Flashback, February 1825: Adams Victory in Disputed Presidential Race Launches ‘Corrupt Bargain’ Charge

With none of the three major candidates winning a majority of votes in the Electoral College, the 1824 Presidential election was thrown into the House of Representatives, which awarded the office to John Quincy Adams in February 1825.

I wrote 15 years ago about Adams’ first year in the White House, while surveying his prior distinguished diplomatic career and consequential post-Presidency. But the month in which he fulfilled his ambition for the nation’s highest office was so astonishing—and such an anticipation of how current thinly sourced smear campaigns can poison the electorate—that it deserves exploration in depth.

With the popular James Monroe declining to run for a third term, the stage was set for an electoral free-for-all in 1824, featuring four candidates:

*Secretary of State Adams, the son of another President, John Adams, drew strength from the Northeast, especially New England.

*Andrew Jackson, hero of the Battle of New Orleans, looked to a base mostly confined to the West and South, with residual support in the Northeast.

*Treasury Secretary William Crawford, though the favorite of the Democratic-Republican Party establishment, had suffered a debilitating stroke before the election. Though unable to campaign, he retained support in the Deep South.

*Speaker of the House Henry Clay, who earned the least votes in the Electoral College, ended up exerting the greatest influence on the vote.

The election of 1824 was the first that used the procedures outlined in the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution, which called for the House of Representatives to pick among the top three candidates in the Electoral College.

Those three turned out to be Adams, Jackson, and Crawford. Although Jackson led the Electoral College count (and, most historians contend, what would have been the popular vote), he did not have a majority. Crawford’s medical condition effectively made it a two-man race between Adams and Jackson.

Four years before, it took the Missouri Compromise to avert a civil war over slavery. Many of the sectional differences barely muzzled in that agreement were coming to the fore again.

A sense of déjà vu must have particularly gripped Adams: as in the election of 1800 (lost by his father), it would take a New York Federalist to secure the outcome.

But, while Federalist leader Alexander Hamilton had persuaded his side to vote for Thomas Jefferson rather than Aaron Burr in that earlier election on the 36^th House ballot, it took only one ballot—cast by 60-year-old aristocrat Stephen Van Rensselaer III—to settle matters in 1825.

Legend holds that, while agonizing on the House floor over whom to support, Rensselaer noticed a ballot placed in front of him reading, ADAMS. Believing this to be divinely inspired, the congressman voted accordingly.

If only matters had remained that simple…

In an early attempt at creating a unifying “team of rivals” strategy that Abraham Lincoln later used, Adams asked Crawford to remain as treasury secretary and Jackson to take over the War Department. Both declined.

The selection of the third rival, Clay, sparked enormous controversy. The President-elect knew him as a fellow diplomat in the Treaty of Ghent negotiations that ended the War of 1812, and though he didn’t particularly trust the Kentuckian or care for his drinking and gambling, he knew he was able and shared common domestic policy goals.

Adams asked Clay to become Secretary of State after his House of Representatives victory, not before (contrary to what some Websites and podcasts claim to this day).

But, because Clay had swung the vote of his state’s delegation to Adams, and the State Department had served as a steppingstone to the Presidency for all occupants of the office in the prior 25 years, an anonymous letter soon appeared in Philadelphia’s Columbian Observer charging that the two men had engaged in a “corrupt bargain.”

Eventually, the “anonymous” Congressman emerged from the shadows to admit being the source of the allegation: George Kremer of Pennsylvania.

William Russ, Jr.’s article about the incident in the October 1940 issue of the academic journal Pennsylvania History noted not only that Kremer had “sunk into oblivion, even locally,” but that before and after his moment in the spotlight he was “obscure.” That difficulty in remembering him has only increased with time.

In 1825, Kremer, then completing his first term as a congressman, was hardly a disinterested observer, and certainly not a distinguished one. Successive stints as a storekeeper, lawyer, and two-year state legislator had done nothing to disabuse perceptions that he was a backbench time-server, a reputation not helped by his propensity for wearing a leopard-skin coat on the floor of the House. 

The topic that preoccupied Kremer in Congress–eliminating waste and abuse in government—frequently seemed like a pretext to contest initiatives that involved funding internal improvements—the policies that Clay and Adams supported and that Jackson opposed. Kremer, in fact, often anticipated many of the same arguments that MAGA supporters use today against government expenditures.

