Short Stuff: Andrew Jackson's Inauguration

Wild stories about a crazy party after Andrew Jackson's inauguration have been around since the weeks after it went down. But how wild was it really? See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 0:39Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's sitting in for Dave and this is short stuff. And Chuck, I have come to really detest politics.

• 0:49Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 0:50Josh Clark?

  In particular, the American brand of zero sum outrage politics that the entire nation's have meshed in.

• 0:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 0:59Josh Clark?

  I try not to think about it.

• 1:00Speaker 02

  Same.

• 1:01Josh Clark?

  Avoid politics as much as possible.

• 1:03Speaker 02

  Same.

• 1:04Josh Clark?

  So let's get started about this political history story.

• 1:07Speaker 02

  We're talking about Andrew Jackson and his first inauguration, or his inauguration, rather. They used to hold these in March and his was held on March 4th, 1829. And what happened there at the Capitol was he gave a speech and did his thing. And what you should know about Andrew Jackson is he was a very populist president. Some say the very first one. And people loved him. They were like, he's for the little people and like, we want to go meet this guy on inauguration day. So he said, that's a great idea. George Washington held these levees at the White House, which is basically come and meet the first family on inauguration day and I'm going to do the same. Big mistake.

• 1:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there's a, just basically a legend of Andrew Jackson's inauguration in 1829 that. They basically tore the roof off the White House. They partied so hard there.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:59Josh Clark?

  And he didn't, but that was the thing. You mentioned he was a populist president.

• 2:05Josh Clark?

  All of a sudden, because of, because of him being a populist and the people who supported him, average, everyday people who typically weren't into politics at all, suddenly overran Washington DC in a very celebratory mood because Andrew Jackson had beaten the Washington establishment, the elites, John Quincy Adams. And now the people were truly represented in, in, in the American government as far as they were concerned.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, but here's the thing. There are historians that say,

• 2:41Speaker 02

  hold your water there. It may not have been as wild as everyone thinks. There's a guy named Daniel Feller, who was a history professor at UT Tennessee, go Vols, I'll even say that as a Georgia fan. And he was the editor of the papers of Andrew Jackson, so he knows a thing or two. And he's like, you know what? They talked about people wrecking the place, people coming there with muddy boots and turning over tables and punch bowls. He said, take that with a grain of salt because all, a lot of this stuff comes from the account of this woman named Margaret Baird Smith, who showed up like late to the party after this stuff had evidently happened.

• 3:11Josh Clark?

  She was tardy to the party.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Tardy to the party and also did not like Andrew Jackson and his politics. So probably had a pretty heavy slant on the chaos she described.

• 3:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and this was, I mean, she was a good example of how the opposition to Andrew Jackson felt. Like they felt like they owned DC and Andrew Jackson and his supporters didn't really belong there.

• 3:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:36Josh Clark?

  And yet, because Andrew Jackson had won the presidency and these like average, everyday people felt represented finally, they, they showed up. The question is, like, nobody's saying like that didn't happen. It's the degree to which it happened. And Margaret Baird Smith's letters to her daughter in particular are essentially like one of a very few number of firsthand accounts. And she's, she really did not like this and pretty much.

• 4:08Josh Clark?

  I guess blew it out of proportion is a really good way to put it.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, she writes about the majesty of the people disappearing and a mob of people you know, fighting and scrambling and what a pity, what a pity.

• 4:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah, she said it twice.

• 4:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And is this a How Stuff Works article?

• 4:28Speaker 02

  This is a Dave Ruse shorty special.

• 4:30Josh Clark?

  I should have known because Dave mentions like you can almost hear Margaret clutching her pearls in this.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, Dave line.

• 4:38Josh Clark?

  So you said she was targeted to the party. She showed up a little bit after three. And the reason she didn't go straight from the inauguration to the party is because she heard that there were these large crowds. The estimate that has been bandied about all these years later is that there were 20,000 people.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:59Josh Clark?

  Who showed up at the White House.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  That's incredible.

• 5:02Josh Clark?

  To, to party. So I say we take a break and we come back and talk about what they say happened at this 20,000 person strong party at the White House.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  Let's do it.

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• 6:32Josh Clark?

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• 7:47Josh Clark?

