http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1832_US_presidential_election
Voting for Clay this time.
The Anti-Masons make some good points . . . Fuck it, I’ll stick with Clay.
Gotta stop the Illuminati wherever we can. Anti-Masonic for me.
In Andrew Jackson’s favor, he did manage to finally dumb John Calhoun. And, with the benefit of hindsight, if we elect him, we’ll get a giant wheel of cheese out of the deal. Better than Henry Clay’s big tub of yogurt.
Sorry, that one whooshed.
In 1835, this dairy farmer in New York made a 1400 pound wheel of cheddar and sent it to President Jackson as a “thanks for being so great” gift. Jackson kept giving chunks of cheese away for the rest of his presidency, and then, just before he left office, opened the doors of the White House to whoever wanted to come and threw a “Please, for the love of God, help me eat all this cheese” party."
The Clay tub of yogurt is a joke, in that yogurt probably wouldn’t keep as well as cheese.
[insert your own “Who cut the cheese?!” joke here]
Jefferson got a big wheel of cheese as a gift in the White House, too - they referred to it on The West Wing.
I vote for Jackson. He got ripped off in 1828, and ought to win this year. A war hero, a man of the people, a strong leader and a stouthearted pro-Union man.
I think The West Wing episode actually referred to the Jackson cheese. And he got ripped off in 1824. He won in 1828.
The first of three incidents in American history known as “the Corrupt Bargain”, BTW (the others being the 1876 election and Ford’s pardon of Nixon).
Thanks, all. Perhaps I was thinking of this, which is about Jefferson’s big cheese: http://www.amazon.com/Big-Cheese-White-House-Tremendous/dp/0374406278/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1398305150&sr=8-5&keywords=jefferson+cheese
One sign of America’s decline as a nation is that we don’t give the President monstrously large cheeses anymore. It’s really pretty sad.
Obama was offered a couple, but he thought he was being offered a big “Jesus” and he weren’t having none. [rimshot]
Gotta vote for Clay because I despise Jackson now and would have back then as well. Why he’s on our currency I don’t know.
War hero, populist, prominent Democrat, stared down Calhoun and the nullificationists, etc. Our strongest, most effective President between Washington and the Civil War. When Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre, he had in his pockets a newspaper clipping favorably comparing his leadership to Jackson’s.
Responsible for the Trail of Tears and precipitated a banking crisis that didn’t hit the fan until 1837. His war hero stature was for winning a battle fought after the peace treaty was already signed and therefore meaningless.
I never said he was perfect. I’d be glad to see him replaced by T.R. or Truman on the $20 bill. But Jackson wasn’t a nonentity, and he did some good things.
The other reason Jackson is on the $20 is that his shutting down of the National Bank helped promote the state banks, and that led to the emergence of the modern banking system in the US. It’s also important to remember that, while we look at the Indian Removal Policy as cruel and genocidal, it was popular at the time, and credited with reducing bloodshed. Even without it, things weren’t going to be peaceful. States like Georgia wanted Cherokee and Creek lands, and there’s no way the tribes were going to be able to hold onto the amount of land they claimed with the population they had. I firmly believe that without the Indian Removal Act, you would have seen war and active genocide. There would have been more and more incursions on Cherokee (for instance) land, the Cherokee would have fought back, the Georgia militia would have invaded, and a lot of Cherokee would have died that way.
Hard as it might be to believe now, Jackson WAS popular at the time, and a large part of the reason that he was popular was because he and his administration changed politics. Before Jackson, politics was a rich man’s game. Every president before him, with the exception of John Adams, had inherited wealth, and Adams’ family was locally prominent. Jackson, on the other hand, was an entirely self made man, the son of poor Irish immigrants. He had, from his own hard work and ambition, become a successful lawyer, military officer and planter.
Jackson was part of a movement…one he didn’t start, but one he encouraged and helped develop, that expanded suffrage, and encouraged participation by ordinary people. And that’s why people liked him; because he was a voice for people who, until that point, had been disenfranchised. He was the first successful American populist politician.