Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1879-08-02
JACKSON.


He was always too certain of the goodness
of his cause, especially when his feelings
came into play, TO believe, much less to be
able to understand, that the opposition arose
from honest conviction. In political life, as
in the field, he knew only friends and foes,
and he was, therefore, ruthless in his battles
with his enemies. But he was just as unre-
served in his devotion to his friends. He
made their cause his own completely. Per
sOnal questions which most frequently gave
him offenSe, he grasped with such intensity
that they became the real ones at issue to
him. And just as the limits of what was
personal to himself and the real question at
issue faded one into the other, SO also did
the limits between political life and civil
life. In addition to this, he was wanting in
the ability to estimate the relative import
ance of different questions. He could not
distinguish the small from the great, because
he gave his entire thought and viii to every
task; and he, therefore, began nothing new
until he had carried out his previous UNDER
taking. His resolves were quickly made,
and without any weighing of the possible
consequences to his own person. But neither
his formal education nor the schooling
which life had given him, made him capa-
Bile of objective examination and cOnsidera-
ton. His own person, that is, his personal
feeling, assumption and belief We're the
starting point and the rallying point of all
his elaboration, thought and action the one
and the other SubiecuVefy i'll the highest
power. To shake an opinion which he had
once formed, by argument, or even TO mod
lty 1t, was, therefore, almost impossible; but
until he had formed a fixed opinion, he was
like wax in sl1ilful hands. This was all the
more dangerous, since he could not at all
distinguish between his person and his
office. He not only made use, on a most
extensive scale, of his official position in
extra official affairs, becau he, in good
faith, dragged his office into that which con-
cerned only his own person; but, what was
much more far-reaching in its consequences,
he marked out the boundaries of the rights
of the Office in accordance with his own
personal Judgment and the wants of the
moment, because he gave the duties of the
Office an improperly wide extension, and
and was conscious that he desired to fulfil
them honestly. Since Louis XIV, the max
i'm Pefdt c'eSt moi, has scarcely found, n sec
Ond time, so ingenious and complete an
expression as in Andrew Jackson. The only
difference is that it was translated from the
Language of m onarchy into the language of
repubhcaniSm. That such phenomenon
was possible in the republic, and that, at the
same time, its political and sOcial-political
development Kept on its course as undiS-
turbed and consistently as if this singular
man had never sat in the Presidential chair,
is easy of explanation. Washington was
called the embodiment of the best traits of
the American national character, and Jack
son was the embodiment of all its typical
traits. He was unQuestiOnahiy man of
great parts, hut he was at the same time en-
tirely Incapable of rising, in any respect, to
the height of a great man, because the disfa-
VOr of circumstances during the years that
he was capable of being educated had kept
him in the ingenious cOarSencSS of the child
of nature. spite of the frightful influence,
in the real sense of the expression, which he
exercised during the eight years of his Pres
idency, he neither pointed out nor opened
new ways to his people by the superiority
of his mind, but only dragged them more
rapidly onward on the road they had long
been travelling, by the demOniacal power of
his will. The supporters of his policy We're
substance oft, the satisfaction of those in
StiuctS