Andrew Jackson Book

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER in JACKSON IN FLORIDA Andrew Jackson took no important part in the election of 1816. He had favored Monroe in 1808, and he preferred him to the other candidates in 1816. Crawford was, at this time, Jackson's pet dislike. The reason for this was that Crawford, as Secretary of War, had modified Jackson's treaty with the Creeks, about which the Cherokees, deeming the terms unjust to them, had appealed to the President. Jackson made a personal quarrel with a public man for not acting as he, Jackson, wanted him to act in the discharge of his duty. Jackson resumed the negotiation, and bought again the lands ceded before. As the people of Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama were interested in the cession, Jackson, by re-obtaining it after it had been surrendered, greatly increased his popularity.1 November 12, 1816, a letter, signed by Jackson, was addressed to Monroe, immediately after his election to the presidency, urging the appointment of Wm. Drayton, of South Carolina, as Secretary of War. Wm. B. Lewis, Jackson's neighbor and confidential friend, husband of one of Mrs. Jack- 1 11 NUes, 143. son's nieces, wrote this letter. As Parton says, one has no trouble in distinguishing. those letters signed Jackson, but which have been copied and revised by Lewis, Lee, Livingston and others, from those which have not been through that process. A part of this letter was connected with a land speculation, but the political part of it seems gratuitous and impertinent. It is, in fact, introduced by an apology. It is difficult to see its significance and that of others which Jackson wrote during this winter (1816-17), unless he was being used to advance an intrigue on behalf of Drayton about which we have no other information. The ideas and suggestions are not at all such as would ...Read More