0:02 [SPEAKER_00]: What's the first step in becoming the most powerful man in America? 0:06 [SPEAKER_00]: For our seventh president, Andrew Jackson, the first step in his journey to prominence, began with the purchase of his first slave. 0:15 [SPEAKER_00]: I sit down with Aaron Adams, director of education and Andrew Jackson's Hermitage, a museum on the premises of the president's former home to learn more. 0:24 [SPEAKER_01]: I always thought that Jackson would have started his upward mobility with the ownership of land, right, because land represents a resource that you can tap into in many ways. 0:37 [SPEAKER_01]: There's natural resources on the property, this is terrific farming, area, or there's pasture land if you want to derase animals, right? 0:45 [SPEAKER_01]: It is Linus Cheep, so it would have made sense to me that Jackson began with Lyon. 0:50 [SPEAKER_01]: But he doesn't. 0:51 [SPEAKER_01]: What Jackson begins with is the ownership of people. 0:55 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's how he begins to get his economic future settled. 1:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Every era has its rights of passage, and in the late 18th century, in the newly founded United States of America, one of those thresholds was ownership of another human being. 1:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Jackson was 21 years old in 1788 when he bought his first person, a black woman, roughly his own age. 1:18 [SPEAKER_01]: The first enslaved person that Jackson purchases is a young woman named Nancy. 1:23 [SPEAKER_01]: Nancy was 1:25 [SPEAKER_01]: 18 or 28 years old, we're not totally sure of her age. 1:28 [SPEAKER_01]: She came from a farm in East Tennessee, and Jackson had lived in Nashville for only about six weeks at that point. 1:34 [SPEAKER_01]: But he was living in a boarding house. 1:36 [SPEAKER_01]: And while the boarding house provided lodging, it fell short in terms of other services, right? 1:43 [SPEAKER_01]: So somebody's got a cook and somebody's got a clean, and somebody has to do the laundry, and so that's Nancy's purpose. 1:49 [SPEAKER_00]: The next best day of Andrew Jackson's young life was the day he got his second slave, a man named Tom. 1:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Nancy was essential to Jackson's domestic life, an valuable asset, but Tom was a cold mind. 2:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Evidently, he was a world-class blacksmith. 2:06 [SPEAKER_01]: Jackson very shortly after Nancy purchases an enslaved man named Tom and Tom cost Jackson about $600. 2:15 [SPEAKER_01]: This is an exorbitant amount of money. 2:17 [SPEAKER_01]: Jackson goes into debt to buy Tom. 2:19 [SPEAKER_01]: So Jackson's clearly making an investment in Tom. 2:24 [SPEAKER_01]: And it putting dollar figures on human beings is such a 2:27 [SPEAKER_01]: foreign concept to us in many ways. 2:29 [SPEAKER_01]: It says two things, I think, one, six hundred dollars indicates that Tom was somebody in their physical prime. 2:37 [SPEAKER_01]: So somebody who's coming healthy, young, Tom was 27. 2:40 [SPEAKER_01]: So he had decades of productivity ahead of him. 2:44 [SPEAKER_01]: But it also that six hundred dollars also says that Tom comes, well, the pretty finely tuned and complex skill set that he has mastered. 2:54 [SPEAKER_00]: If Nancy was a Toyota, Tom was a Bentley. 2:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Everyone wanted to slave with Tom's skill set, especially on the front here. 3:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Nancy was steady and reliable at her daily care for Jackson's immediate physical needs, but she wasn't a profitable investment. 3:08 [SPEAKER_00]: She was what business people call overhead. 3:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Tom, on the other hand, was the sports car all the neighbors wanted to drive. 3:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Everybody needed blocksmithing, and Jackson was more than happy to lend Tom out to neighboring farmers and businesses for a fee. 3:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Put another way, Nancy was personal property, and Tom was rental property, revenue generating property, a highly skilled technician, and each time he blocks myth, Andrew got paid. 3:38 [SPEAKER_01]: Tom is a blacksmith. 3:39 [SPEAKER_01]: Blacksmiths were one of the highest values commanded for enslaved demand. 3:43 [SPEAKER_01]: If you had a blacksmith, it was right at the top in terms of financial value. 3:48 [SPEAKER_01]: And in a growing community on the front here, like Jackson, there's so many small farmers, there's so many businesses getting established everybody needs blacksmithing. 