Challenged by Clay to testify and offer evidence before a congressional committee that would investigate the corruption allegations, however, Kremer backed down, saying at first, bizarrely, that he hadn’t intended to "to charge Mr. Clay with corruption," then refusing to testify on constitutional grounds, before finally crowing, after his three terms in Congress, how proud he was for his part in spreading the news about the scandal.

To be sure, backers of all four major candidates maneuvered furiously for advantage behind the scenes. But no documentary evidence has ever been produced substantiating the claims about Clay and Adams.

Moreover, despite friction between the two men in the past, even a shouting match, there could be little doubt that the House Speaker preferred Adams to Jackson—or, to put it another way, that Clay regarded Jackson as unsuited for the Presidency by virtue of his military background, hair-trigger temper, and distrust of banks.

None of that mattered to Jackson. He could have remembered that Adams, unlike Presidential aspirants like Crawford and Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, had come to his defense in the Monroe Administration over his overly aggressive responses to Native American raids from Florida into Georgia.

But it was easier for him to think he’d lost because of the “corrupt bargain” than because of his incompatibility with Clay. So he not only nursed a grudge against the two men, but encouraged his supporters to regard the new administration as illegitimate—not unlike how Donald Trump convinced his followers that, all evidence to the contrary, the election of 2020 had been stolen from him at the polls.

Like his father, Adams erred in believing that he could govern above the fray, without benefit of political adherents. Jackson would not make the same mistake. (The “spoils system” is one Jacksonian legacy that Trump seems especially eager to copy in his return to the White House.)

When Adams left office four years later, defeated by the man he’d beaten previously, Jackson, he was one of the unhappiest men ever to occupy the White House.

Like his father, John Quincy Adams was so peeved by what transpired in his single term in office that he didn’t stick around for the inauguration of his successor.

Historians still regard Adams as the greatest Secretary of State in our history, and, like Jimmy Carter, he earned great respect for his post-Presidential career (see my prior blog post about his fight against the Jacksonian “gag rule” meant to squelch any opposition to slavery in Congress).

But his term in the White House was virtually unrelieved misery for him and his family, because of the stark mismatch between his lofty policy goals and miniscule political instincts. 

This Day in Presidential History (Birth of John Quincy Adams, ‘Old Man Eloquent’)

July 11, 1767—John Quincy Adams, who like his father saw a lifetime of devotion to the young American republic culminate in a single, unhappy term as President, was born in in Braintree, Mass.

Adams may have left the most extraordinary ongoing glimpse into the achievement—as well as the physical and psychological health—of any President in the form of the diary he kept faithfully, beginning in 1779 at age twelve and continuing until his death almost 70 years later.

Anxiety, both about his own failures and those of his country, was expressed in splenetic rants that he wrote (or, in his late 70s, dictated, after a minor stroke) at the end of the day. Few people provoked him more than his successor in the White House, Andrew Jackson.

As his father did when he left Washington before the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson in 1801, Adams did not stick around to see the swearing-in of the man who defeated him in his re-election bid. Unlike his father, who reconciled with his old friend in retirement, Adams did not make peace with Jackson.

He could not draw on a reservoir of years of respect, affection and shared intellectual interests for Jackson, as John Adams could with Jefferson. Having endured four years of abuse from Jackson’s surrogates over accusations of a “corrupt bargain” with Henry Clay in the House of Representatives that won him the Presidency despite losing the popular vote, Adams then lost a re-election campaign barely rivaled for rancor in Presidential history.

Out of office, Adams stewed whenever Jackson won additional acclaim or honors. He refused to attend the ceremony in which his beloved Harvard bestowed an honorary degree on this “barbarian and savage who could scarcely spell his own name.” Jackson, he fumed, was so “ravenous of notoriety that he craves the sympathy for sickness as a portion of his glory,” to the point that the President even permitted talk of his “constant diarrhea.”

Was Adams a sore loser? Sure. But much of his anger stemmed from genuine concern over the direction of the country set by Jackson and his followers.

