It looks like Andrew Jackson was a hot head
Isn’t it funny the stuff you’ll watch on TV when you’re just trying to zone out before you fall asleep? About a week ago I was doing just that: waiting for the sleeping pill to kick in and not ready to let my mind wind down, so I turned on the TV.
I’m not quite sure what my criteria is in terms of what’s a click and what’s a stop. Somehow I ended up on the History Channel, which is surprising for many reasons the least of which being I’m not a huge fan of that channel. Anyway, I stopped on a special about Andrew Jackson.
The part I watched was possibly ten minutes long, as I was falling asleep. This is my disclaimer so if you saw this documentary and I have some of this wrong, just correct me in the comments section VIP lounge. When I turned it on I learned about the woman he married and that he had one heck of a temper on him.
A quick side note is so necessary. The narrator was Edward Herrmann that guy who sounds like Herman Munster and who used to do the Chrysler commercials a while ago. He has an awesome voice, so that was why I stopped on that channel — because of Edward Herrmann’s voice. I’m telling you, the narrator can make or break a show for me. I told you I was in love with Paul Winfield’s voice from “City Confidential” and was devastated when he died.
So it seems this chick was technically married to someone else at the time but that guy was a jerk and would not grant her a divorce. So she packed up her bags, left town and started over with Mr. Andrew Jackson. It’s kind of fuzzy here.
I think they kind of just hung out together for a while and then she received a letter via the pony express saying her first husband was getting pissed off and she needed to actually divorce him (or something to that effect.) It also seems this information was public so it sort of became dirty laundry that was out there in the community.
And it was a huge button for Mr. Jackson.
Somehow the divorce was granted and then she and Andrew got married legally. But if you wanted to piss Andrew Jackson off back in the 1800s, all you had to do was talk smack about his wife, which is exactly what some guy did. So Andy did the only thing he felt he could do: he challenged that guy to a duel with pistols.
They went out into a field, each armed with a gun and stood back to back. Then they took 20 paces and turned around to face each other. The narrator said Andy knew the other guy was an expert shot and that there was no way he could shoot that guy first.
So here’s what he did. He stood there and let the other guy take the first shot.
And he was hit somewhere in the chest area, but it wasn’t fatal. In the re-creation, he fell to his knees but the other guy stood still and Andrew was able to concentrate on shooting to kill the other guy. That was his strategy: let the other guy shoot first, then Jackson would have as long as he wanted to take careful aim and shoot.
Jackson killed the other guy. And the bullet remained inside Jackson for the rest of his life.
The documentary stressed that honor and integrity were really important to Andrew Jackson and if anyone trash-talked his character (or his wife’s character) they had better be ready to eat a lead sandwich. I’m pretty sure no one ever dissed Andrew Jackson’s wife again.
They also said Andrew Jackson was not a fan of George Washington. I think he felt George sold-out, I don’t remember the exact reason. But the point was that it was well-known that Andrew Jackson didn’t like George Washington and that was controversial back then.
And I have to admit this is where I got hooked (but I did fall asleep soon after this point). What was so interesting is that they managed to put a human face on Andrew Jackson and kind of reveal some interesting piece of information that made him real to me. He was a hot head, he had a lot of temper tantrums, he spoke out about George Washington and he didn’t care who heard him.
I did find a 3-minute montage clip of the History Channel show I watched and the absolute best quote has to be the following from John Seigenthaler, author of “James K. Polk.”
“I think a psychologist would find him a troubled man and would probably have recommended medication. But he wouldn’t have taken it (laughter).”
Those two sentences make me wish I could contact Mr. Seigenthaler to say, thank you for making Andrew Jackson a real person to me.
This History Channel documentary said Mr. Jackson considered himself a Jeffersonian Democrat. But according to Seigenthaler, “Thomas Jefferson didn’t like men who bordered on fanaticism. And (Andrew) Jackson seemed to him to be at best uncouth and at worst dangerous.”
That’s what I love about this documentary. They portray the real face of Andrew Jackson as a person and yet they diplomatically described him as spirited and “uncouth.”
It makes me imagine Thomas Jefferson sitting at home in front of the fireplace with his shirt collar up around his ears and his powdered wig on his head saying to his wife, “That Andrew Jackson is one crazy b@stard, you know that?”
And it’s fun for me to look at Andrew Jackson’s image on a $20 bill and think about him wearing his issues on his sleeve.
