jeff flannery: thank you. i am the head of the reader and services section and i would like to welcome you to the library of congress. the manuscript division is custodian to approximately 63 million primary source documents. among our other personal papers of 23 u.s. president and numerous other well-known americans, including the poet walt whitman, aeronautic pioneers orval and wilbur wright , and a civil rights icon rosa parks. 170 years after his death andrew jackson still dominates the period between the founders generation and the onslaught of the slavery crisis. during the age of jackson, 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 art and since -- modern audiences. one of -- it is here that the collections and personal papers of the nation's leading figures shed light on their hopes and ambitions. the division not only holds the most significant collection of papers were jackson, but also includes those of many of his associates and rivals. martin van buren, daniel webster, and james polk to name a few. -- the primary source collections are amply these primary -- source collections -- these primary source collections are amply supplemented with other artifacts. we are fortunate today to have as our speaker one of the finest young scholars in the field. dr. mark cheathem is a native of cleveland, tennessee and it is the a in history in lebanon, tennessee. his ma in history in murfreesboro and his phd from mississippi state university. mark taught at mississippi university for women mississippi state university, and southern new hampshire university before returning to his undergraduates on the modern 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, he has determined to be a resolute researcher. he is the author or editor of five books including "andrew jackson and the rise of the democrats," and its -- is currently completing a new book. he is here today to speak about andrew jackson -- "andrew jackson southerner." please welcome dr. mark cheathem . >> [applause] professor cheathem: thank you for that introduction, jeff. and thank you for coming out. i know it is lunchtime and i am accustomed to that. you teach students in the morning, they are still recovering from breakfast. you teach them right after lunch, they are asleep. [laughter] so if your policy, it really won't bother me. i consider it a privilege to speak here. i was telling my wife before i came this will probably be the height of my professional speaking career tuesday got the library of congress. i really do appreciate the opportunity. i am going to talk about andrew jackson as a southerner today but i want to give you a little bit of background. i think it is always important for listeners and the audience to understand where somebody is coming from. when i was an undergraduate about 30 miles east of nashville, i had an undergraduate professor by the name of money -- monte who told me when i was entering my senior year, you need to go work at the hermitage. i trusted him so i went and worked there for one summer. it was asked a 22 years ago -- 20 years ago this summer. he didn't tell me i had to dress in costume. [laughter] in hot, humid tennessee can -- summers, dressing in costumes was not exactly the most pleasant thing. and it certainly wasn't the coolest thing. the young 21-year-old college student. but in any case, that is really i became enamored with andrew jackson. giving the two is, learning about him, his relatives, his family, and coming to -- to realize that this was a man who was very instrumental in american history. i actually wrote my dissertation on one of jackson's nephews. who was a prominent diplomat and newspaper editor and actually ran for the vice presidency in 1856. when i finished that book, i was looking for a new topic and my graduate mentor, who has worked on william tecumseh sherman and is now an editor of the grant papers, he said, why don't you tackle jackson? i said, well, sure. little did i know that a guy was working on a biography that would win a pulitzer prize. if i had known that, i very likely would not have started down this path of looking at jackson from a biographical standpoint. but i didn't know, so i did. and my book came out in 2013 and has been a mild success. i guess you could say. in some terms. so, lets me give you the premise of the book and then our talk about some of the aspects that led me to interpret jackson as a southerner. in the short amount of time that we have, i cannot go into everything. but i will be happy to talk to more about this after. so, historians have looked at jackson in a number of different ways. and one of the ways -- -- one of the most significant ways is that they have looked at him as a westerner. they see jackson almost like an early form of a cowboy. he sort of waltzes into town and if you have ever seen the charlton has to move the "the general's lady" my students don't even know who that is, so some of you may know. but that is kind of how he comes across in the movie, sort of this cowboy who is there to kind of win rachael's heart. historians have treated jackson that way to some extent. frederick jackson turner the picks jackson and sort of the embodiment of the frontier thesis and other historians have played along with that. but if you look at where jackson came from, if you look at when he arrived in nashville, what he did once he was there, to me, it seems fairly clear that that was the west. but jackson is not really a westerner per se. he has western characteristics and he considers himself a westerner, but he also is a southerner. and his life exudes that identity. i want to walk you through some of the characteristics. in case you don't know, andrew jackson was born on march 15 1757 along the north carolina-south carolina border. this is an area that if you are familiar with where charlotte, north carolina is, it is about 70 mouse east southeast. there is some dispute about whether jackson was born in north carolina or south carolina because his family and his relatives lived all along the border back-and-forth. jackson believed he was born in south carolina. i have tended to follow him in that. regardless, this area was the backcountry. 