During Adams’ post-Presidential years as a Congressman—the only former White House occupant to serve in the House of Representatives—he lent his prestige, as the son--and, therefore, one of the last link--to the leaders of the American Revolution, to opposing, sometimes single-handedly, “the Gag Rule,” a brazen attempt by Jacksonian Democrats to abridge freedom of petition by tabling any memorial touching in any way on slavery. Later, he opposed the admission of Texas to the Union and the Mexican-American War, deriding them as attempts to augment the power of the slave states.

Less well-known was his deep, lasting anger over Jackson’s treatment of Native Americans. Jackson had not only pushed the Cherokee tribe to leave their ancestral territory for new land west of the Mississippi, but had even defied a Supreme Court decision handed down by the revered John Marshall that he must honor the tribe’s rights. 

The climax for Adams may have come on June 30, 1841, in a morning visit from the Cherokee Chief John Ross and two others in his delegation. Adams, having refused appointment to chair the House Committee on Indian Affair, believed that this service would have resulted in “total impotence to render any useful service.” He could not help feeling alarmed at what he saw coming to pass, as he confided in his diary:

“The policy, from Washington to myself, of all the Presidents of the United States had been justice and kindness to the Indian tribes—to civilize and preserve them. With the Creeks and Cherokees it had been eminently successful. Its success was their misfortune. The States within whose borders their settlements were took the alarm, broke down all the treaties which had pledged the faith of the nation. Georgia extended her jurisdiction over them, took possession of their lands, houses, cattle, furniture, negroes, and drove them out from their own dwellings. All the Southern States supported Georgia in this utter prostration of faith and justice; and Andrew Jackson, by the simultaneous operation of fraudulent treaties and brutal force, consummated the work. The Florida War is one of the fruits of this policy, the conduct of which exhibits one (un)interrupted scene of the most profligate corruption. All resistance against this abomination is vain. It is among the heinous sins of this nation, for which I believe God will one day bring them to judgement—but as His own time and by His own means.”

The pre-Jackson policy of the American government should not be treated as a nirvana. It smacked of paternalism, of the need to “civilize and preserve” the tribes. The first six American Presidents believed in an expansionist America where whites enjoyed priority.

But Adams believed that abrogation of treaty obligations represented a dangerous, irreversible step, out of keeping both with our adherence to law and to respecting the rights of other nations. United States Indian policy, Adams confided in his diary on another occasion, amounted to a “sickening mass of putrefaction.”

The President responsible for this “putrefaction” preached a militant form of nationalism that has made him a favorite of Steve Bannon, adviser to our current President. Consider that when weighing if this is the kind of “populism” desirable for America.

As he rose, again and again, in opposition to the depredations of Jacksonian Democrats, Adams was given a nickname: “Old Man Eloquent.” His diary reveals in full the intellectual commitment and moral passion—along with the frequent bouts of depression—that animated his commitment to serving the United States.

Quote of the Day (Davy Crockett, on Hell and Texas)

“Since you have chosen to elect a man with a timber toe to succeed me, you may all go to hell and I will go to Texas.”—Defeated Tennessee Congressman David Crockett, in his farewell to constituents at the Union Hotel Bar in Memphis, quoted in J. R. Edmondson, The Alamo Story: From Early History to Current Conflicts (2000)

It galled David Crockett ("Davy" to posterity) that he lost to Adam Huntsman, a one-legged lawyer supported by President Andrew Jackson and Gov. William Carroll, by less than three hundred votes. But typical of his talent for raw but effective storytelling, he turned it into a crowd-pleasing anecdote, which he duly recited to an appreciative audience upon arriving in Nacogdoches, Texas, on or about this date in 1836.

Savagely disillusioned with politics (the Whigs had hoped to run him for President), Crockett had come to Texas in the hope of turning around his life, much as another Tennessean (who unlike him, remained on good terms with Jackson), Sam Houston, had done—though he wanted instead to make his fortune as a land agent.

The ex-Congressman and frontiersman was right about a revolution being in the offing in this Mexican-held land, but he was wrong about his long-term prospects. Two months later, he fell at the Alamo and, like everyone else in that garrison, passed into legend.

I used the phrase “passed into legend” in that last sentence, but it might have been just as correct to write “became part of an endless controversy,” for the arguments involving Crockett after that became even more contentious than what had already happened back in his home state, when he became the only member of Tennessee’s Congressional delegation to vote against Jackson’s Indian Removal Act.

Did he go down fighting the overwhelming forces of Mexican dictator Santa Ana? Or was he executed after having surrendered? The latter interpretation has endured, based on the alleged eyewitness account of a Mexican officer who was there.(For an examination, pro and con, see this piece by Michael Lind in the Winter 1998 issue of The Wilson Quarterly.)

Crockett—and Alamo—partisans fiercely disclaim that any such thing occurred. Who knows when, if ever, the dispute will be resolved?

Flashback, March 1829: Jackson Takes Oath, Followers Make Mess

In a scene likened by appalled observers to the worst excesses of the French Revolution, supporters of Andrew Jackson celebrated his inauguration in such numbers and such a rambunctious fashion that the White House suffered damage and the new President had to be spirited away from the premises. It’s a safe bet to say that nothing like it was seen before—and, thankfully, nothing like it since.

Well, almost. A college professor of mine, in his American Presidency seminar, noted that Ronald Reagan was the first White House occupant since Jackson who had been elected to reverse the course of history. In many ways, the analogy is imperfect: Jackson represented democratizing forces in his growing nation, and he invoked Presidential powers in ways his predecessors never dreamed of.

But Reagan and the broad new coalition that swept him into office, like Jackson and his, annoyed, even unnerved, observers who belonged to the opposite political party. The flaunting of conspicuous wealth by a number of Reagan supporters led humorist Calvin Trillin to term the 1981 inaugural ball “the Night of the Minks.”

“Old Hickory” had the opposite problem. There had never been so many people gathered into the capital since the seat of government had moved there nearly 30 years before. Most were well-behaved, but they had been kept a long time outside on that cold day. Once inside the unexpectedly crowded and stuffy interior, they congregated in such numbers that the wooden floor threatened to give way.

Margaret Bayard Smith, an author and fixture of Washington society for the past three decades, typified the general reaction when she wrote:

“But what a scene did we witness! The Majesty of the People had disappeared, and a rabble, a mob, of boys, negros [sic], women, children, scrambling fighting, romping. What a pity what a pity! No arrangements had been made no police officers placed on duty and the whole house had been inundated by the rabble mob.”

There is some question whether the criticism was fully deserved. Most contemporary witnesses and newspapers reported only minimal damage, and one common anecdote—about cheese ground into the White House carpets by visitors’ boots—appears to be a distortion of an event that occurred at the end of Jackson’s second term, according to a blog post by Scott Bomboy of the National Constitution Center.

But there was at least some truth to it. In the oval drawing room, the general-turned-politician was so hard-pressed by admirers that he began to gasp for air. His closest advisers managed to get him away before he got hurt. (Even washtubs full of punch, placed outside the house to lure people away, weren’t completely successful in that regard.)

The reaction to the events among Washington’s reigning establishment reflected lingering ill-feelings about Jackson’s character and intellect, an extraordinarily nasty Presidential campaign, and a sea-change in the electorate that would transform the nation’s political culture over the next three decades. Much the same thing happened with Reagan in 1981:

*A powerful personality but faulty intellect. Jackson, hardly a scholar, couldn’t spell. In fact, according to legend, he didn’t even see the need for it (“It is a damn poor mind who can't think of at least two ways to spell any word”.) Reagan was excoriated for a lack of curiosity and an attachment to odd “facts” that dissolved when scrutinized (e.g., that trees cause most pollution).

*Aftereffects of bitter campaigns. If the 1824 election, which ended up in the House of Representatives, didn’t end James Monroe’s “Era of Good Feelings,” the next Presidential campaign did. Jackson’s followers, when they weren’t flaying John Quincy Adams for a “corrupt bargain” that secured him the Presidency and made Clay his Secretary of State, charged the incumbent with “pimping” for the Czar of Russia during one of his many diplomatic posts. Adams’ supporters called Jackson an ignoramus, a murderer (for killing a man in a duel), and—in the charge with the most collateral damage—an adulterer. He and wife Rachel found out after the fact that her abusive first husband had not filed for divorce, as expected, but only permission to get one, and that thus—at least initially invalid--she was still technically married to her first husband, and the first husband spitefully charged her with adultery before the divorce decree was granted. Jackson blamed her death just after the 1828 election on the stress caused by the mudslinging, and, holding Adams personally responsible, he refused to meet with him in the pre-inaugural transition. Though the 1980 election didn’t approach 1828 in bitterness, Jimmy Carter saw Reagan, in the words of historian Douglas Brinkley, as “an unprincipled but telegenic B-grade Hollywood cowboy who had ridden into the White House on such ‘patriotic’ themes as abhorrence of government, xenophobia, and massive tax cuts.” For his part, Reagan resented Carter’s charge that his opponent would divide the nation by pitting whites against blacks and the rich against the poor.

