• Born: 15 March 1767

• Birthplace: Waxhaw, South Carolina

• Died: 8 June 1845
• Best Known As: President of the United States, 1829-37
A veteran of the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, Andrew Jackson was popularly known
as "Old Hickory" for his ruggedness. He gained national fame when he ran the British out of
New Orleans in 1815, and he governed the Florida territory from 1821-23. Elected to the U.S.
Senate by the Tennessee legislature in 1823, he was sent to Washington as a presidential
contender on the strength of his image as a hero of the wild frontier. The confusion of the 1824
election led to the House of Representatives electing John Quincy Adams over Jackson, but
Jackson won the 1828 election and denied Adams a second term. Jackson was re-elected in 1832,
then followed the example of George Washington and chose not to seek a third term. Jackson, in
ill health, returned to his estate in Tennessee, the Hermitage, and continued to play a role in party
politics after handpicking Martin Van Buren as the Democratic party's nominee in 1836 (Van
Buren won and succeeded Jackson). Jackson's efforts to limit the power of the affluent elite led
to his reputation for "Jacksonian Democracy," but his administration was known for a heavy
hand when it came to the power of the executive branch. He was a staunch champion of states'
rights against federalism, and his administration was marked by expansion in Texas, wars with
the Indians and his rejection of the Bank of the United States.
Jackson's wife Rachel died on 22 December 1828, just weeks after his election to the
presidency... Harvard College conferred an honorary degree on President Jackson in 1833, much
to the disapproval of Harvard alumnus John Quincy Adams, who called Jackson "a barbarian
who could not write a sentence of grammar and hardly could spell his own name."... Both North
Carolina and South Carolina have claimed Jackson as a native son, as his hometown of Waxhaw
was in border territory... Jackson was a notorious brawler and duellist; in 1806 he killed a man
named Charles Dickinson in a duel (with pistols) over Mrs. Jackson's honor.

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(born March 15, 1767, Waxhaws region, S.C. — died June 8, 1845, the Hermitage, near
Nashville, Tenn., U.S.) Seventh president of the U.S. (1829 – 37). He fought briefly in the
American Revolution near his frontier home, where his family was killed in the conflict. In 1788
he was appointed prosecuting attorney for western North Carolina. When the region became the
state of Tennessee, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives (1796 – 97) and the
Senate (1797 – 98). He served on the state supreme court (1798 – 1804) and in 1802 was elected
major general of the Tennessee militia. When the War of 1812 began, he offered the U.S. the
services of his 50,000-man volunteer militia. Sent to the Mississippi Territory to fight the Creek
Indians, who were allied with the British, he defeated them after a short campaign (1813 – 14) at
the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. After capturing Pensacola, Fla., from the British-allied Spanish, he
marched overland to engage the British in Louisiana. A decisive victory at the Battle of New
Orleans made him a national hero; he was dubbed "Old Hickory" by the press. After the U.S.
acquired Florida, Jackson was named governor of the territory (1821). One of four candidates in
the 1824 presidential election, he won an electoral-vote plurality, but the House of
Representative instead selected John Quincy Adams as president. Jackson's victory over Adams
in the 1828 presidential election is commonly regarded as a turning point in U.S. history. Jackson
was the first president from west of the Appalachian Mountains, the first to be born in poverty,
and the first to be elected through a direct appeal to the mass of voters rather than through the
support of a recognized political organization. The era of his presidency has come to be known
as "Jacksonian Democracy." Upon taking office he replaced many federal officials with his
political supporters, a practice that became known as the spoils system. His administration
acquiesced in the illegal seizure of Cherokee land in Georgia and then forcibly expelled the
Indians who refused to leave (see Trail of Tears). When South Carolina claimed a right to nullify
a federally imposed tariff, Jackson asked for and received Congressional authority to use the
military to enforce federal laws in the state (see nullification). His reelection in 1832 was
partially the result of his controversial veto of a bill to recharter the Bank of the United States,
which was unpopular with many of his supporters (see Bank War). The intensity of the political
struggles during his tenure led to the strengthening of the Democratic Party and to the further
development of the two-party system.

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Jackson first experienced war at thirteen, fighting in the Battle of Hanging Rock, South Carolina
(6 August 1780). Subsequently captured, he remained uncooperative and was slashed by a
British officer, creating an antipathy as permanent as the scar on his face. Jackson's entire family
perished in the Revolutionary War.

In 1788, Jackson moved to western North Carolina (now Tennessee), where he served as a field‐
grade officer in the Tennessee militia and was elected, 1802, as major general—a post
considered second only to that of the governor. In 1813, he commanded the Tennessee troops
sent to subdue the Creeks in present‐day Alabama. After several minor victories that
significantly weakened the Indians, Jackson delivered a devastating blow at the Battle of
Horseshoe Bend, 27–28 March 1814.