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, had pushed out for the most part the natives living there, and had established a small settlement. jackson's parents moved from ireland to the region about two years before jackson was born. he had two older brothers. his parents were not well off. but he had two uncles living in the area who were. and by well off, i mean that they owned a substantial amount of land and they owned slaves. slave property was an investment. for you to invest even in one slave, much less multiple slaves, meant that you had some kind of money. in any case, even though this was considered the backcountry the region was connected to charleston. if you know anything about houston during this time, you know that charleston was a port city that was connected to not just the rest of the colonies, but was really connected to the transatlantic world. it was connected europe, africa, caribbean, and to the other colonies. i make that point because it is important to understand that the region was a region in the backcountry, but people move back and forth from charleston to there. certainly, news travel back-and-forth. answer to think about this community as being isolated and backwards really doesn't give a good testament to actually how connected it is to charleston. and that is important to understand because jackson -- is is attuned to what is happening -- is attuned to what is happening in houston. his father dies about the time he is born. he loses an older brother during a battle during the revolutionary war. and then his brother and other mother -- his mother and other brother die. by the time jackson is an early adolescent, he doesn't have any immediate family. he decides that he is going to leave the region and go to trust in and try to make it there. so, 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. i want to go westward. he wants to look towards charleston. once jackson is in charleston, he doesn't stay there very long. he gets involved in some gambling disputes. he leaves charleston and moves north to the charlotte, north carolina area. and that is really where he begins to change his life. he falls in with a group of young men who are very young connected, both locally, statewide, and nationally with prominent political leaders. jackson falls in with this group probably first through drinking and gambling. but then he decides 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. so jackson studies for the law becomes a law. and then as a result of his connections with these other young man, he is given the opportunity to move to nashville. which had been settled in the late 1770's, early 1780's. about a decade old at that point. by the time jackson makes it to nashville, he is a 21-year-old lawyer. and that is a significant difference if you think about where we are in our development at 21 years of age. now, i teach primarily 18 to 21-year-old 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 or 10. even 200 years ago. so, the reason i am emphasizing this is because it is important to understand that while we grow and mature and adapt, by the time you are 21 years old, you have a pretty firm sense of who you are, your personality, the direction in life that you are going. and that is jackson when he arrives in nashville. now, on his way to nashville jackson gets involved in a dispute. if you know anything about jackson, you probably know he gets into these disputes periodically. speaking of personality, he has a very temperamental personality. violent, even, at times. so jackson stops in jonesboro, tennessee and he has to stop there because there are native american attacks between there and nashville. they spent a few months there and while he is there, he needs to make money so he practices law. he gets involved in a dispute with another lawyer. he was princeton educated, very prominent in north carolina. the -- the point of the dispute is not very clear. there was a court case, avery and jackson were on opposite sides. avery apparently said something that insulted jackson, so jackson wrote him a letter and challenged him to a duel. and the two men actually do go out to the dueling grounds and settle things and move on. let me explain a little bit about dueling. dueling is something that, certainly as we get closer to the civil war, is associated very closely with southern men. with a lead, white, southern men. not so much during this time in terms of the original applications, but certainly among the upper class. jackson issued this challenge which says that he believed he was a member of the elite upper class. ok? avery accepted the challenge, which indicated his belief that jackson was of the elite upper class. ok. now, why is that? dueling was something that only occurred among elite white southern men. you don't have slaves, you don't have women, there is no middle class like we think of today. you don't even have the lower classes who engage in dueling. and you certainly don't see duels happening between men of unequal rank. unequal social rank. so jackson could have believed he was a member of the elite double class and issued the challenge, and if every thought that he wasn't on the same rank as him, then avery would have ignored the challenge, would have beaten jackson with a cane or a web. that was the response that you had if you are challenged by someone if you are not of your social rank. avery accepts the challenge which means he accepts jackson as his equal. the point of dueling was not to kill each other, despite the cartoon imagery. i will say a little bit more about that