In The West Wing

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Hello, my name is President Shrimpo, and you're listening to In The West Wing, a political history podcast brought to you by WKNC 88.1. And in this week's episode, we're gonna be taking a look back at sort of the birth of Jacksonian Democracy and the formation of a new party system under the great jackass, Old Hickory himself, Andrew Jackson.

Before we can get into understanding the presidency and sort of the impact of Andrew Jackson, you have to understand the political climate that sort of set up the situation and sort of allowed Andrew Jackson to come up to the plate, and that would be the election of 1824, which we covered in in the previous episode. As a reminder, the election of 1824 was a four way split following the presidency of James Monroe, Andrew Jackson would win the popular vote and a plurality of the electoral vote. But he would ultimately fail to secure the outright majority needed to be elected in the electoral college. And so a contingent election was held, allowing John Quincy Adams, the son of the only Federalist President John Adams, to be elected as a new president. And while Andrew Jackson was initially very gracious in how he handled his loss, many of his supporters believed that there was a sort of corrupt bargain that had been struck between the supporters of John Quincy Adams and the supporters of Speaker of the House, Henry Clay. And for many, including for Jackson, many of these suspicions were confirmed when John Adams appointed Henry Clay to be his Secretary of State. At the time, the Secretary of the State was sort of seen as the natural political successor to the president, rather than, than, say the Vice President, as it sometimes is seen today. To, quickly go over the presidency of John Quincy Adams, I think it's important to say that, that Adams remained very hopeful that his administration could somehow remain above partisanship in sort of the way that it had under James Monroe in hopes to sort of maintain the one party dynamic of the Democratic Republican Party. And so ultimately, Adams filled his cabinet both with the supporters of himself, as well as supporters of Jackson. And it's also, I think, important to say that, that of the early presidents John Quincy Adams had sort of one of the least offensive agendas, you know, on the table, his, his primary agenda was to promote a system of national improvements and develop infrastructure on a national scale. I would sort of describe his platform as a sort of soft federalism and the idea that that the federal government should be intervening on behalf of the states to sort of do these sorts of large projects to sort of enhance business to sort of improve the economic strength of the country through these infrastructure programs, but not in the same way sort of overbearing way that had been done by the old Federalist party. And while the, the constitutionality of these national infrastructure programs was, was certainly questioned, to some extent, it was generally sort of inoffensive, you know, most people kind of agreed that on paper, at the very least, it was a good idea. But the problem was that Southern democratic Republicans, really, very continuously stonewalled John Adams attempt at passing this agenda. And part of this is because after the very contentious election of 1824, the Democratic Republican Party was very squarely in neatly divided into these different factions that had sort of different aims and goals. And these factions could be roughly split into those supporting the agenda of President John Adams. Those supporting the agenda of vice President John C. Calhoun. Those in support of Andrew Jackson, and those in support of William H. Crawford, the former Secretary of War and Secretary of the Treasury, under Presidents Madison and Monroe. And so these different factions eventually kind of gained the labels of Jackson's men or Adam's men. However, this, this sort of factionalism within the party could only last for so long. And so these rifts that began, a sort of like an internal party conflict changed and morphed into one in which these different factions rather than identifying as one big tent Party began to sort of fracture and identify as their own separate parties. And so generally, those in support of Calhoun, Jackson and Crawford, generally southerners, however, some northerners were among them, eventually came to be known as the Democratic Party, whereas the northern supporters of John Quincy Adams came to be known as national Republicans. And that's not to say that it was entirely a regional divide. Obviously, there were there were many northern Democrats, and there were southern national Republicans. But just, just to give you an idea of where each party's sort of main base of support lie, it was sort of a north- south divide. Now, one of the most important and pressing issues under the presidency of John Quincy Adams was tariff policy. Sounds like something very dry, very boring, something that we don't really talk a whole lot about today in modern politics, but at the time, it was a very, very pressing issue. And that is because European imports of manufactured goods really hurt the economies of New England states, many of these states hoped to sort of develop their own manufacturing base. And so by allowing cheaper European goods to be imported, a lot of times they were sort of undercut, and that didn't allow these these industries to sort of have the space that they needed to grow and develop on their own. And so many, many northern manufacturers, who generally supported the National Republican agenda, believed that a protective tariff needed to be placed on these goods being imported. And while this policy was, was very popular among those in the Northeast, and out in sort of the new western states, a lot of Southerners really were not happy with these with this tariff policy, as they believed that a protective tariff would force them to buy more expensive goods, no matter which way they put it, because either they would have to be buying European imports, which had a high tariff rate on them, or they would have to be buying very expensive, oftentimes lower quality American goods. And so of course, it makes sense that, that southerners would sort of resent this policy. And so, in 1828, a bill was introduced to increase this protective tariff. And so what followed was a sort of match of political chicken. National Republicans, of course, wanted to set a fairly reasonable protective tariff, maybe not reasonable to the Southerners, but, you know, within sort of the realm of what was considered politically acceptable. Democrats, under the leadership of Martin Van Buren of New York, aimed to really undercut the support for this tariff. And so they amended the Tariff Act by placing very high tariff rates on raw materials. The rationality behind this was that by upping tariffs on raw goods, northern manufacturers would also be hit hard and impacted by this tariff policy. And so the idea was that by making such an extreme draft of the tariff bill, the one that they, that Congress would act on, the idea was that it would force National Republicans to back down and come back to the sort of negotiating table. And so, Martin Van Buren led Democrats to oppose any attempt at further amending the act, despite many Democrats believing that the new tariff would be damaging to the north as well as the South, the tariff passed, many Northerners just didn't see it in the same way that southerners did. And not only did the Tariff Act passed through Congress, but it would be signed into law by John Quincy Adams. This new tariff would be known as The Tariff of Abominations by its detractors, particularly those in the south. And in the process, John Quincy Adams took a lot of flack for signing it into law. And ultimately, this, this Tariff Act would sow the seeds for the Nullification Crisis later down the line. But I don't, it's just a strange sort of story in, in how Democrats essentially caused the problem that they were really resenting like, I don't know, it's just, it's just so interesting in how-