Thereafter, Jackson was given a major generalship in the U.S. Army and put in charge of the
Gulf Coast region. He seized Spanish Pensacola in the fall of 1814 and then marched to New
Orleans to counter a British invasion. After a series of largely successful preliminary
engagements, on 8 January 1815 he and his troops won the main Battle of New Orleans, one of
the severest defeats ever suffered by a British army. Jackson emerged a national hero.

Retaining his major generalship after the war, Jackson in 1818 pursued Indians into Spanish
Florida and again occupied Pensacola. The Monroe administration reluctantly supported him,
using the conquest to force Spain to sell the Floridas to the United States. Jackson resigned his
commission in 1821. Except while acting as commander in chief during his presidency, he never
held another command.

Jackson was a superb general. Although unschooled in theory, he was a competent tactician and
strategist. He thoroughly prepared for battle and acted quickly and resourcefully to take the war
to the enemy and to catch him by surprise. Among his greatest assets as a leader was an
indomitable will, which earned him the nickname “Old Hickory” in 1813 when he continued to
campaign despite a nearly crippling case of dysentery. He expected the same devotion to duty
from others. During the War of 1812, he sanctioned the hanging of seven militiamen for
disobedience or desertion, and jailed several New Orleans officials (including a federal judge)
who challenged his decision to continue martial law after the British had left. Jackson often
inspired fierce loyalty in officers and enlisted men alike; even his critics followed him into battle,
if only because they feared him more than the enemy.

Jackson was the first westerner to become a national military hero. Like few of his
contemporaries, he demonstrated a talent for commanding militia and volunteers no less than
regulars, and showed equal skill in conducting conventional operations against European
regulars and unconventional warfare against Indians.
[See also Commander in Chief, President as; Native American Wars: Wars Between Native
Americans and Europeans and Euro‐Americans; Seminole Wars.]

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b. Waxhaw, S.C., 15 Mar. 1767; d. near Nashville, Tenn., 8 June 1845), president of the United
States, 1829–1837. During his two terms, President Andrew Jackson made six appointments to
the high court, more than any other president except George Washington, William Howard Taft,
and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Though Jackson took account of such traditional criteria as
geography and public service, he calculated the political gain to be realized through his
selections. In nominating John McLean of Ohio, a presidential aspirant popular in the West,
Jackson extracted from him a promise not to seek the presidency in return for a place on the
Court. Jackson thereby shelved a potential rival. Politics also figured in Jackson's other Court
nominations. In 1830 he selected Henry Baldwin, a Pennsylvania congressman who had helped
deliver that state to Jackson in 1828. James M. Wayne (1835), Philip P. Barbour (1836), and
John Catron (1837) had also rendered valuable political service to the president. Jackson's most
controversial nominee, however, was Roger B. Taney of Maryland. Taney as secretary of the
treasury had played a crucial role in Jackson's attack on the Second Bank of the United States.
Senate Whigs and disaffected Democrats thwarted Taney's first nomination in 1835. Jackson
refused to make another appointment, however, and when Chief Justice John Marshall died on 6
July 1835, the president had not one but two positions to fill. In December he nominated Philip
P. Barbour, a strong states' rights Democrat from Virginia, to replace Gabriel Duvall and Taney
to fill Marshall's post. The Senate agreed to the selections only after three months of wrangling.

Jackson's appointees dominated American constitutional development down to the Civil War,
and some historians even argue that they, especially Taney in Dred Scott (1857), contributed to
the war's coming. Yet like most of the justices that he appointed, Jackson's view of the Court and
constitutional law blended states' rights and nationalism. He was pragmatic though assertive; he
pushed his criticism of the Court when it was effective and backed off when it was not. He was
also determined to use his office to shape the nation's destiny without being encumbered by the
other branches. Jackson used the appointment process to impress his political views on the Court
but also claimed that as the tribune of the people he was obliged to interpret the Constitution as
he understood it. In his veto of the act rechartering the Second Bank of the United States in 1832,
Jackson argued for strict construction of the Constitution and asserted a departmental theory of
constitutional interpretation. He held that each of the branches of government had the right and
duty to interpret the Constitution independently of the other branches. No previous president, not
even Thomas Jefferson, had ever gone so far in claiming that the Court's opinions could be
ignored.

Yet Jackson's hostility to the Court had limits. He allegedly remarked, following the Supreme
Court's decision in Worcester v. Georgia (1832), that “John Marshall had made his decision, now
let him enforce it” (see Cherokee Cases). Jackson did not make that statement (although he did
nothing to stop Georgia from defying the Court's decision) and he never asserted an inherent
prerogative to disregard judicial decisions. He merely wanted equality among the branches of
government in matters of constitutional interpretation.

