2. John C. Calhoun
• John C. Calhoun was a southerner who became the
foremost defender of states’ rights.
• His defense of states’ rights is considered one of the best
articulated, even if one does not agree fully with him. He is
not considered simplistic in his approach.
• "Jackson led through force of personality, not intellect; his
successors in the White House were remarkable for neither,
and yielded pre-eminence to Congressional politicians. Of
the three greatest, Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, the last
showed the most striking mind. His problem, that of
defending a minority interest in a democracy, offered the
toughest challenge to fresh thinking" (Hofstadter 89).
3. • Calhoun on Van Buren:
– “He is not of the race of the lion or the tiger,”
Calhoun said of Van Buren; rather, he “belongs to
a lower order – the fox” (Meacham 307)
4. Andrew Jackson, an ambiguous man
• “In fact, Jackson made more friends than he fought
duels, and in the practice of law, the pursuit of politics,
and his mastery of the military – his three overlapping
professions – he inspired great loyalty. Jackson’s
willingness to risk his own life to protect others won
him the respect and thanks of his contemporaries and
made them amenable to forgiving him his (many)
trespasses. . . . By projecting personal strength, Jackson
created a persona of power, and it was this aura,
perhaps more than any particular gift of insight,
judgment, or rhetoric, that propelled him forward
throughout his life” (Meacham 26)
5. Andrew Jackson, an ambiguous man
• “Like Henry Clay of Kentucky (1777-1852), Speaker of the House and
leader of what were known as the War Hawks, and John Caldwell Calhoun
of South Carolina (1782-1850), Jackson wanted every unassimilated Indian
driven west of the Mississippi, and he wanted the states and the federal
government to build roads as quickly as possible to bring in the settlers to
secure the new frontier – just as his forebears had done in Ulster after the
Battle of the Boyne. His arm was still in a sling from his latest duel, but he
hurried his militiamen south, building roads as he went. With him was his
partner in land speculation, General John Coffee, who commanded the
cavalry, and a motley bunch of adventurers, which included David Crockett
(1786-1836), also from Tennessee and a noted sharpshooter, and Samuel
Houston (1793-1863), a Virginia-born frontiersman, then only nineteen”
(Johnson 29).
• David Crockett: “We shot them like dogs” (Johnson 29). Crockett, the so-
called “King of the Wild Frontier,” would gain fame as a Congressman from
Tenn. Ironically, he opposed Jackson’s Removal Act. He would later die at
the Alamo.
6. Slavery at Jackson’s Hermitage
A slave at the Hermitage, Alfred, once had a revealing exchange with Roeliff
Brinkerhoff, a tutor Andrew Jackson, Jr., had hired for his children . . . “Alfred was a
man of powerful physique, and had the brains and executive powers of a major-
general,” Brinkerhoff recalled. “He was thoroughly reliable, and was fully and
deservedly trusted in the management of plantation affairs.” Brinkerhoff ran into
Alfred one evening on the grounds but found him “unusually reticent and gloomy.”
Looking at Brinkerhoff, Alfred asked:
“You white folks have easy time, don’t you?”
“Why so, Alfred?” I asked.
“You have liberty to come and go as you will,” he replied.
I soon found that he was full of discontent with his lot, and I
thought it wise to turn his attention to the brighter side. . . .
I showed him how freedom had its burdens as well as slavery; that
God had so constituted human life that every one in every station had a load
to carry, and that he was the wisest and the happiest who contentedly did
his duty, and looked to a world beyond, where all inequalities would be
made even. Alfred did not seem disposed to argue the question with me, or
to combat my logic, but he quietly looked up into my face and popped this
question at me:
“How would you like to be a slave?”
It is needless to say I backed out as gracefully as I could, but I have
never yet found an answer to the argument embodied in that question.”
(Meacham 303-4, bold added)
7. Thomas Jefferson on the bulk
of his contemporaries in Virginia
• “Writing in the same liberal tradition which assigns ultimate
wisdom to the people, and which was quoted approvingly
in The Family of Man, Thomas Jefferson set forth in his
Notes on Virginia a plan of elementary schooling by which,
he said, ‘twenty of the best geniuses will be raked from the
rubbish annually.’ It is inconceivable today that anyone
should publicly describe any group of people as intellectual
rubbish. I am not myself suggesting that we should, for I am
a child of the age and I shrink from giving pain. I only
illustrate by this taboo our changed outlook, which gives a
clue to public feelings about Intellect at the present time:
the democratic treatment of Intellect is not determined by
any conscious valuation of it on anybody's part, but by
attitudes designed to protect everybody’s tender ego”
(Barzun 31, bold added).
8. • "Hamilton schemed to get the children into
factories; Jefferson planned school systems.
While Hamilton valued institutions and
abstractions, Jefferson valued people and
found no wealth more important than life"
(Hofstadter 55).
9. Works Cited
• Barzun, Jacques. The House of Intellect. New York: Harper
and Brothers, 1959. Print.
• Hofstadter, Richard. The American Political Tradition and the
Men Who Made It. 1948, 1973, 1976. New York: Vintage,
1989. Print.
• Johnson, Paul. The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-
1830. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. Print.
• Meacham, Jon. American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White
House. New York: Random House, 2008. Print.