-they called it The Tariff of Abominations, when they were the ones that forced it to be as extreme as it was. It's I don't know, it just feels like misplaced blame, and, in my opinion. And so, with all of that, John Quincy Adams really suffered very badly in the court of public opinion. And so with that, the election of 1828 was essentially a rematch between Andrew Jackson of Tennessee versus incumbent president John Quincy Adams. And really, Adams was, was very unpopular in, in the political climate of the election. And much like the election of 1824, this was a very personal campaign, really, very ugly mudslinging from both sides of the, of the campaign. Andrew Jackson's wife, Rachel, had been married to another man prior to Andrew Jackson. But she had left him based on the fact that he was abusive to her. And she moved back to her hometown. And in the process, she'd been convinced that her husband had must have filed for divorce. And so she married Andrew Jackson. However, the couple only later learned that her divorce to her first husband was never finalized. And so eventually, they have the marriage, her first marriage was, was ended in divorce. And the Jack, and Andrew Jackson and Rachel Jackson were able to marry each other once again, legally. But the story was really excellent fodder for political attacks. And so, Rachel Jackson was attacked and accused of being an adulterer, something that was shocking in the society of the early 1800s. And this put a lot of emotional strain on Rachel. And, of course, you know, the Jackson camp was, you know, equally ugly in many of its attacks, they accused President Adams of pimping out a teenage girl to the court of the Russian Tsar when he was a diplomat to Russia. The story is entirely fabricated, it did not happen. But it just kind of goes to show how, you know, the line between fact and fiction was very easily blurred even, even back then. And really, it was just very ugly and very personal. And as a result, the two men really had a very bitter relationship with one another. President John Quincy Adams would later describe Andrew Jackson as, quote,

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A barbarian who could not write a sentence of grammar and hardly could spell his own name.

