Status Updates From American Lion: Andrew Jacks...

Had Jackson been a truly wild man—blustery, threatening, and senselessly violent, both in his emotions and his actions—then he would not have risen so far. Of course, he had his moments of bluster, and he made threats, and he could, at times, seem senselessly violent, but on the whole Jackson gambled only when he liked his odds, and when he had taken care to protect himself from the worst that could happen.

Partly because of his defeat at the hands of the House in 1825, partly because of his fear of the Bank, partly because of his distrust of entrenched freeholders, Jackson believed the country was being controlled by a kind of congressional-financial-bureaucratic complex in which the needs and concerns of the unconnected were secondary to mthose who were on the inside.

But how did [Jackson] transform himself from a "slobbering" young man lashing out at an unfair and largely uncaring world to become ... a cool calculator? Part of the answer lies in the fact that his ambition to succeed was matched by his intellectual capacity to realize that his anger would tend to block, not fuel, his rise.