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If the United States or any other Western country once illustrated “the simplicity of our system of government,” these days are long past. This may have added to the intensity of his refusal: He was certainly not going to risk an imperial burial. As president, he had been accused of behaving like a Caesar, in a style of autocratic populism that a few of his successors have copied. Every monument erected to perpetuate the memory of our heroes and statesmen ought to bear evidence of the economy and simplicity of our republican institutions and the plainness of our republican citizens … I cannot permit my remains to be the first in these United States to be deposited in a Sarcophagus made for an Emperor or King.”
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But his reply to the letter from Elliott outlining this offer was famously robust: “I cannot consent that my mortal body shall be laid in a repository prepared for an Emperor or King-my republican feelings and principles forbid it-the simplicity of our system of government forbids it. Jackson was 77 years old and in failing health he would die a few months later. (See Mary Beard, “ A Tomb Not Fit for a President,” WSJ, October 16, 2021.) Jackson’s reaction, Beard writes, stoodĪs a symbol of the down-to-earth essence of American republicanism and its distaste for the vulgar bric-a-brac of monarchy or autocracy. The story is about Andrew Jackson who, before his death, refused to be buried in a marble sarcophagus believed to have once contained the remains of a Roman emperor. An interesting essay in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal suggests, if we go farther than the author, that “the simplicity of our system of government,” although a worthy ideal, has become a mere historical memory if not a propaganda tool for the democratic Leviathan.