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"It can not be denied that in the first month of this administration more removals were made than had occurred from the foundation of the government to that time. … So numerous were the removals in the city of Washington that the business of the place seems paralyzed."
No, that isn't an account of President Donald Trump's first weeks in office. It is a description of Andrew Jackson's first 40 days on the job, according to James Parton's 1860 book, "The Life of Andrew Jackson."
"The sun had not gone down upon the day of his inauguration before it was known in all official circles in Washington that the 'reform' alluded to in the inaugural address meant a removal from office of all who had conspicuously opposed," Parton wrote, "and an appointment to office of those who had conspicuously aided the election of the new President."
Jackson set the standard for the most tumultuous presidential term ever - at least until now. He took office on March 4, 1829, as the self-described champion of "the common man," declaring he was out for revenge against the "hungry rats" from the outgoing administration of President John Quincy Adams.
Jackson quickly replaced the Adams-appointed U.S. ambassador to Colombia, fellow 1812 war hero Gen. William Henry Harrison, who had been there only a few weeks after a months-long trip.
Then Jackson turned to federal workers. Everyone in government "from the highest officer to the lowest clerk, was filled with apprehension," wrote socialite Margaret Bayard Smith, who had known presidents since Thomas Jefferson. One troubled Treasury Department worker "from mere fear of removal, cut his throat from ear to ear," the National Daily Intelligencer reported. Another article said a bureaucrat "went raving crazy."
Washington was a city of about 19,000 people. The President's House and the Capitol were connected by dirt streets with no streetlights. Most congressmen stayed at boardinghouses along Pennsylvania Avenue, Donald B. Cole wrote in his 1993 book "The Presidency of Andrew Jackson." Prominent visitors stayed at John Gadsby's new four-story National Hotel. The word on the street was about job cuts.
In his first year, Jackson cut 20 percent of the 11,000 federal jobs in a government overseeing 24 states, Sen. John Holmes of Maine said in Congress in 1830. Jackson removed "more officials in one year than all preceding presidents had in the previous forty," Cole wrote.
"The most disagreeable duty I have to perform is the removals & appointments to office - There is great distress here," wrote Jackson, who turned 62 on March 15. The president made 68 appointments in the first nine days alone.
Jackson also formed a "kitchen Cabinet" of advisers. One of them was newspaper editor Duff Green, who promoted Jackson's policies. Green's United States Telegraph said about the job cuts: "Removals have been made, and we have no doubt it will continue to be, for the country loudly demands them."
To help with the job cutting, Jackson appointed another newsman, Amos Kendall, as a Treasury Department auditor. Kendall didn't ask workers to write five things they did the previous week, but he did have Eight Rules of Conduct.
"First, every government officer must begin work by nine in the morning and not end until three in the afternoon," he wrote. "Third, no officer may read a book or newspaper during working hours unless absolutely necessary for the job at hand." He forbade "any gambling or drunkenness" and "Eighth, no officer can use any office supplies for anything other than government business."
Kendall soon found that his predecessor had stolen $3,300 in federal money and had him prosecuted. Later, Jackson officials claimed to have removed officials who had defaulted on $457,000 - equal to $23 million now.
But Congress eventually discovered that Jackson's choice for collector at the Port of New York, gregarious New York City politician Samuel Swartwout, had fled to England after becoming the first person to steal $1 million, or about $60 million today, from the federal government.
Jackson's fast start led to turmoil in April 1830, when he began pushing publisher Green out of his kitchen Cabinet for printing criticisms of the president by his own vice president, John C. Calhoun.
"Poor Duff is now the target" of Jackson's fervent backers down to "those who throw up their arms and shout, 'long live King Andrew,'" the Lowell Journal wrote. Jackson replaced Green with Francis Blair, who moved into a house across the street from the White House while he published the Washington Globe. (The Blair House now is used to house visiting foreign leaders.)
This was followed in April 1831 by reports that Jackson was forcing out Treasury Secretary Samuel Ingham. "Jackson has already indicated to the Honorable Secretary his Sovereign Displeasure and that his place is wanted for one who is known to be more loyal to His Majesty, King Andrew the first," the Baltimore Patriot reported.
At issue was what later became famed as "The Petticoat Affair." Since the inaugural ball, most of Jackson's Cabinet members and their wives had been snubbing War Secretary John Eaton's young bride, Margaret. She was the daughter of a local innkeeper and had been widowed only a few months when she married Eaton, a friend of the president. Jackson, perhaps because his wife Rachel had died just before he took office, sided with Peggy Eaton. At one Cabinet meeting he went so far to say, "She is as chaste as a virgin."
Secretary of State Martin Van Buren unsuccessfully tried to calm matters by calling on Peggy Eaton and her husband at their home. "The political history of the United States, for the last thirty years," Parton wrote in 1860, "dates from the moment when the soft hand of Mr. Van Buren touched Mrs. Eaton's knocker."
Then came the stunning news that all but one of Jackson's six Cabinet members had resigned. To help defuse the Peggy Eaton issue, Eaton and Van Buren voluntarily resigned first. This led to the forced resignations of everybody except the postmaster general. A popular cartoon showed Jackson sitting in a chair with the walls collapsed around him and four rats with human faces running away, with the caption, "The rats leaving a falling house."
Meanwhile, Jackson was publicly quarreling with Vice President Calhoun, who was urging people back in South Carolina to disobey the president's tariffs as unconstitutional.
Jackson soon was vetoing bills like no president before him. The big one was a veto in 1832 of a bill to continue the charter of the quasi-public Second Bank of the United States. Jackson, who wanted to get rid of paper money, said the bank favored the wealthy. "It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes," he wrote, and not the "humble members of society."
Things got nastier during the 1832 election campaign against Jackson's political enemy Henry Clay of Kentucky. Long before the current White House put out a mock Time magazine cover showing President Trump wearing a crown and the words "Long Live the King," anti-Jackson newspapers began publishing a cartoon of "King Andrew the first" under the headline "Born to Command." The famous cartoon showed the king standing dressed in a long flowing robe with a scepter in the right hand and a veto pen in the left while stomping on the U.S. Constitution.
Jackson was unfazed. He won reelection and continued the turmoil that began in his first term. In March 1837 he turned over the presidency to Van Buren and left for his slave plantation at the Hermitage in Tennessee.
Asked if he had any regrets, according to several Jackson biographers, he said, "Yes, I regret I was unable to shoot Henry Clay or to hang John C. Calhoun."
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