Gratuitous Historickal Posting (TM)

My quote-of-the-day email guy reminds me this morning that today is the anniversary of the birth of Andrew "Old Hickory" Jackson:

The brave man inattentive to his duty, is worth little more to his country than the coward who deserts her in the hour of danger.

- Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) (to troops who had abandoned their lines during
the Battle of New Orleans, 8 January 1815)

There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.
If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, showers its favors alike on the high and low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing.

- Jackson (Veto of the Bank Bill, 10 July 1832)

He was the most American of Americans - an embodied Declaration of Inde
pendence - the Fourth of July incarnate.

- James Parton (Life of Andrew Jackson, 1859)

Andrew Jackson is ignorant, passionate, hypocritical, corrupt, and easily
swayed by the basest men who surround him.

- Henry Clay (letter, August 1833)

(Today is the 240th anniversary of the birth of "Old Hickory," Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), the 7th President of these United States, in the Waxhaw Settlement on the border between North and South Carolina. Jackson helped to draft the Tennessee constitution and was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1796. In the War of 1812, he first overcame the Creek Indians, and as a major-general decisively defeated the British at the Battle of New Orleans, which established his reputation. Jackson soon became a prominent champion of frontier populism, and the idea of "Jacksonian democracy" brought him two terms as president (1829-1837) after an earlier defeat in 1824.* His presidential record remains controversial: it saw the establishment of the spoils system and the dissolution of the Bank of the United States, whose assets were distributed among chosen state, or "pet," banks. Moreover, his "Specie Circular," which decreed that all public lands must be paid for in coin money, led directly to the financial Panic of 1837. However, in a toast at a Jefferson Day celebration in April 1830, Jackson proposed famously, "Our Federal Union - it must be preserved!")

* N.B. When no candidate received a majority of the electoral votes, the presidential election of 1824 was decided in the House of Repre sentatives, which chose John Quincy Adams.

By a neat little coincidence, I happen to be reading H.W Brands' Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times. I must say that I admire Jackson's personal courage and his strong unionist beliefs - he's to be commended in the highest for putting down the rat-bastard nullificationists who threatened to cause South Carolina to secede in 1832. At the same time, I'm a Hamiltonian Federalist, so I find Jackson's brand of democratic populism to be, well, distasteful. And I'm no fan of his efforts to blow off Chief Justice Marshall, either.

The first part of Jackson's life - his service in the Revolutionary War, his life on the frontier, and his campaigns against the British, the Red Stick Creeks and the Seminoles - is fascinating. However, while plodding my way through Jackson's later political battle with Nicholas Biddle over the fate of the Bank of the United States, I suddenly realized I must be a wonk indeed, for I can think of no other reason for reading about it.

UPDATE: Is it Ides of March posting you be wanting? Rachel's got ye covered.