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on march 28, 1834, a storm arrived. the united states senate took action thatthey had never done before and which they have never done since. political war was a torrential downpour inwashington between members of the democratic party and the whig party, when the senatedecided taking 10 weeks to deliberate what

First Tennessee Business Banking Online, ended as one single paragraph was the rightcourse of action; it was just too important to ignore. these lawmakers wanted to send a message tothe president of the united states, or caesar, as some were calling him: he had gone toofar.

this business on the table, this thing tooimportant to ignore, this thing that required 10 weeks of the senate’s attention, wasa non-binding censure- a formal scolding- just words. but they drafted and debated. drafted. and debated. and finally, by a vote of 26-20, it passed. reading in part. “resolved.

that the president...has assumed upon himselfauthority and power not conferred by the constitution and laws, but in derogation of both.” only 34 words in total, but the message wasclear. president andrew jackson- in their eyes, waswholly unworthy of the power he wielded and was comporting himself so recklessly as tothreaten the constitution itself. and of course we can talk about the mutualpolitical vitriol and disgust between jackson and his enemies- after all, it was his arch-nemesishenry clay who authored the censure. but to leave it there would be disingenuous. andrew jackson, a man who once said of himself,“i know what i am fit for...i am not fit

to be president”, or as a woman who knewhim from north carolina put it, “well, if andrew jackson can be president, anybody can!”was pushing the bounds of the constitution as it had been intended, and in doing so,he changed the way all memorable or modern presidents since have used executive power. so what exactly did he do? in the case of the 1834 censure, he failedto procure a document for congress. but this was merely a pretext to attack himon all the other things he had done in his term and a half in office. here’s one of those things.

after congress’ initial approval, presidentjackson rejected their maysville road project in 1830. now this isn’t an exact outline of the originalroad; this is what eventually became us route 68, but jackson vetoed something very similarthat would have used federal funds to connect lexington, kentucky to maysville. now you and i might debate the merits of aninfrastructure project, but jackson’s opponents did not see it that way; for them, the president’sveto was nothing short of a constitutional crisis. henry clay wrote, “we are all shocked andmortified by the rejection of the maysville

road...we shall be contending a principlewhich wears a monarchical aspect” former president john quincy adams said, “theoverseer ascendency is complete” and if you’re wondering how a road vetocan lead to the monarchical upheaval of liberty, we’re gonna have to go deeper with thistopic, and examine how the founders saw the office of presidency, what powers they compromisedwhen designing the chief executive of the united states. spoiler alert: the founders didn’t agreeon everything. the constitution wasn’t handed down frommt. sinai, but rather written through a series of debates which took place over 4 monthsin a courthouse in philadelphia.

which is why we need to here, at some of jamesmadison’s notes that he took about what the founders were arguing during the constitutionaldebates. it’s public domain, but i just happen tohave a copy in a compilation book. now, one delegate in particular raised someeyebrows during the debate on june 18th, 1787. his proposal: a supreme executive authority,one who served for life- “no good executive could be established on a republican model”he argued “ only the english model was good on this subject”if it sounds to you like ‘supreme executive authority for life’ is simply a euphemismfor king, you’re on the right track to understanding why basically no one voted for this plan.

the 55 delegates at the moment probably satback in their chairs and asked, ‘didn’t we just fight a war to get rid of the king?” but american fear of monarchy goes deeperthan just the memories of george iii. a constitutional republic was still a prettyradical experiment. the articles of confederation which had beenthe first attempt at american government starting in 1781 didn’t even have a chief executive;that was the level of skepticism of executives, and specifically national executives. under the articles, power was skewed in favorof the legislature and moreso, the individual 13 states.

and then, here was this guy a mere 3 yearsafter independence from england’s monarch, giving a presentation worthy of broadway,proposing the president stay in office until he dies? this man was of course alexander hamilton. though respected (he went on to be georgewashington's secretary of the treasury), this anglophile was clearly in the minority. but he wasn’t alone, the 2nd president johnadams got himself into trouble when he proposed referring to george washington as ‘his majestythe president”, or even worse, “his high mightiness, the president of the united statesand protector of their liberties”.

