The Mass Murderer on Your $20

So we’re in late February, which means it’s the season for local Jefferson-Jackson Days, when local Democratic Parties hold potlucks to raise money and get people pumped for Get Out the Vote drives. It’s also shortly after President’s Day, which is, for me, always a day spent reminiscing about random presidential trivia and tweeting unpopular opinions.

And for once one of those unpopular opinions caught the attention of an editor and now I’m writing about how the “Jackson” in Jefferson-Jackson Day is an abomination. Indeed, I want to grab my fellow Democrats who say stupid, historically ignorant things about how George W. Bush was “the worst President ever” by the lapels and shove them at Andrew Jackson’s Wikipedia entry, rubbing their nose in it until they understand what they did.

I see nothing in Articles 1 or 4 that restricts unilateral secession.

As I said, Article I and Article IV give Congress the power to admit new states and approve any change in their status - by splitting, combining, or any change in their territory - once they have been admitted. Implied in that is the power to approve any change at all, including leaving.

I can only understand State Sovereignty in the context of voluntary membership in the union.

You say it's voluntary, yet a state is admitted only with the permission of the other states. No other party really has a say in the matter; not the president or the courts or even the people of the territory itself. So membership is not voluntary, it is granted. Since a new state has to have permission to join why is it so hard to accept it needs permission to leave as well?

If I am wrong I will admit it if you show me factual rebuttal.

Saying the attack on Fort Sumter was a defensive measure is complete nonsense. The fort posed no threat to the people of Charleston. It had taken no aggressive actions. It had not interfered with a single ship entering or leaving. It had done nothing to prompt a defensive measure. On the contrary, the South tried to starve it into surrender. The South fired on ships entering the harbor on more than one occasion. The South was making unreasonable demands. It was the South who was the aggressor and not the North.

Where territory or other property within the states boarders had been ceded to the Federal government by the state for its use it could be assumed that that territory or other property would revert to the state upon that state leaving the union.

Based on what rule of law or what clause of the Constitution?

This only makes sense because to assume otherwise would be to have an outpost potentially hostile foreign entity within your boarders.

One of the many reasons why a negotiated separation would be preferable to unilateral secession. It would give both sides a chance to deal with any issues of potential disagreement before parting. But a peaceful separation was not what the South wanted apparently.

Ha! The irony of such a passionate leftist rant ending up advocating putting Reagan on the $20 bill is too rich to ignore.

Chu is a jerk and I don't agree with him about taking Jackson off the $20, but in spite of himself he does suggest a valid point -- for all the talk about "tyrant Abe" other presidents, sometimes Southerners, sometimes libertarian heroes, pulled some pretty rotten stuff with much less justification. Antebellum America wasn't the libertarian paradise it's sometimes made out to be.

I do wonder, though, if we are supposed to apologize for every sin of the past, doesn't that mean that we can't escape those sins, and might as well keep Jackson, Jefferson, and the others on our money? If after 100 years and all the struggles, this is still an issue, apologies, etc. won't make it go away.

A couple of years back there was a u-toob video that showed hippies going full-retard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0hFSktb0jk

Warning: the video is about four minutes long but anything over 30 seconds will cause permanent brain damage.

The turgid gaseous emanations by Mr. Chu sparked this resonant memory of the hippies because each in their own phony and pretentious way try so hard toward relevance of things that are totally irrelevant. Instead of lamenting the loss of trees that have been cut why not celebrate and protect trees that still exist? They’re not making any difference about things that are, only whining about things that are no longer. Likewise Chu doesn’t appear to have anything positive to say about anyone but rather only suggests changing the inclusion of the president from Jackson to Reagan because, in his perverse thinking, he believes that it would be some sort of “living insult” to Reagan’s memory.

Leftists - what are you gonna do with them? You can’t reason with them and you can’t kill them (yet). ;’)

tanknetter: "All discussion about the merits of Jackson aside..."

