legislative act, however, had only authorized the courts to
determine whether or not there were sufficient grounds for a
divorce and to grant or withhold it accordingly. It was more
than two years before the divorce was actually granted, and only
on the basis of the fact that Jackson and Mrs Robards were then
living together. On receiving this information, Jackson had
the marriage ceremony performed a second time.
In 1796 Jackson assisted in framing the constitution of Tennessee. From December 1796 to March 1797 he represented that state in the Federal House of Representatives, where he distinguished himself as an irreconcilable opponent of President Washington, and was one of the twelve representatives who voted against the address to him by the House. In 1797 he was elected a United States senator; but he resigned in the following year. He was judge of the supreme court of Tennessee from 1798 to 1804. In 1804–1805 he contracted a friendship with Aaron Burr; and at the latter’s trial in 1807 Jackson was one of his conspicuous champions. Up to the time of his nomination for the presidency, the biographer of Jackson finds nothing to record but military exploits in which he displayed perseverance, energy and skill of a very high order, and a succession of personal acts in which he showed himself ignorant, violent, perverse, quarrelsome and astonishingly indiscreet. His combative disposition led him into numerous personal difficulties. In 1795 he fought a duel with Colonel Waitstill Avery (1745–1821), an opposing counsel, over some angry words uttered in a court room; but both, it appears, intentionally fired wild. In 1806 in another duel, after a long and bitter quarrel, he killed Charles Dickinson, and Jackson himself received a wound from which he never fully recovered. In 1813 he exchanged shots with Thomas Hart Benton and his brother Jesse in a Nashville tavern, and received a second wound. Jackson and Thomas Hart Benton were later reconciled.
In 1813–1814, as major-general of militia, he commanded in the campaign against the Creek Indians in Georgia and Alabama, defeated them (at Talladega, on the 9th of November 1813, and at Tohopeka, on the 29th of March 1814), and thus first attracted public notice by his talents. In May 1814 he was commissioned as major-general in the regular army to serve against the British; in November he captured Pensacola, Florida, then owned by Spain, but used by the British as a base of operations; and on the 8th of January 1815 he inflicted a severe defeat on the enemy before New Orleans, the contestants being unaware that a treaty of peace had already been signed. During his stay in New Orleans he proclaimed martial law, and carried out his measures with unrelenting sternness, banishing from the town a judge who attempted resistance. When civil law was restored, Jackson was fined $1000 for contempt of court; in 1844 Congress ordered the fine with interest ($2700) to be repaid. In 1818 Jackson received the command against the Seminoles. His conduct in following them up into the Spanish territory of Florida, in seizing Pensacola, and in arresting and executing two British subjects, Alexander Arbuthnot and Robert Ambrister, gave rise to much hostile comment in the cabinet and in Congress; but the negotiations for the purchase of Florida put an end to the diplomatic difficulty. In 1821 Jackson was military governor of the territory of Florida, and there again he came into collision with the civil authority. From this, as from previous troubles, John Quincy Adams, then secretary of state, extricated him.
In July 1822 the general assembly of Tennessee nominated Jackson for president; and in 1823 he was elected to the United States Senate, from which he resigned in 1825. The rival candidates for the office of president in the campaign of 1824 were Jackson, John Quincy Adams, W. H. Crawford and Henry Clay. Jackson obtained the largest number of votes (99) in the electoral college (Adams receiving 84, Crawford 41 and Clay 37); but no one had an absolute majority, and it thus became the duty of the House of Representatives to choose one of the three candidates—Adams, Jackson and Crawford—who had received the greatest numbers of electoral votes. At the election by the house (February 9, 1825) Adams was chosen, receiving the votes of 13 states, while Jackson received the votes of 7 and Crawford the votes of 4. Jackson, however, was recognized by the abler politicians as the coming man. Martin Van Buren and others, going into opposition under his banner, waged from the first a relentless and factious war on the administration. Van Buren was the most adroit politician of his time; and Jackson was in the hands of very astute men, who advised and controlled him. He was easy to lead when his mind was in solution; and he gave his confidence freely where he had once placed it. He was not suspicious, but if he withdrew his confidence he was implacable. When his mind crystallized on a notion that had a personal significance to himself, that notion became a hard fact that filled his field of vision. When he was told that he had been cheated in the matter of the presidency,[1] he was sure of it, although those who told him were by no means so.
There was great significance in the election of Jackson in 1828. A new generation was growing up under new economic and social conditions. They felt great confidence in themselves and great independence. They despised tradition and Old World ways and notions; and they accepted the Jeffersonian dogmas, not only as maxims, but as social forces—the causes of the material prosperity of the country. By this generation, therefore, Jackson was recognized as a man after their own heart. They liked him because he was vigorous, brusque, uncouth, relentless, straightforward and open. They made him president in 1828, and he fulfilled all their expectations. He had 178 votes in the electoral college against 83 given for Adams. Though the work of redistribution of offices began almost at his inauguration, it is yet an incorrect account of the matter to say that Jackson corrupted the civil service. His administration is rather the date at which a system of democracy, organized by the use of patronage, was introduced into the federal arena by Van Buren. It was at this time that the Democratic or Republican party divided, largely along personal lines, into Jacksonian Democrats and National Republicans, the latter led by such men as Henry Clay and J. Q. Adams. The administration itself had two factions in it from the first, the faction of Van Buren, the secretary of state in 1829–1831, and that of Calhoun, vice-president in 1829–1832. The refusal of the wives of the cabinet and of Mrs Calhoun to accord social recognition to Mrs J. H. Eaton brought about a rupture, and in April 1831 the whole cabinet was reorganized. Van Buren, a widower, sided with the president in this affair and grew in his favour. Jackson in the meantime had learned that Calhoun as secretary of war had wished to censure him for his actions during the Seminole war in Florida in 1818, and henceforth he regarded the South Carolina statesman as his enemy. The result was that Jackson transferred to Van Buren his support for succession in the presidency. The relations between Jackson and his cabinet were unlike those existing under his predecessors. Having a military point of view, he was inclined to look upon the cabinet members as inferior officers, and when in need of advice he usually consulted a group of personal friends, who came to be called the “Kitchen Cabinet.” The principal members of this clique were William B. Lewis (1784–1866), Amos Kendall and Duff Green, the last named being editor of the United States Telegraph, the organ of the administration.
In 1832 Jackson was re-elected by a large majority (219 electoral votes to 49) over Henry Clay, his chief opponent. The battle raged mainly around the re-charter of the Bank of the United States. It is probable that Jackson’s advisers in 1828 had told him, though erroneously, that the bank had worked against him, and then were not able to control him. The first message of his first presidency had contained a severe reflection on the bank; and in the very height of this second campaign (July 1832) he vetoed the re-charter, which had been passed in
- ↑ The charge was freely made then and afterwards (though, it is now believed, without justification) that Clay had supported Adams and by influencing his followers in the house had been instrumental in securing his election, as the result of a bargain by which Adams had agreed to pay him for his support by appointing him secretary of state.