3:56 [SPEAKER_01]: People need tools, they need weapons, animals need shoes, and so there's so many needs for metal workers. 4:03 [SPEAKER_01]: So what Jackson does, 4:05 [SPEAKER_01]: It first seems a little odd because one he doesn't have the money to buy a Tom. 4:09 [SPEAKER_01]: So he's willing to take on the debt to buy a Tom. 4:12 [SPEAKER_01]: But then, what, what is he going to use him for, right? 4:16 [SPEAKER_01]: Jackson's not interested in expanding into like an ironworks business or anything like that, although that was done around here. 4:24 [SPEAKER_01]: what Jackson does instead is he decides to rent out Tom's services. 4:29 [SPEAKER_01]: So as other people, neighbors and around the area are getting established, they need blacksmithing done, but they don't need to purchase their own. 4:37 [SPEAKER_01]: They don't have enough work of their own to have one. 4:40 [SPEAKER_01]: So Jackson just rents Tom out, right? 4:42 [SPEAKER_01]: And so the money that's coming in from Tom's labor becomes Jackson's earliest source of cash flow just about. 4:52 [SPEAKER_01]: So what Jackson is doing is banking all of that money, and that becomes the pot of money that then Jackson starts tapping into to purchase land for himself. 5:03 [SPEAKER_00]: It's jarring to hear Aaron speak so frankly of human beings as financial assets, but it's also important to address things like slavery in the Plainus terms. 5:12 [SPEAKER_00]: We can talk so much about the institution of slavery that we lose touch with just how bizarre and backwards it was on a personal level. 5:20 [SPEAKER_00]: I think most of us today struggle to wrap our heads around this idea of human ownership and are running other people like a used carlot, but of course that's just how it's been for most of human history. 5:31 [SPEAKER_00]: In participation in the so-called peculiar institution is one of the many things that complicate the life and legacy of Andrew Jackson. 5:39 [SPEAKER_00]: His rise to the presidency is a layer and complicated as all human life is, but in some ways it starts right here. 5:47 [SPEAKER_00]: On the 5:50 [SPEAKER_01]: So he buys two farms here in Nashville before he buys the hermitage. 5:54 [SPEAKER_01]: Both were closer in towards downtown Nashville. 5:56 [SPEAKER_01]: We're about 12 miles east of downtown today. 5:59 [SPEAKER_01]: But both were small that a hundred and twenty acres. 6:02 [SPEAKER_01]: And then he consolidates everything here at the hermitage. 6:09 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, yeah, and to raise money for other projects like I said, he's involved in many other things and of course as the front here is advancing as Native peoples are being pushed out of their homelands a lot of that territory is almost all of that territory is being backfilled with planters bringing in insulin and so Jackson is investing in a lot of plantations around the region as well because often plantations were just investment 6:35 [SPEAKER_01]: Structures, they weren't necessarily meant to be a homeplace, right in a home stead. 6:39 [SPEAKER_01]: It was meant to be an economic driver. 6:41 [SPEAKER_01]: It was meant to be a money maker. 6:42 [SPEAKER_01]: And so Jackson begins to invest in plantations across Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana. 6:47 [SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, so he consolidates all of his sort of homeplace here at the hermitage. 6:51 [SPEAKER_01]: But he still got irons and all these other plantations, hand in many other plantations across the South. 6:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Before all of this slave owning and plantation buying, Jackson was just another ambitious outsider hoping to climb the social ladder in the antebellum south. 7:07 [SPEAKER_00]: He moves to Tennessee and studies law, not primarily because he loves it, but because of the social mobility it will afford him, all an errand tell the story. 7:18 [SPEAKER_01]: So Jackson, most Nashville in the fall of 1788 is 21 years old. 7:22 [SPEAKER_01]: He's coming from North Carolina. 7:24 [SPEAKER_01]: Tennessee was still an extension of North Carolina at this point, but he comes out with a law license. 7:29 [SPEAKER_01]: Jackson was appointed the public prosecutor of the Merro District of North Carolina, which is today is what Middleton is. 7:37 [SPEAKER_01]: So here comes this 21 year old, but with a few changes of clothes and a law license, and he's living in a boarding house here in Nashville. 7:44 [SPEAKER_01]: And from there, his involvement in the community 7:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Skyrockets, and very intentionally on his part, he marries into the Donaldson family, his wife Rachel Donaldson robots was the daughter of one of the founding families of Nashville, so he marries into a family with a great deal of influence and reach in the community. 