this fetishization of monarchy might strikesome like 18th century stockholm syndrome, but luckily the presidency crafted at theconstitutional convention wasn’t infected. ultimately, the powers given the presidentwere narrow; i mean, the founder could barely agree to having one executive and not likea panel of three executives. so, here’s what the president could do:enforce laws passed by congress. command armed forces, but not declare war(that power lies with congress). propose budgets. but congress can ultimately pass or rejectthose budgets. negotiate treaties, which then need approvalfrom the senate.

appoint judges and ambassadors, again withsenate consent. the common strain here is the congress, whichseems to have authority or a check on just about everything the president can do. indeed, the founders wanted the focus to beon the congress, specifically the directly elected house of representatives, not theindirectly elected, electoral college selected, president. even the president’s veto power was envisionedin a limited way. the first six presidents only vetoed a totalof 10 pieces of legislation, and that rejection was based on constitutionality, not personalpreference like we see in our era.

16. and even this wasn’t enough for some people. this highly restricted president- basicallythe administrator of the will of congress- ‘we pass the laws and we check everythingthat you do’- this arrangement wasn’t good enough for some people. after the constitution was drafted and signed,it went to the 13 states for approval. and there, it met criticism from a loose groupcalled the anti-federalists, who opposed the constitution for a variety of reasons; amongthem- the idea the president would evolve into an autocrat.

the most well-known criticism of executivepower of the president can be found in cato v, published in the new york journal on november22nd, 1787. and though this side of the debate ultimatelylost, their warnings echo through time. again, cato v: “great powers of the presidentwould lead to oppression and ruin…[this] frame of government differs but very immateriallyfrom the establishment of monarchy in great britain...you are about to precipitate yourselvesinto a sea of uncertainty, and adopt a system so vague...is it because you do not believethat an american can be a tyrant?” a king can ignore rules. a king can impose his will.

a king can haunt you even once he’s gone. a king elected elected through a democraticprocess is the worst king of all. but the only king in power on inaugurationday 1829 was, as supreme court justice joseph story called it, king mob. the night after andrew jackson was sworn inas the 7th president, his critics were more preoccupied by the absolute chaos in the whitehouse than his authoritarian tendencies. you see, in the public eye, andrew jacksonwas impervious to criticism. he was able to get away with things that wouldhave sunk any other politician of the time. even though he had married rachel donelsonwhen she was still married to another man,

even though he had started open shootoutson crowded streets more than once, killed a man in cold blood in 1806, slaughtered nativeson multiple occasions, even though he had seemingly usurped president monroe duringthe 1st seminole war in 1818, invading spanish florida and extrajudicially executing britishofficers- jackson was an american war hero. voters loved him. during the war of 1812 with the british, heled a group of outnumbered men to one of the few american victories. in a slew of embarrassing losses and destruction,including the burning of washington dc, jackson’s repelling of the british in new orleans gavepoliticians and citizens something, someone

to celebrate: the hero of the common man,andrew jackson. when jackson ran for president, he thoughthimself a man standing for the men of america against the political elites. for too long, he thought, the president hadsimply been chosen by a small enclave of intelligentsia in washington- where all institutions corruptedinto the swamp on which they were built. like thomas jefferson, jackson believed thatthe uniqueness of america lay in small farms, individual men expanding west and tillingthe fertile country into prosperity. but below this call for individual freedomlay an irony, one that jon meacham accurately describes in his jackson biography, “americanlion”.

he writes,“jackson took the jeffersonian vision of the centrality of the people further, andhe took jefferson’s view of the role of the president further still. to jackson, the idea of the sovereignty ofthe many was compatible with a powerful executive. he saw that liberty required security, thatfreedom required order, that the well-being of the parts of the union required that thewhole remain intact. if he felt a temporary resort to autocracywas necessary to preserve democracy, jackson would not hesitate”in other words, sometimes you need a tyrant to execute the will of the people.

jackson would play this role several timesduring his administration. it was this behavior that alarmed his criticsbefore he even stepped foot in the white house. for example, while rescuing new orleans undermartial law, jackson arrested federal district judge dominic hall who had insisted he fulfilla writ of habeas corpus. a general arresting a member of the judiciarywould have major consequences for american history in the long term, but in the shortterm it simply added to the ammunition jackson’s opponents were stockpiling should he everrun for office. he was an ill tempered philanderer-murderous,a potential tyrant. or as henry clay put it, perhaps speakingfor all the nervous elites in washington,

