Jackson fell back on a stoic acceptance of God’s will. “I bow to the decree, but feel in its afflictive power how weak are the Sentiments of Philosophy, without the aid of divine Grace,” he wrote to one of Rachel’s friends.3 To William Polk, he admitted the death came as a “severe stroke” to him, but he felt assured that Rachel now resided happily in Heaven.4 By the middle of January, Jackson was convinced that her death only strengthened his own faith to live according to “her virtues, her piety, & Christianity,”5 and it is true that his Presbyterian faith grew far more pronounced after Rachel’s death.

The Nashville Republican editorialized, “In the character of this excellent and lamented lady,” Rachel Jackson, “feminine charms, domestic virtues, and Christian perfections were united.” Yet, the paper chided, Andrew Jackson’s enemies were responsible for her premature death. “In order to obstruct his just popularity, and rightful power, she was made the object of injuries more barbarous than murderous savages could inflict,” the paper continued. “And Providence after permitting her to witness the downfall and confusion of those he patronized and those who committed these atrocities, gently withdrew her wounded spirit to the mansions of eternal bliss.”6

Arriving in Washington in January, hoping to meet with the president-elect, newspaper owner Amos Kendall wrote to his wife, “Since the news of Mrs. Jackson’s death, I have less inclination” to wait for his arrival. “That melancholy event will cast a gloom over everything.

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