What Happens When A Nation Falls For A Strongman

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Andrew Jackson is one of those American names people think they understand until they look closer. We sit down with historian David S. Brown, author of Andrew Jackson: The First Populist, to walk through the life that turned “Old Hickory” into a national symbol, a political weapon, and a permanent argument. From a hazy birthplace and a brutal frontier childhood to a self-made legal career in Tennessee, Jackson’s story is built on loss, ambition, and a fierce need to command respect.

We talk about the traits that powered his rise and damaged his reputation: the duels that served as public proof of status, the moments of questionable judgment such as the Aaron Burr affair, and the social explosion of the Peggy Eaton controversy that effectively broke a cabinet. Brown also explains why Jackson’s actions in Spanish Florida created an international crisis, and how the Battle of New Orleans locked in a celebrity aura that followed him into national politics. This is early American history as a lesson in how fame and force can merge into leadership.

From there, we dig into the big structures Jackson helped reshape: Jacksonian democracy, the expansion of presidential power, the veto as a governing tool, the nullification crisis, and the Bank War against the Second Bank of the United States. We also face the hardest parts of his legacy head-on, including Indian removal and the fact that there was opposition to it even in Jackson’s own time. We end by testing modern comparisons and what “populism” really means when you put policy, personality, and power in the same frame.

If you care about US presidents, American populism, or how the bully pulpit was born, listen now, then subscribe, share the show with a friend, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

Transcript

Rerun Setup And Guest Intro

Miichele mcAloon 0:08

You're listening to Crossword where cultural clues lead to the truth of the word, and my name is Michele McAloon. You can find out more about me at bookclues.com. Yes, folks, Americans have headbangers of presidents. And I thought it would be a better time than ever to bring out old Andrew Jackson. This is a rerun from a couple years ago, but somehow it just seems very appropriate. Sorry for the rerun, taking a little vacate now. Anyway, if you'll want to find out more about me, go to bookclues.com. Otherwise, happy listening. God bless and hang on. We are going to talk about a very controversial and colorful figure in American history, and that is Andrew Jackson, with author David Scott Brown, who has written a wonderful biography on this man. Andrew Jackson, The First Populist, The Defiant Life of Andrew Jackson by David S. Brown, and it's published by Scrimner. Professor Brown is a Horace F. Raffensberger professor of history at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. He is the author of several books, including biographies of Richard Hofstadter and F. Scott Fitzgerald. His book, Richard Hofstadter, an intellectual biography, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Elizabeth, Pennsylvania. David Brown, welcome to the show.

Professor David Brown 1:42

Thanks, Michelle. It's good to be with you.

Jackson’s Frontier Origins

Miichele mcAloon 1:43

You wrote a wonderful biography. This is really a good biography about a character that has been very controversial in American history. And as you open your book, a man that has sort of refused to fade away and has remained unrepentant in our imagination, in our historical recollection. So it is there is a lot to unpack with a figure like Andrew Jackson. Despite the best efforts to cancel him, he looms large in the American imagination. And he was definitely the president between Thomas Jefferson and President Lincoln. So he really kind of bridged an era, his whole life did. And it's a real interesting period of history. So let's begin with his upbringing. I mean, he's even been accused of being born on an Irish ship and not a U.S. citizen. Who was Andrew Jackson? Where did he come from?

Professor David Brown 2:44

So his background is Irish, Scotch-Irish. As you mentioned, he was accused by the opposition of being born on a ship at sea. In fact, we were not quite sure where he was born. Best guess is South Carolina, although there's a stone marker in North Carolina insisting that Jackson was born there as well. Boundaries being a little bit hazy in the 1760s when Jackson was born. Frontier, Southern upbringing, was an orphan by the age of 14. I never knew his father, who died when he was just an infant, was a POW as a 14-year-old in the American Revolution, only present to be a POW. When his brother, brothers die, and his mother dies, he's 14, and he's farmed out to various family members. And he will eventually begin to educate himself, read law, by his 20s, matriculate to the Great West to participate in something that's happening increasingly around the country, which is the Western migration. And with Andrew Jackson, that's going into the territory of Tennessee, where there are all kinds of opportunities for somewhat educated, aspiring young men, of which he, of course, is one of them.

Miichele mcAloon 3:56

Do you think he was a smart man?

