United StatesWho was Andrew Jackson?
Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) was a Tennessee lawyer, planter and enslaver who became a national figure after defeating the British at New Orleans in 1815 and leading campaigns against the Creek and Seminole nations. After losing the disputed 1824 election, he won the presidency in 1828 and 1832 at the head of a new Democratic Party that cast him as the champion of ordinary citizens against entrenched privilege. In office he rotated federal officeholders, vetoed internal improvements and the recharter of the Second Bank of the United States, faced down South Carolina's attempt to nullify the tariff, and made the removal of Native American nations west of the Mississippi a central goal.
Political views
Pressed Congress to pass the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and used it to negotiate, and often force, treaties that moved Native nations west.
Source: history.state.govVetoed the recharter of the Second Bank of the United States in 1832, calling it a monopoly that served the rich and powerful.
Source: avalon.law.yale.eduVetoed the Maysville Road bill in 1830, arguing against federal funding for local transportation projects.
Source: millercenter.orgDeclared in 1832 that no state could nullify federal law or leave the Union, while urging Congress to lower the tariff.
Source: avalon.law.yale.eduDefended rotation in office, replacing federal officials with his own supporters in what critics called the spoils system.
Source: millercenter.orgRecommended federal suppression of abolitionist mailings to the South in 1835.
Source: millercenter.org
Legacy
Admirers credit Jackson with widening democratic participation for white men, attacking concentrated financial power and preserving the Union during the Nullification Crisis, and the Democratic Party long celebrated him as a founder. Critics, then and now, point to his expansion of executive power, the spoils system and a war on the national bank that many economists link to the instability of the 1830s. His record on Native Americans is the most serious charge against him. His government moved nearly 50,000 Native Americans west through coerced treaties, ignored a Supreme Court ruling protecting Cherokee sovereignty, and set in motion the Cherokee removal of 1838-1839, the Trail of Tears, in which an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 Cherokees died. He also enslaved people on his Tennessee plantation and bought and sold them throughout his life.
In their words
It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes.