Jackson’s First Inaugural, Explained

A soft-spoken inaugural, a roaring political realignment. We unpack Andrew Jackson’s first days as president to reveal how a short address helped usher in a long era of mass democracy, constitutional confrontation, and executive assertiveness. From the fallout of 1824’s House decision to the landslide of 1828, we connect the dots between electoral grievance, public mandate, and a presidency that promised restraint while preparing for high-stakes battles over federal power.

We walk through Jackson’s blueprint: execute the laws, honor constitutional limits, and defend the states without letting the Union fray. Then we dig into the policies that made the rhetoric real. Jackson centers fiscal frugality, ties civic virtue to balanced ledgers, and sets the stage for the only moment the United States carried no national debt. He nods to internal improvements but insists on constitutional footing, previewing clashes over roads, canals, and the national bank. Along the way, we examine the spoils system as Jackson framed it—rotation as democratic accountability—while weighing the costs of politicizing the civil service.

The most fraught line in the address promises just treatment of Native nations “consistent with the feelings of our people,” a phrase that exposes the chasm between humane posture and coercive policy. We explore the seeds of removal, the coming nullification crisis, and how Jackson’s appointments would echo into Dred Scott. Finally, we sit with the scene itself: Jackson, ill and grieving Rachel’s death, speaking almost inaudibly to a massive crowd—an image that captures the paradox of a restrained text and an expansive mandate. If you care about how the modern presidency took shape—where popular sovereignty meets constitutional guardrails—this conversation brings the past into sharp focus.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage: 1824–1828
• 4:31 The “Corrupt Bargain” And Its Fallout
• 9:06 Jackson’s Inaugural: Powers And Limits
• 13:16 Debt, Frugality, And Internal Improvements
• 17:26 Spoils System And Patronage

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:48

Welcome back to Civics in the Year. Today we're talking about Andrew Jackson and his first inaugural address with Dr. Bienberg. Andrew Jackson is a very interesting character. So, Dr. Bienberg, talking about the first inaugural address in 1829. What is happening in America when this document is written? And what problems was it trying to address? Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14

So Andrew Jackson is an interesting figure, as you said. And he's gone up and down in how he's been assessed in American history. So he was very, very and so that's been quite striking to see, particularly among even so, like I studied with a guy named Sean Walentz uh in grad school, who's considered a big Jacksonian guy, maybe leads me to be in some ways, in some ways, and I say qualifiedly more sympathetic to Jackson than on other things, even if I'm quite critical on others. But but Jackson's sort of historical reputation has really shifted a lot over time. But what what the context for this is the 1828 election most immediately, but you really can't talk about 28 without backing up to 24. So 24 is the election in which, again, it's only effectively one party at this point. So they're all internal caucus debates. And historically, what had happened had been, or at least a little while, is Congress had basically backed a candidate, and the last few had been the Secretary of State. So in 24, you get a little bit of a complication because Congress backs the Secretary of the Treasury, William Crawford, who is ailing at this point. And well, you also have John Quincy Adams, who's Secretary of State. So you have basically sort of two seeming, in one sense, kind of front runners. Not that much ideological difference among them. Crawford has more recently, in 1824, tried to invent himself as a more hard-line states-wrightser, but that had not been his earlier record. Adams, remember, had been a Federalist who switched to the Jeffersonian party relatively early. So he wasn't just like jumping ship when it was sinking. He actually is loses his Senate seat because he pisses off his fellow Federalists by endorsing uh some of Jefferson's policies in basically the war, like the lead up to the War of 1812. So he views himself as a moderate Jeffersonian who had never really been that comfortable with the Federalists. But lots of the old Jeffersonians still view him as like a traitor and you know a turncoat. So very famous. And Jackson is not really even planning. Jackson likes John Quincy Adams in 24. And Adams likes Jackson. In fact, Adams muses that he might want Jackson as his vice president. And Jackson sort of gets sucked into politics. And there's the the the re the details, the accounts get really detailed, and I won't bog you all down in that. But he doesn't seem like he's that really excited about running initially. And as the campaign goes on for various ways, he gets more and more invested. And he's also somebody who has like a deep, deep sense of like personal grievance and honor, which was something that we'll come back to. The short version, I could talk about that election forever, but we got to get to the 28 election before we then get to the inaugural address. The short version is Jackson ends up with the most popular votes and a plurality, but not a majority of electoral votes.

SPEAKER_00: 4:19

What's a pro plurality?

SPEAKER_01: 4:26

Okay. So he has, I think, 99 electoral votes. I think that I think Adams is next. I want to say like 84%, 85%. I don't know exactly what the number is, but he has a plurality, but you need a majority. And under the Constitution, if no one secures a majority of the electoral college votes, then and keep in mind some of the state legislatures are still directly appointing electors at this point. They're not all popular votes, popular elections. So Jackson is first, Adams is second, Clay is third, and there is sort of a really shady maneuver that uh Van Buren, who is for Crawford, Van Buren is basically maneuvering things uh in New York politics, but eventually sort of Clay gets over. He's not a Clay guy, but there's some sort of really shady stuff that he's trying to play around to get factional stuff. Anyway, very, very complicated. Sean Lentz's book, you can go into all these details of these. They had fun names like Barn Burners and Loco Focos and these really fun state factions. The anti-renters. Anyway, there's a whole bunch of them. But the short version is we have Jackson, Adams, and Clay that emerge as the top three vote getters. Clay is a member of Congress and in fact had been the speaker, right? So he has he's like beloved by Congress. But he and he effectively has his faction throw in with Adams, even though, as a personal matter, Adams and Jackson like each other better. And Clay hates Adams. But ideologically, and later scholars have vindicated this, like that's the rational move. You go with your second choice. But Jackson becomes convinced that there's this hideous evil bargain because then Clay becomes secretary of state, which is historically had been the most important position, right, after the president. So again, this all looks natural, like how, in some sense, things ought to play out that if Clay is number three in the thing, you know, Cliff Clay is involved here, he seemingly is and is important in the party. He's been the speaker. It's not unreasonable that he becomes secretary of state. But Jackson becomes convinced that basically he got cheated out of this. And he just goes back, he resigns his Senate seat. In fact, he's a senator at this point. He resigns his Senate seat to just go seeth. And one of the states, I think it's Tennessee, actually endorses him for president like five days later or 30 days later, or something like very, very quickly. So the the takeaway is Adams is president, Clay is serving in his cabinet, Jackson is just home seething. Basically, everybody knows 28 is going to be in some sense a replay of this. Adams is writing in his journal that he knows he's going to basically get stopped. Uh and he's, again, he he is not, he has a relatively high view of Jackson, again, quite strikingly compared to, you know, you'd think this sort of elitist New England, New England scholarly type, uh, would view Jackson as a dumb hick. But he actually respects him. But he knows he's gonna lose. And in fact, it plays out pretty much as you would expect. Van Buren has thrown in with Jackson as his avatar. John Calhoun, who had been earlier, again, sort of an Adams Clay guy, throws in with Jackson, uh, which ends up being a problem later when Jackson when A, Jackson realizes Calhoun had tried to stab him in the back when Jackson was a general, and B, previewing our nullification thing, he thinks he's a traitor and wants to hang him. So that's really high drama between our president and our vice president. But Jackson becomes president. And so he is issuing this inaugural address, effectively uh explaining that. Again, like many, like most of the inaugural addresses back then, it is mercifully short. You can sit down and read it in like 10 minutes. But I want to just point out a couple of the things that he he mentions in it. So one is that he says, he recognizes that the president, in theory, and this will come back up, he says, as it administering, he says, it is my job to execute the laws of the United States, to superintend their foreign and confederate relations, and so on. In administering the laws of Congress, I shall keep steadily in view the limitations as well as the extent of the executive power. Jackson will later, and some of these Jackson will end up vetoing, and we'll talk more about this, but uh in an when we talk about the banks and the Maysville, Jackson views and is within his prerogative to veto things on constitutional grounds, even if the Supreme Court has endorsed it. He doesn't view that as exceeding the powers of the executive, but Congress increasingly will. Jackson does view themselves, does basically does view