8:03 [SPEAKER_01]: Jackson, in addition to practicing law, he's also working as a land speculator, so he's buying up military pensions after the revolution 8:12 [SPEAKER_01]: soldiers are often given pensions and land rather than a new at a year cash or some of something else. 8:19 [SPEAKER_01]: And so Jackson is speculating quite a bit in land. 8:22 [SPEAKER_01]: He's running a farm, so his economic profile. 8:24 [SPEAKER_01]: He's got lots of different irons and lots of different fires. 8:27 [SPEAKER_01]: As Jackson is getting established, he really sees, he really sees pretty quickly, I think that the practice of law is just not going to be his 8:38 [SPEAKER_01]: preferred way to focus his efforts. 8:41 [SPEAKER_01]: I see from the research he seems to find the practice of law fairly tedious. 8:45 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a lot of travel at this point he's a circuit riding lawyer, right? 8:48 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's a lot of travel back and forth to the territorial capital, which was an East Tennessee. 8:53 [SPEAKER_01]: And he, it's a lot of dealing with other people's business, right? 8:57 [SPEAKER_01]: But what it lets Jackson do ultimately is see what the established path forward for social advancement is. 9:06 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's what he wants to do. 9:07 [SPEAKER_01]: Jackson wants to be a man of influence in position. 9:11 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's part of the reason he chose to practice law, because especially right after the revolution, the lawyers in the community were the men that people look to set the path for everything, right? 9:22 [SPEAKER_01]: These men, they're wise, they have influence. 9:25 [SPEAKER_01]: Given that we're very new nation, anybody with familiarity with the law is going to be a key player in the establishment of governments and communities and other organizations. 9:35 [SPEAKER_01]: And so that's why he chooses the practice of law. 9:38 [SPEAKER_01]: But once he gets to Nashville and realizes, that's only going to be the starting point for him. 9:44 [SPEAKER_01]: He realizes then too pretty quickly that he's also going to need to own land and he's going to need to own people as a reflection of his wealth and ambitions and trajectory. 9:55 [SPEAKER_01]: So Jackson sets out to continue 9:58 [SPEAKER_01]: with that influence piece. 9:59 [SPEAKER_01]: Like I said, he may reason to the Donaldson family. 10:02 [SPEAKER_01]: He is on our state's constitutional committee when we break from North Carolina in 1796. 10:09 [SPEAKER_01]: He is our first congressional representative. 10:11 [SPEAKER_01]: He does an early term in the U.S. Senate in the 1790s. 10:15 [SPEAKER_01]: He helps to found the Masonic lodge here in Nashville. 10:18 [SPEAKER_01]: So Jackson was a free mason. 10:20 [SPEAKER_01]: He eventually sits on the state's Supreme Court. 10:22 [SPEAKER_01]: And then, of course, his military experience within the war of 1812 is really going to finish off that influence piece. 10:28 [SPEAKER_01]: Once he's victorious at the Battle of New Orleans, which would just celebrate it, January 8th, he could have set still for the rest of the 19th century, and he still would have been the most popular man in America. 10:41 [SPEAKER_00]: If Jackson's upward mobility began with slave ownership, the pivotal scene in his rise to power was the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. 10:50 [SPEAKER_00]: During the War of 1812, British blockades around the East Coast had devastated the American economy and British troops had successfully invaded Washington, DC. 11:00 [SPEAKER_00]: On August 24th, 1814, they looted the White House in the capital building and set them on fire. 11:07 [SPEAKER_00]: American armies and their native allies were defeated in key battles in Upper Canada. 11:12 [SPEAKER_00]: In the young nation, less than three decades old, felt a crisis of confidence. 11:17 [SPEAKER_00]: They needed a hero, while they got, with Andrew Jackson. 11:20 [SPEAKER_00]: After crushing a powerful native force in Alabama in Georgia, General Jackson led a rag tag army of 5,000 that included marines, militia, pirates, smugglers, and former slaves to the city of New Orleans to prepare for its defense. 11:36 [SPEAKER_00]: A British force of 9,000 battle hardened professional soldiers gathered outside the city preparing for its assault. 11:43 [SPEAKER_00]: By the time the battle ended, two of three 11:49 [SPEAKER_00]: It was a route. 