Professor David Brown 3:58

I think Jackson was shrewd. I think he was canny. I think there was very much an intelligence there. It was a different kind of intelligence than, say, John Quincy Adams. Quincy Adams was born the same year as Jackson. Quincy Adams precedes Jackson to the presidency. So there's a little bit of an overlap there. Quincy Adams, it was the Puritan tradition. It was educated at Harvard. And for Jackson, it was more of an education, the frontier. It was more of an education in the School of Hard Knox, if you will. And Jackson, I think, was a very successful lawyer. He was a frontier lawyer. He was a successful in making his way up through a frontier, a territorial system. He becomes uh involved in politics. He's appointed to positions. He'll be elected by the legislature, represents Tennessee in the House of Representatives, its first representative. He'll serve a term on the Tennessee Supreme Court. So, yes, Jackson was an intelligent, canny individual, not so much book smart, didn't read that much, but certainly read more and is more perspicacious than what his political opponents considered him to be. Like all things, there's a bit of stereotyping. So I mentioned John Quincy Adams. Adams gets stereotyped for the New England pedigree, and Jackson gets stereotyped for the frontier pedigree. Both have their place with some truth, but both are obviously overplayed.

Shrewd Intelligence And Class Tensions

Miichele mcAloon 5:20

But you can see the remembrance of Jackson is definitely playing out in the dynamics of the United States of that time. And that's that New England pedigree versus the frontier pedigree. The frontier pedigree thinking the New England, they're elitist and everything that we hear today, actually. And the New York pedigree thinking that the frontier pedigree is rough and rude and uncouth. And you kind of see these stereotypes being played out really pretty much throughout Jackson's life. Is that true?

Professor David Brown 5:57

Yeah, and I would add that there's another section that we should mention, and that is the coastal aristocratic South. Virginia Dynasty, for example, the Tidewater gentry. These people were not particularly friendly to Jackson. And Jackson was not particularly friendly to them. It has something to do with regions, but it also has something to do with class. There was a New England gentry, to be sure, but there's also a Virginia gentry. There was a South Carolina gentry. John C. Calhoun was one of Jackson's great enemies. And he was, you know, from the same state as Jackson was, South Carolina. Thomas Jefferson, we don't think, was a very big fan of Van Drew Jackson. And indications suggest that he did not vote for Jackson for the presidency in 1824. He voted for John Quincy Adams. So regionalism has something to do with it, but class does as well.

Miichele mcAloon 6:41

His trajectory of his life, and it's actually in the title of your book, you say the defiant life of Andrew Jackson. And we sort of see that, and you kind of paint that picture at a very early age when he is a very young lawyer. He's an extremely young lawyer. I think he's like 20, 21, I mean young, writing the in Tennessee. We see a defiance coming out in him. Where do you think that comes from? And it's one that stays throughout his life.

Defiance Culture And Dueling

Professor David Brown 7:10

That's a great question. I think we still sort of search for answers. Some might argue the fact that uh he was sort of bereft of a father, as I mentioned, never never knew his father. And then when his mother died, he was kind of farmed off to relatives, you know, kind of expected to take whatever was left over and might have had some anger about the fact that he had two older brothers. He lost them both in the American Revolution. He lost his mother as well by the time he was 14. As we might say today, going through some post-traumatic shock, someone who I think was congenitally formed by a desire to be on top, to be a leader, and always wanted to assert himself in that role. I think that both of those traits, whatnot, I think that they play out here. When Jackson goes to Tennessee, he's very interested in asserting that he is, despite being, as you mentioned, a very young man, he's a gentleman. And so he is keen to purchase a fine horse. He is keen to purchase a slave, and he is keen to engage in an affair of honor. Now that doesn't mean that you're actually going to shoot at somebody. It might simply mean that you are, in fact, challenging someone to a duel, and perhaps the second, the handlers, they work it out so that no shots are actually fired. This occurs for Jackson first time due to an instance in which he was embarrassed in court by an older man, a lawyer, a more sophisticated, and so Jackson challenges him to a duel, and they don't actually shoot each other. They meet and they fire over each other's heads because this has been worked out in advance. But what it did in a very kind of public way, it recognized that Andrew Jackson was considered to be a gentleman because not anybody could duel. This was supposed to be a province of gentlemen. So while Jackson is viewed, as I mentioned before, by kind of quasi-east or yeah, East Coast quasi-aristocracy as being frontier, the frontier is also eager to replicate the coast and have its own type of recognized aristocracy, of which by that time Jackson will consider himself to be one.

