Oct 19, 2022 4 min read

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WASHINGTON – So I gave a talk on President Andrew Jackson, counting the ways he harshly steered the country wrong, wrong and wrong again.

The Trail of Tears. Closing the Bank of the United States, Alexander Hamilton’s masterpiece. Naming hateful racist Roger Taney as chief justice.

The forceful Jackson was as “unwoke” as you can get. The 1830s were a dark decade. The man on horseback was Donald Trump’s favorite president.

My mother spoke up in the Georgetown library and said, “But you didn’t confess.”

“You’re related on your grandmother’s side,” she said, right there in front of everyone.

Smelling salts?

The populist president (the seventh) expanded democracy for all white men. That was revered as “Jacksonian democracy” by historians. But there’s much more to his story, ugly truths often excused as contradictory or unfortunate.

“Old Hickory” and me – or shall I call him Uncle Andy? – have a little history together, however distant. I’ve visited the Hermitage, his slave plantation in Nashville, not knowing of the connection through my Kilbourn, Kan., relatives.

The lady guiding the tour called him “the General.” When I asked where the enslaved quarters were, she pointed to the woods.

Give him this: Jackson was a fierce general, whipping the British in the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. That’s how the rugged frontier lawyer and military man rose to fame.

But the War of 1812 was already over, treaty signed and all. The news hadn’t crossed the Atlantic yet. The victory was great for American morale and Jackson’s career, but not necessary. I often wish the battle had never been fought.

As president, Jackson’s defenders say simply Southerners wanted more land to grow cotton in the Deep South. Jackson, a former Indian fighter, sought to have five tribes removed from the rich Southeast ground.

“Your father has provided a country large enough for all of you, and he advises you to remove to it,” he wrote to one chief.

The cruel “Indian removal” meant the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw and other tribes were force marched by the Army to dusty Oklahoma on the other side of the Mississippi River.

Imagine up to 60,000 people driven hundreds of miles from beloved ancestral homes.

The Trail of Tears opened the way for Southern slavery to expand further.

Jackson also vowed to “kill” the Bank of the United States, which he did. He regarded it as elitist, with the nation’s wealth and debt in the hands of a few. Unfortunately, by sucking assets dry from a central source, Jackson caused the Panic of 1837 – a financial depression. He left office that year, but the damage he did lived long after him.

Now we come to Taney. Jackson is indirectly blamed for perhaps the worst Supreme Court case in American history. In the Dred Scott opinion of 1857, Taney ruled that free or enslaved Black people could never have citizenship rights that “the white man is bound to respect.”

The shriveled Taney snuffed out hopes of human rights for Black people. That landed as an outrage on America’s conscience and a catalyst for the Civil War.

Lawyer Francis Scott Key, composer of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” urged Jackson to make his brother-in-law Taney the chief justice. Jackson, Taney and Key were a trifecta against the budding abolitionist movement.

But there is one good thing about Jackson. He was a Union man and stamped out an early move by South Carolina to defy and “nullify” federal obligations for states’ rights.

Jackson’s vice president, John Calhoun of South Carolina, devised this doctrine, which became the basis for the Civil War.

Jackson later said one regret was not hanging Calhoun.

“Disunion by armed force is treason,” Jackson declared.

Music to my ears. I like that Uncle Andy was a Southerner who loved the Union. He speaks straight to our country’s fragile condition since Jan. 6, 2021, when the Capitol came under armed siege. (Yes, Uncle, I was there.)

Jackson actually believed in the Constitution – or his version. Judged on character alone, his raw courage and honesty place him high above Trump. He would spurn and roar at any schemes of sedition.

I saw a tree Jackson planted in the White House garden. It still stands strong.

Jamie Stiehm is a nationally syndicated columnist. She may be reached at JamieStiehm.com.