Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times

In politics perhaps more than in most other arenas of human endeavor, interests and convictions tend to coincide. Whether convictions produce interests, or interests convictions, differs from person to person. But whatever their genesis, convictions and interests almost invariably end up pointing in the same direction. Those who can't master the coincidence don't succeed in politics, and leave the game to those who can.

Louisiana is a delightful country, and though the climate too often proves fatal to a foreigner, yet generally we ascribe to the climate what is the effect of our imprudence. I have been severely attacked this summer, and had nearly died, but at length I am acclimated.” The author of these words was John Windship, a Bostonian who migrated to Louisiana not long after his graduation from Harvard in 1809.

Years later, a Jackson partisan (who wasn’t at Knoxville) said Jackson had praised the melodiousness of “Tennessee” as a word that had “as sweet a flavor on the tongue as hot corn-cakes and honey.

In a country where offices are created solely for the benefit of the people, no one man has any more intrinsic right to official station than another. Offices were not established to give support to particular men at the public expense. No individual wrong is, therefore, done by removal, since neither appointment to nor continuance in office is a matter of right.

They have fallen on a plan to remove from office every man who professes Republican principles, and fill those offices with men who will bend to the nod of the Executive.

One reason America broke away from Britain was that getting decisions out of London took so long.