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Jackson, Andrew (1767-1845) U.S. Army major general and 7th president of the United States
(1829-37), born in the Waxhaw Settlement, South Carolina. At the age of thirteen Jackson
participated in the Revolutionary War, probably as a courier, and was captured by the British. He
later settled in Tennessee, where he practiced law and eventually entered politics. In 1796 he was
elected to represent the new state of Tennessee in the U.S. Congress. His legislative record there,
and during a brief term in the Senate the following year, was undistinguished. He returned to
Tennessee, where he engaged in land speculation and commercial trade. During the War of 1812,
Jackson, who had been elected major general of the Tennessee militia, proved himself an
excellent general and military leader, earning the sobriquet “Old Hickory” from his soldiers. He
crushed the Creek Indians, stripping them of their lands in present-day Alabama and Georgia.
His subsequent checking of a British invasion of New Orleans (1815) made him a national hero.
Jackson went on to defeat the Seminoles in Florida, a move that led to its acquisition from Spain.
Elected to the Senate for the second time in 1823, he lost his first bid for the presidency in 1824,
when the election was thrown into the House of Representatives, and John Quincy Adams
emerged the victor. (Jackson had received both a popular and electoral plurality, but not the
required electoral majority.) Preparatory to a second bid in 1828, Jackson and his friends formed
an organization that became the Democratic party. Jackson's brand of democracy advocated
equality of opportunity and belief in the sovereignty of the people. He was swept to victory. One
blotch on Jackson's record was the Indian Removal Act, which called for the removal of the
Cherokees to territory beyond the Mississippi, to an area that is now Oklahoma. The
implementation of this measure in 1838—known as the Trail of Tears—is one of the greatest
tragedies the United States has inflicted on a minority population.
Jackson was the first president to veto legislation for other than constitutional reasons, thereby
expanding presidential power. He was known as a man with a mean and vicious temper whose
outbursts frequently led him into duels and gunfights.