 *Disgruntled, depressed predecessors. Jackson and Reagan succeeded men of intelligence and industry (Adams and Carter) whose stiff-necked ways hobbled them when they sought to advance their legislative program in Congress. Both Adams and Carter found it difficult to accept that their own failings as politicians contributed to their massive defeats. Adams, like his father, didn’t stick around to watch the new President inaugurated. Once out of office, Carter criticized his successor repeatedly.

*New presidents who broke with the past. Jackson, the first trans-Allegheny President, broke the line of men who held the nation’s highest office who had hailed from Virginia and Massachusetts. Reagan, a former actor who made his home in California, represented a new breed in politics: someone who had gained fame without being a lawyer, politician, or professional soldier.

*Agents of change. With his stiff delivery, Jackson didn’t express himself memorably, but he didn’t have anything memorable to express anyway. (See the inaugural address here.) Reagan had a different problem: a pre-political career as sports radio announcer, actor, TV anthology host and corporate (GE) representative made him adept at wringing nuance from every single sentence, but a glittering delivery that led him to be nicknamed “The Great Communicator” couldn’t disguise the fact that his speeches often couldn’t get past banalities. (See his address here.) But it didn’t matter, because their image overrode everything. Both Jackson and Reagan came from the West, vowing to Change Washington. Jackson heralded an age of “reform” (his word) now at hand; Reagan proclaimed that big government wasn’t the solution, but part of the problem.

*Changing economic directions. The Reaganauts chafed under the label given to their program by Democrats: “trickle-down economics.” Had any of them been so inclined, I suspect they would have been much more comfortable with a phrase from Richard Hofstadter’s classic The American Political Tradition about the Jacksonian economic program: “a phase in the expansion of liberated capitalism.” It sounds fine indeed, wrenched out of Hofstadter’s trenchant analysis. Another historian, Bray Hammond, spelled out what followed in the 1830s. The same trends held true in the 1980s: “Liberty became transformed into laisser faire. A violent, aggressive economic individualism became established. The democracy became greedy, intolerant, imperialistic, and lawless. It opened economic advantages to those who had not previously had them. . . . Wealth was won and lost, lost and won. Patient accumulation was condemned.” Yes, “impatient capitalism” might be a better description of what came to pass in both eras.

*Consolidation of coalitions and dawn of new political eras. By 1828, with property requirements and other restrictions increasingly eliminated, universal male suffrage had become the norm in virtually all the states. The age of deference, which had benefited the aristocratic Virginia and Adams dynasties, was over. A rough-hewn man, as one might expect from someone that Hofstadter termed a “one-generation aristocrat,” Jackson benefited from these tendencies, then gave it a decided push forward. Martin Van Buren, the “Little Magician” of Jackson’s Cabinet, welded Jackson's base in the Southwest, the slaveholding states of the Southeast and Northeast urban strongholds such as New York into the modern Democratic Party. Similarly, the Reagan coalition put in the driver’s seat disaffected blue-collar conservative Democrats, neo-conservatives, traditional Main Street conservatives and a “New Right” of evangelical Christians motivated by social issues.

This Day in Presidential History (Jackson Duels Over Horses, Wife)

May 30, 1806—Amid early morning fog, on the banks of the Red River in Logan County, Kentucky, Andrew Jackson—lawyer, planter, temporarily out of public life—engaged in a duel with Charles Dickinson, a Nashville attorney with a well-earned reputation as one of the deadliest shots in the state. Though Dickinson fired first and his aim was as true as ever, it wasn’t good enough—his opponent was only badly wounded.

The consequences of that day—the uproar over Jackson’s decision to continue the duel when he didn’t have to, along with the bullet that remained lodged inside him—would last for the remainder of Old Hickory’s life, and play no small part in creating his legend as a man not to be trifled with.

This is what happens when two men get excited over liquor, horses—and especially a woman.

