American Giant. One of the best to have ever done it.
Born 1767. Carolina backcountry. Edge of civilization.
Father dies before you’re born.
Mother raises you alone. Hard woman.
American Revolution breaks out. You’re a teenager.
Age 13. British soldiers capture you.
Officer orders you to clean his boots.
You refuse.
He slashes your face and hand with a sword.
Scars never fade.
Thrown into prison.
Contract smallpox.
Nearly die.
Released in a prisoner exchange.
Return home broken and fevered.
Shortly after, your mother dies of cholera.
She was nursing American prisoners of war.
You are 14.
Completely orphaned.
Frontier life hardens you.
Study law. No schools. No polish.
Become a lawyer. Then a judge.
Honor culture.
Duel repeatedly.
One duel goes wrong.
Shot in the chest.
Bullet lodges inches from your heart.
Doctors cannot remove it.
You carry it for life.
Rise in Tennessee politics.
Become a general.
New Orleans.
British Empire returns.
Veterans of Europe. Best army in the world.
You have militia. Riflemen. Pirates. Farmers.
They expect a massacre.
You annihilate them.
Victory so decisive it shocks the world.
Become a national hero overnight.
Enter presidential politics.
Win the popular vote.
Lose in Congress.
“Corrupt bargain.”
You do not forget.
Run again.
You win.
First true populist president.
Enemies immediately: elites, editors, bankers.
They call you dangerous.
You agree.
Then comes the real war.
The Second Bank of the United States.
Private. Politically connected. Foreign investors.
Controls credit. Controls elections. Controls survival.
They call it stability.
You call it tyranny.
Bank president Nicholas Biddle believes you can be managed.
Congress renews the Bank’s charter early, to force your hand.
You veto it.
Publicly.
“The rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes.”
The bankers panic.
They unleash newspapers.
Contract credit.
Trigger economic pressure to break you.
You escalate.
Remove federal deposits.
Shift them to state banks.
The central bank begins to suffocate.
The Bank collapses.
No central bank.
No financial sovereign above the people.
The bankers want you dead.
January 30, 1835.
Capitol steps.
Assassin approaches.
Pulls a pistol.
Click.
Misfire.
Second pistol.
Click.
Another misfire.
You don’t flee.
You attack him with your cane.
Beat him until restrained.
Courts declare the assassin insane.
You are not convinced.
Leave office having paid off the national debt.
Only president ever to do it.
Die 1845.
Age 78.
Leaves behind:
The destruction of the central bank.
The precedent that finance answers to sovereignty.
The expansion of executive power.
A nation reminded that elites are never permanent.
Proof that an orphan from the American frontier can defy empires.
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