Andrew Jackson (1767 - 1845) was an American soldier, lawyer and statesman who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. [1] A national hero after the Battle of New Orleans, he founded the Democratic Party and reshaped the presidency around a claim to direct popular mandate. His administration also enforced the Indian Removal Act, under which tens of thousands of Native Americans were driven from their lands with heavy loss of life. [2]
Early life
Jackson was born on 15 March 1767 in the Waxhaws settlement on the border of the Carolinas, to Scots-Irish immigrant parents. His father died before his birth, and the Revolutionary War killed his two brothers and his mother. [1] Captured by British troops as a boy, he was slashed by an officer's sword for refusing to clean his boots.
He read law in North Carolina and moved west to the Tennessee frontier, where he built a legal and political career and acquired the plantation known as the Hermitage. He held enslaved people there, more than a hundred by the later years of his life. [3]
Soldier
Jackson held brief terms in Congress and on the Tennessee superior court, but his reputation was made in the field. As major general of the Tennessee militia he defeated the Red Stick Creeks at Horseshoe Bend in 1814, imposing a treaty that stripped the Creek Nation of much of its territory. [2]
On 8 January 1815 his mixed force of regulars, militia, free Black soldiers, Choctaw allies and privateers routed a British army at New Orleans, in a battle fought after the peace treaty had been signed but before news of it arrived. He invaded Spanish Florida in 1818 and later served as the territory's governor. [1]
Election and presidency
Jackson won a plurality of the popular and electoral vote in 1824, but with no majority the contest went to the House, which chose John Quincy Adams. His supporters denounced the result as a corrupt bargain and spent four years building the coalition that became the Democratic Party. He won decisively in 1828. [3]
In office he distributed federal posts to supporters on a scale that gave rise to the term spoils system, and used the veto more often than all previous presidents combined. During the nullification crisis of 1832-33, when South Carolina declared federal tariffs void within the state, he secured the Force Bill authorising military enforcement while accepting a compromise tariff. [2]
His struggle against the Second Bank of the United States dominated the second term. He vetoed the bank's recharter in 1832, won re-election on the issue and withdrew federal deposits. The national debt was extinguished in 1835, though the credit conditions that followed contributed to the financial panic of 1837. [3]
Indian removal
Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830, authorising the exchange of Native lands east of the Mississippi for territory in the west. His administration pressed treaties on the Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, Cherokee and Seminole nations and carried out removals by force where consent was refused. [1]
When the Supreme Court held in Worcester v. Georgia (1832) that Georgia's laws had no force in Cherokee territory, the federal government did not act to protect the Cherokee. The removals that followed, culminating in the Cherokee march of 1838-39 known as the Trail of Tears, killed thousands of people from exposure, disease and starvation. [2]
Later life and legacy
Jackson retired to the Hermitage in 1837 and remained influential in Democratic politics until his death there on 8 June 1845. [1]
His presidency is credited with widening political participation among white men and strengthening the executive branch against Congress and the states, and is judged at the same time by the human cost of removal. [3]
