In Jackson’s crude lexicon, territorial disputes were to be settled by violent means, not by words alone. He explained his Indian policy as the right of “retaliatory vengeance” against “inhumane bloody barbarians.” In 1818, he was heralded in a laudatory biography as a kind of backcountry Moses, administering justice with biblical wrath. To those who protested his lack of regard for international law or constitutional details, defenders claimed that he was “too much a patriot in war, to suffer the scruples of a legal construction.”
That's terrifying. Both the action and that there were people willing to defend it. Something like this only good as long as it's not aimed at you, but a loose cannon always, eventually will be.
