a communicant of the Presbyterian church; and his last words to the friends about his bedside were messages of Christian cheer.  After two days the body was laid to rest in the Hermitage garden, beside the grave of the companion whose loss he had never ceased to mourn with all the feeling of which his great nature was capable.  The authorities at the national capital ordered public honors to be paid to the ex-President, and gatherings in all parts of the country listened with much show of feeling to appropriate eulogies.

“General Jackson,” said Daniel Webster to Thurlow Weed in 1837, “is an honest and upright man.  He does what he thinks is right, and does it with all his might.  He has a violent temper, which leads him often to hasty conclusions.  It also causes him to view as personal to himself the public acts of other men.  For this reason there is great difference between Jackson angry and Jackson in good humor.  When he is calm, his judgment is good; when angry, it is usually bad....  His patriotism is no more to be questioned than that of Washington.  He is the greatest General we have and, except Washington, the greatest we ever had.”

To this characterization of Andrew Jackson by his greatest American contemporary it is impossible to make noteworthy addition.  His was a character of striking contradictions.  His personal virtues were honesty, bravery, open-heartedness, chivalry toward women, hospitality, steadfastness.  His personal faults were irascibility, egotism, stubbornness, vindictiveness, and intolerance of the opinions of others.  He was not a statesman; yet some of the highest qualities of statesmanship were in him.  He had a perception of the public will which has rarely been surpassed; and in most, if not all, of the great issues of his time he had a grasp of the right end of the question.

The country came to the belief that the National Bank should not be revived.  It accepted and perpetuated Van Buren’s independent treasury plan.  The annexation of Texas, which Jackson strongly favored, became an accomplished fact with the approval of a majority of the people.  The moderated protective tariff to which Jackson inclined was kept up until the Civil War.  The removal of the Indians to reservations beyond the Mississippi fell in with the views of the public upon that subject and inaugurated an Indian policy which was closely adhered to for more than half a century.  In his vindication of executive independence Jackson broke new ground, crudely enough it is true; yet, whatever the merits of his ideas at the moment, they reshaped men’s conception of the presidency and helped make that office the power that it is today.  The strong stand taken against nullification clarified popular opinion upon the nature of the Union and lent new and powerful support to national vigor and dignity.

Over against these achievements must be placed the introduction of the Spoils System, which debauched the Civil Service and did the country lasting harm; yet Jackson only responded to public opinion which held “rotation in office to be the cardinal principle of democracy.”  It needed a half-century of experience to convince the American people of this fallacy and to place the national Civil Service beyond the reach of spoilsmen.  Even now public opinion is slow to realize that efficiency in office can be secured only by experience and relative permanence.