THE ENIGMA OF ANDREW JACKSON

President Andrew Jackson.

Believer in small government.

But a major slaveholder who would have his runaway slaves beaten upon their return (and one named Gilbert actually died from his beating).

In fact, Jackson believed in slavery that much that he believed that fugitive slaves who had established a peaceful refuge on Spanish territory should be captured and returned to their 'rightful owners'. So Jackson organised a raid on that refuge, known as Negro Fort, offereing to pay $50 for each captured fugitive slave, and instructed General Gaines to invade Spanish Florida and capture as many slaves as possible. But Gaines fired a hot cannonball into the fort's arsenal and blew the fort to smithereens, killing nearly 300 occupants, many of whom were women and children.

So why would a slaveholding, slave-beating, slavery-loving man like Jackson, who owned several plantations and 300 slaves, believe in small government?

So there was less oversight of his plantations and the plantations of his buddies?

So he and they could treat their slaves with whatever treatment they saw fit, including death?

I believe so.