They had not realized that he exercised total control over his emotions when it suited his purpose. They assumed he was a hotheaded frontiersman. They expected him to behave like Sam Houston, who sometimes appeared in Washington dressed in Indian clothes. They thought Jackson would show up carrying “a scalping knife in one hand and a tomahawk in the other, allways ready to knock down, and scalp any and every person who differed with me in opinion.” But he surprised them. Instead of a war-whooping savage as the new senator from Tennessee they “found a man of even temper, firm in his opinions
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