Miichele mcAloon 9:11

He keeps going back to dueling, which is something really colorful about his life, and even to the point where it hurts his reputation. But he seems determined to do this.

Professor David Brown 9:23

That's right. It's a performance, it continually reasserts his stature as a gentleman, and it also, as you know, it doesn't age particularly well. And so it begins to rebound on him a little bit because someone of of his age and his accomplishments is not supposed to be engaging in duels. Now, again, most of these duels did not involve him actually firing on another individual, although that did happen. It did, yes. But you know, the fact that he would, for example, be a second to a young man in his army, this was in 1813, rather than sort of set the two men down and read them the Riot Act or get them to be on the same page. The United States is fine the War of 1812. We don't need our soldiers dueling with each other. Jackson will, you know, in that particular instance, act as a second. There were people that did question his wisdom and judgment.

Miichele mcAloon 10:14

There's other instances in his life where you kind of wonder a little bit about his judgment. And one was the Burr conspiracy, which I'm not really sure. I completely understand that. Later, it's the Eaton, the woman Peggy, or Margaret Eaton in the White House. And both of these kind of show almost a lapse of judgment. Even when he goes into Florida and he kind of takes on diplomacy himself and starts acting more the king versus the army general.

Burr Plot Peggy Eaton Florida

Battle Of New Orleans Celebrity

Professor David Brown 10:43

Jackson, considered by his political opposition to be King Andrew I. In other words, he liked to prize himself on being a Democrat, being a Republican, but yet he could operate as a kind of a kind of a king and not always allow the judgment of others to factor in, but would push his own agenda. You mentioned three instances: Burough Affair, Peggy Eaton Affair, and then going into Florida. All of those, as you mentioned, demonstrate a real lack of judgment. In the Burr Affair, Aaron Burr had been Thomas Jefferson's vice president. It looked like after that had come to an end, and Burr was going to be out of office, that Burr was interested in perhaps carving out an empire in the Southwest. He told different people, different stories. Apparently he told Jackson that he was operating at the behest of the government secretly. And so Jackson was willing on those terms to support him. Jackson was a general in the Tennessee militia. Jackson could help to provide for boats, men, perhaps Roundup Finance as well. When Jackson gets winded, that's not the case, that Burr might have been telling him the story, then Jackson, there's a real fast turnaround on that. But it did demonstrate a lack of judgment on his part. It probably put him really on the outs of the Jeffersonians. And so when the War of 1812 happens, Jackson's sort of waiting for an opportunity to take his army in the field. But Madison, who remembers the Borough Affair, was kind of loath, reticent to do that. In the Eaton affair, you know, Jackson becomes president. Jackson wants some Tennessee around him in his cabinet. And so he picks an old friend, his colleague, John Eaton, who was a senator from Tennessee. Eaton had very recently remarried Margaret Eaton, and there were stories about her reputation. It was said that Jackson had brought Eaton into his cabinet because Jackson had just lost his wife. Rachel Jackson had just died months before he had taken the presidency. And when Jackson and Rachel had gotten together, she was a married woman, and she remained married when she and Jackson were living together, thinking that her husband had gotten a divorce. He had not gotten a divorce until later. And so those stories were out there, they were manifest. And there were those who said that Jackson was bringing Eaton into the cabinet and protecting Margaret Peggy Eaton because he was, in a sense, reading his own situation, his own marital past into the criticisms that the Eatons were now taking. And it paralyzed the cabinet and advises the president. Socially, cabinet wives hold functions and whatnot. For the most part, Jackson's other cabinet members, their wives were not going to socialize with the Eatons, which meant that things were not bad blood within the cabinet. It was only a result when basically the cabinet had got cleaned out about two years into Jackson's presidency. And you also mentioned Jackson's ventures into Florida. Jackson was ordered to go into Spanish territory in order to prosecute a war, really the first Seminole War, against the Seminoles who were crossing over into Georgia. Jackson was not ordered, however, to, in the name of prosecuting this conflict, to take Spanish forts for obvious reasons. But in fact, he did do that. And this caused a real international problem. And there were even questions of would Spain and perhaps Great Britain go to war with the United States? Because, you know, did Jackson receive orders from the central government to, in fact, do a preemptive war, invade Spanish Florida, take its force. Jackson's cabinet was mixed on this, moves to the cabinet. This is James Monroe's cabinet, said, hang him, leave him out to dry, fire him. But John Quincy Adams, who was conducting diplomacy to purchase Spanish Florida, said, you know, this is going to help us because Spain understands clearly it cannot keep this territory for much longer. Anytime an American army wants to go down, it could do so. And so Quincy Adams argues that we should, in fact, stand by Jackson. And Quincy Adams is also concerned, I think rightfully so, over what he called the shock of Jackson's personality. What would Americans say if, in fact, we conduct this treaty, it's successful, we have Florida, but then we don't stand by Andrew Jackson. So it was decided that the country would basically allow an American military commander who did not receive orders to occupy forts of a neighboring country to, in fact, do that.