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In fact, Adam"s own Vice President, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina had flipped joining Andrew Jackson running as Andrew Jackson's running mate in the election of 1828, which really only further serves to undermine the legitimacy of Adams presidency. And so, with the election of 1828, Andrew Jackson would solidly defeat John Quincy Adams in a landslide, carrying the South, the West, as well as several Mid Atlantic states, particularly Pennsylvania, and the majority of New York's electors. During this election, the use of the popular vote was massively expanded in determining how states apportioned their electors. The only states at this time who still did not use the popular vote in any way in determining how the electors were apportioned were the states of Delaware and South Carolina, which just kind of shows how drastically the culture of presidential elections shifted within only 30 years or so because, you know, the earliest elections that were actually contested, you know, the election of 1796 only a small handful of states actually bothered to track the popular vote and it was really people were mostly just voting for electors if they were voting at all. Whereas you know, by this stage, really the the common man really participated elec-, in elections. Of course, the common man was only white men. But still, it was, it was an expansion of participatory democracy that had not really happened before this point. And so with that Andrew Jackson solidly won the election. But tragedy soon struck the Jackson household. When Rachel Jackson, his beloved wife, died, le-, 20 days after Andrew Jackson's victory, her health had long been in decline. But Andrew still blamed his political opponents for her death. He believed that the attack sustained against her really hit deeply wounded her emotionally to the degree that she died of a heart attack. Now, obviously, she did certainly struggle with, with mental health issues as a result of the election. But, you know, she was older, she was unhealthy, she had been unhealthy since before his first presidential campaign. So, you know, I feel like some of his his blame was really sort of misplaced, but he still held a lot of blame for his opponents. Having said during her funeral, quote,

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May God Almighty forgive her murderers, I never can.

