< PREVIOUS ] [ 2006 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
Perhaps it's a trend away from politically correct
diversity, but in the past decade we have been treated with
some engaging biographies of famous dead white men. Among
those I have enjoyed are Grant: A Biography
by
William S. McFeely, Alexander Hamilton
by Ron
Chernow, Benjamin Franklin : An American Life
by
Walter Isaacson, American Sphinx : The Character of
Thomas Jefferson
by Joseph J. Ellis, and John
Adams
by David McCullough.
Last week I finished another, Andrew Jackson: His
Life and Times
by H.W. Brands. Jackson, whose face
graces the $20 bill, comes across as the only full-bore
warrior to sit in the White House. Many other presidents
had commanded men in battle before entering politics, but
Jackson loved conflict. He killed men in duels, and carried
their bullets in his own body. He led an outnumbered
rag-tag army to victory over the superpower of the day at
the Battle of New Orleans in 1815.
As president, he fought the financial powers of
Philadelphia and New York, and paid off the national debt,
since having a debt would raise around the
administration a moneyed aristocracy dangerous to the
liberties of the country.
In assessing Jackson, President Harry S. Truman wrote
that Old Hickory's only major mistake was the 1838 Cherokee
removal from Georgia. But with all due respect to the
Trail of Tears,
I'm beginning to think that
Jackson's biggest mistake is one action that generally
attracts praise. It was his response to the Nullification
Crisis of 1833.
It came when the South Carolina legislature declared
that the federal tariff on foreign imports could not be
collected at its harbors, and if the federal government
tried to collect the lawful duties by force, such action
would be inconsistent with the longer continuance of
South Carolina in the Union.
Jackson responded quickly and firmly. Disunion by
armed force is treason,
he announced as he dispatched
warships and mobilized soldiers. Meanwhile the tariff was
reduced, giving the Palmetto State hotheads a face-saving
way to back down, and South Carolina was kept in the
union.
But was that really a benefit to the United States? Many of the Founding Fathers owned slaves, but they believed that slavery was immoral and that some future generation would find a way to eliminate it.
Then came Sen. John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, who constructed elaborate arguments that slavery was a moral good and should be expanded. Without Calhoun's persistent rhetoric in the nation's capitol, that evil might have been seen as an evil, and eradicated sooner rather than later.
South Carolina was the first to secede after Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860. If it had already been out of the union, struggling along as a tiny realm, it might not have been able to lead the way for the other cotton states, and we might not have suffered a Civil War.
During that conflict, South Carolina was duly chastised by the army of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman and unfortunately restored to the Union.
It was the home state of Strom Thurmond, the
Dixiecrat
candidate for President in 1948. He
maintained that racial segregation was an important part of
the fight against Communism, which is the sort of vile
argument that poisons political discourse.
Had South Carolina remained out, John McCain might well be president of the United States today. He was the leading Republican candidate in 2000, until the South Carolina primary. Rumors were spread that the McCains' adopted Bangladeshi child was actually his own illegitimate black child -- something that worked to kill his candidacy in South Carolina.
Scanning recent news from that state, I find Bible
classes proposed in public high schools, a plan to apply
the death penalty even more broadly, and the Christian
Exodus
scheme to produce a theocracy there.
It's obvious that Andrew Jackson didn't do America any
favors by keeping South Carolina in the Union. As one
sensible resident remarked after the 1860 secession vote,
the state is too large to be a lunatic asylum and too
small to be a republic.
Today we would be better off it
it had been allowed to go its own way without infecting the
rest of the country.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 2006 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >