Jackson as a frontiersman is too simplistic. He believes that jacksons upgrading upbringing in the south is more in line with an elite southern gentleman. This 50 Minute Program was hosted by the library of congress. Professor cheathem thank you. My name is jeff flanery, i would like to welcome you to the library of congress. The menu for the the Manuscript Library is related to American History and culture. Among our collection of personal papers of 23 u. S. President s and numerous other wellknown americans including such notables as Walt Whitman Orville and wilbur wright, carl sagan, and civil rights icon rosa parks. 170 years after his death Andrew Jackson still dominates the. Between the onslaught of the slavery crisis that overran midcentury america. One could mark the expansion of democracy, trace the development of modern political parties, and witness a wave of political partisanship that would not look unfamiliar to modern already and says. Modern audiences. The librarys manuscript division. It is here that the collection and personal papers of the nations leading figure shed light on the motivations strategies, hopes, and ambitions very the division not only host the most significant collection of papers for jackson himself but also includes those of many of his associates and rivals. Martin van buren, henry clay it Daniel Webster and pulled to name a few. The primary source collections are amply complemented by the librarys vast collections of. Newspapers, pamphlets, maps, and books. Researchers studying the age of jackson would be a standard by the wealth of material available here at the library of congress commerce. We have one of the finest Young Scholars in the field of jacksonian studies. Dr. Mark cheathem is that native of cleveland, tennessee and earned his ba in history from Cumberland University. His phd was earned from Mississippi State university. Marcotte at Mississippi University for women, this is City State University before returning in 20 oh eight to his undergraduate alma mater where he is a professor of history and History Program director. I can readily attest that during his many visits to the library over the years, mark has proven to be a determined researcher whose devotion to pursuing documentation in the era is second to none. Dr. Cheathem is the author or editor of five books including Andrew Jackson and the rise of the democrats. He has concluded a new book. He is here today to speak about Andrew Jackson, southerner which one the 2013 book award from tennessee. Please welcome dr. Mark cheathem. [laughter] [applause] professor cheathem thank you for that introduction and thank you for coming out. I know it is lunchtime. I am accustomed to that. I teach students. When you teach them in the morning, they are still recovering from breakfast. If you teach them right before lunch, they are hungry. If you fall asleep, it will not bother me. Hopefully you will not. I consider it a privilege to speak here. I was telling my wife before i came that this will probably be the height of my professional speaking career. I really do appreciate the opportunity. I am going to talk about Andrew Jackson as a southerner today but before i do that i want to give you some background about how i came to study Andrew Jackson. It is important for listeners to understand where someone is coming from. When i was an undergraduate at Cumberland University which is about 30 miles east of nashville, i hadnt undergraduate professor i had an undergraduate professor who told me when i was entering my senior year, mark, you need to work at the hermitage. He was a check he was a jackson expert. I trusted him and i worked there for a summer. He did not tell me i had to dress in. Cost you. I will be honest with you. Dressing in period costume which involves multiple layers was not exactly the most pleasant thing. It was certainly not the coolest thing. As a young 21yearold college didnt. In any case, that is where i became enamored with Andrew Jackson. I gave the tours and learned about him and learned about his family. Coming to realize that this was a man who is very instrumental in American History. I wrote my dissertation on one of his nephews. Andrew jackson donelson who was a prominent diplomat. He ran for the vice presidency in 1856. When i finished that book, i was looking for a new topic. My graduate mentor who has worked on William Tecumseh sherman and is now the editor of the grant papers he threw out some ideas and suggested i tackle jackson. Little did i know that a guy named john meacham was working on a biography that would win a pulitzer prize. If i had known that, i probably would not have started down this path. I did not know and so i did. Andrew jackson, southerner came out in 2013. It has been a mild success, i guess you could say in some terms. Let me give you the premise of the book and then i will talk about some of the aspects that led me to interpret jackson as a southerner. I cant go into everything but during the q and a afterwards i can tell i can talk to you more about this. Historians have looked at jackson in a number of different ways. One of the ways, one of the most significant ways they have looked at him is as a westerner. They looked at his progress from the carolinas to nashville, tennessee which was considered the west in the late 1700s. They see jackson almost as an early form of a cowboy. He waltzed into town. If you have ever seen the trial the Charleston Heston uvc, that is kind of how he comes across in the movies as a roughhewn cowboy who is there to win rachels heart. Historians have treated jackson that way to some extent. One historian treated him that way. If you look at where he came from, if you look at when he arrived in nashville and what he did when he was there, it seems fairly clear that that was the west but jackson is not a westerner per se. He has western characteristics and he considered himself a westerner. He is also a