American History Tellers - The Age of Jackson | Good Feelings | 2

Episode Date: April 4, 2018

In the summer of 1817, President James Monroe toured the country in an effort to unite the ever-growing United States, torn between bitter political battles that overshadowed national conflict.To Monroe, the nation seemed ready “to get back into the great family of the union.” And based on reactions to his speech, he was right. A Federalist newspaper hailed Monroe’s visit, and his message of togetherness, as a success.It ushered in what became known as “The Era of Good Feelings.” In truth, it was barely an era at all. The appearance of political unity had already begun to crack in 1819, when the Monroe administration faced its first serious political crisis: the Missouri Controversy.Support us by supporting our sponsors!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Imagine it's July 4th, 1817. You're a farmer who lives just south of Boston, Massachusetts. Today you've come out to the Charleston Peninsula with your friend, a man who's the newly elected junior congressman for Massachusetts, to hear President James Monroe speak at Bunker Hill. You climb the hill to where the assembled crowd is waiting for the president to arrive. Families have come out for the Fourth of July holiday, as well as local

businessmen and politicians eager to hear the president speak. Some families are picnicking while they wait, and the feeling in the crowd is festive. Still, it's a hot summer's day, and the hill offers no shade. You mop the sweat from your brows as you wait. You're not exactly a fan of the new president. You voted against him in the election, and you're a little bit suspicious of his motivation for being here. He's come all the way up from Virginia just to rub our noses in his victory. Well, at least he came. We haven't seen a Virginian in New England since before the war.

Your friend's joke is at least partly true. None of Monroe's predecessors have traveled to New England, the last bastion of the Federalist Party. Monroe has been in Boston a week, attempting to woo the Federalist Party members to his side. Have you seen this hat? The last cocked hat in the Union. He dresses as though the revolution wasn't 40 years ago. You smirk. Still, as you

stand there waiting, you find yourself eager to hear what this new president has to say. The Federalist Party was soundly defeated in the last election. Their opposition to the War of 1812, one that you shared, made the election a complete embarrassment. General Andrew Jackson Victory in New Orleans paved the way for Monroe's landslide win. I hear Monroe is calling for the Federalists and the Republicans to work together. He says it's the only way to move forward after the war. He could be right. If we're shut out, things will only get worse for us here in Massachusetts. Your friend looks less convinced than you, but you don't have time to press your point. Monroe's small cavalcade has made its way to the outskirts of the field.

You can see men on horseback stopping to dismount, including one distinctive cocked hat. Later that day, you return home in a considerably brighter mood. Monroe's optimism and the celebratory spirit of the crowd was infectious. Monroe spoke of political unity and of brotherhood. He spoke of national pride and of laying the foundations for a new era of cooperation and togetherness. The loss of the election is still painful, but his words left you feeling optimistic about America's future. What you don't know is that in just two years, those good feelings will evaporate amid a bitter debate over slavery,

a debate that will threaten to rip the country apart and sow the seeds of civil war. With Audible, there's more to imagine when you listen. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, expert advice, any genre you love. You can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking. And Audible makes it easy to be inspired and entertained as a part of your everyday routine without needing to set aside extra time. As an Audible member, you choose one title a month to keep from their ever-growing catalog. Explore themes of friendship, loss, and hope with remarkably bright creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. Find what piques your imagination.

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of the products you're obsessed with. Listen to The Best Idea Yet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. From Wondery, this is American History Tellers. Our history, your story. I'm Lindsey Graham. We're continuing American History Tellers with a six-episode series, The Age of Jackson, beginning with the future President Andrew Jackson's rise to national celebrity as a general in the United States Army. This is episode two, Good Feelings. In March of 1817, James Monroe became the President of the United States. Monroe was well-known from the Revolutionary War.

He had crossed the Delaware with Washington. He even looked the part of a Revolutionary War hero. Fashions had changed, but Monroe still dressed in knee breeches, buckled shoes, powdered wigs, and cocked hats. He'd been Secretary of State under his predecessor, James Madison, and he ran for President on the Madisonian platform, emphasizing nationalism, protections for domestic manufacturing, and the improvement and construction of roads and canals.

