… And The Question Of Civilian Control Over The Military.
"Americans remember Andrew Jackson's victory over John Quincy Adams in 1828 as the General's revenge for his narrow loss to Adams four years earlier, when no candidate received a majority in the Electoral College, the election devolved to Congress, and Henry Clay threw his support to the man most likely to endorse his "American System"—the network of public works or "internal improvements" Clay fought for throughout his career. In accepting the grateful president-elect's offer of the Secretary of State, Clay opened himself and his ally to the charge of a "corrupt bargain"—a charge Andrew Jackson fervently believed true, and one he and his political allies kept alive for the next four years.
But the 1828 campaign also saw an interesting and important Constitutional dispute. No one doubted Jackson's right to run for the presidency; he was fully eligible, legally speaking. More than that, his spectacular record as a military commander in several wars against Indian nations and in the War of 1812 evidently fitted him for the role of Commander in Chief. While the nickname "Old Hickory" is the one that has lasted, in his own lifetime he was equally known simply as "The Hero": the hero of the Battle of New Orleans, redeemer of American pride at the end of a mostly ignominious war against our still-detested former imperial oppressors, the British, whom the adolescent Jackson had fought, suffering wounds and imprisonment, during the War of Independence. "Bloodied, but unbowed," the phrase made by a British poet later in the nineteenth century, already described Jackson, how Americans felt about their country, and about him.
John Quincy Adams came from a line of decidedly unmilitary sorts—great men, too, but great civilians. His partisans in 1828 needed somehow to turn the Hero-General's record against him, and in his years of soldiering Jackson had in fact left behind some ammunition for their use…"
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Amicalement
Armand
takes another stab at building a more perfect flight stand.