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And so with the death of Rachel Jackson, and his belief that the election of 1824 had been stolen from him, Andrew Jackson had developed a very deep seated unshakable grudge, essentially for the rest of his life towards, towards his political opponents. And with that, I think I think we should talk a little bit more about Andrew Jackson's personal life and like who he was as a person. And so we're gonna jump way back in time to when he was born in 1767. Andrew Jackson was born in the Waxhaws region of the Carolinas, which is sort of a border region sort of straddling the, straddling North Carolina and South Carolina. So it's unclear which state he was actually born in. Jackson's father died, only about a month before his birth, during a, in a logging accident. And young Andrew Jackson was a boy during the Revolutionary War. And essentially, all of his immediate family died during the war. Some of them died in, in military service, particularly his brothers. Some died from illness. And, and he was really very deeply, personally wounded by his experience during the Revolutionary War, both in sort of an emotional level, but also physically, because he sort of had shown disrespect to a British officer that was forcibly living in his home. And when, when Jackson so, showed disrespect towards that officer, he was cut on across his left hand and his head, in that sort of left a very deep impression on the young boy. And so with that, Andrew Jackson was left an orphan at the age of 14. And he sort of drifted between extended family members during this period, until eventually he started a legal career as a lawyer, eventually moving out west to the new Tennessee territory. And it was out in Tennessee, where he really made a name for himself politically, both as a lawyer but also, more importantly, as a local landowner, he was a planter. And actually, on his plantation, he came to own a roughly 300 slaves throughout his lifetime. Of the early American presidents, the only presidents who did not directly owned slaves were John Adams and his son, John Quincy Adams. So really, I don't know if I should mention every time a president had owned slaves, but still, it's I think it's still kind of gives us some idea of, of Jackson's background. And it was while he sort of rose to prominence that Jackson garnered a real reputation for being very hot headed. He frequently fought in duels. And it was sort of seen as a man who was very quick to fight, particularly over, over issues of honor. And while the number of duels that Jackson actually fought in, has long been overestimated and exaggerated by, by those who are his detractors. The fact is, he certainly participated in a number of duels and the most infamous of his many duels, was his duel with a man named Charles Dickinson. And in this duel, it was fought over, there had been a long string of personal insults flung between the two. And eventually it came up into a duel. And so this, this gunfight, this duel, both men would turn, and Dickinson would fire first shooting Andrew Jackson squarely in the chest. Jackson did not go down. And in fact, he waited for Dickinson to shoot him. Then, once he had sort of recollected himself, he steadied his aim, and shot Dickinson back in the chest, killing him. I just, I, that's such a fascinating story to me in how you know how, he took a bullet just so that he could more accurately murder another man. And actually, Jackson would live with the bullet lodged in his chest for the remainder of his life because it was in a location that was inoperable. So aside from from his duels, and his career as a planter, Jackson, most prominently became known on the national stage for his service during the War of 1812, most specifically, winning the Battle of New Orleans, and it was through this service in the War of 1812. He garnered his lifelong nickname, Old Hickory. I'm not going to go into whole a whole lot of detail about the Battle of New Orleans, you can listen to our episode on the War of 1812. And to come to the Confederacy to get a little bit more insight on that. But yes, he had a very prominent military career, and continued to serve in the military. He also fought in the First Seminal War, which essentially was an illegal invasion of the Spanish territory of Florida, under orders in 1817 by Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, future Vice President, John C. Calhoun. And essentially, Jackson invaded Florida to quote, pacify the Seminole Tribe, which is just a way of saying violently harass the Seminoles into submission. And ultimately, Jackson would win the conflict. And in fact, his illegal invasion would lead to the purchase and annexation of Florida for the United States. So that's a manifest destiny for you. So all of this is just to say that Andrew Jackson had sort of a strange rise to prominence from a young man, orphaned as a teenager with, with sort of a lot of deep seeded resentment and sort of, if I had to speculate some sort of complex surrounding all of this, his sort of very vengeful, violent streak, you know, demonstrated in, in his, his penchant for violent duels, you know, all of this is just to say, what could possibly go wrong with him becoming the president? And so with the start of Jackson's presidency, one of the biggest issues to President Jackson, you might think, oh, it could be the economy or, or foreign policy or, or slavery or any number of things. But no, that's not what was most important to Andrew Jackson. What was important to Andrew Jackson was who was or wasn't being invited to parties. And what I mean by this is something that is known as the petticoat affair. Andrew Jackson's Secretary of War was a man, whose name was John Eaton. Eaton was a close personal friend of Andrew Jackson, and he was married to a woman whose name was Peggy Eaton. Now, Peggy had been previously married to an older, wealthy man. And there were rumors that she may have been having an affair with John Eaton. And so when, when her first husband passed away, within a few months, she very quickly remarried John Eaton, and that sort of that didn't look good in the social circles of Washington DC. And so she had a very bad reputation among the wives of other cabinet ministers. And so these the wives of these cabinet ministers really made a very concerted effort to exclude and ostracize the Eaton's because of her bad reputation. The wife of Vice President John C. Calhoun, Floride Calhoun sort of lead this group of women, which came to be known as the petticoats, hence the name of the, of the affair. This whole ordeal, very, very deeply upset President Jackson. He was absolutely convinced that the social strain of this exclusion would put way too much strain on the heart of Peggy Eaton. And he was worried that she would die much the same way that his beloved wife Rachel had passed away. Of course, Peggy Eaton was a much younger and healthier woman than Rachel had been. But that didn't really seem to matter to Jackson. And so he constantly harangued his own cabinet, to invite the Eatons to social gatherings and parties and invite them to their home, you know, basic social etiquette because he believed that this was such a serious and pressing issue that a woman's life was at stake. And so this sort of formed the basis of one of the earliest political rifts between President Jackson and vice president Calhoun.