“i cannot believe that the killing of 2000englishmen at new orleans qualifies a person for the various difficult and complicatedduties of the presidency”. an existential threat to the union. but it didn’t matter. election of 1828. with 56% of the vote general jackson was electedpresident. it was the mass of newly enfranchised voters,non-land-owning white men; jackson spoke directly to them. perhaps he represented the man they wishedto be-wealthy, he had a large slave plantation

in franklin, tennessee- heroic, he was willingto fight and die for the things he believed, a bit of a temper like them- he relished conflict. they celebrated his victory with the largestinaugural crowd to date. the democratic party and jacksonian era wereborn. these were the men and women who flooded thewhite house on inauguration night, filling it to capacity, shattering glasses, beggingfor federal jobs, drinking themselves silly, enjoying the idea of the great general inoffice. the common man in the house of their father. and yes.

as strange as it sounds, there was a fatherlyconnection here. you might call it a cult of personality today. one newspaper described jackson’s interactionwith a crowd on a trip he took from baltimore to boston. “he appeared to feel as a father surroundedby a numerous band of children-happy in their affections and loving them with all a parent’slove.” (261)anyway, the inauguration party got so crazy that jackson had to slip out a window. had he known how crazy the next 8 years wouldbe, he might have stayed and gotten straight

to work. the drama of the jackson administration crescendoedas time went on. what started as concerns about the motleysupporters wrecking the white house and sycophantic political appointments ended with jacksondeploying federal troops against fellow americans. so like his administration, let’s startwith the least controversial and go to most. now the least controversial, my opinion, themaysville road veto. remember, we talked about this earlier. jackson vetoed the infrastructure projectnot because he thought it was unconstitutional, but because he was focused on bringing downthe national debt, and because the project

seemed to focus exclusively on kentucky. it probably also didn’t help that his rivalhenry clay represented the state. when the veto came, critics freaked out. prior presidents had vetoed a total of sixbills between them; jackson started with mayesville and went on to veto 11 more bills, four ofthem all within a week. napoleon’s takeover of the french republicat the turn of century was still fresh on congress’ mind. seeing a former general acting in such anunprecedented way, challenging the understanding that congress was the most direct line tothe people, definitely stirred the washington

pot. the way we understand the president’s vetopower today comes directly from andrew jackson. what we think of as the president exertinginfluence and being up on a soap box was seen as tyrannical to his contemporaries. a king ignores rules. let’s step forward a little bit in timeto 1833, the president is drowning in crisis. we’re in the white house and jackson ison a monstrous 15 minute rhetorical tirade directed at a delegation from new york. witnesses said his gesticulation was so wildthat he at one point had to set down his pipe.

they had come to the white house seeking economicrelief, but jackson was more interested in berating them for even showing up. “we have no money here, gentlemen” hesaid, “biddle has all the money”. you see, the new yorkers had hit the nervemost sensitive to the tennessean president at the time: the national bank. jackson hated the national bank. hated the man running the bank. and he had just risked his political careerto kill it. “the bank...is trying to kill me, but ishall kill it”

the delegates reactions reflect perhaps howmany of the president’s true enemies rose and fell: jackson was cordial first, ruthlesssecond. in the same way he had politely invited themen into the white house, he had been pretty genial to biddle during their first meetingbefore launching an all out assault. but wait. who is biddle and why does he have all themoney? again reading from american lion,“jackson worried about the power of the second national bank of the united states,an institution that held the public’s money but was not subject to the public’s control,or to the president’s.

presided over by nicholas biddle-brilliant,arrogant, and as willful in his way as andrew jackson was in his- the bank...was a rivalinterest that, jackson believed, made loans to influence elections, paid retainers topro-bank lawmakers, and could control much of the nation’s economy on a whim.” (pg.53)the only thing that jackson hated more than elected political elites were unelected politicalelites. and nicholas biddle was the epitomizationof that characterization. and so jackson had made it his personal goalto bring down biddle and his bank and send all the money to state and private banks,which jackson hated just a little bit less.

but biddle was ready to fight back as he knewthe clock was ticking. allying himself with jackson’s enemies inthe senate, a bank recharter was pushed through the congress and to the president’s deska mere 4 months before the 1832 presidential election. biddle’s gamble was clear: option one, jacksonsigns the recharter and the bank gets what it wants. 2, jackson vetoes the recharter, and the generalpopularity of the bank leads to his punishment on election day. new bank supporting president.

