American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House

by Jon Meacham

At Boston’s Faneuil Hall, Daniel Webster, the great Massachusetts senator, rallied to the president’s defense, denouncing South Carolina’s defiance in epic terms: “It is nothing more nor less than resistance by force—it is disunion by force—it is secession by force—it is Civil War!” The danger was real, for there was nothing foreordained about the future of American democracy in the Jackson years. The nation itself, dating from the Declaration of Independence, was barely half a century old. Now, as Jackson began his fifth year in the White House, the United States might collapse into fratricidal conflict, and foreign powers—always a threat—watched with anticipation. In a private letter in the winter of 1833, Richard Wellesley, the Marquis Wellesley and elder brother of the Duke of Wellington, hoped for “the dissolution of the American confederacy, which I think would be a great benefit to the civilized world.”