Within the cabinet, one of the only Cabinet members to publicly side with John and Peggy Eaton was a certain Martin Van Buren, the Secretary of State, Martin Van Buren, was himself a widower. And so he did not have the social pressure of a wife, who would have been involved in this sort of petticoat circle. And so he didn't really have to fear the social repercussions of publicly aligning with the Eatons. And so this really kind of fast tracked Martin Van Buren to be very much on Jackson's good side, Martin Van Buren had not initially been one of, of Jackson supporters, but over time he came to be. And ultimately, this, this crisis of the petticoat affair, only ended in the mass resignation of Jackson's entire cabinet. Really only one cabinet member stuck around. And it was because he was basically entirely disengaged from the issue. And it's just I think it's, it's really interesting, and I think it's very telling that Andrew Jackson was willing to jeopardize the stability of his own government, over a relatively minor social issue. And I think it really kind of points to how emotional and reactionary, Jackson could be in in in how he handled issues, how he could really sort of very easily ignore the very much more pressing, big picture issues that we're facing the country. And so with, with the seeds of discontent, sowed with the petticoat affair between Jackson and his vice president, it really kind of came to a head with something that has come to be known as the Nullification Crisis. So essentially, the Nullification Crisis is best understood as a conflict that arose with the sort of hard right wing of the Southern Democrats who were very opposed to the so called Tariff of Abominations that had been passed in 1828. And these, these Democrats really expected Jackson to make a serious effort to repeal the tariff. But really, it was not the most pressing issue to him, even though he did certainly oppose a protective tariff. And actually, another protective tariff act was passed early in 1832, which really sparked outrage from a lot of Southerners. And so, with this, this conflict brewing, the state government of South Carolina, advanced a political theory that had kind of floated around since the founders had drafted the Constitution. This theory is known as nullification, which essentially argued that state governments could nullify federal acts that they deemed were unconstitutional. And so, the state government of South Carolina moved to nullify both of the two protective tariff acts. And this sort of set the groundwork for very serious conflict, because it was a state government acting independently suddenly of the federal government, ignoring federal law, and that really kind of rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, even those who supported a doctrine of states rights politically. And in fact, it came su-, to such a head that the government of South Carolina even floated the idea of fully just outright seceding from the union over nullification. Based on the idea that states willingly joined the United States, so they should be willingly be able to leave the United States. And this was just unacceptable to Andrew Jackson. Jackson had long been a proponent of states rights as an ideology. But he would not back the idea of nullification or secession, he believed that the union was indivisible. And Jackson threatened to use military force in response to the crisis. In fact, Jackson threatened that, should the state of South Carolina secede, quote,

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If a single drop of blood shall be shed there, in opposition to the laws of the United States. I will hang the first man I can lay my hand on engaged in such treasonable conduct upon the first tree I can reach.