southerner. His life exudes that identity. I want to walk you through some of those characteristics of jacksons southern identity. In case you dont know, Andrew Jackson was born on march 15, 1767 along the North CarolinaSouth Carolina border. This is an area that if you are familiar where charlotte is, it is about 70 miles east of charlotte. There is some dispute about whether jackson was born in North Carolina or South Carolina because his family and then his relatives lived all along the border. Jackson believed he was born in South Carolina. That is what he always said. Regardless, this area was the back country. This was frontier area. It was an area that had been occupied by native americans. White settlers had moved from the east coast into the area and pushed out the natives living there and had established a small settlement. Jacksons periods moved from ireland jacksons parents moved from ireland about two years before he was born. He had two older brothers. His parents were not well off. He had two uncles living in the area who were. I mean that they owned a substantial amount of land and they owned slaves. Slave property was an investment , a capital investment. For you to invest in one slave or more was an indication that you had some kind of money. Even though this was back country, and a frontier, the region was connected to charleston. If you know anything about charleston, you know that it was a port city that connected to not just the rest of the colonies, but was connected to the transatlantic world. It was connected to europe africa, and the caribbean. I make that point because it is important to understand that the region was where people moved back and forth from the region to charleston. News and product travel back and forth. To think about this community as being isolated and backwards really does not give a good testament to actually how connected it was to charleston. That is important to understand because jackson is attuned to what is happening in trials did. During the revolution, jackson loses most of his family. His father dies around the time he is born in 1767. He loses an older brother during a battle in the revolutionary war. His mother and other brother died because of disease from prison camps during the revolution. By the time jackson is an early adolescent he doesnt have any immediate family. He is and, uncles, and cousins. He decides to leave the region and go to charleston and try to make it there. When we are thinking about jackson during the early part of his life through his early adolescent years, the thing to understand about him is that he is not oriented westward. He is looking towards houston. He is oriented towards the coast. Once he is there, he doesnt stay there long. He is involved in some gambling disputes. He leaves charleston and moves north to charlotte, North Carolina. That is where he begins to change his life. He falls in with a group of young men who were very well connected locally, statewide, and nationally with prominent political leaders. Many of them were sons of these political leaders. He probably falls in with this group through drinking and gambling but then he decides that he wants to become a lawyer because he had noticed that entering the Legal Profession was one way for you to move upward in the world. Jackson studies for the law and becomes a lawyer. As a result of his connections with these other young men he is given the opportunity to move to nashville. That had been settled in the late 1770s and early 1780s. It was about a decade old at that point. By the time jackson makes it to nashville, he is a 21yearold lawyer. And that is a significant difference, if you think about where we are in our development at 21 years of age. I teach primarily 18 to 21yearold students. 21 is not quite as mature as they think it is or as i thought it was but it is certainly not the same as someone who is 14. Even 200 years ago. The reason i am emphasizing this is because it is important to understand that while we change and mature as we get older, at the time you are 21 years old you have a pretty firm sense of who you are and who and your personality and the direction in life you are going. And that is jackson when he arrives in nashville. On his way to nashville, jackson gets involved in a dispute. If you know anything about jackson, you probably know that he gets into these disputes periodically. Speaking of personality, he has a very temperamental personality. Violent even at times. Jackson, on his way to nashville, stops in jonesboro, tennessee near knoxville. He has to stop there because there are native american attacks between knoxville and nashville. They spend a few months there. He needs to make money so he practices law. He gets involved in a dispute with another lawyer. Avery was princeton educated and very prominent. The point of the dispute is not clear. There was a court case, avery and jackson were on opposite sides. Avery said something that insulted jackson so jackson wrote him a letter and challenged him to a duel. The two men actually do go out to the dueling grounds. And settle things and move on. Let me explain something about dueling. Dueling is something that, as we get closer to the civil war, is associated very closely with southern men. And with elite, white, southern men. Certainly among the upper class. Jackson issued this challenge which said that he believed that he was a member of the elite upperclass. Avery accepted the challenge which indicated his believe that jackson was of the elite, upperclass. Why is that important . Dueling was something that only occurred among elite, white, southern men. You do not have slaves women middleclass the lower classes engaged in dueling. You certainly dont see tools happening between men of unequal right. Unequal social rank. Jackson issued the challenge and avery if avery did not think he was on the same rank with him, he would have beaten jackson with a