The Jefferson Key

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President Andrew Jackson faced the gun aimed at his chest. A strange sight but not altogether unfamiliar, not for a man who’d spent nearly his entire life fighting wars. He was leaving the Capitol Rotunda, walking toward the East Portico, his somber mood matching the day’s weather. His Treasury secretary, Levi Woodbury, steadied him, as did his trusted walking cane. Winter had been harsh this year, especially on a gaunt, sixty-seven-year-old body-his muscles were unusually stiff, his lungs perpetually congested.

He’d ventured from the White House only to say goodbye to a former friend-Warren Davis of South Carolina, elected twice to Congress, once as an ally, a Jacksonian Democrat, the other as a Nullifier. His enemy, the former vice president John C. Calhoun, had concocted the Nullifier Party, its members actually believing that states could choose what federal laws they wanted to obey. The devil’s work was how he’d described such foolishness. There’d be no country if the Nullifiers had their way-which, he supposed, was their entire intent. Thankfully, the Constitution spoke of a unified government, not a loose league where everyone could do as they pleased.

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