Andrew Jackson and Evaluating Historical and Political Figures

Not long ago, the US Treasury Department announced that in the upcoming redesign of the US$20 dollar bill, African-American anti-slavery activist Harriet Tubman will replace former US President Andrew Jackson on the front of the bill, though Jackson will apparently appear on the back. This follows years of activism with the goal of getting a woman on the front of at least one US bill, an area hitherto dominated solely by white men. A few years ago, the US Treasury suggested that they would put a woman on the US$10, replacing Alexander Hamilton, but this met with a lukewarm response, largely because many felt that on the one hand Hamilton, as the first Treasury Secretary and the primary architect behind the establishment of the federal banking system, was relatively deserving of his place, while Jackson was not, in part because he had complete disdain for the federal banking system, but also because of his record in other areas. Thus, further pressure led to the current proposal. Inevitably, there are still some people who are dissatisfied. Some conservatives are insisting that Jackson was a great president and deserves to remain on the front of the bill, while others say he should be removed entirely. Like the recent debate at Princeton over the record of President Woodrow Wilson, whose name is on one of the schools there, this all comes down to the difficult task of judging a historical figure – or for that matter a contemporary one – as “good” or “bad” based on their record. This is something I’ve talked about before, but it’s worth going over again, as it relates not only to how we view history but how we look at present day political figures, such as candidates for office.

Defenders of Jackson point to his positive accomplishments, such as defeating the British in the Battle of New Orleans at the end of the War of 1812, or making US presidential elections more democratic. They respond to criticism of the bad things Jackson did, such as his violent treatment of Native Americans, by saying he was a man of his times, and since many others at that time believed or even acted in ways similar to him, we shouldn’t judge him by today’s standards. This is similar to the defense offered for Woodrow Wilson’s pro-segregation actions as president. They observe that most, if not all, historical figures were complex people who combined great virtues with major flaws and that it is not fair to expect those who are honored by various monuments to have been perfect.

There is some merit in these arguments. It is certainly true that no one is perfect, and if we were only to honor people who never committed a morally questionable act then we’d end up honoring no one at all. I’d also agree that people should for the most part be judged against the standards of their times. For instance, slavery was not only widespread in the early United States but also in many societies throughout history. Slavery was common in ancient Greece and Rome, with Aristotle explicitly justifying it (by what seems today a specious argument that some people were inherently suited to be slaves). According to the Torah, even the mythical father of the Jewish nation, Abraham, owned a slave who he also had children by (how willing a participant she was isn’t not clearly stated). So the mere fact that a historical figure owned slaves is not alone grounds for saying they are not worth of being honored. Likewise, strong prejudice against other ethnic or religious groups was virtually universal in many past societies, as was the opinion that woman were inferior to men. Attitudes that seem reprehensible to us were often held by people who otherwise seem wise and just. I recently finished reading Ammianus Marcellinus’s history of the late Roman Empire, and while Ammianus was clearly bothered by injustice and was able to take a fairly objective view even of groups he didn’t belong to (for instance, despite being a pagan and a great admirer of Julian, the last pagan emperor, he criticizes Julian for barring Christians from teaching rhetoric), he also made negative comments about Jews and homosexuality. He attacks the shortsighted Roman officials who mistreated the Goths who had taken refuge in the Empire after their lands were invaded by the Huns, and yet after the Goths rebelled (eventually killing the emperor Valens and wiping out his army at Adrianopole), he praises a Roman leader in the East who took the precaution of massacring all the Goths serving in the eastern armies. It seems likely that not only would Ammianus not have thought Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s internment of Japanese-Americans to be wrong, he might even have considered it too mild. Nevertheless, for his time, Amminanus was probably a fairly decent person.

It’s not even quite fair to use the fact that a few people in the society in question recognized the injustice of some contemporary institution to condemn all those who did not. For instance, just because a few people in colonial America realized that slavery was inherently wrong and that people of African descent were fully equal to Europeans is not necessarily reason to consider all their contemporaries who failed to see the same thing to be evil. It would be more reasonable to say those that those few were ahead of their time in reaching an insight that eluded their fellows. What seems obvious to us was not necessarily obvious to people raised in a society where racism, like sexism, was pervasive. It takes an especially insightful person to break free of ideas that they have absorbed and been surrounded by all their lives, especially when there are few if any people around them challenging those beliefs.