cane or a wet. That was the risk that would be the response if you felt someone was not at the same social rank. The point of dueling was not to kill each other despite the cartoon imagery. The point of dueling, most of the time, was to protect your public reputation. And it turned that was used at that point was honored. How people perceive you. Particularly how men of your same social rank perceive you. While there are some instances where men fought duels to kill each other, most of the time they fought to go out, face the opponent and you have to be willing to face death. In doing so, you preserve your reputation. You show the people that you are a man, and youre willing to die for that sentiment. Jackson and avery fight this dual. They fire into the air and go about their business. Things are settled. You may think that is a failure but it is not. Jackson has just proven to other people in his party traveling with him, to people in jonesboro that he is accepted as one of their own. Jackson, throughout the course of his life, will get involved in other duels. Not as many as you read on the internet. I have seen some websites say that jackson fought hundreds of tools or dozens. He fought to in half. He fought the one with avery. He has an encounter with another that was supposed to be a duel what but but wasnt a duel. In 1806, he fights a duel with Charles Dickinson and killed him. That is the only time that jackson killed anyone in a duel. Dont believe everything you read on the internet. Jackson would get involved in other violent encounters. There is a man who insults him. Jackson take so with to him. That takes a whip to him. He has these other encounters throughout his life. Violence is one of those things, not just solely characteristic of southerners, but when you pair it with honor and where jackson is coming from, to me it indicates that jackson has a southern identity at this point. Your eyes glazed over just as my students do. We are not going to go through every person on here. I will use this as an illustration of something. One of the key characteristics of southern life in this. And of jacksons life was the characteristic of kinship. There are different kinds of kinship. Billingsley has written extensively about this. Lori glover has also written extensively about this. There are three types of kinship. You have a luncheon, people who are related to you genetically. You have marital kin, people who marry into your family or his family you marry into. And then there is a third type of kinship called fictive kinship. This type of kinship is the type in which you are not related genetically or even merrily to someone, but you still consider them family. I will give you an illustration. We have three children. Our two oldest are girls. When they were younger, there was a woman we knew who was like their grandmother. The girls called her grammy. She spoiled them. Like grandparents tend to do. More sugar. And then sends them home. You know how that goes. This woman was not related to us in any way, but she was a member of our fictive and ship. She believed that we were family and we believed that she was family. I would venture to say that most people in this room probably have Something Like that or have had Something Like that in their lives. When you look at kinship in jacksons life, his blood ken his immediate family was dead. His extended genetic family, he really doesnt have anything to do with once he leaves that region. Later in life, some extended relatives right him but that is the extent of it. What becomes important for jackson are the marital kinship ties and the fictive kinship ties. Let me talk about the marital kinship ties first. When jackson moves to nashville he barely he very soon after falls in love with a one and named rachel donelson. She was the daughter of one of the cofounders of nashville. John donelson had come from virginia. He was a prominent wealthy man from virginia. He had taken his family to nashville. He had died by this point. Jackson moves to nashville falls in love with rachel donnelson. There is a slight problem. Rachel is married. Eventually, her husband laser probably in part because of jackson. Andrew and rachel traveled to stand up spanish naxos. They come back and say they are married. It just a couple years later, it turns out that rachel had not divorced her first husband. There is a lot of controversy about this. By 1794, they are legally married. If you think about jackson as someone who is not a member of the elite class, because donelson was a leak. If he is not a member of the elite class, why would rachel donelsons brothers have accepted him given all of the questionable circumstances. If you have a young man come into your family, he starts to take up emotionally or physically with your married sister brothers have away in the south of handling that. The donelson brothers do not. They do not reject jackson. They dont throw him out of town or take him out. They accept his and rachels version of their relationship. Part of the reason i think they are able to do that and are willing to do that is because ac jackson they see jackson on an equal social rank with them. Someone who is a much better choice for rachel and her first husband. Again, there are a lot of circumstances there. Part of jacksons success is that he moved to nashville coming from his connections with the donelsons. There are many donelsons. When i do genealogy, you have to wade through a lot of Andrew Jacksons and donelsons. It is very confusing. You have this donelson Family Network in nashville that helps jackson find legal cases to prosecute, jobs, helps him to speculate in land. The donelsons are very key to him advancing in tennessee. In terms of his political career, jackson depends not just on those family connections, but he also depends on this fictive connections. People he considers family. There are a couple of men who are part of a fictive Ki