Andrew Jackson

I am amused by the search for the body of Charles Henry Dickinson, the man Andrew Jackson killed in a duel in 1806. I love talking about Andrew Jackson the murderer in my survey courses. I particularly like the story of him shooting at the guy on the boat before he ran for president. The guy just wanted to meet him but he was getting in the way and slowing the boat down. So Jackson started shooting. I don't think he hit anything and he certainly didn't kill the guy. But the students like the story anyway.

Theo Emery does pose some interesting questions about what might have happened had Jackson died in the duel: "would the United States have won the Battle of New Orleans? Would executive power have evolved without President Jackson? Would the Trail of Tears have taken place?

Questions like these get at the issue of top-down versus bottom-up history. How much do generals and presidents matter? I tend to fall in the middle of this debate. For example, there is no question that Martin Luther King helped shape the civil rights movement, but had he not been in Montgomery in 1955, the civil rights movement still would have happened and the ultimate successes and failures of the movement would likely have been little different.

Let me try to answer Emery's three questions. Would the United States have won the Battle of New Orleans? Hard to say. But it doesn't really matter. The Battle of New Orleans was a great boost to the morale of the United States. But it didn't actually accomplish anything. Not only had the Treaty of Ghent been signed before the battle, ending the War of 1812, but the main issue leading to the war--the impressment of U.S. sailors by the British navy--was rendered irrelevant by the end of the Napoleonic Wars. A devastating loss at New Orleans might have made the British press their advantage harder on the American continent, but ultimately I think little would have changed. We would however have been spared Johnny Horton's 1959 hit song, "Battle of New Orleans," which can only be seen as positive.

Would executive power have expanded without Jackson? This is the toughest of the three questions. I have to think the answer is yes. One thing about Jackson is that he was so dominant over the political life of his time. This is quite unusual in American history--probably only Franklin Roosevelt is comparable. The main thing tying the Whigs together was a collective dislike for Jackson. So the second party system would have fallen on somewhat different lines if Jackson had died in 1806. However, it is fairly likely that Henry Clay would have been president had Jackson not been around. Clay almost certainly would have expanded executive power on some level to promote the American System. Still, the expansion of executive power is ultimately pretty small under Jackson. Most of the presidents after him for the rest of the century did not push executive power (Polk and Lincoln being the strongest exceptions). Thus, in 1896, we had several consecutive presidents that actively believed the promotion of all legislation and national agendas should come from Congress. Nearly all the expansion of executive power we see today began with Theodore Roosevelt and blew up from there. So if Jackson is never president, we are pretty much in the same situation in 1900 and today. Ultimately, Jackson's expansion of executive authority made little difference in the big picture of American history.

Finally, the Trail of Tears. Jackson may have been right when he argued that removing the Cherokees was actually the best thing for their survival. That doesn't make him any less the racist. But the other option was war started by local whites. The U.S. military was not going to stop white settlers from invading Indian lands--they never had before and didn't after. Regardless of the Supreme Court decision that affirmed Cherokee rights, no U.S. president was going to use the army to keep whites out. So the Trail of Tears might not have happened, but other unspeakable atrocities would have.

Interesting questions though.