  So we said, Chuck, before we broke, that there's about 20,000 people estimated to have been at the White House for Andrew Jackson's inauguration levy. That even Margaret Bayard said, or Bayard Smith said that that was probably an exaggerated number.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:04Josh Clark?

  She did say that there were some crazy things going on, though.

• 8:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, bloody noses, several thousand dollars' worth of glassware broken. But here's the thing, again, some historians think she might have been exaggerating because she was just maybe a pearl clutcher and didn't like Jackson. There was a senator from Massachusetts named Daniel Webster.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  Who was not a fan of Jackson as well, but he wrote all about this day. And he didn't mention like all this chaos going on. He said, you know, people have come 500 miles to see General Jackson. They really seem to think the country is rescued from some dreadful danger. And he also said, a lot of people were also there to like aspiring political politicos, I guess, trying to maybe get a job or get some influence. So he wrote pretty good depth about this and he never mentioned like, you know, a party where people were getting in fights and muddy boots and turning over tables.

• 9:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it was like, he didn't mention that it was, it turned into the infield of the Kentucky Derby.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  Right, yeah.

• 9:11Josh Clark?

  That is really significant because he was there and to not mention like that people were just going berserk, partying at the White House and trashing the place. I think that to me says volumes about it that it either was, did, it happened a little bit, but it was so insignificant that Webster didn't even think it was worth mentioning, or that the whole thing was basically made up.

• 9:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I get the feeling it wasn't completely made up. I bet it got a little wild and there are also people that say like, you know, it sounds like there were probably people that maybe stood on tables and chairs to get a better look and like maybe a table breaks when you're doing that. But she made it sound like they just trashed the place.

• 9:55Josh Clark?

  Right, yeah, exactly. And that not only did they trash the place, they were, it wasn't just that there were 20,000 people or however many people were there, that they were just rowdy. She was basically trying to portray them as, again, people who didn't belong in Washington, let alone the White House. And look, you can't even, you can't, you can't take these supporters of Andrew Jackson anywhere. Look at what they did. They rushed people carrying out the punch bowls to get punch and free cake. And yeah, they elbowed each other. It was like a Black Friday sale essentially is what Margaret Smith was describing. And again, just painting people in a very unflattering light. The problem is that was a letter to her daughter, right?

• 10:38Josh Clark?

  So if her daughter was misled, or maybe she was even trying to entertain her daughter, who knows? It would be one thing. Historians would probably still have found those letters and be talking about it. But the reason why it became such a well-known thing is that the press picked that up, too. And exactly like happens today, that exaggeration was run with to outrage people who were opponents of Andrew Jackson because that completely satisfied their opinion of those people.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, here's a bit from the New York Spectator that's pretty colorful. "Here was the corpulent epicure grunting and sweating for breath, the dandy wishing he had no toes, the tight-laced miss, fearing her person might receive some permanently deforming impulse, the miser hunting for his pocketbook, the courtier looking for his watch, and the office seeker in an agony to reach the president."

• 11:33Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  What does that even mean?

• 11:35Josh Clark?

  I don't know the part about the dandy wishing he had no toes. I looked high and low for what that meant.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  Uh, maybe because they were getting stepped on so much?

• 11:44Josh Clark?

  Uh, maybe.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  That's the only thing I could think of that made any sense.

• 11:47Josh Clark?

  The one I came up with is that maybe it was in fashion to have small feet.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  Maybe. I know that "The Dandy Has No Toes" is a pretty great record title.

• 11:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. One of the best ever.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  That's a deep cut.

• 12:01Josh Clark?

  So, I guess in 1978, the Tennessee Historical Society, they rolled up their sleeves and they're like, "Let's get to the bottom of this." And from their research, they actually said, they considered it sheer bedlam. But they turned up another account from a senator named James Hamilton of South Carolina, who was a supporter of Jackson's. And even he said that this was a, he called it a regular saturnalia. But he also said that most of the damage was minimal. So somewhere in between there and Margaret Bayard Smith's account, it was probably the truth. And I think it was Daniel Webster who's probably the most reliable.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I agree. But who knows? It's a fun story.

• 12:44Josh Clark?

  It is a fun story. And we love fun history stories. And I guess Chuck, short stuff is out?

• 12:51Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 12:55Speaker 00

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