democracy; they had naturally more of it after the Revolution. But even
after the Revolution something like an aristocracy was to be noted in
the older States, North and South, consisting in the North of the old
New England families with their mercantile wealth and their Puritan
traditions, in the South of the great slave-owning squires. In the new
lands, in the constant and necessary fight with savage nature and savage
man, such distinctions were obliterated. Before a massacre all men are
equal. In the presence of a grizzly bear "these truths" are quite
unmistakably self-evident. The West was in a quite new and peculiar
sense democratic, and was to give to America the great men who should
complete the work of democracy.

The other side of Jackson's character, as it influenced his public life,
was the outlook which belonged to him as a soldier. He had the
soldier's special virtue of loyalty. He was, throughout his long life,
almost fanatically loyal in word and deed to his wife, to his friends,
to his country. But above all he was loyal to the Jeffersonian dogma of
popular sovereignty, which he accepted quite simply and unquestioningly,
as soldiers are often found to accept a religion. And, accepting it, he
acted upon it with the same simplicity. Sophistications of it moved him
to contempt and anger. Sovereignty was in the people. Therefore those
ought to rule whom the people chose; and these were the servants of the
people and ought to act as the people willed. All of which is quite
unassailable; but anyone who has ever mixed in the smallest degree in
politics will understand how appalling must have been the effect of the
sudden intrusion in that atmosphere of such truisms by a man who really
acted as if they were true. With this simplicity of outlook Jackson
possessed in an almost unparalleled degree the quality which makes a
true leader--the capacity to sum up and interpret the inarticulate will
of the mass. His eye for the direction of popular feeling was unerring,
perhaps largely because he snared or rather incarnated the instincts,
the traditions--what others would call the prejudices--of those who
followed him. As a military leader his soldiers adored him, and he
carried into civil politics a good general's capacity for identifying
himself with the army he leads.

He had also, of course, the advantage of a picturesque personality and
of a high repute acquired in arms. The populace called him "Old
Hickory"--a ni