that purpose.
In the 1780s the law was almost as much a frontier as the western reaches of the national domain. The Revolution had displaced the principal lawyers of the country, who tended to be Tories and now attempted to construct new practices in Canada or England. It also created an entirely new set of laws, with each state writing a constitution (some states more than one), and the nation as a whole doing the same. Although the English common law still formed the basis for much of the day-to-day work of lawyers, that body of precedents had to be reinterpreted in light of the utterly un-English, un-common-law notion that the basic laws of the land (of the states and the nation) could be drafted de novo and superimposed on centuries of case law like a legal deus ex machina. What did all this mean? How would the new system work? This was for the lawyers to argue and the judges—lawyers themselves, in nearly all cases—to decide.
If law was a frontier, law on the frontier was doubly so. In the cities the standards of legal training were well understood and were enforced—as law or guild practice—by persons and institutions attached to the status quo. In the towns and villages of the interior, the standards were more haphazard, more like the standards that had allowed Andrew Jackson to become a teacher. A young man would apprentice with an attorney, who might or might not pay attention to what the young man was learning. When the apprentice thought he could talk his way past a board of examiners, who might or might not examine his expertise closely, he struck out on his own.
The arrangement suited Jackson. In the late winter of 1785, shortly before his eighteenth birthday, he apprenticed himself to Spruce Macay, a lawyer in Salisbury, North Carolina, two days’ ride from the Waxhaw. Macay’s primary qualification for pedagogy was his modest library of law books, a prerequisite for anyone wishing to take on apprentices, of whom he maintained a small but steady supply. Jackson and his fellow attorneys-in-training, including an ambitious fellow named John McNairy, lived in the village tavern, which doubled as a rooming house for long-term visitors on low budgets. Jackson and the others spent days in Macay’s crowded office, filing papers, finding precedents, tracing statutes, running errands, and doing whatever else was needed to keep the practice running. If Macay devoted much time to instructing his charges in the law, he did so unobtrusively. Osmosis was his educational philosophy.
By nights Jackson and the others acted like the unattached, irresponsible young men they were. They drank, gambled (perhaps at dice, Jackson’s later denial notwithstanding, but certainly at cards, horses, and cocks), and played practical jokes, in the poor taste typical of practical jokes. Jackson invited two prostitutes to a Christmas ball the local dancing school put on. His humorous intention, such as it was, got lost in the cloud of scandal that arose when the two scarlet women—a mother and daughter—accepted the invitation and appeared at the event. The proper ladies of the town were shocked, the mother and daughter were embarrassed, and Jackson was compelled to explain himself. To the respectables he said he meant no harm, that he didn’t think the strumpets would actually attend . What he said to the mother and daughter went unrecorded.
Around Salisbury Jackson acquired a reputation as a wild thing going quickly wrong. Years after he left, the townsfolk remembered an evening when Jackson and his friends toasted their mutual health and then, lest the glasses be used for less noble purposes, hurled them into the fire. With the logic of apprentice lawyers, they reasoned that the same argument compelled them to hurl the chairs they sat on into the fire. And then the table. And then the drapes, and everything else in the room that wasn’t nailed down. The building survived the pyrotechnics, but barely. Decades later an
In the 1780s the law was almost as much a frontier as the western reaches of the national domain. The Revolution had displaced the principal lawyers of the country, who tended to be Tories and now attempted to construct new practices in Canada or England. It also created an entirely new set of laws, with each state writing a constitution (some states more than one), and the nation as a whole doing the same. Although the English common law still formed the basis for much of the day-to-day work of lawyers, that body of precedents had to be reinterpreted in light of the utterly un-English, un-common-law notion that the basic laws of the land (of the states and the nation) could be drafted de novo and superimposed on centuries of case law like a legal deus ex machina. What did all this mean? How would the new system work? This was for the lawyers to argue and the judges—lawyers themselves, in nearly all cases—to decide.
If law was a frontier, law on the frontier was doubly so. In the cities the standards of legal training were well understood and were enforced—as law or guild practice—by persons and institutions attached to the status quo. In the towns and villages of the interior, the standards were more haphazard, more like the standards that had allowed Andrew Jackson to become a teacher. A young man would apprentice with an attorney, who might or might not pay attention to what the young man was learning. When the apprentice thought he could talk his way past a board of examiners, who might or might not examine his expertise closely, he struck out on his own.
The arrangement suited Jackson. In the late winter of 1785, shortly before his eighteenth birthday, he apprenticed himself to Spruce Macay, a lawyer in Salisbury, North Carolina, two days’ ride from the Waxhaw. Macay’s primary qualification for pedagogy was his modest library of law books, a prerequisite for anyone wishing to take on apprentices, of whom he maintained a small but steady supply. Jackson and his fellow attorneys-in-training, including an ambitious fellow named John McNairy, lived in the village tavern, which doubled as a rooming house for long-term visitors on low budgets. Jackson and the others spent days in Macay’s crowded office, filing papers, finding precedents, tracing statutes, running errands, and doing whatever else was needed to keep the practice running. If Macay devoted much time to instructing his charges in the law, he did so unobtrusively. Osmosis was his educational philosophy.
By nights Jackson and the others acted like the unattached, irresponsible young men they were. They drank, gambled (perhaps at dice, Jackson’s later denial notwithstanding, but certainly at cards, horses, and cocks), and played practical jokes, in the poor taste typical of practical jokes. Jackson invited two prostitutes to a Christmas ball the local dancing school put on. His humorous intention, such as it was, got lost in the cloud of scandal that arose when the two scarlet women—a mother and daughter—accepted the invitation and appeared at the event. The proper ladies of the town were shocked, the mother and daughter were embarrassed, and Jackson was compelled to explain himself. To the respectables he said he meant no harm, that he didn’t think the strumpets would actually attend . What he said to the mother and daughter went unrecorded.
Around Salisbury Jackson acquired a reputation as a wild thing going quickly wrong. Years after he left, the townsfolk remembered an evening when Jackson and his friends toasted their mutual health and then, lest the glasses be used for less noble purposes, hurled them into the fire. With the logic of apprentice lawyers, they reasoned that the same argument compelled them to hurl the chairs they sat on into the fire. And then the table. And then the drapes, and everything else in the room that wasn’t nailed down. The building survived the pyrotechnics, but barely. Decades later an
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