Perceptions of Andrew Jackson have evolved dramatically over the last 70 years or so. As America rose to counter a foreign enemy (multiple enemies, in fact) in WWII, Hollywood contributed The Remarkable Andrew (1942), in which the spirit of the victor of New Orleans and seventh President (played by Brian Donlevy) comes to the aid of a wrongly accused small-town accountant (played by William Holden) who idolizes him.

Flash forward to 2010, nearly 40 years after America washed its hands of a conflict in Southeast Asia—and now amid two wars involving the Islamic world—when the Public Theater presented the Michael Friedman musical Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson, described by The New York Times as “likely to remain a true reflection of these United States for many years to come.”

There’s a world of difference in these two worldviews, also shaped, to no mean extent, by two generations’ diametrically opposed perceptions of Jackson’s treatment of slaves and Native Americans. But they are united on one point, something that the unfortunate Mr. Dickinson (did I mention that AJ’s shot killed him?) would readily agree with: Jackson would fight.

There are people in this world who are too cocky for their own good, and I’m afraid Dickinson was one of them. Put together youth (25 years old), good looks, a decent legal practice (a letter of recommendation by his teacher, John Marshall, didn’t hurt), an agreeable wife and the aforesaid deadly aim (one that had gotten him through a number of duels already), and Dickinson thought he could survive anything.

He should have known better than to mess with Jackson. Not yet 40 years old, Old Hickory was already inspiring stories about his ferocious temper, his ability to take a devastating blow, and his capacity to strike back.

A few incidents (recounted briefly but with brio) in Jon Meacham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of the President, American Lion, will suffice:

* Recalling wrestling matches in their youth on the frontier, an acquaintance remarked: “I could throw him three times out of four, but he would never stay throwed.”

* Captured along with his brother Robert during the American Revolution, the 14-year-old Jackson was ordered by a British officer to clean his boots. Jackson refused, claiming that he was a prisoner of war and should be treated as such. The redcoat swung his sword, leaving scars on Jackson’s skull and fingers—and hatred for a foreign force that so mistreated Robert in captivity that he died shortly after release.

* While riding circuit in 1798 as a justice of the Tennessee Superior Court, Jackson came face to face with Russell Bean, indicted for “cutting off the ears of his infant child in a drunken frolic.” Bean scared out of his wits the local sheriff, then, armed with a knife and pistols, proceeded to taunt a local posse sent to bring him to court. Jackson, however, made the astonished Bean drop his guns and surrender. It was not simply Jackson‘s blunt order (“Now surrender, you infernal villain, this very instant, or I’ll blow you through”), but his look, Bean confessed later, that did the trick. When Bean looked into the eyes of the sheriff and townspeople, he said, he saw, “No shoot”; when he looked into Jackson's, he read, “Shoot.” That meant, Bean concluded (in a phrase I can't help but love), it was time for him to “sing small.”

Surely Dickinson knew all this. He had to—there weren’t many lawyers out on the frontier, and he and Jackson were often rivals at the bar. The wonder is not really that he got into trouble with Old Hickory, but why he didn’t do so sooner than he did.

Dickinson, you see, touched on the most sensitive point in Jackson’s life: the origin of his marriage to his dear wife Rachel. The two had wed as soon as her first husband, Lewis Robards, obtained a divorce, in 1791--or so they thought. But, it turned out, Robards had only filed for divorce, and his petition wasn’t granted for another two years. As soon as the pair learned this, they went through the ceremony again to formalize things, though they already thought of themselves as man and wife.

Nevertheless, this meant that, technically, Andrew and Rachel had been living together unmarried, in an adulterous, bigamous relationship, for two years.

Meacham writes that Jackson’s marital situation caused such a scandal during the 1828 Presidential campaign because the nation’s mores had grown more conservative than those of Jackson’s frontier environment of the early 1790s. But even by the turn of the century, on the frontier, tongues were wagging.

One of these was Dickinson’s. The first time Jackson heard about this, he requested via Dickinson’s father-in-law, Col. Joseph Erwin, an apology. Jackson accepted Dickinson’s explanation—that he only started talking after too much to drink, and didn’t mean anything by it.