Well... before we get too far off-topic, it's worth noting some things about Andrew Jackson:

Born in the Carolinas, served in the Revolutionary War, lived in Tennessee, an 1812 war hero and slave owner, dismantled the Federal Reserve's predecessor, paid off the national debt -- so what's not to like?
You'd think Democrat President Jackson would be lionized by our pro-Confederates, but no, they loathe and despise him almost as much as that Black Republican, "Ape" Lincoln.
Why?
Because, like most Founding Fathers, Jackson was a patriot first, with little tolerance for "states rights" or "nullification", or the constant whining and complaining from South Carolina about tariffs:
Even "Ape" Lincoln never spoke so abruptly to the Deep South's great slaveocracy.
Virtually everybody will tell you -- even our own highly respected scholars here -- that Jackson founded the modern Democrat party.
But it's not true, Jackson only re-founded the Slave-Power party first created by Thomas Jefferson under the name "Democratic Republicans", in opposition to the Northern Federalist party of John Adams.
But Jefferson's young protégé, John Quincy Adams, joined Jefferson's party, and the old Federalists collapsed after the Hartford Convention, leaving the US with just one party -- Jefferson's.
Andrew Jackson merely reestablished the split between northern & southern political alliances, renaming the mostly southern party "Democrats".
Point is: Jackson was one of the last of the great pre-war Southern patriot presidents -- one-term Polk was the last.

Bottom line: as the only president who ever paid off the national debt, Jackson deserves his richly ironic place on our $20 bill, ironic because Jackson opposed a national bank.
And, as the last of the Founders who clearly understood and confronted just what "nullification" and "states rights" amounted to, he deserves the same place in our hearts as "Ape" Lincoln's Black Republicans.

Jackson is rightly condemned for his actions relocating Indians west of the Mississippi -- the "Trail of Tears" -- but we might remember that rounding up & transporting masses of people is not so unusual for Democrat presidents -- Wilson in WWI, and especially FDR rounding up Japanese civilians in WWII come to mind.
It's just one of those "things" Democrats like to do.

Interesting question. I had previously done some research based on BroJoeK's post of that picture and here's a bit of what I found:

Here's a quick history of rail-line development in the United States:

http://railroad.lindahall.org/essays/rails-guage.html

This link is a dry read PDF file but has more raw data:

https://campus.fsu.edu/bbcswebdav/xid-3430397_1

The bottom line is that the industry evolved, both north and south, starting with serving local interests and eventually recognizing the desirability of standardization for economic reasons, and all apparently done without federal interference.

Perhaps more specific to the decision point in the south, here is a quote from wackypedia:

In 1886, the southern railroads agreed to coordinate changing gauge on all their tracks. After considerable debate and planning, most of the southern rail network was converted from 5 ft (1,524 mm) gauge to 4 ft 9 in (1,448 mm) gauge, then the standard of the Pennsylvania Railroad, over two remarkable days beginning on Monday, May 31, 1886. Over a period of 36 hours, tens of thousands of workers pulled the spikes from the west rail of all the broad gauge lines in the South, moved them 3 in (76 mm) east and spiked them back in place. The new gauge was close enough that standard gauge equipment could run on it without problem. By June 1886, all major railroads in North America were using approximately the same gauge. The final conversion to true standard gauge took place gradually as track was maintained.[1] Now, the only broad-gauge rail systems in the United States are some city transit systems.

Andrew Jackson merely reestablished the split between northern & southern political alliances, renaming the mostly southern party "Democrats".

It's true that the Democratic-Republican Party split into pro-Jackson and anti-Jackson factions, after a while formalized as the Democratic and Whig parties.

But they weren't initially particularly regional in nature. Both parties were well-represented in all sections till at least 1850.

The demise of the Whig Party, unable to navigate the shoals of slavery politics, was one of the first harbingers of disunion. The last was the split of the Democratic Party in 1860 into three factions, each of which ran a candidate for president.

1010RD: "At what point in time and by what cause were all the gauges in the US standardized?"

Yes, much is often made of the South's various gauged railroad tracks, suggesting this was a major problem for them.
But, as I read the map, that wasn't necessarily so.

I see only two major gauges -- 4' 8-1/2" plus 5', and I see where major Confederate cities were connected to both, i.e., Richmond, Petersburg, Norfolk & Wilmington.
So it appears that once freight was loaded on a particular gauge line, it could run hundreds of miles before having to change gauges:

Wilmington to Richmond = 260 miles on 4' 8-1/2" gauge.
Norfolk to New Orleans = 1,100 miles on 5' gauge.
Savannah to Memphis = 630 miles on 5' gauge.