bank gets what it wants. option 3, jackson refuses to sign the billor tepidly vetoes, he appears weak and afraid of the institution and his enemies. loses reelection. seems like a pretty dire for andrew jackson...butthere was a fourth option. “the congress, the executive, and the courtmust each for itself be guided by its own opinion of the constitution,” jackson explainedin his veto of the bank recharter. “the opinion of the judges has no more authorityover congress than the opinion of congress has over the judges, and on that point thepresident is independent of both.”

a couple things are happening here. number one: jackson is calling the biddle’sbluff. you want a reelection battle? let’s do it. my children are the ‘humble members of society’-“the farmers, mechanics, and laborers. you represent elites of “artificial distinction,gratuities and exclusive privileges”. second, not only is the opinion of congressirrelevant, but don’t preach to me about supreme court. i’m autonomous of both the court and thecongress.

jackson had expanded his power again. he had declared his willingness to ignorethe other branches of the government. not even a year later, jackson would declarea ruling of the supreme court, “still born”. that is to say, like a miscarriage, decisionsof the court are born dead into the world, from a mother to whom the father does notyield. with this veto of the bank, jackson had cementedthe political paradigm in the way he saw fit. and he was rewarded, easily winning his reelection with 54% of the vote. the bank was left to bleed out the final yearsof its charter. king jackson, as his opponents now calledhim, had won.

when the delegation from new york arriveda year later seeking economic relief from andrew jackson, it was because biddle andthe bank were using the only tactic they had left: creating an artificial credit crisisand strangling the national economy. but the battle was already lost; the fundswere removed and the institution was liquidated in 1841. a king imposes his will. and this fight basically raged and concludedbetween 1832 and 1833, arguably the most consequential period in jackson’s presidency. that’s because during this struggle withthe bank, jackson had sent ominous orders

to the secretary of war on a different matter:secretly replace the federal soldiers and officers in charleston, south carolina withsoldiers and officers loyal to him and the union. “therefore let the officers and men be relievedby a faithful detachment...let it be done without a hint of the cause until it is effected,”the president was secretly preparing for war with one of the states in the union. now, the south carolinians didn’t expectit to be this way. jackson believed himself to have been bornin south carolina; he was a child of the south; a slave owner with a massive cotton plantationin tennessee.

why wouldn’t he be empathetic to their complaints? namely, that the tariff passed under the previouspresident in 1828 was an abomination. the tax was hurting cotton exports to britainand that was hurting the southern economy- hurting jackson’s bottom line too. and that’s why jackson’s own vice president,john c. calhoun of south carolina, pushed within the administration to allow southernnullification. in other words, allow individual states todiscern whether federal laws were constitutional or not, and reject them if not. the implications of nullification were huge.

how can the slope not be slippery if stateafter state can simply reject laws they don’t approve of? on the other hand, it is a classical americanquestion: how can we be sure that the federal government won’t exploit and oppress thesmaller states that make up the whole? jackson himself was a bit foggy on the issue. if southern states couldn’t nullify a taxlaw, could they nullify a northern attempt to end slavery? jackson was still foggy as of 1830 when thewashington establishment gathered at the indian queen hotel to celebrate the birthday of thelate thomas jefferson.

after dinner, toasts were raised. president jackson, in prepared words calledout, “our federal union- it must be preserved,”. jackson was making it clear to the nullifiersin the room, his own vice president included, that he was the patriarch of the nation andthat he chose to side with the union. vice president calhoun took his turn, “ourfederal union-next to our liberty the most dear”. newspapers wrote of the drama the next day. game on. jackson was in a difficult spot for the nextthree years.

go too hard on the south carolinians and theother southern states might join them. aquiesse, and good luck trying to impose taxlaws in the future. now with everything we know about jackson,we would expect that he would escalate the situation: with his temper? scream, shoot someone, grab more power andcrush this group. at this critical moment in our history, andrewjackson’s tactics were directly tied to the continued existence of the union. congress was busy trying to calm tensionsas well. in july 1832, they passed and the presidentsigned a reduction in the tariff.