himself as having a policy advocacy component to it, which the Constitution envisions. So it's not crazy for him to have this take. So in that, that sounds pretty orthodox, right? Like, look, I'll execute the laws recognizing the presidency has some legitimate powers, but also fundamentally is supposed to be sort of an administrative post. So he notes that he notes that he will be defensive of the rights of the separate states. He'll exercise a proper respect for the sovereign members of our union. And again, that's something that we'll talk about. Jackson has a very, I think, I think, very thoughtful view of that, which Clay will come around to in some ways as well, and against Calhoun. And then he says he will manage the public revenue and he spends a lot of time talking about that. I think it's probably the second longest paragraph, other than the one about the uh armies. And he he effectively says, like, we need to be strict and faithful and basically frugal. And Jackson, and this is something that I one of the things that I do appreciate about Jackson, Jackson pays off the national debt. He doesn't balance the budget in terms of national deficit and he pays it off for a year or certain less. He literally pays off the entirety of the United States debt through very aggressive fiscal means. I as somebody who is paying taxes and looks at a percent of our debt that's interest, I would not have been unhappy if president's 20, 30, 50, 80, pick whatever years ago had paid off national debt. So that's uh that's something that uh that Jackson manages to secure. He says that he will support internal improvements so far as they can be promoted by the constitutional acts of the federal government. And so he's sort of hedging his bets on what kinds of internal improvements he thinks are constitutional, going back to the session that we had recorded on uh Madison and Monroe on internal improvements. So he's trying to pitch himself as a moderate on that. And again, Jackson is not particularly, at least in the campaigns, ideological. He's sort of somebody that everybody can project their own views on. And then the two other things that I just want to briefly note that are in this document, uh, is he says he does have a squeamishness about uh what he has believes is basically become a group of parasites in DC that are political appointees. And so he says, like, we're gonna be more cautious about patronage. And so this is where you see the beginning of this, the idea of the spoil system of you know, we need to be willing to remove people who are sort of not in line with what the people have voted for. I mean, it's not just it's like we won, we pay out our people. Jackson understands it more of uh an elections have consequences, and you need to make sure that the people working for the federal government are consistent with what the people have voted for. And then uh I know what my colleague, I think probably have Aaron Kushner do it, talking about uh Indian relations. Jackson makes a nod to that and says, it's my sincere and constant desire to observe toward the Indian tribes within our limits a just and liberal policy and to give humane and considerate attention to their rights and wants, which is consistent with the habits of our government and the feelings of our people. So you can hear him sort of hedging on that, right? So we need to be just and fair to the Indians as consistent with the feelings of our people, which gives basically infinite wiggle room with which to implement some of the policies that I know Professor Kushner will talk about. So again, the inaugural address in and of itself is not any great stirring, scintillating thing, but what it represents is the election of Andrew Jackson, which more broadly represents the small D democratization of presidential elections. Again, Jackson does not take the view, as we talked about with Tocqueville, you know, Jackson doesn't take the view that the president can do whatever he wants, but he does take the view that the president is an avatar of the people, the people voting for in basically direct elections, rather than as sort of the founders that envision the president as a sort of boring technocrat that's selected by boring state leaders from across the country, right? So Jackson is repudiating that and saying, I represent the people. And that's a really striking innovation. And so that's something that, again, you don't see it so much in the text of the inaugural address itself. There's allusions to him as the choice of a free people. But Jackson's presidency is, I think, one of the most important in American history. And so this obviously is the sort of beginning of that.