On the other hand, judging people by the standards of their times does not mean excusing or whitewashing their bad deeds, even if they did not know how wrong they were. And many historical leaders including Wilson and especially Jackson, committed acts that were reprehensible even by the standards of their times. Wilson didn’t merely conform to the racist attitudes of his contemporaries; he was clearly more racist than many other political leaders of his time. He imposed segregation on the civil service where it had not existed before, actually taking things backwards. As for Jackson, his violent temper was notorious even in his own day, as was his greed in seizing vast tracts of land for himself and his friends, and his bloody slaughters of the Native Americans, by our standards genocidal, were extreme even in comparison with the generally terrible treatment of the natives by the white Americans of the time.

In other words, even when the standards of a previous era or culture included beliefs and prejudices that we now know to be wrong, it is still possible to judge people of the time in a relative sense, and in many cases to reach the conclusion that this or that historical figure was, overall, a bad person. Of course even the most horrible person is bound to have a few good points, and the best will still have flaws. So of course it would be possible for someone to list negative things about Harriet Tubman, just as people arguing for or against Jackson will list his virtues or his flaws. But to reach a truly balanced judgment, we have to, as much as possible, consider both their good deeds and their bad ones. The problem is that there is a tendency for people (even many historians, particularly in the past), to categorize a historical figure as a hero or a villain, and then to play up their virtues while minimizing their flaws or vice versa. To judge anyone fairly, we have to look at both sides. However, in some cases, even when looking at both positives and negatives, it is not hard to reach a conclusion in one direction or another. In the case of Andrew Jackson, for example, the bad things he did were so numerous and so awful that it is difficult to argue that the good things he did could possibly outweigh them. This doesn’t mean that we should erase him from our history books or ignore his good deeds. But since being placed on a bill is a highly exclusive honor that only a few people receive, there are clearly many Americans far more deserving than Jackson.

Still, while it is not hard to conclude that someone like Andrew Jackson was bad enough to be undeserving of a special honor like a place on the currency, or that the dictator Chiang Kai-shek shouldn’t have a massive memorial hall in his name in central Taipei, we still should resist easy characterization of any individual in history as a flawless hero or a thorough villain. Instead, we should look at all of them as objectively as possible, taking care to look at both positives and negatives, at least as far as we are aware of them. This applies to current political figures as well. For example, we have to acknowledge that Donald Trump (or Drumpf, as I call him) has occasionally gotten some things right, such being the only Republican candidate to say Planned Parenthood did some good work, or saying that he would try to be a neutral mediator between Israel and the Palestinians, or condemning North Carolina’s ridiculous bathroom bill. But even if he hadn’t backtracked on some of those statements, the things he’s gotten right cannot begin to make up for the worst things he’s said, not to mention his ignorance and awful judgment on a wide variety of subjects, from President Barack Obama’s birthplace to foreign policy. In other words, his good points can’t begin to make up for his bad ones, at least when it comes to whether he would be acceptable as US president. Clearly he is completely unqualified for that position, even if he sometimes manages to get things right.

Conversely, some people on the left seem to focus entirely on the worst things Hillary Clinton has done, to the point where some will make the absurd claim that she’s no better than a Republican. For example, practically the only vote she made as a US senator that they talk about is the one authorizing President George W. Bush to use force against Iraq. That vote was certainly a mistake, as Clinton herself has admitted, but she was far from the only Democrat who voted that way at the time. Her overall voting record was in fact quite progressive, even more so than both Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Likewise, they cite her worst policy positions, ignoring the many areas where she is as progressive as Bernie Sanders (or even more so, in the case of gun control). While of course Clinton could be better on numerous issues, an objective assessment of her record shows that she would be at least as progressive as Obama overall. Even if that’s not good enough (and there are some on the left who are not big fans of Obama), what really matters is that in a side-by-side comparison, Clinton is vastly – and I mean vastly – superior to Drumpf or any other character that the Republicans might try to foist on their base in Drumpf’s place. The idea that there is no substantial difference between Clinton and the Republicans is absurd beyond belief, and yet by focusing entirely on the worst aspects of Clinton’s record and ignoring the rest, some people apparently have convinced themselves that it is true, just as some have managed to convince themselves that Drumpf wouldn’t be so bad. In reality, when judging candidates for office, as when judging historical figures, we have to look at both the good and the bad, and remember that with human beings, as with pretty much everything, there are no absolutes. No one is completely virtuous or thoroughly evil, but by looking as objectively as possible at someone’s overall record, we can judge whether they are worthy of being honored – or being elected to office.