This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories,

the show where America is the star and the American people.

Up next, the story of a man whose politics are as controversial today as they were in his

time. He excelled at the lost art of dueling and was our first president with a D in front of his

name. We're of course talking about Andrew Jackson. You're to tell a story of the man

is Dr. Bradley Berzer, a professor at Hillsdale College, an author of In Defense of Andrew Jackson.

Here's Dr. Berzer. When Andrew Jackson took the oath of office for the very first time on March 4th of 1829,

he did so wearing all black.

He was still lamenting the very recent loss of his wife,

his partner, his absolute intellectual equal.

He also, when he gave his talk,

when he gave his inaugural, when he gave his inaugural,

he bowed twice to the American people,

once when he started and once when he finished his talks,

and both times he recognized that they were the true sovereigns of America.

This was not affectation or theater on his part. One of the things that astounded me absolutely

in getting to write on Andrew Jackson is how unbelievably honest he was and how unbelievably dedicated

he was to the American people. So in 2017, and I don't want to make this too autobiographical about me, but in 2017, I got asked through John Miller, who teaches here at the college, he was asked by Harry Crocker, who was the head then of Regnery Publishing, if they knew somebody who could write a very quick and short biography of Andrew Jackson. I've been teaching Andrew Jackson during a

class that we have here at Hillsdale College for the last 20, 21 years since 1999. I've been teaching

a course called Jacksonian America. And throughout most of the time that I had the privilege of

...