in just a second. the point of dueling -- -- most of the time was to protect -- was to protect your perception. and how many of your same social rank perceived you. whether are some instances in which men fight duels and intent to kill one another, most of the time all you are doing is saying i am willing to go out, face my opponent, and stare him face-to-face -- that is usually how duels took place -- but you have to stand there and face one another and you have to be willing to -- to face death. in doing so, you preserve your reputation. you show people that you are a man, that you are willing to die for that sentiment. so jackson and avery fight this dual. they fire into the air, they go about their business, and things are settled. you may think, that is a failure. but it is not because jackson has just proven to other people in his party who is traveling with them, to people in jonesboro which are not the was the center of power in tennessee at that point. he has proven the people that jackson is accepted as one of his own -- their own. he will get involved into duels later in life. i have seen some websites say that jackson thought hundreds of tools or dozens of tools. he fights to and-a-half. the one with avery. he has an encounter with another man that is supposed to be up dual, but is not a duel. so i count that as a half. and then he fights a dual with dickinson, and jackson kills him in that duel. that is the only time jackson kills anyone in a duel. again, don't believe everything you read on the internet. jackson will get involved in other violent encounters. there is a man who insults him. jackson takes a whip to him. he gets involved in a street brawl in downtown nashville in 1813. winds up almost dying from that. so he has these other encounters. and violence is one of those things that is not just solely characteristic of southerners but when you pair it with honor and where jackson is coming from, to me, indicates that he very much has a southern identity at this point. now, your eyes glaze over just like my students' eyes do. i am going to use this as an illustration of something. one of the key characteristics of -- of southern life in this. period was the characteristic of kinship. billingsley has written extensively about this. glover has written extensively about can strip -- kinship in the south. you have people who are related to your genetically. you have marital kin. and then there is a third type of kinship called fixative kinship. this is the type of kinship in which you are not related genetically, or even mentally to someone -- maritally to someone but you still consider them family. we have three children. our two oldest are girls. when they were younger, there was a woman we knew who was like the grandmother. the grose called her grandma. she spoiled them my grandmother's 10 to do. they kick in the face, oh, it is ok. more sugar. then sends them home. you know how that goes. so this woman was not related to us in any way. but she was a member of our kinship network. she believed that we were family. 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 life. so, when you look at kinship in jackson's life, his blood kin was dead. his extended genetic family, he really doesn't have anything to do with once he leaves the black sauce -- paws. he doesn't go back as far as we know. and they don't visit him as far as we know. so what becomes important for jackson other marital kinship ties. let me talk about the marital kinship ties first. when jackson moves to nashville he very soon after falls in love with a young woman by the name of rachel donaldson. she was the daughter of one of the cofounders of nashville. john donaldson had come from virginia. he was a very wealthy man in virginia. he has helped cofound the settlement. and he had died by this point by the time jackson gets there. jackson follows a love with rachel. there is a slight problem. she is married. it's -- and i won't get into all the circumstances, but eventually her husband leaves her. and andrew and rachel traveled down to spanish natchez. they come back and they say that they are married. it turns out that rachel and her husband had actually not been divorced. jackson had been an adulterer. they have to remarry or marry for the first time. there is lots of controversy about this. in any case, by 1794, they are legally married. if you think about jackson as someone who is not a member of the elite class, because the donaldson's were elite. if he is not a member of the elite class, why would rachel donaldson's brothers accepted him? if you have a young man coming to your family, he starts to take up emotionally or even physically with your married sister, brothers have away in the south of handling that. the donaldson brothers don't. they don't reject jackson, they don't throw him out of town, they don't chase them out of town. they accept he is -- so part of the reason i think they are able to do that is because they see jackson as someone who is on the equally social rank as them and as someone who is a much better choice or rachel that her first husband. again, there are lots of circumstances to that. so, part of jackson's success when he moves to nashville comes from his connections to the donaldson's. and there are many donaldson's. when i do genealogy to look up a certain person's name, you have to wade through dozens of donaldson's, jackson's, it is very confusing. so you have this donaldson family network that is in nashville that helps jackson find legal cases to prosecute find jobs that help them to speculate in land, they help him find enslaved people to work for labor. the donaldson's are very much 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 those other connections, the people he considers family. there are a couple of men who are part of a fictive kinship network that jackson utilizes to a great advantage. and those