In Partial Defense of Andy Jackson

Protesters tried to take down the statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Park last night.

Jackson's reputation has suffered a great decline since his salad days.  Even as late as 2007 Iowa Democrats were holding Jefferson-Jackson day dinners, and Obama made the speech which was key to winning the primary in 2008.

Let me quote a paragraph from near the closing of the speech--why is Obama running?

Because I will never forget that the only reason that I’m standing here today is because somebody, somewhere stood up for me when it was risky. Stood up when it was hard. Stood up when it wasn’t popular. And because that somebody stood up, a few more stood up. And then a few thousand stood up. And then a few million stood up. And standing up, with courage and clear purpose, they somehow managed to change the world.

 Implicitly this ties back to his acknowledgement of the occasion near the beginning of the speech:

This party -- the party of Jefferson and Jackson, of Roosevelt and Kennedy -- has always made the biggest difference in the lives of the American people when we led, not by polls, but by principle; not by calculation, but by conviction; when we summoned the entire nation to a common purpose -- a higher purpose. And I run for the Presidency of the United States of America because that’s the party America needs us to be right now.

That's my partial defense of Andrew Jackson. According to the way I was taught, the progression of America has been from:

"all men are created equal" where the definition of "men" is implicitly:

•  white men owning property, 
• almost all white men (except felons and Native Americans?)
• almost all men (except felons and Native Americans?)
• almost all adults (except felons)

Jefferson represents the first step, Jackson the second step, Lincoln the third.

Yes, I know Jackson was a slaveowner, a mean man, a bigot. Worst of all, he's the embodiment of America's first original sin (first in my mind if not in popular usage)--its mistreatment of Native Americans.

I don't mind taking down statues of whomever, but it shouldn't cloud our view of history, with all its complexities.

[Updated:  the discussions of Jackson I've seen have focused on the Trail of Tears and his populism/democratic stands, as I did above.  What we all miss is his preservation of the Union, resisting Calhoun and South Carolina over the nullification issue.. Had Jackson allowed SC to prevail, the union might have dissolved.  Definitely the advantages over the South the North had in population and industry in 1860 which allowed it to prevailed in the Civil War were not there.]