So, I don't see Southern railroad gauges as a major limiting factor.
What I do see are many other railroad issues, including:

In 1860 many railroads did not go all the way through cities.
It meant that rail-cars had to be unloaded at one end of town, transported across by horse-drawn wagons, and a new train reloaded on the other end of town.
This made the particular gauges of each rail line somewhat irrelevant -- freight had to be off-loaded & reloaded anyway.
It was most particularly a problem in Baltimore, leading to both political embarrassment for incoming President Lincoln, and the first actual deaths of the war.
During the war, it would cause on-going delays in transporting men & supplies to the front.
Rail and rolling stock maintenance. Especially after the loss of Cumberland Iron Works, near Nashville, the Confederacy never had enough iron to keep things running effectively.
Union Army depredations of rail, bridges, engines & rolling stock grew greater with each passing year.

In short, while the Confederate rail system was not as extensive as the Union's, they had enough rail, if it could be maintained, to serve their purposes.
And, to my original point: Confederate blockade-running ships could therefore land at any of more than a dozen different ports, communicate via telegraph, and then transport their wares by rail to anywhere else in the Confederacy.
And that would render the operations (or non-operations) of any one port (i.e., Charleston, SC) somewhat irrelevant.

Sherman Logan: "But they weren't initially particularly regional in nature.
Both parties were well-represented in all sections till at least 1850."

We've had this conversation before, so again I invite you to review every presidential election, beginning in 1796.
Once you're there, it's relatively easy to flip through them -- 1800, 1804, 1808, etc., etc.

What you'll notice is that the South always voted, nearly unanimously for the current version of Jefferson's Slave-Power Democrats -- unanimous except when:

More than one slave-owner was running for President, for example, in 1832 all three candidates were Southerners, and then, yes, the South split its votes.
However, most still went for the Democrat, in this case, Andrew Jackson.
Similar results in 1844.
The Democrat is a northerner and there are Southerners running against, i.e., in 1836 New York Democrat Van Buren defeated four different Whig candidates, two from the South, which caused the South to split its vote.
Similar results in 1848.
There was no Southerner on the ballot, i.e., 1840 New York Democrat Van Buren split the Southern vote with Ohio Whig Harrison, who won.

Likewise, northern states usually supported the northern Federalist - Whig - Republican candidate, though not nearly as consistently.
If there was a Northerner on the ballot, New Englanders nearly always voted for him.
However, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, etc. often voted Democrat, even if the Federalist-Whig-Republican was a Northerner.
For an example, consider 1852.

Point is: yes, the Southern vote could be split, but not when they were given the choice of a Democrat Southerner versus a non-Democrat Northerner.
By contrast, the Northern vote, especially outside New England, often supported Southern Democrat candidates versus Northern non-Democrats.

These were the much-disparaged "Dough-faced" Northerners, who were willing to kiss-b*tt of the Southern Slave-Power in exchange for:

Preserving the Union
being part of the majority Democrat party.

1828 -- Jackson (blue) versus JQ Adams (yellow):

Thanks for the interesting reply.

But, sorry, I don’t buy it. The Democratic Party in the prewar years was dominated by southern pols, not particularly surprising since the nation as a whole was so dominated. Just look at the statistics for presidents, supreme court justices, cabinet members and military officers.

But the DP was not Servant of the South or of Slavery. It was a loose alliance of a bunch of state parties.

Yes, the Democrats were not as group particularly hostile to slavery. Again, this is not surprising. For most of this period neither was the nation, even in most of the North.

In fact, there WAS no North vs. South split in a political sense until southerners overreached themselves in 1850. For the previous 50 years the regional split had been North(east) vs. South vs. West.

And the split was not entirely slave vs. free. MO, TN and KY were generally considered Western, not Southern states.

It wasn’t until the Compromise of 1850, the Dred Scott decision, the Kansas-Nebraska Act and Bleeding Kansas that the country split decisively on slave vs. free lines.

In fact, the decade of the 1850s were one of the most interesting and bizarre periods in American history, with several third-party groups popping up, some not at all oriented towards the slavery issue. The Know-Nothings, for instance, were big in parts of both North and South.

Sherman Logan: "In fact, there WAS no North vs. South split in a political sense until southerners overreached themselves in 1850.
For the previous 50 years the regional split had been North(east) vs. South vs. West."