11:51 [SPEAKER_00]: The Battle for New Orleans became known as the Miracle of New Orleans, and almost overnight and you jack some became a national hero. 11:59 [SPEAKER_01]: Almost immediately after the success of the Battle of New Orleans, that's January of 1815, the conversation starts almost immediately. 12:07 [SPEAKER_01]: Who better to have in a position of leadership in the nation at the highest level than this man who has just shut the British down in such an epic fashion? 12:17 [SPEAKER_01]: And really put the exclamation point on the end of the war of 1812 that we were really looking for. 12:23 [SPEAKER_00]: In some ways, Andrew Jackson became for the War of 1812, what George Washington had been for the Revolutionary War, at least in popular imagination. 12:34 [SPEAKER_01]: So the war of 1812 is often called America's second war for independence. 12:38 [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like that's not an inaccurate description of the war. 12:42 [SPEAKER_01]: And so not only have we secured our independence, we've now defended our independence. 12:48 [SPEAKER_01]: And for Jackson to in that process in such a remarkable fashion, just how could anybody be better than that? 12:56 [SPEAKER_01]: How could you have any possible better, leader than that? 12:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Four years later, in 1819, President James Monroe offered Jackson governorship of the newly acquired territory of Florida. 13:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Some once surprisingly, the general nearly turned it down. 13:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Jackson is a man of action and violence, for whom the bureaucracy, impeding this a public office is an acquired taste. 13:20 [SPEAKER_01]: Jackson is sought after for lots of political offices in many different ways. 13:24 [SPEAKER_01]: The first one that he's offered is the governor ship of Florida. 13:28 [SPEAKER_01]: Once Florida is passed from Spain to the United States in 1819, now they need a territorial governor, Jackson seems to be the natural choice for it. 13:37 [SPEAKER_01]: Jackson doesn't seem to be particularly interested in the job. 13:41 [SPEAKER_01]: Eventually he tells President Monroe that he will essentially give him six months. 13:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I'll do the job for six months. 13:49 [SPEAKER_01]: You need to be looking for somebody else in the meantime. 13:52 [SPEAKER_01]: So they go to Florida. 13:53 [SPEAKER_01]: They're there for about six months and then they're back in Nashville. 13:57 [SPEAKER_01]: And it's interesting that first executive political leadership position that Jackson holds, 14:04 [SPEAKER_01]: He really detests it in many ways. 14:06 [SPEAKER_01]: All of the favors seeking, all of the political hangers on, just that sort of constant duty and that constant scrutiny really frustrate Jackson in many ways. 14:17 [SPEAKER_01]: But by 1824, they're very strongly talking about Jackson as a candidate for the presidency. 14:22 [SPEAKER_01]: So he does run in 1824. 14:23 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's his first time he runs for election. 14:26 [SPEAKER_01]: He runs three times. 14:27 [SPEAKER_01]: He's defeated in 1824. 14:29 [SPEAKER_01]: But then wins in 1828, 1832. 14:33 [SPEAKER_01]: The 1824 election is really a fascinating one. 14:37 [SPEAKER_01]: Jackson begins this political race. 14:40 [SPEAKER_01]: There's four candidates running for office. 14:43 [SPEAKER_01]: It was John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, which are the names that most people know. 14:46 [SPEAKER_01]: William Crawford, who has sort of fallen out of a lot of historic awareness, but it was a senator from Virginia and had had been the secretary of the treasury at one point. 14:56 [SPEAKER_01]: And then you have Jackson. 14:57 [SPEAKER_01]: So out of these four men, three of them have been grooming themselves or have been groomed for this position, the position of the presidency, right? 15:06 [SPEAKER_01]: They have experienced at the highest levels of federal government. 15:09 [SPEAKER_01]: They have an education befitting somebody that we would want in that position. 15:13 [SPEAKER_01]: And then here's Jackson, right? 15:15 [SPEAKER_01]: He's this, almost this wild Western art. 15:18 [SPEAKER_01]: He is a dualist. 15:20 [SPEAKER_01]: He comes with very strong military background. 15:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Many people are concerned that Jackson's military experience, if he were to move into political leadership, he would become a military dictator. 15:32 [SPEAKER_01]: That's really what they're anticipating. 