After being reelected, Jackson was invited to visit Harvard to receive an honorary doctorate of laws. John Quincy Adams, appalled, asked the president of Harvard if the offer could be withdrawn. “Why, no,” came the democratic reply. “As the people have twice decided this man knows enough to be their ruler, it is not for Harvard College to maintain that they are mistaken.”27 Adams did not attend the ceremony for Jackson, recording in his diary that he did not desire to witness Harvard’s “disgrace in conferring her highest literary honors upon a barbarian who could not write a sentence of
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