two men are william b lewis on the bottom right and then his brother in law john henry eden. these two men are the two men in tennessee most responsible for jackson running for the presidency and for him winning the presidency. john eaton becomes a notorious -- because he marries a woman by the name of margaret. again, lots of interesting details to it. but before that, he had served with jackson during the war of 1812. had supported jackson's political campaigns in 1824 and 1828. frankly, had been jackson's unofficial campaign manager coordinating a lot of the official correspondence and attacks during those campaigns. william e lewis was, and you'll appreciate this, sort of the gordon liddy of his day. i like it washington crowd. [laughter] lewis was instrumental in a different way. he did a lot of the things that jackson and eaton and others didn't want to do or couldn't do. he would take up dirt on henry clay, for example. but he did a lot of the dirty work. a lot of behind the scenes work. so these two men are part of a larger kinship network that jackson uses to advance himself politically. again, we are not going to talk about everyone, but if you notice on one side, you have the stokes family. this was a very prominent north carolina family that william lewis marries into after his first wife dies. and the stokes family is very much involved in gaining support for jackson in north carolina. and on the other side, the cleburne family is a very prominent family in louisiana. and this family was very strong in its support of jackson and of the democrats. so jackson utilizes this kinship network politically, and there are multiple kinship networks like this. this is not necessarily uncommon in the earlier public, but jackson, who isn't part of those virginia families, those dynastic families like the washingtons and the jeffersons, jackson understands that this is something he needs to advance himself in his career. and these fictive ties in particular very much become a part of the southern network and in some cases, you have stronger bonds within those communities than you would ever have even with your own family members. as we see in jackson's case. one of the things that makes jackson successful and one of the clearest markers of his southern identity, is the fact that he owns other human beings. and this is one of the most prominent ways that he acquires wealth and produces wealth. so this graph gives you in indication of some of that slaveholding wealth. or some of the numbers of slaves he owned. these are not all the enslaved people. that he was the master over. there are other plantations that he owns in mississippi and alabama that have slaves on them. so these are just the ones in middle tennessee. jackson starts out purchasing his first slave, a young woman by the name of nancy, on his way to nashville from north carolina in 1788. he very quickly understand that if he is going to advance economically, he is going to have to acquire more slaves. he does that for the rest of his life. at one point, he owns close to 200 slaves. over the course of his lifetime, he probably owns well over 300. the hermitage has identified around 300 individual names living either at the hermitage or at one of jackson's other plantations. this is a very prominent piece of jackson's growing reputation, a permanent part of him being a member of the elite class. and when you consider that the -- the most valuable slaves in terms of cost, if you just think about this in economic terms, if you look at young male field hands who work cash crops if you look at their equivalent value today as being around $45,000 in today's dollars. that gives you some sense of what it meant to invest in slave property. if you own one slave, even if that slave is not a young male field hand, let's say it is an older woman or older man, even if it is $20,000 in today's money, that is a fairly significant investment. you multiply that by 5, 10, hundred, by nearly 200 in jackson's case, he is a multimillionaire. that doesn't include the property he owns, the crops that are produced that are sold. so when you look at jackson and you try to understand him as a southerner, you have to understand that his slave ownership is very much a part of that identity. all these things tie together but really the linchpin in all of this is slaveholding. without slaveholding, jackson does not advance or stay at that rank. one of the questions that i get at least in tennessee, is -- what kind of slave owner was jackson? this goes to the other side of slavery. we have talked about the economic side, but there is the other side. the other side is what is it like for the enslaved people? and i could give you many examples. first of all jackson is a fairly typical slave owner. there are times when he expresses sympathy, regret, about things that i happening to his enslaved people. there are times also when he orders them beaten or punished. so i want to use bette as one example. betty was a young girl when jackson purchased or and her mother. at this point, in 1867 post civil war. you can tell she is an older woman at this point. the episode i want to talk about is one that happens in 1821. jackson is in florida. and he had gone to florida to meet the territorial governor of the state. so he takes with him rachel, his wife, some relatives and some members of their slave household. betty was one of those. she is in her 20's at this point probably. so jackson is off doing the things that politicians do. he is governing the territory working up the transfer from spain. so rachel writes him a letter complaining about betty. complaining that betty is putting on airs. so you can almost see jackson. here he is doing the important work and expects his wife to handle these issues. you can almost see him roll his eyes. he writes back and he writes back not to rachel, but to some of the male