He won in a landslide, 183 votes in the Electoral College. His opponent, New York Federalist Rufus King, received only 34, and his defeat spelled the end of the Federalist Party. The party had been on the ropes for a while. In 1814, they held a series of secret meetings in Hartford, Connecticut. This Hartford Convention yielded a report that detailed the Federalist grievances and produced a series of proposed amendments to the Constitution, each one a rebuke to the way Jefferson and Madison had been running the country. They wanted a two-thirds congressional majority for declaration of war, a two-thirds majority for admission of a new state.

They wanted to abolish the three-fifths representation of slaves in the South. They wanted to limit future presidents to one term and require each new president to be from a different state than his predecessor. Some Federalists even advocated for Western states to be expelled from the Union or for New England to secede from the rest of the country. And the War of 1812 against Britain was reviled. Rufus King, eventually to run against Monroe in the general election, thought the war against the British was merely manufactured for political gain by Madison and the Republican Party. He regarded the war as a war of party and not of country.

And to fight this, the Federalists sent three commissioners to Washington to make their demands. But by the time they had arrived, news of Andrew Jackson's victory at the Battle of New Orleans had swept the nation. Jackson was a hero, and Madison had ratified the Treaty of Ghent. War was over, the Republicans were victorious, and the Federalist commissioners in the capital, with their list of demands and rumors of secession, looked a bit foolish. In the wake of victory against the British, again, Americans grew suspicious of the Federalist Party, who groused unpatriotically and advocated disunion. The Federalist Party was all but ruined. Monroe's victory put the final nail in the coffin.

Still, Monroe was determined to bring the country together and fulfill George Washington's wish of not allowing political parties to divide the nation. To prove his commitment, he toured New England in the summer of 1817. Perhaps some of his Republican allies had hoped Monroe would advocate more strongly for their policies. Instead, his speech at Bunker Hill commemorated the Revolutionary War battle and called for a new era of unity and cooperation. To Monroe, it seemed as though New Englanders were ready to get back to the great family of the Union. And based on reactions to his speech, he was right. A Federalist newspaper

hailed Monroe's visit and his message of togetherness as a success. It ushered in what became known as the Era of Good Feelings. In truth, though, it was barely an era at all. The appearance of political unity had already begun to crack in 1819, when the Monroe administration faced its first serious political crisis, the Missouri Controversy. For years, settlers had been pouring into the Missouri Territory with the hopes of establishing their own family farms. The giant Missouri and Mississippi rivers provided easy access to unclaimed and fertile lands. Meanwhile, the town of St. Louis was steadily growing into a center of American commerce. Missouri's population tripled in 10 years. This growth had to be taken seriously. Granting Missouri statehood should not have been controversial. After all, Illinois became a state in 1818 with an even smaller population.

But a proposition from New York Congressman James Tallmadge that Missouri should enter the Union as a free state, that is, one where slavery was prohibited, ignited a political firestorm. Talmadge and the Northerners who backed him cited moral, religious, and economic reasons to stop slavery from expanding beyond the South. How could a Christian nation enslave God's children? How could free white men compete with slave labor? They even drew upon the principles of the Declaration of Independence. How could a nation which had proclaimed less than 50 years earlier that all men were created equal hold humans in bondage? Of course, not all Northerners were anti-slavery for strictly

humanitarian reasons. There was some electoral mathematics in play, too. The country was increasingly divided along north-south lines between free states and slave states. Slaves were not allowed to vote, but since 1787, they could be counted as three-fifths a person when determining the state's political representation. Allowing Missouri to join as a slave state, with all the extra representation that would come with that, would have huge consequences. The balance of power in Washington was at stake. Imagine it's the evening of February 18th, 1819. You serve as an aide to Representative James Talmadge from New York.

For nearly three days, the House of Representatives have met here in Washington to discuss admitting Missouri as a state and hotly debate Talmadge's amendment to the bill that would abolish slavery there. The arguing has been blistering and bitter and feels a long way from those good feelings the president had been talking about only a couple of years earlier. The Northerners have a voting majority in the House,

but you know the Southern Bloc stands in fierce opposition. Their economic and political power is at stake. Confrontation grows heated. Congressmen and their aides spill into the hallways to argue. Missouri must be allowed to govern itself without interference from this Congress. What, and be subject to an endless line of Southern presidents? The three-fifths clause means you would win every single election. Your side talk of morality, but it's clear the Federalists want to impose their will on the South.

The Constitution has no authority to restrict slavery within the states. You Southerners aren't content with just slaves on the plantations. You seek to enslave us all. As the debate turns to accusations of a Northern conspiracy, you turn and head back to your office. How can these two sides possibly be reconciled? The next day, in a seemingly prophetic statement, Thomas W. Cobb from Georgia challenges Talmadge in a congressional debate saying, if you persist, the union will be dissolved. You have kindled a fire which all the waters of the ocean cannot put out, which seas of blood can only extinguish. The Talmadge Amendment passed in the House but failed in the Senate. The deadlock left

Missouri's statehood and the issue of slavery in the territories undecided. President James Monroe wrote to his son-in-law, my own decided opinion is that new states cannot be admitted into the Union on other conditions than the old, that their incorporation must place them on precisely the same footing as to rights granted and retained. Monroe seemed to think the issue could be negotiated away, but his own Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, wrote in his private journal, I take it for granted that the present question is a mere preamble, a title page to a great tragic volume. The President thinks this question will be winked away by a compromise, but so do not I. Much am I mistaken if it is not destined to survive his political and individual life, and mine. Eventually, the House and Senate struck what came to be known as the Missouri

Compromise. To offset Missouri's entry into the Union as a slave state, Maine would be given statehood as a free state, preserving the balance between the two sides. Slavery would also be prohibited on land north of the parallel 36 degrees, 30 minutes. Essentially all of the land gained from the Louisiana Purchase except Missouri. Jackson was critical of the compromise, writing to a friend, the Missouri question, so-called, has agitated the public mind, and what I sincerely regret and never expected, but what I now see, will be the entering wedge to separate the union. It is a question of political ascendancy and power, and the Eastern interests are determined

to succeed regardless of the consequences, the Constitution, or our national happiness. Former President Thomas Jefferson, who, like Jackson, was a slave owner, worried about the consequences of the crisis, too. This momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed indeed for the moment, but this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. While the debate raged in Washington, Andrew Jackson was distracted by his own failing health. In 1818, he wrote to his nephew, complaining of a recurring cough and pain in his chest. He was constantly bringing up phlegm and blood, and his stomach was bothered by the rich foods he ate. If Jackson had any hopes for higher office, his current health

seemed to have ruled it out. So he focused on his plantation. As the cotton business boomed, he grew rich, and the number of people he kept enslaved increased. In 1812, he had owned 20 people. By the time the decade was out, that number doubled. Despite his ill health, Jackson was brought out of his semi-retirement in 1821. Two years earlier, Spain had agreed to surrender Florida to the U.S., and Jackson was asked to oversee the transition.

In 1821, he and Rachel arrived in Pensacola. They found an almost deserted city, one that was falling into ruin during the final days of Spanish rule. But Rachel Jackson was clearly in love with their temporary home, writing to a friend back in Nashville, Pensacola is a perfect plain, as white as flower, yet productive of fine peach trees, oranges in abundance, grapes, figs, pomegranates, fine flowers growing spontaneously, the most beautiful water prospect I ever saw. And from 10 o'clock in the morning until 10 at night, we have the finest sea breeze. There is something in it so exhilarating, so pure, so wholesome. It enlivens the whole system. Jackson himself was happy enough to accept the formal surrender from the Spanish, but he was still eager to return to private life. After less than a year, he resigned his position as governor, telling President Monroe that he was truly wearied of public life. In 1822, he would again write to Monroe at the White House, My health is not good, nor have I much hope of regaining it.

Retirement and ease may prolong my life, but I fear never can restore my broken constitution. Little did Jackson know that in six years, he would overcome his frailty and his weariness of public service. He would be in the White House himself. For years, American Scandal has taken you deep inside the biggest controversies and shocking events in U.S. history. And now you can listen to exclusive seasons on Wondery+. Go beyond the headlines with jaw-dropping stories and immersive reporting that unveils the complex truth behind these scandals. In our exclusive season, The Hare Krishna Murders, dive into the twisted world of a

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Start your free trial of Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify to start listening today and uncover the real story behind America's most notorious scandals. In November 1991, media tycoon Robert Maxwell mysteriously vanished from his luxury yacht in the Canary Islands. But it wasn't just his body that would come to the surface in the days that followed. It soon emerged that Robert's business was on the brink of collapse,

and behind his facade of wealth and success was a litany of bad investments, mounting debt, and multimillion-dollar fraud. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show Business Movers. We tell the true stories of business leaders who risked it all, the critical moments that defined their journey, and the ideas that transform the way we live our lives. In our latest

series, a young refugee fleeing the Nazis arrives in Britain determined to make something of his life. Taking the name Robert Maxwell, he builds a publishing and newspaper empire that spans the globe. But ambition eventually curdles into desperation, and Robert's determination to succeed turns into a willingness to do anything to get ahead. Follow Business Movers wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. The end of the War of 1812 had triggered an economic boom. As business flourished, banks, especially in the West and South,

were happy to make risky loans to help finance land purchases and the construction of new settlements. These state banks were, in turn, borrowing that money from other banks, including the Second Bank of the United States. Modeled on Alexander Hamilton's First Bank of the United States, the Second Bank was chartered by President Madison in 1816. But just two years later, in 1818, the Second Bank of the United States

cut back lending and began calling in its loans. In turn, that led the state banks to call in their loans. Credit tightened. Thousands of people lost their homes and farms to foreclosure, and the nation was caught in a panic. Western cities were hit especially hard. They had relied

on easy credit to fuel their expansion. Much of the debt was held by the Second Bank of the United States. A well-known Missouri politician and Jackson's former aide to camp, Thomas Hart Benton, complained that the West was in the jaws of the monster, a lump of butter in the mouth of a dog, one gulp, one swallow, and all is gone. It was a dire time. Cotton, flour, and tobacco commodities lost over half their value. Public land sales crashed. People were short on cash, so they stopped buying. Country merchants failed, and unemployment rose. For a still young country just recovering from war, it was ruinous. For his part, Andrew Jackson was not personally affected by the economic downturn. His plantation business continued,

but he blamed the Bank of the United States for causing the panic, seeding a distrust of banks that would come to play a big part in his presidency. But in 1822, the prospect of him being president must have seen a bit ridiculous to Jackson. He was living at the Hermitage, still recovering from illness and guarding his finances in the wake of the panic. He had no aspirations but to live out the rest of his days as a plantation owner. But his supporters had other plans. Almost as soon as Monroe had been elected in 1820, the conversation in the Democratic Republican Party turned to the 1824 election. Some in the party wanted Jackson to run for

president. He was extremely popular, especially in the South and West, places where the other candidates, John Quincy Adams and John Calhoun, had little support. But if this was something Jackson wanted, he was quiet about it. So it was a bit of a surprise when in 1822, a group of Tennessee politicians unanimously passed a resolution in favor of running retired General Jackson for the presidency. From the start, Jackson's supporters pitched him as a populist candidate. Sam Houston, who would soon be the president of the Republic of Texas,

wrote to Jackson, You are now before the eyes of the nation. You have been your country's great sentinel at a time when her watchman had been caught slumbering on post. Her capital had been reduced to ashes. You have been her faithful guardian, her well-tried servant. Will not the nation look to you again? Will it not regard your interests when they are connected with your country's welfare? There will be no caucus at the next Congress. The next president will be the people's choice. Jackson himself did not campaign publicly for the presidency. He barely campaigned for any office. Still, in 1823, as the presidential campaign continued, Jackson was elected to the Senate, returning to the same office he had resigned over two decades earlier. He was not eager to return to Washington, but his belief that office

should be neither sought for nor declined required he accept the role. His election to the Senate might have in fact hurt his chances in the presidential election. Jackson's key strength as a candidate was that he had appeared to be above the fray, a national hero who was not bogged down by partisan politics in Washington. Now he would be in the thick of it. The military man would have to learn to negotiate and to persuade. He would have to speak out, and he would have to vote. For a man who had shown little regard for others' opinions and who wielded his military power in such absolute terms, this would be a challenge.

Imagine it's autumn in western Virginia, 1823. You've been working in the post office all morning and have heard that Jackson will be riding through town later in the afternoon. The weather is cold and dreary. You and your co-worker leave to gather on the edge of town and greet the old general as he passes. Mobs of people have been cheering him at every stop, slowing his progress on his way to Washington. For days, you've been anxious for his arrival in your small town. Do you think he'll arrive before sundown today? I hear it's been slow going.

Last night, I heard he switched to traveling by stagecoach. Riding through on horseback causes spectacle wherever he went. Everyone wants to see old Hickory before he heads to the Capitol. Yeah. Finally, we'll have a man up there who will be on the side of the people. You nod your head in agreement. Those crooked politicians in Washington should watch themselves. Now that General Jackson's the senator, he'll clean up the banks in Congress,

just like he cleaned up those Brits a few years back. Everyone knows how much Jackson despises the banks. Times have been tough. The farmers have been the hardest hit, and people are just getting back on their feet. Jackson is seen as a new hope that the government will be fighting for the people instead of the political elite. Look, here he comes now. You both turn to watch as the carriage comes into sight around the corner and sweeps past you. Inside, you catch just a glimpse of Jackson's face. It's pale, almost sickly looking, not as tough as you had expected of the famous old hickory. All the attention of his return to Washington flattered Jackson, but he was also homesick.

This would be his longest break away from Rachel since the Seminole War, and with his health always in question, he feared he might never return to Tennessee. And he did not take well to the day-to-day work of being a senator. He wrote, I am worn out with the fatigue of legislating. Nature never intended me for any such pursuit, I am sure. Day after day, talking and arguing about things that might be decided in a few hours requires a Job-like patience to bear it. It does not suit me. On the other hand, Jackson did seem to enjoy a party put on by John Quincy Adams' wife, Louisa, to commemorate his victory at New Orleans. The Adams house was packed with elegant guests and the political elite,

and Jackson was the center of attention. At the party, Adams asked Jackson if he would consider being his running mate. In Adams' mind, having Jackson on the ticket would help him carry the South and West, areas in which Adams had little support. But Jackson declined. He had no wish to be vice president. After all, it was a job that Adams' own father had hated. The presidential campaign came to a frantic end with four candidates with a good chance of winning. Jackson supporters had promoted their candidate as an outsider, running against the Washington elite.

And after the panic of 1819, this anti-establishment message struck a chord with voters. Jackson would win the popular vote, beating Adams by almost 50%. Jackson also had the most votes in the electoral college, but crucially fell short of the 131 votes needed to win outright. With no clear winner in the Electoral College, it fell to the House of Representatives to choose the president from the top three candidates. Jackson felt the office was rightfully his, but Henry Clay had other ideas. As the fourth-place finisher in the presidential election, Clay had been knocked out of contention.

