Andrew Jackson Defines Success and Its Attainment: ?By industry and attention to business you will rise over all obstacles that may appear in your way to wealth and honor.? (He also approves Missouri becoming the 24th state, and has insight into how this will be accomplished)

Andrew Jackson

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?Missouri will, I expect sequester the property of the U.S. and hold it for their own use, until it is invited into the Union by Congress, this is the only course she can adopt as an independent State, unless she returns to her Territorial government again; this would be a course too humble for a free people to submit to."The Missouri Compromise of 1820 enabled Missouri to join the Union as a slave state and Maine as a free state, maintaining the Senate balance. It prohibited slavery in the remaining Louisiana Purchase territory north of 36?30? latitude. But it was August 1821 before Missouri was finally admitted into the Union, with the wait causing a stir in that territory, and some predicted that Missouri would take action to force Congress to move faster on admission. Jackson was one of those.By 1821, Congress began to rein in the significant military buildup that was meant to address the mismanagement of the War of 1812. Jackson noted that Secretary of War John C. Calhoun proposed to reduce the size of the army, which would please critics. Calhoun's original proposal, which was rejected, had been to create a professional, efficient, and centrally organized military force that could be rapidly expanded in times of war without requiring a large, expensive peacetime standing army. Some of Calhoun?s ideas, unaccepted then, strongly influenced military strategy for the remainder of the 19th century.Richard Keith Call was an attorney and politician who became a close friend of Andrew Jackson when he served as Jackson's aide during the Creek War, but the parents of Call's lover, Mary Letitia Kirkman, strongly disapproved of Jackson. Despite a brief attempt to distance himself from her, Call and Mary Kirkman married in 1824 at Jackson's home near Nashville. When Jackson went to Florida to become territorial governor in March of 1821, Call went with him, settling there, eventually becoming territorial governor himself from 1836 to 1839, and again from 1841 to 1844.Autograph Letter Signed twice, once in full and once with initials, three pages, Hermitage, January 4, 1821, to Call, covering a number of important subjects. In the letter, Jackson reports that he went to Nashville in order to meet with Thomas Kirkman (father of Mary Letitia Kirkman), remarking that he burned Call's letter so that no one could know that Call mentioned Mary Kirkman, and denied consorting with gamblers. He then predicted that Missouri would seize property of the federal government until Congress admits the Territory into the Union, with Jackson agreeing that this would be justified, as a proud, free people would not submit to the indignity of being refused admission. Jackson also encourages Call in his course of study and career, giving Call significant advice: Jackson?s formula for success."I rec'd yours of the 29th ult. in due course of mail, and requested our mutual friend Mr. Oldfield to say to you I would answer it as soon as I could have an interview with Mr. Kirkman; for this purpose I went to Nashville on the 2nd instant, but he had not--or yesterday when I left town--returned home. Mr. Oldfield showed me your letter, from which I see your mind is at ease and that you are now reading law in good earnest. This is as it ought to be, and by an attentive course of study you will soon fit yourself for the Bar and by industry and attention to business you will rise over all obstacles that may appear in your way to wealth and honor. When & to whom you write be careful, be care full lest you commit your situation to those who would let it be known to others & by that means get to the ears of those that ought not to know it. Your confidence in Mr. Oldfield is well placed, and with him it ought to rest and with none else, least any eye but my own should see your letter I have burnt it?lest even your naming her should raise suspicions that the spark had rekindled."I fear'd great delicacy in calling on Mr. K[irkman] from the source Mr. Oldfield got his inform.

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• Titre: Andrew Jackson Defines Success and Its Attainment: ?By industry and attention to business you will rise over all obstacles that may appear in your way to wealth and honor.? (He also approves Missouri becoming the 24th state, and has insight into how this will be accomplished)
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