S.A. Bent, comp. Familiar Short Sayings of Great Men. 1887.

Andrew Jackson

[An American general and statesman; born in North Carolina, March 15, 1767; began the practice of law in Nashville, Tenn., 1788; representative to Congress, 1796; senator, 1797; judge of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, 1798–1804; defended New Orleans against the British, 1815; served in the Creek and Seminole wars; governor of Florida, 1821; United-States senator, 1823; President of the United States, 1829–1837; suppressed nullification, 1832; died June 8, 1845.]

Our federal Union, it must be preserved.

At a banquet at Washington, on Jefferson’s birthday, April 30, 1830. When the regular toasts which savored of the doctrine of nullification had been given, the President was called upon for a volunteer sentiment, and gave what was thought to be an impromptu, but what had in reality been prepared with deliberation. It electrified the country, and became a watchword.

When asked in his last illness by Dr. Edgar what he would have done, had Calhoun and his followers persisted in their attempt of nullification, he answered, “Hung them, sir, as high as Haman! They should have been a terror to traitors to all time, and posterity would have pronounced it the best act of my life.” “As he said these words,” says his biographer Parton, “he half rose in bed, and all the old fire glowed in his eyes again.”

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