Privately, he disliked both Jackson and Adams, but preferred Adams of the two. So Clay threw his support behind Adams, helping sway the House and making John Quincy Adams president. Jackson and his supporters were outraged. They felt their victory had been snatched from them by the political establishment. When Adams made Henry Clay his Secretary of State, they claimed a corrupt bargain had been struck. Jackson resigned his seat in the Senate, again, and went home to Tennessee. He was relieved to end his senatorial career, and his wife Rachel was much happier with him home. But his supporters were not done.

Back home in Tennessee, the Nashville Gazette was calling for Jackson to run in 1828, and Jackson began to envision a new era in politics, one where the will of the people would never again be undermined by the politicians in Washington. How did Birkenstocks go from a German cobbler's passion project 250 years ago to the Barbie movie today? Who created that bottle of red Sriracha with a green top that's permanently living in your fridge? Did you know that the Air Jordans were initially banned by the NBA? We'll explore all that and more in The Best Idea Yet, a brand new podcast from Wondery and T-Boy. This is Nick. This is Nick.

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In the presidential election of 1824, Andrew Jackson didn't campaign much on his own behalf, and he lost in a humiliating technical action of Congress. Returning home, he began actively planning for the next election. He would campaign as a proponent of democracy and a return to what he saw as the founding values of the United States. He promised majority rule and the right of people to act through the ballot box on both local and national decisions. By the end of 1825, the Tennessee legislature had nominated Jackson for president once again. And this time, Jackson found a new ally in Martin Van Buren,

a short New York senator with bushy sideburns. Van Buren pushed for expanded voting rights and the idea of popular nominating conventions, sharing with Jackson a notion that the voice of we the people had been muted. Known as the little magician for his adept organizing skills, Van Buren marshaled a growing coalition of voters behind Jackson, including farmers hurt in the Panic of 1819, Catholics facing religious discrimination, and many others who felt that their voices were silenced by the so-called corrupt bargain of 1824. The 1828 election was a watershed moment in American politics, changing the way campaigns were run. More states and more voters than ever before were participating. Van Buren served as fundraiser, strategist, and publicist, running a campaign

little short of brilliant. But the stakes were high, and it quickly became clear that, unlike in the previous election with four viable candidates, this would feature only two, a rematch between Jackson and Adams. The rhetoric grew nasty, and mudslinging reached a new level. Jackson's past, and that of his wife Rachel, would be used against him. Imagine it's the spring of 1828. It's evening in Philadelphia. You and an old friend are gathered at a political rally for John Quincy Adams. The presidential campaign has been hotly contested throughout the city and the country.

Hundreds of people have gathered, and the mood is raucous. The anti-Jackson sentiment in the crowd is high. Just this morning, the paper included a handbill with the title Some Account of the Bloody Deeds of General Jackson. The handbill depicted silhouettes of six black coffins representing the six militiamen Jackson had executed after the Battle of New Orleans. The crowd and Adams' party, the National Republicans, see Jackson as a despotic monster. They are rallying the city and others across the North against him.

People shout out profanities and epithets. A man climbs to the small stage erected at the front of the square. The speaker pitches his voice above the crowd to be heard. Fellow citizens, I was an eyewitness of all I am about to tell you, and of many incidents of the bloody and atrocious acts of General Jackson. Therefore, men, prepare yourselves for a tale that makes the hair stand on end and the stoutest heart sicken. The crowd roars its approval of this impassioned opening. As you cheer along, the speaker continues. Today, we offer an elegy for the dead. Webb, Lindsay, Harris, Lewis, Hunt, and Morrow. Those souls that Jackson has so viciously banished from this earth. Calls for justice ring out from the crowd. Here in

Philadelphia, Jackson is not a war hero. He's a criminal. You're about to comment to your friend that this all seems a bit much. The tone and the stories appear overblown. Then you notice that he's also shaking his fists, his face reddened by anger. Jackson deserves to be jailed for what he did. But do you think the stories about him are true? Everyone treated him like a hero after the war. Of course they're true.

Besides, haven't you heard the lies Jackson supporters are spreading about Adams? You shake your head. Your friend is clearly more caught up on political gossip than you are. They say that Adams pimped American girls to the Russian czar while he was a diplomat in Russia. Can you imagine? What a filthy lie. Of course it's a lie. These Democratic Republicans will spread any rumor to help Jackson's cause.