members of his household, including a nephew and a doctor that were living with him. and he told these then tell betty to stop putting on airs and if she doesn't comply, then take her out in public and whip her. so, we don't know what happens. we don't know if that he is whipped. we know that she stays with the jackson family even after jackson's death. what is interesting about this particular episode is that what richard was complaining about was that betty was doing neighbors -- neighbor's laundry. whether that was a pattern of betty trying to express her independence in the form of freedom, we don't know. but rachel was concerned about her doing other people's laundry and that is what jackson ordered her with four. you have jackson who couldz express concern and sympathy. then you have a man who could order a slave woman with four doing other people's laundry. and that is why i say he is typical. it is pretty rare to find slaveowners who are sadistic and it is pretty rare to find slaveowners who are overly compassionate. what you usually find is in the middle over a broad spectrum. slaveowners acting more towards one side of the spectrum at times. what jackson is probably most known for today is -- and this is a portrait -- an important part of his identity. he believes that native americans were in the way. that they would be at a better served becoming like white americans or moving. so during the war of 1812 and after and certainly during his presidency, jackson tries to accomplish that. he does so through violence. he does though -- so through treaty and deception. after the war of 1812 and as president, he uses paternalism and eventually force to remove native americans. in doing so, he provides one of the most important contributions that he could've made as a southerner. he opens up the deep south to white settlement. certainly, he has plenty of help in that regard. he has soldiers working for him other people working for the same goals. but jackson is the job in force. to remove these native americans from the southeast. in doing so, he opens up this territory for white settlement. those white settlers often had time -- oftentimes had with them slaves. when you look at the south, the south we think of -- hopefully not too often -- when you think about the old south jackson is not the only one who helps create it, but he certainly is a main instigator of that because of the removal of native americans and the land backing that opens up that is filled by white settlers. this is something jackson firmly believes in. he is a firm believer that this land belongs to white southerners and it belongs to the nation. he is a firm believer that with native americans removed, that the united states will be much better off. and this continues. this continues out west with texas. he is very much involved in the annexation of texas with sam houston and other people. so he is someone that when you look at the math -- map prior to the civil war, he is responsible for what that map looks like i would argue. that is one of the main contributions he makes as a southerner and a reflection of how he sees himself as a southerner. that is certainly not a western phenomenon. i could talk more and more about jackson. and i will be happy to take questions, if you have any. but let me stop because i can go on and on. i should stop. and see if you have any questions. >> [applause] professor cheathem: yes sir? >> [inaudible] one, would you think jackson -- [indiscernible] second question, was jackson's view of native americans and africans similar to that of thomas jefferson? professor cheathem: two great questions. the first question was -- was jackson's view of the union similar to sam houston's in 1861? let me answer it this way. if jackson were alive in 1861, before fort sumter, i think he would have been like sam houston. i have thought about this. it seems to me that jackson had a strong support of the union that came from his military background. if he had been alive during the crisis, initially, he would have supported the union. once fort sumter happened, would jackson have gone with tennessee? that is a good question that i don't have an answer to. before fort sumter, he would have supported the union. the second question was -- was jackson's views of the native americans and african similar to thomas jefferson's? jefferson expresses it more eloquently. jackson doesn't have the same education. the two men are more similar than people like to recognize. jefferson talks about what happens if we free slaves. jefferson is very much involved with displacing native americans. as per the much every president before jackson had been. i would say that they are very similar or more similar than we would like to give them credit for. there are a couple of things that make jackson different. he didn't write the declaration. a lot of things are forgiven of jefferson because he wrote the declaration. the second thing is that jackson is much more blatant and open about what he is doing and he is also more successful about it. his success in that regard, the -- no matter how we view it today, comes off as something that is a negative and not a positive. other questions. yes. >> what would you say is the slave population and native american population around 1814 in the south? professor cheathem: a great question. i wish i had access to google. in the south, you are looking at -- in terms of native americans -- tens of thousands. i think, let's see, from the from the 1800s until the 1840's, about 60,000 native americans are displaced from the southeast. so, tens of thousands. in terms of african-americans in the south at that point, there were 8 million in 1860, there were a little over half a million in 1790, you are looking at maybe between one and 2 million. that would be my best guess. yes? >> i know this is one of those kind of actual things that historians