Over time, something of a myth has grown up around Jackson, to the effect that once you were on his bad side, not even God could get you off it. Not so: Seven years after the Dickinson imbroglio, Jackson became involved in another duel, with Thomas Hart Benton; received a bullet from that encounter; but later, in Washington, became an ally and diehard friend of Benton, by now a U.S. Senator from Missouri.

Unlike Benton, Dickinson wouldn’t live either to old age or into Jackson’s good graces. With the matter over Rachel seemingly taken care of, a dispute arose between the two over their shared passion for horseracing. Dickinson, exasperated by a forfeit and outright loss by a horse owned by Col. Erwin to one owned by Jackson, had one drink too many again, and again he made insinuations about Jackson and Rachel.

By this time, Jackson had also gotten wind of a rumor that some of Dickinson’s statements were about to make their way into print. Among Dickinson’s assertions: that Jackson was cowardly. Representatives from Jackson reached Dickinson before he could leave the state for Maryland (his birthplace and home of his ancestors) and demanded immediate satisfaction from the rash attorney. The meeting was set for May 30.

Jackson and his "second" for the duel were certain he couldn’t outdraw Dickinson, and determined that his best chance was somehow to withstand Dickinson’s shot before getting off one of his own. At this point, they hit upon a simple but (within the terms of the elaborate Code Duello formulated in Ireland in 1777) acceptable means of doing so: wear a loose coat that would provide a more elusive target for Dickinson.

All of this was unbeknownst to Dickinson, who was feeling even more confident (if that could be possible) on the way to the encounter, when, just for practice, he aimed at a string supporting an apple and cut the cord in two. Then, once he got to the site of the encounter and got the word to pace off, he turned almost immediately and fired.

The bullet scraped Jackson’s breastbone and broke some ribs—but more important, it didn’t touch his heart. Dickinson didn’t even know this much—all he could see was that Jackson stood as erect as ever. “Great God! Have I missed him?” Dickinson exclaimed, immediately sensing his own jeopardy—because now, by the Code Duello, Jackson could get off a clear shot at him.

Jackson pointed his pistol, aimed—and nothing happened: His pistol was at half-lock. At this point, by settled practice, Jackson, with his honor clearly established by his willingness not just to meet his opponent but to endure a shot from him, could have simply aimed at the trees, fired a worthless shot, called it a day, and let cooler heads smooth things over once again with his opponent.

But Jackson was reading the Code Duello very literally, and knew that an empty click technically didn’t count as a shot at all. This time when he aimed, he got his shot off, and it struck Dickinson in the abdomen. The latter was taken to a nearby house, where he bled to death from the wound.

Jackson and his second were 20 miles away when they noticed that Jackson was bleeding into his shoes. Some observers thought that Jackson didn’t seek immediate attention because he didn’t want Dickinson to have the satisfaction that he had struck him at all.

The Dickinson duel would return to haunt Jackson two decades later, when supporters of John Quincy Adams not only cited it as an example of the general’s intemperate nature, but also pointed to his decision to fire at Dickinson as a cold-blooded murder. It didn’t matter: unlike the disputed election of 1824, which ended up with Jackson losing the election in the House of Representatives despite winning the popular vote, this time he won walking away.

Dickinson was hardly the last person to underestimate Jackson’s fierce will. Nearly 30 years later, Jackson became the first President to suffer an assassination attempt, while he was leaving the Capitol as part of the funeral procession for a congressman. This time, by the standards of the day, the 67-year-old Jackson really was Old Hickory. But he reacted just the way he would have 30 years before.

After the assailant, named Richard Lawrence, attempted to fire at him, Jackson and the crowd rushed him. Lawrence, now with a second gun (and, by some accounts, close enough to touch Jackson’s coat), pulled the trigger again. Even with the different weapon, the gun misfired.

Now Jackson turned upon him, and Lawrence—like Bean and Dickinson before him—knew genuine fear, as Jackson, employing a trick he’d learned long ago on the frontier, swung his cane at the assailant’s stomach and brought him to heel.

Andrew Jackson was a hugely controversial figure, even for a position that seems to attract (or create) such types. His encounter with Dickinson illustrates one of the great faults of his personality: a propensity to enlarge a quarrel unto it became an unnecessary matter of life or death.

It also demonstrates, as certainly as his later near-death experience with Lawrence three decades later, one of his virtues: a physical fearlessness so absolute as to make men confident in themselves simply because they were associated with Old Hickory.