SPEAKER_00: 14:03

Can I ask really quickly, is this because I know different inaugural addresses, some of them are spoken, some of them are just written. Was this one something that he spoke, or was it a written thing?

SPEAKER_01: 14:15

I don't know. I think it was spoken. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00: 14:18

Because I know that sometimes that just changes how we read things, how we understand things.

SPEAKER_01: 14:26

Yeah, I don't remember whether that one was I I my my assumption is it was spoken. Although perhaps not, because uh Jackson was Jackson by this point, I don't think had any teeth left. He was in bad physical shape. Jackson was in a appalling physical shape. And it's also worth noting that his wife, yeah, yeah, his wife had just died. His wife had just died, but also he'd been very sick for a while. He had to take all kinds of medicines because he had lots of bullets in him from all the duels that he'd been in. They used to joke that he rattled when he walked. Now, this doesn't stop him from this is a fun Jackson story, but somebody at one point tries to shoot him, assassinate him during his presidency, comes up with two loaded pistols, and like 10 feet away. So this this should be a fairly clean, not clean, but fairly and both of the pistols jam. Both of them jam. And Jackson is again such an honor, it's a with a hot temper. They're basically the people surrounding him have to pull Jackson off from beating the guy to death with his cane because Jackson is so so angry. But but yeah, Jackson is not in in very good, in very good health. So I I think I think it was spoken, but uh, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00: 15:37

I did look it up quick. It said it was spoken. However, the speech was nearly inaudible in the massive crowd, described by witnesses as almost silent due to his quiet delivery. Also, Dr. Beinberg talked about his wife had just died. That is like a whole nother podcast episode we could do about Rachel Jackson, but we do know that Andrew Jackson was absolutely devastated when Rachel passed. So we're getting off topic, which is not not something out of the ordinary for Liz and Sean, but and this will not be the last time we talk about Andrew Jackson. So I, you know, we're gonna talk about a lot of these inaugural addresses that presidents give, specifically Andrew Jackson's. Why does it still matter?

SPEAKER_01: 16:30

I'm not that convinced that it necessarily does, as a text itself. As I've said, I think the Jackson presidency is one of the most important ones. Lots of major constitutional debates. You know, we got federalism issues with the bank, we've got federal infrastructure, we have federalism issues with the nullification crisis, which I think is one of the like handful of most constitutionally politically important moments in American history. Jackson's appointment of Roger Tawney will have implications of both Roger Tawney and John McClain. So both the most fanatical of each position, like the most sort of opinionated of each position in the Dred Scott case, are both Jackson appointees. So the Jackson coalition is all over the place on slavery. It's worth emphasizing, even if Jackson himself is obviously in the slaveholding camp. But his people are all over the place because it's a national coalition. Indian removal, obviously, is a big deal, and the sort of broader understanding of the presidency. Again, Jackson's presidency is not Theodore Roosevelt's vision of the presidency, but it is very much not George Washington's either. So Jackson is, I think historians now underplay his importance. I understand, I understand why, I understand why some have dropped him in their esteem. And when we talk about the bank, I will be both praising some parts and deeply scathingly critical of others. But Jackson is, I think, certainly in terms of importance, I think probably a top five president. So certainly top ten, probably top five in terms of importance, whether you like him or dislike him. So how he gets into office and what he's envisioning, like it matters. But I I would not be pushing for the first inaugural address to be in and of itself a great text. Partly because I I don't remember whether Jackson wrote this one himself, but Jackson generally is somebody who relies very heavily on other people to do his writing for him. So Polk and Van Buren, later on at least Edward Livingston. So I'm I I don't remember whether he wrote I don't know whether he wrote this one uh or not, but it's not it's not scintillating political theory. It is basically like all right, I won, I won't be scary. And then whether you think he succeeds in that or not uh is a separate question.

SPEAKER_00: 18:49

But interesting. Okay, Dr. Beyenberg, thank you.