American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House

by Jon Meacham

Even God became an issue of contention as the congressional session went on, with Jackson and Henry Clay squaring off over church and state amid a plague. The trouble had begun in Quebec, when a ship arrived from Europe in June 1832. Forty-two of the passengers were dead or dying from cholera, a communicable illness spread through food and water and caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, which strikes the intestines, leading to diarrhea, vomiting, and, in the worst cases, death through dehydration. In two weeks the disease struck New York with such ferocity that the mayor canceled its Fourth of July parade; 2,565 people in the city ultimately died. From Philadelphia to Baltimore to Washington, west to Cincinnati and Chicago and south to New Orleans, the disease terrified the country. On June 27, 1832, Henry Clay proposed that Jackson declare a day of prayer and fasting to seek divine relief from the outbreak. The proposition was good politics—people in the afflicted states might be grateful, and religious believers who were undecided in the presidential race could see Clay’s initiative as evidence of a good soul who shared the essence of their faith. Yet as he had been when Ezra Stiles Ely made the case for the election of “Christian Rulers,” Jackson was reluctant to mix God and government so overtly.