Miichele mcAloon 15:16

Right. Right. And it's just fascinating because then he goes on to the Battle of New Orleans and he comes out as a hero, absolute, a national hero. Matter of fact, would you say that he was actually became out as a celebrity? He became a celebrity at that point. And I don't know if his celebrity status started in Florida or even with the Creek War or when he started becoming kind of larger than Andrew Jackson. And it it seems like the Battle of New Orleans really kind of cemented this legend of a man.

Professor David Brown 15:52

Yeah, I think cemented is a good way to put it because I think it really begins with the Creek War, the campaigns in Alabama, culminating more or less at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. That really put Jackson on the radar. Again, it's the War of 1812. The war was not going well for the United States in all places. But the Creek campaign was utterly successful. And, you know, it's based on the strength of that that Jackson is going to, you know, be elevated. He does have the command in New Orleans. And it's the victory, and not just the victory, it's that it was so complete, so definitive, that Jackson had lost so comparatively few casualties compared to the British. Of course, Jackson was behind an earthen defense. British made a strategic decision that kind of befuddles the mind a little bit. Jackson did make one mistake that day. He did not protect position that was across the Mississippi River. And what the British had hoped to do was to early in the morning of battle cross, take that position, put cannons there, and then that would be able to inflate Jackson's line, because it would be actually behind Jackson's line. That didn't play off. It took the British longer to get across the stream. The main assault began on time. And by the time British forces got up to where the American position was on the other bank of the Mississippi, the battle was already over. So the British strategy, it did make sense. Timing was off. And they went ahead with the main assault, even though at that point in time it was a very, very risky thing to do. Jackson's best decision today was probably to not pursue the British, but to stay behind his lines. It was recognized as an utterly successful victory. And as you mentioned, Jackson does become a bit of a celebrity. When Jackson goes to Washington, D.C., people are very, very eager to catch sight of the man, to shake the man's hand. And that's something that will stay with him pretty much till the day he dies, or maybe even after he dies, because 15 years after he's dead, Jackson dies in 1845 and 1860, he'll still receive hundreds of votes for the presidency. Because it's 1860, it's the election of Abraham Lincoln, which is going to be a catalyst for the separation of the Union. And there were apparently hundreds, if not thousands, who thought, boy, if anybody could could bring us together, it would be Andrew Jackson. In one sense, that's ironic because Jackson was such a divisive individual who, in fact, willed his own opposition into power, like the Whig Party. But in another respect, you know, thinking about how Andrew Jackson stood up to John C. Calhoun, the nullifiers in South Carolina, that was seen as an action of nationalism. And so for people in the 1860, they would think, oh, well, Jackson had stood up to South Carolina in 1833. That's what we need today in 1860. Yeah, he was he was both a congressman and a senator, have come to the Senate again for a second time.

Miichele mcAloon 19:15

Sort of.

Professor David Brown 19:16

And you're right, in neither the House nor the Senate was he particularly good. You know, we all have a skill set. And Jackson's skill set did not include sitting listening for hours as people discussed and debated. He wanted to see more action. Also, he couldn't expect the kind of deference that he might get in other places because, you know, he's in the U.S. Senate, and they're all kind of arrogant. They're all kind of assured of their own place and power. And also, Jackson was, as I mentioned before, he was a canny thinker. He can construct arguments and whatnot, but he wasn't going to stand up and make a 20-minute or two-hour speech and really convince people or win them over in that respect. So I think early in his career, the House and the Senate, these were things to do at the time. They were stepping stones. These also had to do with the condition of Tennessee politics and Jackson's role within his own coalition at that time, but these weren't positions that he particularly relished.