15:33 [SPEAKER_01]: And a lot, it didn't help Jackson. 15:35 [SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of comparisons were being made between he and Napoleon France. 15:39 [SPEAKER_01]: And so people will worry, right, that Jackson's gonna become 15:43 [SPEAKER_01]: So Jackson sort of starts this race off as the wild card and at the back of the pack very much. 15:49 [SPEAKER_01]: So William Crawford's at the head of the pack. 15:51 [SPEAKER_01]: But things begin to change a couple of major moments begin to cause the shift in sort of the positioning of the candidates. 16:00 [SPEAKER_01]: And by the election of 1824, it's really come down to a race between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. 16:06 [SPEAKER_01]: Marquita Lafayette had come through the United States on tour that year and had made a very public point of praising Jackson and his victory at New Orleans and so what better endorsement could you possibly get than the Marquita Lafayette, right? 16:21 [SPEAKER_01]: Like the great hero of the revolution sort of America's favorite fighting Frenchmen. 16:25 [SPEAKER_01]: it says in the musical. 16:27 [SPEAKER_01]: And so that does a lot to really boost Jackson's star a little further, and then William Crawford suffers a massive stroke and essentially falls out of the race. 16:35 [SPEAKER_01]: So it all of that is working together for Jackson's advancement. 16:39 [SPEAKER_01]: When the election comes down though in November of 1824, Jackson carries the largest share of the popular vote. 16:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Adam's carries the second largest share. 16:49 [SPEAKER_01]: But the problem is that nobody carries the constitutional majority, which is 50% are higher. 16:55 [SPEAKER_01]: Right. 16:55 [SPEAKER_01]: So Jackson comes in at about 47% of the popular vote. 16:59 [SPEAKER_01]: Adam's about 44% when the vote goes to the electoral college, the same thing happens. 17:04 [SPEAKER_01]: Jackson has the largest share of the votes. 17:06 [SPEAKER_01]: But again, nobody has that constitutional majority. 17:10 [SPEAKER_01]: You probably don't know this. 17:12 [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't either, but when no presidential candidate receives more than 50% of electoral votes, a quote-absolute majority, the House of Representatives is responsible for electing the next president. 17:22 [SPEAKER_01]: This provision is outlined in the 12th amendment. 17:24 [SPEAKER_01]: In most cases, we might expect the House to choose that candidate who received the most popular or electoral votes during the general election. 17:31 [SPEAKER_01]: in 1824, that candidate was Andrew Jackson. 17:34 [SPEAKER_01]: 12th Amendment to the Constitution goes into effect at that point, and House of Representatives votes for the president. 17:42 [SPEAKER_01]: What happens next is still very much debated, but it begins to pick up a nickname, the corrupt bargain. 17:47 [SPEAKER_01]: There is this sort of backroom dealing between John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay. 17:52 [SPEAKER_01]: Clay realizes he doesn't stand a strong chance against Adams and Jackson at this point. 17:57 [SPEAKER_01]: Clay is very much 17:59 [SPEAKER_01]: interested in having the presidency at some point so he decides to cast his support behind Adams as leverage for his own career in the future. 18:07 [SPEAKER_01]: Jackson and Clay have a very there's a lot of enmity in their relationship. 18:11 [SPEAKER_01]: And so Clay decides to cast in with Adams. 18:15 [SPEAKER_01]: Adams agrees it seems to agrees to appoint Clay as his secretary of state if Clay will then put all of his great 18:25 [SPEAKER_01]: persuasive powers in the House of Representatives, because it is the House of Representatives who chooses the president under the 12th Amendment. 18:32 [SPEAKER_01]: And of Clay was the Speaker of the House of Representatives at that point, so his power within the House is sort of limitless. 18:39 [SPEAKER_01]: Puts all of that behind Adams gets elected when the House goes to vote on the very first ballot. 18:45 [SPEAKER_01]: They don't have to vote on this more than once, but Adams carries that constitutional majority immediately. 18:51 [SPEAKER_01]: And so everybody is stunned by this outcome, right? 18:54 [SPEAKER_01]: Even if Jackson wasn't carrying the constitutional majority before, it indicates that the largest share of the country wants him to be president. 19:04 [SPEAKER_01]: But because of this sort of background dealing, Adam's walks away with it instead. 19:08 [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know if Niavetay is exactly the word, I think it is. 19:14 [SPEAKER_01]: It's a word I debate a lot on about whether this applies. 