PRESIDENTIAL FEUDS, PART I

successor. Unlike his father and Jefferson, he was never reconciled with Jackson. Two years later, Adams returned as a Representative and continued to oppose Jackson and his policies.

In both cases, politics became very personal. In both cases, our political system underwent dramatic changes as a result. Jefferson worked to overturn a number of last minute appointments by John Adams. This resulted in the Supreme Court case Marbury v. Madison which finally established beyond question the power of judicial review, giving the courts, rather than the states, the right to declare laws unconstitutional. At least in this respect, Adams had the last laugh since he had favored judicial review and Jefferson vehemently opposed it. Jackson created a new use of patronage that dramatically increased the political power of the Presidency and set new precedents for the use of appointments for political advantage. After these first two feuds, things would never be the same.

In future articles in this series, we will examine the feuds between Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant, Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, and the especially nasty feelings for each other shared by Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Go To Page: 1 2 3

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic