American Lion by Jon Meacham

The main issues that confronted Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) as the seventh president of the United States (1828-1836) were the nullification controversy, secession and the banking crisis. This book, more political history than biography,  seemed a good complement to the subject of Sam Houston (who was mentored by Jackson and greatly admired him) and the early history of the United States. For the most part it was. 

 Andrew Jackson served as president scarcely 40 years after George Washington and already, in that short space of time, he was considered to be overstepping the powers of the presidency as intended by the Founding Fathers.  Jackson was dubbed King Andrew the First and was criticized for his belief that he had an allegiance directly to the American people.  I had thought that the erosion of the distinctions between the three branches of government and the ballooning of the powers of the executive branch didn’t occur until at least Theodore Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson.

 As for the issues of his presidency, the nullification controversy involved the claim on the part of the state of South Carolina that they had the right to declare null and void certain tariffs (of 1828 and 1832) which were deemed punitive to the economy of that state and the South.  Underlying that claim was the issue of states’ rights and the nature of the ties that bound the states together into a union.  The author writes: “Jackson argued that “We the People” had formed the Union that produced the Constitution, as opposed to the Southern theory that the Constitution was a compact between the states in which the individual states were paramount.”  Pg 228  

The threat of secession arose from the further claim by South Carolina, John Calhoun being its principal spokesman, that the federal government could either amend or remove the tariffs and if they didn’t the state could then secede from the Union.  Jackson saw secession as akin to the destruction of the nation and was adamantly against it.  A compromise was eventually drawn up,  but it’s easy to see that this was a tip-of-the-iceberg controversy.  The division between North and South, with the moral issue of slavery at its core, was building to the crescendo it would soon reach during Lincoln’s presidency.

On the banking issue, briefly, Jackson opposed a national bank because he felt it concentrated power in the hands of the elite and ignored the common man.  Jackson managed to veto a re-charter of the bank and then did just as he had threatened and removed United States funds from the bank.  For that act, the Senate censured him (just like Trump!), a serious blow to Jackson which was later rescinded.

There was no real discussion in the book of the familiar phrase “Jacksonian democracy” that I could ascertain. Nor was much space given to Jackson’s policies toward the Indians, specifically the removal of the Cherokee and the Trail of Tears.  The relationship between Sam Houston and Jackson received scant treatment in this book; I thought Jackson had played a larger role in the events in Texas but his presidency was largely over as Texas was bursting onto the national scene.  A bit of trivia about Jackson, he was the first president to be the target of an assassination attempt. 

Jackson was a figure much like Sam Houston in that he was a Tennessean (though a South Carolinian by birth) and a frontier-type soldier, statesman and lawyer.  Jackson left his mark on history and as the title of the book indicates, American Lion, Jackson was considered a force to be reckoned with.  By today’s standards, he seemed to be a pretty normal politician to me.  Granted, after Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and another Adams, Jackson was the first rough-and-tumble sort to occupy the White House. But he was apparently well spoken, educated to some degree and had informed views.  He was devoted to his wife who died just as he was elected to the presidency and he was equally devoted to his niece and nephew who were his closest aides in Washington. 

This book was good reading by a recognized author who, like Daniel Bergamini, used newly uncovered documents in writing this book.  Meacham also had a hefty bunch of notes at the end of the book, none of which I consulted, but still only half the amount that Bergamini had in his book.  Meacham explained in his acknowledgments that he did not intend an “academic study” of Jackson’s presidency but rather wanted to “paint a biographical portrait” of the man.  I would say he did so with moderate success.  As noted above, I found the book to be more of a political history than an exhaustive biography of Jackson.  The reading was also a little dry at times.