Miichele mcAloon 20:16

So he doesn't like being a senator. He doesn't like being a congressman. How does President Jackson become President Jackson?

Western Voters And New Politics

Power Veto Nullification Removal

Bank War And Money Power

Parties Populism Then And Now

Criticism Then And Closing

Professor David Brown 20:25

You know, it was almost by happenstance there was a desire to kind of in Tennessee float Jackson as a candidate by people who were more interested in Henry Clay as a candidate. And this was about, you know, a favorite son, one last honor, Jackson, you know, thinking that this man's going to be retiring. We'll float him as a favorite son, but he's not going to win. And looking to Henry Clay from neighboring Kentucky, just north, as the real Western candidate. The thing is, though, the Jackson candidacy begins to take off. Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is a large state. It's in the north. Pennsylvania is going to come out and pronounce that, you know, it is for Jackson. This helps to begin a real momentum. I'm not sure that Jackson conceived of being the president. So all this is happening in 1822, 1823, before the 1824 election. And I think the support that he sees from states like Pennsylvania convinces Jackson that this is something that he can do. And also, maybe, upon reflection, something that he has has earned, having, as you mentioned, been in the House, been the Senate, been a territorial governor, been a national hero. And so why should the prize go to other men? It's nothing that he pursued, I think, on his own, but when the idea is put into his head, it begins to excite him. Yeah, that's right. So Jackson's going to be the seventh president of the United States, and he's the first that doesn't come from either Virginia or Massachusetts. And so there's the East Coast aristocracy. Between 1803 and 1820, eight new states enter the Union. But all are in the Southwest or the West, excepting Maine. And all those states, except Maine, in 1828, will go for Jackson. So, yes, there's the feeling that Western migration has done what the founders thought it would do. It has attracted increasing numbers of Americans. And what we find by the 18 teens and 1820s is that these Americans, they want their share. They pay their taxes, they have their congressmen, their senators, they wonder, are they adequately represented on the Supreme Court, in presidential cabinets, and in the presidency themselves? And so Jackson does become, I think, that figure for people in the West, and also for people, as I mentioned as well, in Pennsylvania. You know, in a widespread of Pennsylvania, but also what we still might call frontier or rural Pennsylvania. What they don't like about Jackson is the same thing that the Whig Party doesn't like about Jackson. He's expanding presidential power. So before Jackson, there were 10 presidential vetoes. Jackson uses the veto 12 times, sometimes simply for legislation that he just personally doesn't like. During the nullification crisis, there are some Southern states that did not want to see South Canada nullify federal law, but they were a little bit concerned that Jackson was ready and willing to put together a military force to invade the state and to make it comply with federal law. So the fact that Jackson was a slaveholder, the fact that Jackson was going to be supportive of Indian removal, the fact that the removal of 60,000, self-governing Southern Indians would be replaced by plantocracy. Yeah, southern slaveholders, they were fine with all that. But Jackson's expansion of presidential power did concern them because it was establishing precedents. And there would be times in the Civil War where, for example, Abraham Lincoln would reference Jackson and say, presidents have done this before. He wants to divorce government finances from private banking. The second national bank of the United States. There was the first national bank, that was Alexander Hamilton's bank in the 1790s. Had a 20-year charter. The Jeffersonians, they let the charter lapse because they were concerned about a central financial depository. Too much centralization, nano states' rights. But then the War of 1812 happens, and the Jeffersonians discovered it's very difficult to conduct a war without a central financial institution. So when the war comes to an end, the Jeffersonians actually reconstitute the second national bank. And this is the bank that Jackson has problems with. Opinion of the bank was mixed. Some said it was constitutional, some said it wasn't. Some said it was going to be good for the economy to help the country develop. Others said it was going to create a class of elites and speculators. Jackson tended to be concerned about constitutional issues and about the emergence of elites and speculators. And so Jackson moves against the bank. He does this, in effect, because he has to. The bank asks for a recharter. It's got four more years to go. Congress passes the recharter. Jackson vetoes it. Congress can't overcome his veto. And over a period of four years before the charter comes up, the bank war ensues. And what Jackson seeks to do is to create independent that will take in the federal money, tax money, and hold it before it goes out to pay for government salaries, lighthouses, buoys, things like that. And in doing so, Jackson seems to violate the law because the second national bank had a right to that money by contract. And so when Jackson moves in the direction of trying to not put any more funds into the national bank, he has to call upon his Secretary of the Treasurer to do this. Two of them will do it. He goes through a slew of cabinet