but for southern nullifiers it wasn’t enough. in late november, 1832 the south carolinaconvention declared the tariff ‘utterly null and void’, proclaiming ‘we will considerthe passage, by congress, of any act authorizing the employment of a military or naval forceagainst the state of south carolina...hereby null and void’. they add ‘at every hazard...all south carolinians,civil or military, will obey and execute the ordinance’. not a month later in december, the secretaryof war reported back that 5,000 stand of arms and 1,000 rifles were on their way to charleston,while the president ranted privately that

he had three hundred thousand volunteers readyto march to south carolina. the civil war was about to kick off 30 yearsahead of schedule. on the 10th of december, in approximately9,000 words, jackson addressed the people of south carolina: “...dictates of a highduty oblige me to solemnly announce that you cannot succeed. the laws of the united states must be executed...disunionby armed force is treason. are you ready to incur its guilt?” now this sounds fiery. but jackson actually struck a conciliatorytone throughout his message.

the former mayor of new york commented, “thelanguage of the president is that of a father addressing his wayward children,”jackson worked with the congress in 1833 to accomplish two things. first, lower the tariff again. second, authorize his use of force if it bedeemed necessary to execute the law. now, was this another power grab by andrewjackson?the president sending in troops against a state is pretty radical. nonetheless, the answer is not totally clear. 1.

because jackson didn’t initiate the conflict. if it was a power grab, it wasn’t a plannedpower grab. 2. he asked the congress for the use of force,‘can i use force?’. now, if they had said no, maybe he would havedone it anyway, but we can’t know the answer to that question. 3. it’s not totally unprecedented. in 1794, president washington enforced a whiskeytax in western pennsylvania by means of the

military. but with jackson, it would be the first timethe president sent troops against an entire state. congress gave jackson both things he wanted:they lowered the tariff and they authorized his use of force to collect it. the efforts paid off and south carolinianbacked down. but one man was watching jackson’s activitiesvery carefully. he saw general jackson’s measures to suspendhabeas corpus and arrest a judge in new orleans. he looked back at president washington’suse of force and president jackson’s threatened

use of force to preserve the laws of the union. this 20-something from illinois would makesimilar decisions in a generation. as jon meacham wrote describing jackson’sfeelings, sometimes you need a tyrant to preserve liberty. but tyranny to preserve liberty...is what? a paradox of history. and we could not finish that history withoutlooking at what happened to some of jackson’s other children. jackson, like most americans, wanted the landon which the cherokees, choctaws, creeks,

and seminole tribes lived. in 1830, he got permission from congress inthe form of the indian removal act to make deals with the tribes and relocate them westof the mississippi river. jackson’s letter to the creeks a year earliersheds light on his overall approach to the issue, and his pejorative way of referringto the natives as his family: “[i] speak to you as your father and your friend...youknow i love my white and red children...you and my white children are too near to eachother to live in harmony and peace...beyond the great river mississippi...your fatherhas provided a country large enough for all of you, and he advises you to remove to it.”

when the supreme court intervened with hisand the state of georgia’s planned expulsion of natives, he declared the ruling ‘stillborn’. as jackson aged comfortably at the hermitage,enjoying the wealth he produced with slaves, his successor, president martin van buren,executed the most violent removal of the natives who refused to sign treaties. as jackson said in his farewell address, themembers ‘of that ill-fated race’ were now under the “paternal care of the generalgovernment’. the lights in the shining city on a hill thendimmed; the white children wanted the removal, but didn’t want to see it.

and that’s why ademocratically elected tyranny is the worst tyranny of all. and we have here an account from alexis detocqueville describing the 1831 expulsion of the choctaw,“it is impossible to describe the frightful sufferings that attend these forced migrations...hungeris in the rear, war awaits them, and misery besets them on all sides...it was then themiddle of the winter, and the cold was unusually severe; the snow had frozen hard upon theground, and the river was drifting huge masses of ice. the indians had their families with them,and they brought in their train the wounded

and sick, with children newly born and oldmen upon the verge of death..i saw them embark to pass the mighty river, and never will thatsolemn spectacle fade from my remembrance. no cry, no sob was heard among the assembledcrowd; all were silent. the calamities were of ancient date, and theyknew them to be irremediable.” a father can break rules. a father can impose his will. a father can haunt you even once he’s gone.

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