The Change Agent

In late January 1861, president-elect Abraham Lincoln was at home in wintry Springfield, Ill., contemplating his course. The South was seceding, the Union in danger of dying. In search of a quiet place to work on his Inaugural Address, Lincoln walked through streets of mud and ice to his brother-in-law's brick general store, Yates & Smith, near the corner of Sixth and Adams. Lincoln had told his friend and law partner, William Herndon, that he would need some "works" to consult. "I looked for a long list, but when he went over it I was greatly surprised," Herndon recalled. Lincoln asked for Daniel Webster's "Liberty and Union, now and forever!" oration, a copy of the Constitution, Henry Clay's speech on the Compromise of 1850—and the text of Andrew Jackson's Proclamation to the People of South Carolina.

Nearly thirty years before, in the winter of 1832–33, radicals in Charleston were raising an army to defend South Carolina's right to nullify federal laws it chose not to accept—the first step, Jackson believed, toward secession, and the destruction of the Union. Gaunt but striking, with a shock of white hair, a nearly constant cough, a bullet lodged in his chest and another in his arm, Jackson, 65 years old that winter, stood 6 feet 1 and weighed 140 pounds. "I expect soon to hear that a civil war of extermination has commenced," Jackson had said, musing about arresting the Southern leaders and then hanging them. Over a midday glass of whisky in the White House with an old friend, Jackson pounded a table as he pondered the crisis. Invoking "the God of heaven," Jackson swore to crush any rebellion.

Reading Jackson's words in a small, sparsely furnished upper room, Lincoln found what needed: the example of a president who had rescued the Union from an armed clash with a hostile South. "Disunion by armed force is treason," Jackson had written, underscoring "treason." "Are you really ready to incur its guilt? … Fellow-citizens, the momentous case is before you. On your undivided support of your Government depends the decision of the great question it involves—whether your sacred Union will be preserved and the blessing it secures to us as one people shall be perpetuated." Jackson won. The radicals stood down. Lincoln had his precedent.

As Americans go to the polls this week, they will be adding a new chapter to the long story of the modern presidency—a story that in many ways began with a man who is at once familiar and remote: Andrew Jackson, a kind of forgotten father of his country. In Jackson we can see the best of us and the worst of us, a style of presidential leadership that is at once inspiring and cautionary, for his fights remain our fights, his strengths our strengths and his weaknesses our weaknesses. Recalled mainly, if at all, as a mindless populist whose supporters trashed the White House on his Inauguration Day or as the scourge of the Indians, the real Jackson has been largely lost. Understood properly, however, Jackson should be seen as a man who helped make us who we are. To see him fully is to see ourselves more honestly.

The new president will be assuming an office and leading a political culture largely created by Jackson. Running at the head of a national party, fighting for a mandate from the people to govern in particular ways on particular issues, depending on a circle of insiders and advisers to help guide the affairs of the country, mastering the popular media of the age in order to transmit a consistent message at a constant pace, using the veto as a political, not just a constitutional, weapon and facing difficult confirmation battles in a Washington that is at once politically and personally charged—all are features of the modern presidency that flowered during Jackson's tenure. He was also the first president to insist on the deference he thought due the chief executive as the only official elected by all the people—a distinction he believed made the White House, not Capitol Hill, the center of national power and national action.

The America of Andrew Jackson professed a love of democracy but was willing to live with inequality; aimed for social justice but was prone to racism and intolerance; believed itself one nation but was narrowly divided and fought close elections; and occasionally acted arrogantly toward other countries while craving respect from them at the same time. Jackson himself was capable of great good and great evil, of expanding democratic opportunity to some while simultaneously defending slavery and masterminding the removal of the Indians from their native lands.

Jackson had led the most improbable of lives. Soldier, brawler, duelist, lover and politician, he was the first American president to be the target of assassination, and the only one to attack his assailant. He was the first truly self-made man to become president. (Jackson was, to put it kindly, no scholar. When Harvard University voted to give the seventh president an honorary degree in 1833, a Massachusetts newspaper wrote that he deserved an "A.S.S." as well as an "L.L.D.") Before Jackson, it was possible to think of America without putting the people at the center of politics; after him, such a thing was inconceivable.