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And it was a very serious crisis. In fact, Jackson's own vice president, John C. Calhoun, sided openly with the state of South Carolina being from the state himself, and he would actually resign from the position of the vice, vice presidency, hoping to instead fight for the ideology of nullification from the Senate, serving as a senator from South Carolina from then on, and in fact, John C. Calhoun's resignation really shocked the country. This would be the the first instance of, of either a president or vice president resigning from the office until the 1970s, about 150 years later. And so all of this was, was very contentious, and sort of a dangerous situation to be in. Both the federal government and state government of South Carolina raised troops and were very seriously posturing for a civil war fought over the issue. Ultimately, cooler heads would prevail, and a compromise was actually reached with The Compromise Tariff of 1833, which was drafted in coordination between Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun, which aimed to gradually decrease the tariff rate, such that the state government of South Carolina would not feel that they needed to nullify federal law anymore. Another hot button conflict of the Jackson presidency is the so called Bank War. Just as a brief history lesson, the Bank of the United States was drafted into existence on a 20 year charter in 1816, then President James Madison, and this was a private public institution, which essentially means it was a private entity that acted on behalf of the federal government. And it was meant to sort of manage national banking policy to sort of manage monetary policy and to keep inflation in check. And obviously, it had quite a few supporters. But quite a few Democrats believed that the Bank of the United States was a corrupt and elitist institution that overstepped state sovereignty. And so Jackson was willing to undercut the bank at basically every turn. And this, this conflict, really one of the most important issues under President Jackson. And so the election of 1832, to many people, was sort of seen as a referendum on the bank issue, as Jackson promised to veto the rechartering of the bank, as the rechartering would have fallen during his second term. And so national Republicans really aimed to block him from being able to do so and so they nominated Henry Clay. An-, and who sort of seen as a champion of the bank, while sort of on the political fringes of the election. Southerners who, who were opposed to Andrew Jackson's conduct during the Nullification Crisis, floated their own candidate as well as those in support of the Anti-Masonic Party, which was a very important third party at the time, which was opposed to the Freemasons, it's sort of strange how that was such a viable political party at the time, but it was seen as a very important issue to many. And through this, Jackson would be reelected by a landslide, popular vote margin of 54% of the entire popular vote in his favor. And through all of this, this, this, this crisis. I think, I think one of my favorite quotes, in researching this was, was from Andrew Jackson, who said to Martin Van Buren, quote,

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The bank, Mr. Van Buren, is trying to kill me, but I will kill it.

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And so, of course, Jackson was re-elected to the presidency, with Martin Van Buren, his, his sort of new political protege, serving as his new vice president, with the end of John C. Calhoun, serving in the role. And with Jackson's new mandate to a second term, and with such a large margin of popular vote. He believed that, that he had a mandate to end the national bank before its charter ran out. And so he made a very serious concerted effort to destroy the bank, essentially. But the issue was that there was no clear legal means for Jackson to end the federal government's relationship with the Bank of the United States unless he was deemed to be like insolvent as an institution. And so, what Jackson did, is that he had people lie about the national bank, he had people allege that the bank was, was financially unsound and nearly about to bankrupt. And he appointed his Attorney General, Roger B. Taney, future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in fact, Roger B. Taney. He appointed Taney to be the Interim Secretary of the Treasury, carrying out the mass withdrawal of American investments into the bank, and American finances from the bank. And so, by 1834, the Bank of the United States was deemed defunct, no longer had American finances in it. And it stopped being a body, which controlled the banking system in the United States, which would come to have very dire consequences later down the line. And it was through this these joint crises of nullification, and then the Bank War, as it's sometimes called, from this, this conflict. The many disparate opponents of Jackson's democratic agenda came to form what is now known as the Whig Party. It was essentially a fusion of factions opposed to Jackson's behavior with a sort of combination of Northern national Republicans, sort of in the mold of Adams and Clay, Democrats who were opposed to Jackson's undermining of the banks, these pro-bank Democrats who became disillusioned with Jackson, Southern Democrats who had been in favor of nullification, people like John C. Calhoun or John Taylor, as well as the Anti-Masons who sort of believed that, in some way, the Democrats agenda was part of some Masonic plot to destroy the institutions of the United States. And in the next episode, we will really kind of touch more on, on the importance of this new two party system that comes this born out of the Jacksonian period. But for sort of a, the elephant in the room, which, which I have not addressed thus far, is something that makes Andrew Jackson really very infamous today as a president, and that would be the Indian Removal Act of 1830. So for some context, in the American southeast, native tribes existed. And the policy that the United States took in handling the existence of these tribes, was native assimilation was essentially an effort to proselytize to these Native Americans to to Christianize them to to teach them English, to make their culture more anglicized, to essentially civilize these native tribes. And so these, these, these native groups were dubbed the so called Five Civilized Tribes, which is a grossly racist label, but it's what they were called. And these were the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muskogee and Seminole nations of the American Southeast. Many of these native groups made a very serious effort to assimilate into American culture, and adopted many American institutions, and their understanding of property holding. In fact, many of these tribes even adopted the American institution of chattel slavery. I'm not saying that as a sort of, what about-ism, you know, to say that, you know, these these native groups participated in the evils of American slavery. But that's to say that in order to be deemed sufficiently Americanized, they had to do, they had to participate in owning other human beings. I say that because there's something I think very indicative of what southern Americans deemed as a civil thing to do, if that makes any sense that, and I don't believe that these tribal groups would have participated in in the plantation system that they eventually came to, if it were not for the pressure placed on them by white Americans. And so all of this is to say that culturally, many of these native tribal groups, essentially kind of became indistinguishable culturally, for many white Americans. But despite this, many Democrats, and Andrew Jackson in particular, still treated this, this assimilation policy as a failure, and instead turned to a policy of forced removal. Despite the fact that the forceful removal of Native Americans from their land was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and the case, Johnson V. Intosh. But ultimately, Jackson and his supporters did not care. They ignored the Supreme Court's ruling. And so the Indian Removal Act of 1830, was passed, which essentially allowed the federal government to forcefully remove Native Americans from their land, west of the Mississippi, which initiated a 20 year program of this violent, forceful removal into what is now the state of Oklahoma. And over the course of, of Andrew Jackson and eventually Martin Van Buren's presidencies, 60,000 Native Americans were kicked off their ancestral lands, with 1000s of deaths caused both through wars of resistance, as exampled by that, by the Seminole Nation fighting their wars of resistance against the United States. But depressingly the majority of these deaths would actually come from civilians who died of disease and starvation. As many of these people were forced forced to travel on foot 1000s of miles. The most infamous stage of this Indian removal policy was the 1838 Cherokee removal, which has now come to be known as the Trail of Tears, which forced, which was a forced march from the Cherokees and tribal lands in North Carolina and Georgia. 1000 miles on foot, with little to no preparations, with little clothes next to no food. A Georgian volunteer soldier who participated in the removal came to later say, of what he witnessed.