So, why am I hearing Ray Stephens verse 2 of "Everything is Beautiful" -- "There are none so blind as he who will not see..."? ;-)

You're looking right at just one archetypal election -- 1828 -- and telling me there is no north-south split?
I'm telling you: that's a north-south split, where non-New England Northerners -- Dough-Faces -- joined their Southern allies in electing Democrats, in this case, Andrew Jackson.

And in every presidential election where the choice is a Southern Democrat versus a Northern non-Democrat (Federalist / Whig / Republican) the results are the same, beginning in 1796 -- not 1852!

The only times the South ever split its votes came when the choice was not so clear-cut -- i.e., two Southerners, two Northerners or a Northern Democrat vs. Southern non-Democrat on the ballot.
Yes, then you did see a more-or-less random splitting of states for each candidate.

So, who were these Northern Democrat Dough-Faces?
Well, then as now, Northern Democrats were largely big-city and/or immigrants.
In places like New York City and Philadelphia their numbers dominated state politics, and through their alliance with the Southern Slave-Power, kept the Union united, and the slaveocracy dominant.

So, what happened in the 1850s was: suddenly, after all those years, such Northerners began to see slavery as not just some quaint Southern institution, but as a growing, expanding existential threat to them.
Suddenly, slavery was coming North and West to take away their jobs, and their future farmland, as settlers out west.
Now it was personal, and now they began to vote for the political party which promised to restrict slavery, and protect them -- the Republicans.

Presidential election of 1856.
Note New York, Ohio & some other Northern states switched from Democrat in 1852 to Republican in 1856.
By 1860, they will all vote Republican.

So, what happened in the 1850s was: suddenly, after all those years, such Northerners began to see slavery as not just some quaint Southern institution, but as a growing, expanding existential threat to them.

I'm a little vague on why you think you need to say this, since it's pretty much what I said in my post.

The point is that during the 1850s both North and South began to think of themselves as threatened by the other. The South a few years before the North, which is why they insisted on the various measures to protect, as they saw it, the future of slavery, from 1850 on.

The irony, of course, is that by doing so they created the very opposition to the institution that they thought they were heading off.

But I think the most relevant factor in the history of the 1850s, in many ways the most interesting decade in American politics, is that both sides of the emerging North vs. South confrontation wholeheartedly believed they were acting defensively against deep-laid plots of the other side.

The truth, of course, is that while there were no doubt abolitionists and proslavery fire-eaters attempting exactly that, at the start of the decade they were all very much on the fringes. Only as the decade progressed did they move towards greater influence and eventually control.

The Fire-Eaters, of course, got control of the South in 1860, the Abolitionists took two or three more years to get equal influence in the North.

Sherman Logan: "I'm a little vague on why you think you need to say this, since it's pretty much what I said in my post."

I'm willing to concede that our differing opinions may be only matters of emphasis.
If I understand correctly: you wish to emphasize that where the US was a fully functioning, compromising-as-necessary, representative republic before, say, 1850 -- after that date we became more fearful to protect our regions' interests, resulting in less compromise, more dysfunction and eventually secession, right?

My point has been to show that before 1850, really, before 1860, national politics were dominated by the alliance of Southern Democrat Slave-Power and Northern Democrat Dough-faces (big cities, immigrants).
This can be seen especially clearly in Andrew Jackson's election in 1828, but also clearly in several other elections (i.e., 1796, 1856).
Southern Democrat dominance allowed the Slave-Power to force critical compromises (1850) and rulings (Dred-Scott) which increased slavery's legal protections outside the South.

That in turn drove Northerners to support an anti-slavery political party, Republicans, and the rest, as they say, is history...

Bottom line: I don't agree there was no north-south political split before 1850 (or any other date), only that the north-south split was long moderated by Northern Democrat voters, who became less and less "dough-faced" and more "Wide Awakes"*, especially after Dred Scott in 1857.

*"Wide Awakes" = 1860 young Republicans.

Big city immigrants may have provided the votes, but the power belonged to native-born American leaders, largely of rural origin: Buchanan, Pierce, Cass, Douglas and their Southern counterparts (though Douglas's Southern-born second wife was Catholic and there was some speculation about whether he was as well). I always thought of "Doughface" as more of a native phenomenon, and don't really associate the term with Irish or Germans, whatever their politics or attitude towards slavery, probably because they didn't have much power in Congress yet.

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