![]() ![]() In a "small town" like Washington, D.C., it was expected that everyone would already know the local news, so city papers were usually stuffed with national or international headlines. Newspapers functioned differently in the early 1800s, explains Feller. It should be noted that Smith's account, while widely quoted, isn't the only evidence that something ugly may have happened at the White House on March 4, 1829. "If it had been that riotous scene that Smith reports, you'd think would have mentioned it." "Throwing 'office-seeker' into the mix undercuts the idea that the outpouring of people into Washington was somehow pure and noble and un-self-interested," says Feller, who also thinks it's notable that in Webster's long description of the day's events, he doesn't even mention the allegedly shameful party. In Webster's eyes, the impressive crowds at Jackson's inaugural weren't just members of the president's adoring public, but also political aspirants looking for a cushy government job with the new administration. Instead of describing the inaugural audience as uncivilized rabble, though, as Smith had, Webster blamed the crush of humanity on "thousands of expectants for office who throng the City, & clamor all over the Country." Smith reported that the crowd at the White House was estimated at 20,000 people, although she admitted, "I think the number exaggerated." She didn't hesitate, though, to pass along secondhand accounts of women fainting, men "seen with bloody noses" and expensive glassware "to the amount of several thousand dollars" broken in the mad rush for refreshments. How much of that was her perception and how much was reality? Undoubtedly some of both." "And to her, there were clearly some people at Jackson's levee who didn't look like they belonged there. "Among people like Smith, if you go to the White House, you should be presentable, gentlemanly or ladylike," says Feller. You can almost hear Smith clutching her pearls at the scene she found at the White House, where previous presidents had always opened their doors to the public, but not this kind of public, surely. "The Majesty of the People had disappeared, and a rabble, a mob, of boys, negros, women, children, scrambling, fighting, romping. "But what a scene did we witness!" wrote Smith. Sometime after 3 p.m., she and her crew finally made it to the party. ![]() In a letter to her daughter, Smith wrote of the majesty and pomp of the inaugural itself and how her visit to the White House had been delayed by rumors of overwhelming crowds. ![]() Reading Smith's account of Jackson's inauguration day, it's easy to understand why so many contemporary newspapers and later historians jumped on the story of how Jackson's uncouth rabble ransacked the White House and almost trampled the president to death. It's not an eyewitness account, and it's very likely a jaundiced account." But you have to recognize that her account is basically the only one that portrays what happened at the White House in such extreme terms. "I don't think Smith would have made it up out of whole cloth. "I don't want to undercut this too much," says Feller. This is the story that you've probably heard." "People standing on chairs to get a better view, grabbing for food and drinks to the point that tables are overturned and being shattered. "This is the iconic event that everybody knows about today, when thousands of people - 'dirty' people with mud on their boots who, according to the genteel, should not have been there - stormed the White House and created total chaos," says Daniel Feller, an emeritus history professor at the University of Tennessee and editor of The Papers of Andrew Jackson. And that's when things allegedly got out of control. Following a tradition established by George Washington, Jackson held a "levee" back at the White House, an "open house" of sorts where regular citizens could mingle with the new First Family. Carriages, wagons and carts all pursuing him to the President's house."īut what happened next is the only thing that most Americans know about Jackson's inauguration. "Country men, farmers, gentlemen, mounted and dismounted, boys, women and children, black and white. "The living mass was impenetrable," wrote Margaret Bayard Smith, a Washington socialite and author. (He was the first president to win by appealing to the masses.) When the inauguration ceremony was over, the crowd broke through the barriers and rushed up the Capitol steps to shake hands with "the peoples' president." Jackson was America's first populist president, a straight-talking "outsider" candidate who vowed to represent the people, not the Washington elite. ![]()
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