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I fought through the Civil War, and have seen men shot to pieces and slaughtered by 1000s. But the Cherokee removal was the cruelest work I ever knew.

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And all of this sort of raises the question of why even bother move the natives? If the answer is, I think, quite simple. They stood in the way of white settlement. They weren't convenient to be left in the southeast. They weren't seen as humans. They were seen as obstacles, things to be moved, removed. And I think, I think it's, it's very telling of the mindset of Andrew Jackson. and those who carried out the program at large in that they, that they weren't able to recognize the basic humanity of indigenous people. And so sort of as a brief recap. I think Andrew Jackson is best described politically as a, as a creature of his own emotion,

sort of often acted on whims of what he personally felt was best, even if that was not the most rational thing to do. And he could often be incredibly cruel, violent, and vicd-, and vindictive. And in many senses, he was sort of the father of American Populism. And by that, I mean he sort of, was the first rugged frontiersman who positioned himself as carrying out the will of the common man. The thing is, what he carried out for the common man, often exercise itself is lashing out and violent. And so with that, we're left with an American politics that is entirely reshaped. American politics would not be what it became, if it were not for the singular force of will, and character of Andrew Jackson, for both good and definitely for worse. And so in the next episode of In the West Wing, we'll be taking a look at the rise of Whig opposition to the Democratic agenda and sort of the groundwork for what is known as the the antebellum period of American history. I have been your host, President Shrimpo. And you've been listening to in the west wing, political history podcast brought to you by WKNC 88.1. Special thanks to those who helped give history a voice in this week's episode of In the West Wing, with Justin Kern as John Quincy Adams, Jackson Terwelp, as Andrew Jackson and Joey Sports as the Georgian soldier. The intro music used on in the West Wing, the Star Spangled Banner by the United States Marine Band and our Outro Song is Libertad, by Iriarte and Pesoa.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai