The burning of Washington spurred Americans’ determination to fight. Thousands of Americans volunteered for military service. The British backed off and decided to try an attack on America’s poorly defended Gulf coast. This British assault was to give America its greatest land victory of the war. It was also to bring to prominence an American hero – Andrew Jackson.
When the war of 1812 broke out, Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), who had already established himself as a tough frontiersman, was put in charge of an army of volunteers. In 1814, he decisively defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horsehoe Bend in the Mississippi Territory and drove the British away from Pensacolo, in Spanish West Florida, where they had attempted to establish a military base. When the British threatened to attack America’s Gulf coast, Jackson was ready.
It was Andrew Jackson’s experience, his dogged determination, and his command of respect from his men, who called him “Old Hickory,” that made him a formidable foe. Mass democracy would not have developed without a popular hero like Jackson.
As 1814 drew to a close, Jackson headed for New Orleans to defend it against the coming British fleet. His army of rag-tag but tough frontiersmen, along with a band of pirates led by the famous Frenchman Jean Laffite, took command of a point five miles below New Orleans with the Mississippi on one side and an impenetrable cypress swamp on the other. The British general, Sir Edward Pakenham made an all-out frontal attack. He assumed that the undisciplined army of volunteers, about 4,500 strong, would flee at the sight of his 5,300 highly-trained redcoats. Instead they stood their ground. Artillery fire felled many of the redcoats before they got close to Jackson’s troops. Led by Jackson, his men devastated the British forces. Within half an hour, some 2,100 British soldiers lay dead or wounded. Pakenhan himself died in the battle. A surviving British officer called a retreat and the British withdrew.
Ironically, the Battle of New Orleans, America’s most heroic battle of the war, was fought in vain. On the day before Christmas, while Jackson was erecting his battlement, a peace treaty had been signed in Europe, but the word had not yet reached America. The Battle of New Orleans did much to boost American morale, and it made a hero of Andrew Jackson, but it did not affect the outcome of the war.
Andrew Jackson was one of the strongest and most forceful Presidents in American history. His basic instincts were for the good of the nation as a whole. He opposed the gaining of private advantage from public office. He realized more than many men of his day the dangers that could result from the national government attempting to help the states and private individuals.
His rugged and individualistic frontier character, combined with his long years of military experience, contributed to his determination in carrying out his purposes. He attempted to run the national government like a military organization and looked upon himself as the commanding general. He was willing to listen to advice, but once he made up his mind, he was unrelenting in pursuing a plan. He was seldom willing to compromise on major or minor issues. He was known for his stubbornness, rash action, and occasional tirades of anger. He was capable of making severe threats against his enemies.
Michael Feldberg’s The Turbulent Era is a historical exploration of the nature and consequences of riot and disorder in Jacksonian America, the three-decade, pre-civil war period from 1830 to the end of the 1850’s that loosely coincided with the term of Andrew Jackson as US president. The author, reflecting on the riot incidents in Philadelphia during that time, sought to understand the underlying social, political and psychological dynamics that gave rise to the riots, as well as to understand the long-term consequences and effects of those riots on the country’s social and political life. He stated his analysis method for achieving that goal as:
The historical significance of rioting in a given period should not be measured solely by its frequency or intensity… but should be judged in the broader social and political contexts as well; it must be seen as one of several forms of interaction that can occur among groups or between groups and their government. We must look at the functions Jacksonian riots served, the kinds of groups that employed it, and the success of those groups in using violence to attain their goals (Feldberg 6).
After broadly stating his goal and methods, the book proceeds to examine the Philadelphia Native Americans Riots of 1844, and compares and contrasts the Kensington and Southwark episodes that comprise it. From analyzing these two episodes he is able to come up with different categories of riots which he calls political collective riots, so-called because they were initiated by conservative Protestant nativists against specific political groups: blacks, abolitionists, Catholics, Irish. From here he comes up with two other categories of riots–expressive riots, and recreational riots (Feldberg 6, 24-83). He then goes on to trace the sources of the riots to racial and ethnic tensions, rapid urbanization and population changes, economic and technological innovation, and the failure of government to suppress the riots (Feldberg 7, 84-103). A discussion of the response and consequences of the riots to civil are discussed, before situating the riots in the period in general in the context of the violence in other periods – the Civil War and the riots of the 1960’s. The conclusion is that although the riots in this period are tamer, they are unique in their great frequency and relative effectiveness. Finally, the author points to the riots in this period as being responsible for the formation and institutionalization of professional urban police forces throughout the country. The author notes that the riots petered out at the end of the 1860’s for two main reasons: more professional urban police forces were able to stem the riot tides, and that warring factions eventually channeled their energies to competing for public offices where they are better able to control how the city is run.
The author assumed that the riot incidents in Philadelphia as a microcosm of the riot situation in America as a whole. After analyzing the Philadelphia riots, he projected his conclusions to the rest of America, and presumed that his conclusions were universal. In explaining why he chose Philadelphia, he simply mentioned that his research led him to be intimately familiar with the historical facts and the political and social circumstances of the riots in the place. While this has some merit, the book may benefit from a study of riots in other cities during the same time period, for its universal conclusions to have greater weight. Are the social and political circumstances that led to the riots in Philadelphia the same as in other cities such as New York? Are the differences between the circumstances among the different cities significant enough to warrant a more comprehensive and exhaustive study of those differences and how they affect the author’s conclusions? Will expanding the areas of study yield new and contradictory insights?
The chapters on the Kensington and Southwark riots rate well in its use of relevant facts to portray the warring political, religious, and government forces that gave rise to them. In the Kensington episode, we come to understand that the riot was the inevitable consequence of years of mutual suspicion and distrust between Protestants and Catholics. The issue of what bible to use in the schools can be seen as the spark that finally lit brewing violent sentiments. We see the militancy of the nativists as a reflection of their fear that their way of life is being eroded on all sides by Catholics who are out to consolidate and grab political power at their expense. We see the formation of the nativist groups and the Republican Party as a natural result of that fear gestating, not overnight, but over the course of a decade. On a critical note, the taxonomy of riots presented by the author seems forced and unnecessary. If Catholics are treated as an alien political faction in the same category as the abolitionists, the blacks, and the Irish, then the Kensington and Southwark riots differ only in the size of the warring factions, while the underlying dynamic of nativists reacting in fear of foreign encroachment remains the same. Viewed in this light, because of the relatively superficial treatment of a taxonomy that is not very relevant to its stated goal and methods at the beginning, the book suffers from lack of depth in those areas that it did intend to investigate. That the author concludes mainly that the riots are different from riots in other periods only in their frequency and effectiveness belies its stated broader goals.
Ironically, Jackson was convinced that his almost tyrannical rule (opponents’ cartoons depicted him as King Andrew) was consistent with his democratic principles. Although he was rash and stubborn, and his lack of political and economic knowledge sometimes created problems, his integrity and courage were seldom questioned. Even many of his enemies had to admit respect for him. His strong leadership helped to make the Presidency a much more powerful office than it had been before.
Jackson is best remembered for introducing the spoils system into federal politics. When he was inaugurated, his political supporters thronged Washington, looking for appointments to government positions. Never before had a President been so beset with office seekers. In addition, the fact that many employees had held their positions for many years conflicted with the spirit of Jacksonian politics. Jackson and his followers believed that most federal jobs were simple enough that any ordinary person could quickly learn to do them.
Works Cited
Feldberg, Michael. The Turbulent Era: Riot and Disorder in Jacksonian America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Lowman, Michael. United States History, A Beka Book Publications. Florida
