A slight or an
insult to his personality became in his eyes a moral wrong which must be
cherished and avenged, and which relieved him of any obligation to be
just or kind to his enemy. Many conspicuous illustrations of this
quarrelsome spirit are to be found in the political life of the Middle
Period, which, indeed, cannot be understood without constantly falling
back upon the influence of lively personal resentments. Every prominent
politician cordially disliked or hated a certain number of his political
adversaries and associates; and his public actions were often dictated
by a purpose either to injure these men or to get ahead of them. After
the retirement of Jackson these enmities and resentments came to have a
smaller influence; but a man's right and duty to quarrel with anybody
who, in his opinion, had done him an injury was unchallenged, and was
generally considered to be the necessary accompaniment of American
democratic virility.
As I have intimated above, Andrew Jackson was the most conspicuous
example of this quarrelsome spirit, and for this reason he is wholly
inferior to Lincoln as a type of democratic manhood.
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