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Short Stuff: Andrew Jackson's Inauguration · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Jerry sitting in for Dave and this
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: is short Stuff, And Chuck, I have come to really
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: detest politics, in particular the American brand of zero sum
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: outrage politics that the entire nations have meshed in. Yeah,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: are you trying not to think about it? Im?
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Same?
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Avoid politics as much as possible.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Same.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: So let's get started about this political history story.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: We're talking about Andrew Jackson and his first inauguration or
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: his inauguration brother. They used to hold these in March
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: and his was held in March fourth, eighteen twenty nine.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: And what happened there at the Capitol was he gave
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: a speech and did his thing. And what you should
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: know about Andrew Jackson is he was a very populous president,
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: so I say, the very first one, and people loved him.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: They were like, he's for the little people, and like,
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: we want to go meet this guy on an inauguration day.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: So he said, that's a great idea. George Washington held
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: these levees at the White House, which has basically come
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: and meet the first family on inauguration day, and I'm
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: going to do the same big mistake.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's just basically a legend of Andrew Jackson's inauguration
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: in eighteen twenty nine that they basically tore the roof
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  Speaker 1: off the White House they partied so hard there. Yeah,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: and he didn't. But that was the thing you mentioned.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: He was a populis president. All of a sudden because
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: of him being a populist, and the people who supported him,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: average everyday people who typically weren't into politics at all,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: suddenly overran Washington, d C. In a very celebratory mood
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: because Andrew Jackson had beaten the Washington establishment, the elites,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: John Quincy Adams, and now the people were truly represented
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: in the American government as far as they were concerned.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but here's the thing. There are historians that say,
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: hold your water there. It may not have been as
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: well as everyone thinks. The's a guy named Daniel Feller
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: who was a history professor at ut Tennessee Covaals. I'll
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: even say that as a Georgia fan, and he was
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: the editor of the papers of Andrew Jackson, so he
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: knows a thing or two, and he's like, you know
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: what they talked about people, you know, wrecking the place
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: people coming there with muddy boots and turning over tables
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: and punch bowls. He said, take that with a grain
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: of salt, because all a lot of this stuff comes
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: from the account of this woman named Margaret Baird Smith,
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: who showed up like late to the party after this
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: stuff had evidently happened, heart tardy to the party, and
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: also did not like Andrew Jackson in his politics, so
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  Speaker 2: probably had a pretty heavy slant on the chaos she described.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and this was I mean, she was a good
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: example of how the opposition to Andrew Jackson felt like
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: they felt like they owned DC and Andrew Jackson and
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: his supporters didn't really belong there, right, and yet because
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Andrew Jackson had won the presidency and these like average
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: everyday people felt represented. Finally they they showed up. The
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: question is, like nobody's saying like that didn't happen. It's
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: the degree to which it happened. And Margaret Baird Smith's
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  Speaker 1: letters to her daughter in particular are essentially like one
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  Speaker 1: of a very few number of first hand accounts, and
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: she's she really did not like this, and pretty much
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: I guess blew it out of proportion. It is a
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: really good way to put it.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, she writes about the majesty of the people disappearing
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  Speaker 2: and and a mob of people of you know, fighting
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  Speaker 2: and scrambling and what a pity, what a pity?
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Yes she said it twice. Yeah, yeah, And is this
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: how stuff works article?