You're not sure how to respond. You don't like the way this campaign is going. Both sides are dragging the other through the muck and stooping to new lows to do it. Adams' supporters were increasingly worried that the election was slipping through their fingers. The general's popularity was too difficult to shake, so they sought to widen their fire. Jackson's wife, Rachel, had been married before to Louis Robards, a land speculator from Kentucky. Robards claimed that Jackson had married Rachel while she had still been married to him, accusing them of bigamy, and it was that fact that caused the divorce.

The Jacksons claimed that Robards had beaten Rachel, that the two had been living apart for months when she and Jackson met. But the attacks continued. Rachel was called an adulteress, sometimes even a whore, and Jackson a homewrecker. Papers, like the Commentator in Kentucky, took to using racialized insults, calling her a dirty black wench. The attacks angered Jackson, but he believed that the hit back would only expose Rachel to further insult,

who was already unwell. The insults and gossip took a tremendous toll on Rachel's health, and as the campaign wore on, she only grew sicker. Finally, voting in the presidential election began. Ohio and Pennsylvania went first on October 31st, and the other states followed, ending with North Carolina two weeks later. The results were overwhelmingly in Jackson's favor. Unsurprisingly, much of the East Coast, including New England, New Jersey, and Delaware, went for Adams, and the two candidates split New York and Maryland. But the rest of the country went for Jackson. Jackson received 647,000 popular votes compared to Adams' 508.

And this time, he would not be denied by the Electoral College. Jackson won there, too. 178 votes to 83. The Jacksonians, now calling themselves Democrats, also took both the House and Senate. Jackson felt vindicated, crowing that the election served as condemnation of his opponent's slander and as clear support for his new democratic cause. Rachel's health showed no sign of improving, but she wrote proudly to her friends about her husband's victory

and began preparing for their move to Washington. Then, on December 18th, disaster struck. Rachel was sitting across the room from Jackson when she suddenly felt an excruciating pain in the left shoulder, arm, and breast. She collapsed. For three days, she clung to life. Jackson was supposed to be on his way to Washington, but he could not leave her. On the fourth day, she died.

Jackson was devastated. He blamed her death on the stress of the election and vowed never to forgive those who had attacked her in the press. Privately, he agonized over her death, writing, Oh, how fluctuating are all earthly things. At the time I least expected it, and could least spare her, she was snatched from me. And I left here a solitary moment of grief without the least hope of happiness here below. Jackson's inauguration in March of 1829 was a bittersweet moment for him. To become the people's president was a triumph. To do it without Rachel was a tragedy. The election of Jackson was also a tragedy for many of the Washington establishment.

One remembered the day of the inauguration. No one who was at Washington at the time of General Jackson's inauguration is likely to forget that period to the day of his death. To us, who had witnessed the quiet and orderly period of the Adams administration, it seemed as if half the nation had rushed at once into the capital. It was like the inundation of the northern barbarians into Rome. The West and the South seemed to have precipitated themselves upon the North and overwhelmed it. Strange faces filled every public place, and every face seemed to bear defiance on its brow. The United States had just elected a man who had come from outside the New England elite and Virginian gentry, one who promised to put power back in the hands of the people.

But they had also elected a general, one who had shown little interest in doing things by the book, and with a track record of angry outbursts and brutality. The question was now, which Andrew Jackson would they get? From Wondery, this is episode two of The Age of Jackson from American History Tellers. On the next episode, Jackson faces both economic and political pressures as president, and there's a call in some southern states to leave the Union and form their own country, a Southern Confederacy. If you like American History Tellers,

you can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. American History Tellers is hosted, sound designed, and edited by me, Lindsey Graham, for Airship. Additional production assistance by Derek Behrens. This episode is written by Christine King King with research by Daniel Wallace. Produced by George Lavender.

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