Jackson’s aggressive style, his frequent resorting to duels and street fights, his angry acts of personal and political retaliation seemed to fit what one Frenchman with Jacksonian sympathies described as the westerner’s “rude instinct of masculine liberty.” By this code, independence came from clearing the land of potential threats. The threat could come from Native Americans, rival squatters, political adversaries, or what the corn cracker in Davy Crockett’s Almanack of 1837 described as “eel-skin” easterners who used fancy words to get what they wanted. The cracker’s survivalist ethos
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