Tony Perrottet: The trashing of the White House that was Andrew Jackson's inauguration
[Tony Perrottet's new book, Napoleon's Privates: 2,500 Years of History Unzipped, is a literary version of a Cabinet of Curiosities (HarperCollins, July, 2008; napoleonsprivates.com). He is also the author of Pagan Holiday: On the Trail of Ancient Roman Tourists and The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games.]
The most riotous party scene in the U.S. political arena occurred when the war hero Andrew Jackson, considered a country bumpkin by many a patrician Easterner, arrived in Washington, D.C. An estimated 30,000 of his supporters converged on the young capital city, mostly from the South and West, to whoop it up for the March 4 swearing-in. These frontier crowds didn’t just want to fill the saloons of the capital — they wanted to shake Jackson’s hand and pay a visit to his swank new home, the President’s House, which had recently been painted a glossy white. The scenes of debauchery that ensued would make the city’s genteel, fashion-obsessed locals blanch.
Scoring an Invitation: Until this time, inauguration receptions had been discreet and civilized affairs. Straight-laced members of the American aristocracy would gather at the President’s House and offer their formal congratulations over coffee and biscuits, while quietly rejoicing that power was remaining in the hands of the land-owning elite. 1828 would change all that. Jackson was the first truly popular president: Leading a faction that would later become the Democratic Party, he swept into power by taking advantage of new laws that almost tripled the numbers of registered American voters from 365,000 to a million, and. He himself was one of the country’s fabled self-made men, a poor autodidact from the Tennessee frontier who served in the Revolutionary War as a teenage foot soldier and rose in the ranks to become a successful general in the War of 1812 (he had a dent in his skull from a British sword). He was so popular that any man who had cast a ballot for Jackson in the 1828 election felt that he had been extended a personal invitation to attend the inauguration. What’s more, the election of 1824 had been “stolen” — Jackson had swept the popular vote but had not gained a majority in the Electoral College — and his supporters wanted to make sure they finished the job.
Pre-party Planning: Ever since the British burned Washington to the ground 16 years earlier, successive mayors had been trying to make the capital presentable. It was an uphill job. The artificial city was still a ramshackle and provincial affair, far from the fine metropolis envisioned by designer Pierre Charles L’Enfant — “a parody upon all the other capitals that were ever actually built up and inhabited since the beginning of the world,” scoffed the architecture critic for the Philadelphia Monthly. The city had only one decent thoroughfare, Pennsylvania Avenue, which ran between Congress and the Presidential House, while the rest was bleak swamp and sand. In fact, Washington was completely unprepared for the hordes, wild-haired or otherwise, that arrived upon it. The hotels filled up days beforehand, as did those in nearby Georgetown and Alexandria, so innkeepers happily tripled their room rates and rented space on their kitchen floors. Thousands simply camped out under the open sky. For the coarse Jackson supporters, mostly outdoorsmen of sorts, this was no hardship: They were simply bivouacking as if they were on a hunting trip in the Adirondacks. Many of them had never seen a real city before, so even Washington was an awe-inspiring site.
What to Wear: Unwashed hayseeds they may have been, but on the big day it would be Sunday best — every man with his beaver-skin hat, every woman with a bonnet....
Read entire article at http://www.thesmartset.com (date uncertain)
The most riotous party scene in the U.S. political arena occurred when the war hero Andrew Jackson, considered a country bumpkin by many a patrician Easterner, arrived in Washington, D.C. An estimated 30,000 of his supporters converged on the young capital city, mostly from the South and West, to whoop it up for the March 4 swearing-in. These frontier crowds didn’t just want to fill the saloons of the capital — they wanted to shake Jackson’s hand and pay a visit to his swank new home, the President’s House, which had recently been painted a glossy white. The scenes of debauchery that ensued would make the city’s genteel, fashion-obsessed locals blanch.
Scoring an Invitation: Until this time, inauguration receptions had been discreet and civilized affairs. Straight-laced members of the American aristocracy would gather at the President’s House and offer their formal congratulations over coffee and biscuits, while quietly rejoicing that power was remaining in the hands of the land-owning elite. 1828 would change all that. Jackson was the first truly popular president: Leading a faction that would later become the Democratic Party, he swept into power by taking advantage of new laws that almost tripled the numbers of registered American voters from 365,000 to a million, and. He himself was one of the country’s fabled self-made men, a poor autodidact from the Tennessee frontier who served in the Revolutionary War as a teenage foot soldier and rose in the ranks to become a successful general in the War of 1812 (he had a dent in his skull from a British sword). He was so popular that any man who had cast a ballot for Jackson in the 1828 election felt that he had been extended a personal invitation to attend the inauguration. What’s more, the election of 1824 had been “stolen” — Jackson had swept the popular vote but had not gained a majority in the Electoral College — and his supporters wanted to make sure they finished the job.
Pre-party Planning: Ever since the British burned Washington to the ground 16 years earlier, successive mayors had been trying to make the capital presentable. It was an uphill job. The artificial city was still a ramshackle and provincial affair, far from the fine metropolis envisioned by designer Pierre Charles L’Enfant — “a parody upon all the other capitals that were ever actually built up and inhabited since the beginning of the world,” scoffed the architecture critic for the Philadelphia Monthly. The city had only one decent thoroughfare, Pennsylvania Avenue, which ran between Congress and the Presidential House, while the rest was bleak swamp and sand. In fact, Washington was completely unprepared for the hordes, wild-haired or otherwise, that arrived upon it. The hotels filled up days beforehand, as did those in nearby Georgetown and Alexandria, so innkeepers happily tripled their room rates and rented space on their kitchen floors. Thousands simply camped out under the open sky. For the coarse Jackson supporters, mostly outdoorsmen of sorts, this was no hardship: They were simply bivouacking as if they were on a hunting trip in the Adirondacks. Many of them had never seen a real city before, so even Washington was an awe-inspiring site.
What to Wear: Unwashed hayseeds they may have been, but on the big day it would be Sunday best — every man with his beaver-skin hat, every woman with a bonnet....