Extracted text

OCR Page 1 of 8
SPEECH OF SENATOR HARRY S. TRUMAN OF MISSOURI AT COLUMBUS, OHIO, ON SATURDAY EVENING, JANUARY 11, 1941 FOR RELEASE ON DELIVERY We are here tonight to commemorate one of the greatest victories of American arms and to pay tribute to the Commander of our troops at that victory -- Andrew Jackson, Major General, United States Senator, seventh President of the United States; the man who really made the Democratic Party, the Party that Thomas Jefferson visualized. Andrew Jackson gave us Democratic government, cemented the Republic and firmly established the principles on which the Democratic Party is founded. The actual control and management of the Government by the people became a reality under the old firebrand from Tennessee. Until Jackson, Presidents had the advantages of birth, education and social standing. Jackson carved his career out of the wilderness of the West. He brought home to the Atlantic Seaboard that a very important part of the nation also lay west of the Alleghenies. The migration into Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio and the Northwest Territories had opened up new lands and created new problems even as the age old ones were still perplexing the Adams administration. Bank failures, unemployment and the farm problem were just as lively and perplexing in the days one hundred years ago as they are today. There was a general feeling west of the Appalachian Mountains that the Washington government was a long way off and not particularly interested in the general welfare of the country as a whole. Presidential candidates were picked at caucuses of the Representatives in Congress. The people were not considered. The Era of Good Feeling under Monroe and John Quincy Adams was rather like the Era of Prosperity under Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. The us