members until he finds one. Well, he appoints one who he knows will actually do this. The bank was problematic, not that Jackson didn't have a point about is it correct for the central government to, in effect, you know, kind of be playing winners and losers by giving loans to some major players to build roads or canals or factories, but could the bank have been reformed in a way? And essentially, the old system is the one that we have now with the Federal Reserve System. And we found it difficult during the Civil War in the late 19th century to fight wars or to build a more advanced industrial base, simply relying upon small banks. I think probably the latter, although Jackson does play an important role here because he was so popular with some people and he was so controversial with others. So he was a touchstone. So he might have sped up the process just a bit. There was an earlier party system, more primitive, Jeffersonians versus Hamiltonians, the Federalist Party under Hamilton that collapses with the War of 1812. And Monroe in 1820, he's basically the only candidate. We call this, textbooks call this the era of good feelings, because presumably political parties are gone. Monroe says that he wants to govern under the idea of amalgamation, that there aren't parties, that we're simply all American sis uh all American citizens, and we simply want, you know, the best people for the job. But it doesn't work out that way. There are people, including Martin Van Buren, who probably was one of the real architects of what's called the second national party system, who thought that uh politics worked best, and in fact it was inevitable that there would be partisanship, that sides would divide. Uh in part, you know, he thought it was human nature, in part because there were only so many prizes out there. The chance of maybe of getting one is if he could join a party and be part of the system. And so Van Buren, he accomplishes this in New York State politics with what was known as the Albany Regency, machine politics, and it's the desire to impart the system on a national level. It was gonna happen anyway, but Jackson perhaps sped it up just a bit because it was easy for people to fall in line with him or to oppose him. I think of him as a person of his time. For example, I say in the book that I think one of the things that distinguishes Jackson on Indian removal from some of the previous presidents, I think maybe in some ways it's been overplayed. I can't prove this, but I would conjecture looking at Washington's presidency, looking at Jefferson's presidency, that had they possessed the military capacity, power in 1790, in 1805, to have carried through some type of removal policy, I suspect they would have find such suggestions in their letters and in their correspondence. So in that sense, I find Jackson to be kind of a man of his time, the country moving to the West, further to the West, removal policy, enslavement in the South. Jackson was a great hero to many people, in part because he did so align with their views on things, because he wasn't standing outside of what much of contemporary culture at that time valued. So in that sense, I think he was a man of his time, where he sort of, I think, goes beyond that is with the personality, with the dynamism of his will, and with his ability, I think, to marshal support for policies and programs, and to and to really begin to, long before Theod Roosevelt, I think, use the presidency as a bully pulpit. There are times when, you know, I read Jackson, I get frustrated or I get angry because I think he's being intellectually dishonest in framing arguments, the way that he would attack opponents, and I mean just political opponents, neighbors, for example. He could really be a bully. He was shrewd enough, intelligent enough to, for the most part, know when he should back off. But he was, you know, kind of congenitally aggressive. And sometimes, you know, he wasn't always the gentleman that he very much wanted to portray himself as being. I think, in some ways, yes, and in some ways, no. I'd say that both individuals, they represented something within the American populist tradition. I think both of them knew how to play upon a politics that would move against or criticize legacy institutions. The bank, for example, was a legacy institution. Both of them knew how to also kind of move against establishment institutions or protocol and were successful in doing that. In other respects, the analogy doesn't really hold, though. So, for example, when Donald Trump was asked pre-presidency, what made him a viable candidate for the presidency? Among other things, he mentioned essentially he was a rich man, that his wealth was in excess, he thought of about $10 billion. And that's the kind of economic privilege that Jackson was completely opposed to. Also, many evangelicals in America have, you know, have taken an interest in Trump. In Jackson's time, evangelicals they tended to be critical of Jackson. He was such a controversial character, but also in part, you know, because of the Indian removal policy. And you would find some evangelicals, the missionaries, were very much opposed to what Jackson was doing. There's criticism, historical criticism of Indian removal today, for sure. But what we should keep in mind is that really it's it's not something that's new. That in Jackson's time, there was criticism of Indian removal. And when the bill passed in the House of Representatives, it only passed, I think, by five votes. It was very close. Good conversation. I think that I think we've we've covered so much. Thanks, Michelle. I appreciate it. Worry why do I let myself worry?