“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.