The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1914-01-08
WHAT A SOUTHERN MAN DID.

To-day is the ninety ninth anniversary
of the Battle of New Orleans, when Gen.
Andrew jackson inflicted an overwhelm-
ing defeat on the English Army under
Gen. Packenham before New Orleans.
Each year the Eighth Of January brings
ID in the minds of Louisianians the figure
of the doughty soldier and unbending
statesman, Andrew Jackson, the hero of
the Battle of New Orleans and the seventh
President of the United States.
Without ever having been the personal
friend of jefferson, Jackson was the first
complete development of the Jeffersonian
idea He was the first great American
who was so born and so ripened that he
tested in the flesh the endurance Of the
principle of manhood equality.
His Democratic predecessors believed in
the principle and fought for it. He was
its actual product.
jackson separated the political being Of
the American nation from ancient habits
as Jefferson had separated a political sys-
TEN from ancient institutions. With him
came into the practical administration of
all government, from that of the nation to
that of the town, new forces. jackson in
troduced, represented and fixed:
Popular sovereignty.
Independence of the concentrated money
power.
If the voter had learned before to believe
in the Constitution, he then learned to be-
lieve in himself. The prestige of lordly
'upper' classes, the assumptions Of ex-
elusive families, no longer overpowered the
man of the multitude. Social opportuni
ties no longer graded as condition pre-
cedent of political success. Convention
alites and artificial forms no longer barred
out the poor boy natural capacity to grow
with the tasks imposed upon his talents.
jackson took the South with him to
Washington. The South was the child OF
Democracy. 1t had learned to take the
raw material of manhood and fashion
great lawyers, captains and politicians
The South saw the full meaning of free
institutions and guided thereby its whole
life, social, commercial, religious and pc.
litical. Each man was what he proved
himself to be-no more, no less. The South
looked straight at men and things and wore
neither blue nor green spectacles. 1t was
accustomed to do what was to be done
without calculating risks. Strong, self
reliant, outspoken and active, it could no
take its place in government beside tn,
narrow minded men of Maine, Massachu
SeftS ana Otnef pufltanlcdl OtateS WltnOu
shaking up the dry bones and throwing
some of the precisians into CONSERVATION
While jackson was pushed upward b.
the South he lifted upword the masses il
the East. The farmers of Pennsyvani
still preserve the story of the awakening
The laborers and clerks in New York hav
kept green the memory of the man VIII
gave to them the knowledge that they, a
much as the Clintons, the Livingstones
the Schuylers and the Van Rensallaers
were of the Government.
All the people displaced some of tn
people when Andrew Jackson became thei
President. There are always tendencie
toward again giving up the supreme direc
to1 of affairs to the few. On the Eight
of January we of Louisiana, especially
owe to ourselves and to all who shall com
after us the duty of taking stronger hol
on the Jacksonian tradition. Popular SOW
ereignty and independence of the none
power-who can say that in this time tn
conquests made by jackson in the name {
the common people have not partly slippe
out of our slack hands?