19:17 [SPEAKER_01]: But for Jackson, 19:19 [SPEAKER_01]: once they realize that the election is going to have to go into the House of Representatives. 19:23 [SPEAKER_01]: Jackson just sort of sits back at that point. 19:26 [SPEAKER_01]: What Adams and Clay do, or at least appear to do, is not illegal, right? 19:32 [SPEAKER_01]: They're constant politicians. 19:33 [SPEAKER_01]: They are playing the game, right? 19:35 [SPEAKER_01]: Jackson's a little less. 19:37 [SPEAKER_01]: that way. 19:38 [SPEAKER_01]: And Jackson has this idea that representatives will just repeat their constituents voting. 19:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so Kentucky is the perfect example. 19:49 [SPEAKER_01]: The state of Kentucky, in the state of Kentucky, not a single popular vote had been cast for John Quincy Adams. 19:56 [SPEAKER_01]: It was split between Henry Clay and Andrew Jackson. 20:00 [SPEAKER_01]: When the electoral college goes to the electoral votes go for clay, 20:06 [SPEAKER_01]: When the House of Representatives votes, the state of Kentucky's vote goes to John Quincy Adams. 20:11 [SPEAKER_01]: So Jackson just explodes. 20:14 [SPEAKER_01]: And so I think that election, the language that he describes that that whole process and is biblical. 20:23 [SPEAKER_01]: He describes Henry Clay as the Judas of the West. 20:26 [SPEAKER_01]: that he has sold out the Western citizens. 20:30 [SPEAKER_01]: And then at one point he says that Mr. Adams will seal with his oath on March 4th, which of course was his inauguration, all of his corrupt bargains. 20:39 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's where the corrupt bargain nickname comes from. 20:41 [SPEAKER_01]: And then he refers to Clay again, and he says, and Mr. Clay will be named Secretary of State, which is his 30 pieces of silver. 20:50 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's just, it's biblical. 20:52 [SPEAKER_01]: This rage that Jackson feels. 20:54 [SPEAKER_01]: And Jackson, he also goes on to say that you can see that the voices of the people of the West have been disregarded and that their elected officials demagogues as the word that he uses, that demagogues have bartered the constitutional rights of the people. 21:10 [SPEAKER_01]: That is powerful language, right? 21:12 [SPEAKER_01]: And so it immediately sets the stage for the 1828 election. 21:16 [SPEAKER_01]: Adams is not terribly successful in his single term 21:20 [SPEAKER_00]: This unsuccessful term laid the groundwork for Jackson's second attempt at the presidency in this time. 21:27 [SPEAKER_00]: He won. 21:28 [SPEAKER_01]: 1828 rolls around, and it is a showdown between Jackson and Adams. 21:32 [SPEAKER_01]: Nobody else has involved in the race, and while they have political party affiliations, when you look at the ballots, when you look at campaign paraphernalia, when you look at the tickets for the electors and things like that, you see the terms jacksonian and anti-jacksonian. 21:48 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's more of a referendum really on Jackson or not Jackson, more than it is almost Adams versus Jackson. 21:58 [SPEAKER_00]: The people chose Jackson for the second straight election, and this time he gets his office. 22:03 [SPEAKER_00]: His presidency will be one of the most controversial in history, with certain of his policies, especially those regarding Native Americans, tarnishing his legacy to the present day. 22:14 [SPEAKER_00]: One of the most quoted assessments of this deeply conflicted legacy, so full of noble traits and appalling shortcomings, comes from Jackson's first biographer, James Parton. 22:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Quote, Andrew Jackson, I am given to understand, was a patriot and a traitor. 22:30 [SPEAKER_00]: He was one of the greatest of generals, and wholly ignorant of the art of war. 22:34 [SPEAKER_00]: A writer, brilliant, elegant, eloquent, without being able to compose a correct sentence, or spell words of four syllables, the first of statesmen. 22:44 [SPEAKER_00]: he never devised. 22:45 [SPEAKER_00]: He never framed a measure. 22:47 [SPEAKER_00]: He was the most candid of men and was capable of the most profoundest dissimulation. 22:52 [SPEAKER_00]: A most law-defying law obeying citizen. 22:56 [SPEAKER_00]: A stickler for discipline, he never hesitated to disobey his superior, a democratic, autocrat, an obeying savage, an auspicious saint. 23:07 [SPEAKER_00]: In the next episode, I'll look more of the life of this flawed American hero, as we'll turn to the presidency of Andrew Jackson, and some of the policies that complicate his memory to the present day.
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