Stuff You Should KnowWild 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?
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry sitting in for Dave and this is short Stuff, And Chuck, I have come to really detest politics, in particular the American brand of zero sum outrage politics that the entire nations have meshed in. Yeah, are you trying not to think about it? Im?
Same?
Avoid politics as much as possible.
Same.
So let's get started about this political history story.
We're talking about Andrew Jackson and his first inauguration or his inauguration brother. They used to hold these in March and his was held in March fourth, eighteen twenty nine. 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 populous president, so I 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 an inauguration day. So he said, that's a great idea. George Washington held these levees at the White House, which has basically come and meet the first family on inauguration day, and I'm going to do the same big mistake.
Yeah, there's just basically a legend of Andrew Jackson's inauguration in eighteen twenty nine that they basically tore the roof off the White House they partied so hard there. Yeah, and he didn't. But that was the thing you mentioned. He was a populis president. All of a sudden 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, d C. 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 the American government as far as they were concerned.
Yeah, but here's the thing. There are historians that say, hold your water there. It may not have been as well as everyone thinks. The's a guy named Daniel Feller who was a history professor at ut Tennessee Covaals. 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, you know, 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, heart tardy to the party, and also did not like Andrew Jackson in his politics, so probably had a pretty heavy slant on the chaos she described.
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, right, 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 first hand accounts, and she's she really did not like this, and pretty much I guess blew it out of proportion. It is a really good way to put it.
Yeah, she writes about the majesty of the people disappearing and and a mob of people of you know, fighting and scrambling and what a pity, what a pity?
Yes she said it twice. Yeah, yeah, And is this how stuff works article?
This is a Dave Ruse shorty special.
I should have known because Dave mentions like you can almost hear Margaret her pearls in this. 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 twenty thousand people who showed up at the White House. It's incredible to party. So I say we take a break and we come back and talk about what they say happened at this twenty thousand person strong party at the White House.
Let's do it. Sweat shot shot, stop shot shot.
So we said, chuck before we broke that. There's about twenty thousand people estimated to have been at the White House for Andrew Jackson's inauguration. Levy that even Margaret Bayard said Bayard Smith said that that was probably an exaggerated number. Yeah, she did say that there were some crazy things going.
On though, Yeah, bloody noses several thousand dollars worth of worth of glassware broken. But here's the thing, Like again, some historians think she might have been exaggerating because she was just maybe a pear clutcher and didn't like Jackson. There was a senator from Massachusetts named Daniel Webster 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 five hundred 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.
Yeah, it was like he didn't mention that it was it turned into the infield of the Kentucky Derby. Right, yeah, 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 what shouldn't even think it was worth mentioning, or that the whole thing was basically made up.
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, right.
Yeah, exactly, and that not only did they trash the place they were It wasn't just that there were twenty thousand 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, 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.
Yeah, here's a bit from the New York Spectator that was 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.
Right, what does that even mean? I don't know the part about the dandy wishing he had no toes. I looked high and low for what that meant.
Maybe because they were getting stepped on so much. Maybe that's the only thing I could think of that made any sense.
The one I came up with is that maybe it was in fashion to have small feet.
Maybe I know that the dandy has no toes. This is a pretty great record.
Title, yeah, for sure, one of the best deep cut. Yeah, so the I guess. In nineteen seventy eight, 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 said they considered it sheer bedlam. Yeah, 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, Yeah, and Margaret Bayard Smith's account. It was probably the truth, and yeah, I think it was Daniel Webster, who's probably the most reliable.
Yeah, I agree, but who knows. It's a fun story.
It is a fun story, and we love fun history stories. And I guess Chuck short Stuff is out correct.
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