Читать книгу Facts and fancies for the curious from the harvest-fields of literature - Charles C. Bombaugh - Страница 38

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After the sedate, passionless, orderly administrations of Monroe and Adams, there was a popular demand for something piquant and amusing, and this quality was always found in Old Hickory. Friends and foes alike declare that Andrew Jackson was in many ways far above the imitators who have posed in his image. True, he was narrow, ignorant, violent, unreasonable; he punished his enemies and rewarded his friends. But he was, on the other hand,—and his worst opponents did not deny it,—chaste, honest, truthful, and sincere. For a time he was more bitterly hated than any one who ever occupied his high office, and we may be sure that these better qualities would have been discredited had it been possible. It was constantly reiterated that his frequent and favorite oath was “By the Eternal,” yet neither his nephew and secretary, Mr. Donelson, who was associated with him for thirty years, nor Judge Brackenridge, of Western Pennsylvania, who wrote most of his State papers, ever heard him use such an expression. With long, narrow, firmly set features, and a military stock encircling his neck, he had one advantage for the social life of Washington which seemed difficult of explanation by anything in his earlier career. He had at his command the most courteous and agreeable manners. Even before the election of Adams, Daniel Webster had written to his brother: “General Jackson’s manners are better than those of any of the candidates. He is grave, mild, and reserved. My wife is for him decidedly.” But whatever his personal attractions, he sacrificed his social leadership at Washington by his quixotic attempt to force the Cabinet ladies to admit into their circle the wife of Secretary Eaton, a woman whose antecedents as Peggy O’Neill, an innkeeper’s daughter, made her a persona non grata. For once, Jackson overestimated his powers. He had conquered Indian tribes, and checked the army of Great Britain, but the ladies of Washington society were too much for him. At the dinner-table, or in the ball-room, every lady ignored the presence of “Bellona,” as the newspapers called her.

The two acts with which the administration of President Jackson will be longest identified are his dealings with South Carolina in respect to nullification, and his long warfare with the United States Bank. The first brought the New England States back to him and the second took them away again. He perhaps won rather more applause than he merited by the one act, and more condemnation than was just for the other.

Among the amusing anecdotes of Jackson, it is related that when he was military commander in Florida during the administration of President Monroe, he tried at a drumhead court-martial and hanged two Englishmen who had incited, it is said, an insurrection among the Indians. President Monroe feared that Great Britain would make trouble about this, and summoned the general to Washington before the Cabinet. John Quincy Adams, then Secretary of State, who had instructed Jackson to govern with a firm hand in Florida, defended him, and read a long argument in which he quoted international law as expounded by Grotius, Vattel, and Puffendorff. Jackson listened in sullen silence, but in the evening, when asked at a dinner party whether he was not comforted by Mr. Adams’s citation of authorities, he exclaimed, “What do I care about those old musty chaps? Blast Grotius, blast Vattel, and blast the Puffenchap. This is a fight between Jim Monroe and me, and I propose to fight it out.”