often don't like. but how do you think the jackson presidency would've been different if rachel was alive? professor cheathem: that is interesting. i don't know. rachel did not like politics. she didn't like washington. she considered it babylon. she is an interesting character because when she was younger she was very vivacious and flirtatious. she was kind of the it girl. as she got older, she became religious and pious and dour and boring. honestly. so, i think it would have changed things. if you look at how the jackson reacts to the eat-in -- eaton scandal, i think he would have reacted with much less emotion. a lot of his response psychologically and emotionally comes from his grief over rachel. at least in that regard, i think you would of thing that seemed things turn out differently. he was gone most of the time so how could she. other questions. >> jackson didn't have much formal education, but do you know -- i mean -- he went on to study law, so what education did he achieve through his career? -- [indiscernible] professor cheathem: jackson has some schooling. when he studies to become a lawyer, you read lots so you worked for a lawyer and you can copy cases. after you did that for a certain amount of time, you would come before three lawyers and they would determine whether or not you could practice law. he did not have to go to law school. he did not have to get a license. he is a lifelong reader. he makes biblical references throughout his correspondence. he makes classical references to ancient rome and ancient greece and the ancient philosophers. he is someone who seems to have been very much a self educated man, for the most part. someone interested in growing his knowledge. he is not as illiterate as people think he is. but he is certainly someone that did not have the advances or the education of jefferson or calhoun or henry clay. other questions. >> you said earlier, historically he is viewed as a westerner. when i studied american history, you get the sense that he is a southerner. does it come from simply a matter of geography? or are there other reasons that he has been seen as a westerner? (202) 748-8000 for good -- professor cheathem: good question. you have frederick jackson turner who depicted jackson as a westerner. another historian depicted him as fighting against the moneyed interests. and by the time the 1960's roll around, a lot of their study of jackson focuses on him in indian removal. so it almost seemed like one of those questions about jackson that is obvious if you step back and look at the source material. if you look at where he comes from geographically. how he develops over the course of his early life before he moves to tennessee. it is one of those obvious questions that i think historians have missed. part of that may be because jackson is easy to stereotype. if you stereotype him as a westerner, that explains why all of those people showed up in washington at his inauguration. it can't be because they were looking for jobs. it has to be because they were sort of the beverly hillbillies from the appellation -- appalachias. it is easy to stereotype him into a black and white figure and not see the nuances of his identity. he was a westerner. i want to be clear. if you look at his life, he makes more sense as a southerner. no one has asked me about the $20 bill so i will bring it up. thank you for that segue. sort of. i think a lot of the things that you read about jackson today in regards to the $20 bill, and i am agnostic about it. doesn't matter to me. but i think a lot of the arguments that you read about why he should be removed, it -- you could make the same arguments about jefferson or washington or grant. there are a lot of things, these are all flawed human beings. does that mean we have to keep them on the currency? no is that a reason to kick them off? i don't know. i would rather have seen a different reason than that he was a mean guy and he hated native americans. that was typical of his time. if there is a reason to remove him to honor a woman, that make sense to me. to get rid of him because he killed native americans, you could say that about many people. even some of those on the currency. yes, ma'am. >> i thought he didn't like national banks. professor cheathem: that is one reason people bring up. i think jackson would agree with that. he would not have wanted to be on the paper money. he wanted hard coinage. he probably would be happy if he was taken off. >> hamilton loved banks. he is on tens and you don't get many of those. jackson, who didn't like the national banks, you get them from the atm. professor cheathem: that is right. yes, sir. >> [indiscernible] professor cheathem: i'm sorry? >> the supreme courts decision -- [indiscernible] -- to invest a great deal in the political debate. number two, the donaldson's that you keep mentioning. are they irish or scottish? professor cheathem: i will take your second question. the donaldson's are scots irish. which jackson was as well. your first question, i am not sure about the court case you are referencing, but jackson was very much opposed to the idea of a national bank. he was opposed to the idea of money, particularly government money being used to influence political elections. he tried to destroy the national bank because he believed that the president had used government money to try to defeat jackson in 1828. and jackson holds grudges. at that point, he is not holding -- fighting duels or beating people, but he can hold grudges. that seems to be the impetus behind why he combats the bankrupt his presidency. if there are numerous questions we will do the quiz. >> [applause] professor cheathem: thank you. >> you are watching "american history tv," all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook. jacquelyn serwer: my name is jacquelyn serwer:.

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