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: This is a Dave Ruse shorty special.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: I should have known because Dave mentions like you can
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: almost hear Margaret her pearls in this. So you said
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: she was targeted to the party. She showed up a
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: little bit after three. And the reason she didn't go
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: straight from the inauguration to the party is because she
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: heard that there were these large crowds. The estimate that
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: has been bandied about all these years later is that
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: there were twenty thousand people who showed up at the
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: White House. It's incredible to party. So I say we
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: take a break and we come back and talk about
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: what they say happened at this twenty thousand person strong
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: party at the White House.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: Let's do it. Sweat shot shot, stop shot shot.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: So we said, chuck before we broke that. There's about
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: twenty thousand people estimated to have been at the White
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: House for Andrew Jackson's inauguration. Levy that even Margaret Bayard
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: said Bayard Smith said that that was probably an exaggerated number. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: she did say that there were some crazy things going.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: On though, Yeah, bloody noses several thousand dollars worth of
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: worth of glassware broken. But here's the thing, Like again,
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: some historians think she might have been exaggerating because she
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: was just maybe a pear clutcher and didn't like Jackson.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: There was a senator from Massachusetts named Daniel Webster who
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: was not a fan of Jackson as well. But he
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: wrote all about this day and he didn't mention like
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: all this chaos going on. He said, you know, people
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: have come five hundred miles to see General Jackson. They
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: really seem to think the country is rescued from some
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: dreadful danger. And he also said a lot of people
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: were also there to like aspiring political politicos, I guess,
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: trying to maybe get a job or get some influence.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: So he wrote pretty good depth about this and he
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: never mentioned like, you know, a party where people were
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: getting in fights and muddy boots and turning over tables.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was like he didn't mention that it was
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: it turned into the infield of the Kentucky Derby. Right, yeah,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: that is really significant because he was there. And to
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: not mention like that people were just going berserk partying
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: at the White House and trashing the place. I think
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: that to me says volumes about it that it either
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: was did it happened a little bit, but it was
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: so insignificant that what shouldn't even think it was worth mentioning,
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: or that the whole thing was basically made up.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I get the feeling it wasn't completely
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: made up. I bet it got a little wild. And
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: there are also people that say, like, you know, it
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  Speaker 2: sounds like there were probably people that maybe stood on
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: tables and chairs to get a better look, and like
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: maybe a table breaks when you're doing that. But she
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: made it sound like they just trashed the place, right.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, and that not only did they trash the
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: place they were It wasn't just that there were twenty
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: thousand people or however many people were there that they
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: were just rowdy. She was basically trying to portray them
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: as again, people who didn't belong in Washington, let alone
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: the White House. And look, you can't even you can't
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: you can't take these supporters of Andrew Jackson anywhere. Look
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  Speaker 1: at what they did. They rushed people carrying out the
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: punch bowls to get punch and free cake, and yeah,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: they elbowed each other. It was like a Black Friday
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: sale essentially, is what Margaret Smith was describing, and again
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: just painting people in a very unflattering light. The problem
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: is that was a letter to her daughter, right, so
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: if her daughter was misled, or maybe she was even
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: trying to entertain her daughter, who knows, it would be
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: one thing. Historians would probably still have found those letters
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: and be talking about it. But the reason why it
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: became such a well known thing is that the press
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: picked that up too, and exactly like happens today, that
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: exaggeration was run with to outrage people who were opponents
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: of Andrew Jackson, because that completely satisfied their opinion of
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: those people.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, here's a bit from the New York Spectator that
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: was pretty colorful. Here was the corpulent epicure grunting and
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: sweating for breath, the dandy wishing he had no toes,
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: the tight laced miss fearing her person might receive some
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: permanently deforming impulse, the miser hunting for his pocketbook, the
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: courtier looking for his watch, and the office seeker in
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  Speaker 2: an agony to reach the president.
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  Speaker 1: Right, what does that even mean? I don't know the
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: part about the dandy wishing he had no toes. I
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: looked high and low for what that meant.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: Maybe because they were getting stepped on so much. Maybe
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  Speaker 2: that's the only thing I could think of that made
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  Speaker 2: any sense.
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  Speaker 1: The one I came up with is that maybe it
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  Speaker 1: was in fashion to have small feet.
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  Speaker 2: Maybe I know that the dandy has no toes. This
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: is a pretty great record.
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  Speaker 1: Title, yeah, for sure, one of the best deep cut. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: so the I guess. In nineteen seventy eight, the Tennessee
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: Historical Society, they rolled up their sleeves and they're like,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: let's get to the bottom of this. And from their
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: research they actually said they said they considered it sheer bedlam. Yeah,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: But they turned up another account from a senator named
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: James Hamilton of South Carolina who was a supporter of
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Jackson's and even he said that this was a he
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: called it a regular saturnalia. But he also said that
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: most of the damage was minimal. So somewhere in between there, Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: and Margaret Bayard Smith's account. It was probably the truth,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: and yeah, I think it was Daniel Webster, who's probably
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: the most reliable.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, but who knows. It's a fun story.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: It is a fun story, and we love fun history stories.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: And I guess Chuck short Stuff is out correct.
• 10:14
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• 10:17
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