From the start of his career, Andrew Jackson was a controversial figure. “Hot-tempered,” “Indian-hater,” “military despot,” said his critics, while his friends praised him as a forthright statesman. His contemporary biographer, the journalist James Parton, found him a man of many faces, an enigma. Others thought they understood his personality and policies: James Hamilton, a loyal Jacksonian congressman, recalled Jackson’s volatile temper. Henry Clay, his archrival, warned that Jackson’s quest for power threatened American republicanism, while wealthy New York Whig Philip Hone accused him of inciting class warfare. After talking with dozens of Americans, Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville offered a balanced interpretation of the man and his goals.

James Parton

Preface to The Life of Andrew Jackson (1860)

If any one … had asked what I had yet discovered respecting General Jackson, I might have answered thus: “Andrew Jackson, I am given to understand, was a patriot and a traitor. He was one of the greatest of generals, and wholly ignorant of the art of war. … The first of statesmen, he never devised, he never framed a measure. He was the most candid of men, and was capable of the profoundest dissimulation. A most law-defying, law-obeying citizen. A stickler for discipline, he never hesitated to disobey his superior. A democratic autocrat. An urbane savage. An atrocious saint.”

James Hamilton Jr.

Recalling an Event in 1827, as Jackson Campaigns for the Presidency

The steamer Pocahontas was chartered by citizens of New Orleans to convey the General and his party from Nashville to that city. She was fitted out in the most sumptuous manner. The party was General and Mrs. Jackson, … Governor Samuel Houston, Wm. B. Lewis, Robert Armstrong, and others. … The only freight was the General’s cotton-crop. …

In the course of the voyage an event occurred, which I repeat, as it is suggestive of [his] character. A steamer of greater speed than ours, going in the same direction, passed us, crossed our bow; then stopped and let us pass her and then passed us again in triumph. This was repeated again and again, until the General, being excited by the offensive course, ordered a rifle to be brought to him; hailed the pilot of the other steamer, and swore that if he did the same thing again he would shoot him.

Philip Hone

Ruminating in His Diary on the Jacksonians’ Victory in the New York Elections of 1834

I apprehend that Mr. Van Buren [Jackson’s vice president] and his friends have no permanent cause of triumph in their victory. They … have mounted a vicious horse, who, taking the bit in his mouth, will run away with [them]. … This battle had been fought upon the ground of the poor against the rich, and this unworthy prejudice, this dangerous delusion, has been encouraged by the leaders of the triumphant party, and fanned into a flame by the polluted breath of the hireling press in their employ. …

The cry of “Down with the aristocracy!” mingled with the shouts of victory. … They have succeeded in raising this dangerous spirit [of the mob], and have gladly availed themselves of its support to accomplish a temporary object; but can they allay it at pleasure? … Eighteen thousand men in New York have voted for the high-priest of the party whose professed design is to bring down the property, the talents, the industry, the steady habits of that class which constituted the real strength of the Commonwealth, to the common level of the idle, the worthless, and the unenlightened. Look to it, ye men of respectability in the Jackson party, are ye not afraid of the weapons ye have used in this warfare?

Henry Clay

Introducing a Senate Resolution Censuring Jackson, December 26, 1833

We are in the midst of a revolution, hitherto bloodless, but rapidly tending toward a total change of the pure republican character of the government, and to the concentration of all power in the hands of one man. The powers of Congress are paralyzed, except when exerted in conformity with his will, by frequent and an extraordinary exercise of the executive veto, not anticipated by the founders of our Constitution, and not practiced by any of the predecessors of the present chief magistrate. …

The judiciary has not been exempt from the prevailing rage for innovation. Decisions of the tribunals, deliberately pronounced, have been contemptuously disregarded. … Our Indian relations, coeval with the existence of the government, and recognized and established by numerous laws and treaties, have been subverted. … The system of protection of improvement lies crushed beneath the veto. The system of protection of American industry [will soon meet a similar fate]. … In a term of eight years, a little more than equal to that which was required to establish our liberties [as an independent republic between 1776 and 1783], the government will have been transformed into an elective monarchy — the worst of all forms of government.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Analysis of Jackson in Democracy in America (1835)

We have been told that General Jackson has won battles; that he is an energetic man, prone by nature and habit to the use of force, covetous of power and a despot by inclination.

All this may be true; but the inferences which have been drawn from these truths are very erroneous. It has been imagined that General Jackson is bent on establishing a dictatorship in America, introducing a military spirit, and giving a degree of influence to the central authority that cannot but be dangerous to provincial [state] liberties. …

Far from wishing to extend the Federal power, the President belongs to the party which is desirous of limiting that power to the clear and precise letter of the Constitution and which never puts a construction upon that act favorable to the government of the Union; far from standing forth as the champion of centralization, General Jackson is the agent of the state jealousies; and he was placed in his lofty station by the passions that are most opposed to the central government.

Sources: James Parton, The Life of Andrew Jackson. In Three Volumes (New York: Mason Brothers, 1860), vol. 1, vii–viii; Sean Wilentz, ed., Major Problems in the Early Republic, 1787–1848 (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1991), 374 (Hamilton) and 392–393 (Hone); Calvin Colton, ed., The Life … of Henry Clay, 6 vols. (New York: A. Barnes, 1857), 576–580; Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, abr. by Thomas Bender (New York: Modern Library, 1981), 271–273.