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Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), seventh president of the United States, symbolized the democratic
advances of his time. His actions strengthened the power of the presidential office in American
government.
When Andrew Jackson emerged on the national scene, the United States was undergoing
profound social and economic changes as the new, postrevolutionary generation pushed forward
in search of material gain and political power. Jackson was a classic example of the self-made
man who rose from a log cabin to the White House, and he came to represent the aspirations of
the ordinary citizen struggling to achieve wealth and status. He symbolized the "rise of the
common man." So total was his identification with this period of American history that the years
between 1828 and 1848 are frequently designated the "Age of Jackson."
Andrew Jackson was born on March 15, 1767, in Waxhaw country, which straddles North and
South Carolina. His father, who died shortly before Andrew's birth, had come with his wife to
America from Ireland in 1765. Andrew attended several academies in the Waxhaw settlement,
but his education was spotty and he never developed a taste for learning.
After the outbreak of the American Revolution, Jackson, barely 13 years old, served as an
orderly to Col. William Richardson. Following one engagement, Jackson and his brother were
captured by the British and taken to a prison camp. When Jackson refused to clean an officer's
boots, the officer slashed him with a sword, leaving a permanent scar on his forehead and left
hand. Jackson was the only member of his family to survive the war, and it is generally believed
that his harsh, adventuresome, early life developed his strong, aggressive qualities of leadership,
his violent temper, and his need for intense loyalty from friends.
After the war Jackson drifted from one occupation to another and from one relative to another.
He squandered a small inheritance and for a time lived a wild, undisciplined life that gave free
rein to his passionate nature. He developed lifelong interests in horse racing and cock-fighting
and frequently indulged in outrageous practical jokes. Standing just over 6 feet tall, with long,
sharp, bony features lighted by intense blue eyes, Jackson presented an imposing figure that gave
every impression of a will and need to command.
After learning the saddler's trade, Jackson tried school-teaching for a season or two, then left in
1784 for Salisbury, N. C., where he studied law in a local office. Three years later, licensed to
practice law in North Carolina, he migrated to the western district that eventually became
Tennessee. Appointed public prosecutor for the district, he took up residence in Nashville. A
successful prosecutor and lawyer, he was particularly useful to creditors who had trouble
collecting debts. Since money was scarce in the West, he accepted land in payment for his
services and within 10 years became one of the most important landowners in Tennessee.
Unfortunately his speculations in land failed, and he spiraled deeply into debt, a misadventure
that left him with lasting monetary prejudices. He came to condemn credit because it encouraged
speculation and indebtedness. He distrusted the note-issuing, credit-producing aspects of banking
and abhorred paper money. He regarded hard money - specie - as the only legitimate means by
which honest men could engage in business transactions.
While Jackson was emerging as an important citizen by virtue of his land holdings, he also
achieved social status by marrying Rachel Donelson, the daughter of one of the region's original
settlers. The Jacksons had no children of their own, but they adopted one of Rachel's nephews
and named him Andrew Jackson, Jr.
When Congress created the Southwest Territory in 1790, Jackson was appointed an attorney
general for the Mero District and judge advocate of the Davidson County militia. In 1796 the
northern portion of the territory held a constitutional convention to petition Congress for
admission as a state to the Union. Jackson attended the convention as a delegate from his county.
Although he played a modest part in the proceedings, one tradition does credit him with
suggesting the name of the state: Tennessee, derived from the name of a Cherokee Indian chief.
In 1796, with the admission of Tennessee as the sixteenth state of the Union, Jackson was elected
to its sole seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. His voting record revealed strong
nationalistic tendencies. The following year he was elected U.S. senator but he soon resigned to
become judge of the Superior Court of Tennessee. His decisions as judge were described by one
man as "short, untechnical, unlearned, sometimes ungrammatical, and generally right." He
resigned from the bench in 1804 to devote himself exclusively to his plantation, where he later
built a graceful mansion called the "Hermitage," and to his other business enterprises, including
boatbuilding, horse breeding, and storekeeping.
Military Career
By the beginning of the War of 1812, Jackson had achieved the rank of major general of the
Tennessee militia. He and his militia were directed to subdue the Creek Indians in Alabama who
had massacred white settlers at Ft. Mims. At the Battle of Horseshoe Bend (1814) Jackson
inflicted such a decisive defeat that the Creek's power to wage war was permanently broken.
During this engagement Jackson's men acknowledged his toughness and indomitable will by
calling him "Old Hickory."
When the U.S. government heard rumors of an impending British penetration of the South
through one of the ports on the Gulf of Mexico, Jackson was ordered to block the invasion.
Supposing that New Orleans was the likeliest point of attack, he established a triple line of
defense south of the city. After several minor skirmishes and an artillery bombardment, the
British attacked in force on Jan. 8, 1815, and were decisively defeated. Over 2,000 British
soldiers, including their commanding general, perished in the battle, while only 13 Americans
were killed. It was a stupendous victory. Jackson became a national hero overnight, for he had
infused Americans with confidence in their ability to defend their new liberty.
Florida Territory
When the war ended, Jackson returned to his plantation. However, he soon resumed military
duty to subdue Indian raids along the southern frontier emanating from Spanish Florida. In a
series of rapid moves he invaded Florida, subdued the Seminole Indians, extinguished Spanish
authority, and executed two British subjects for inciting Indian attacks. Despite an international
furor over this invasion, President James Monroe defended Jackson's actions and prevailed upon
Spain to sell Florida to the United States for $5 million. Jackson served as governor of the
Florida Territory briefly, but he was highhanded, was antagonistic to the Spanish, and tried to
exercise absolute authority. He quit in disgust after serving only a few months.
These exploits served to increase Jackson's popularity throughout the country, alerting his friends
in Tennessee to the possibility of making him a presidential candidate. First, he was elected to
the U.S. Senate in October 1823. Then, the following year four candidates sought the presidency,
each representing a different section of the country: Jackson of Tennessee, William H. Crawford
of Georgia, John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, and Henry Clay of Kentucky. In the election
Jackson won the highest plurality of popular and electoral votes, but because he did not have the
constitutionally mandated majority of electoral votes, the issue of selecting the president went to
the House of Representatives. Here, on the first ballot, John Quincy Adams was chosen
president. Adams's subsequent selection of Clay as his secretary of state convinced Jackson that
a "bargain" had been concluded between the two to "fix" the election and cheat him of the
presidency. For the next 4 years Jackson's friends battered the Adams administration with the
accusation of a "corrupt bargain." In the election of 1828 Jackson won an overwhelming victory.
During the campaign Martin Van Buren of New York and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina
joined forces behind Jackson, and out of this coalition emerged the Democratic party. Supporters
of Adams and Clay were now called National Republicans.
"Old Hickory" as President
Jackson's presidential inauguration demonstrated the beginning of a new political age as
thousands of people swarmed into Washington to witness the outdoor inauguration, then poured
through the White House to congratulate their hero, nearly wrecking the building in the process.
Jackson appointed many second-rate men to his Cabinet, with the exception of Martin Van
Buren, his secretary of state.
An initial estrangement between Jackson and his vice president, John C. Calhoun, soon grew
worse because of their obvious disagreement over the important constitutional question of the
nature of the Union. During a Senate debate between Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and
Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina, Hayne articulated Calhoun's doctrine of nullification (that is,
the right of a state to nullify any objectionable Federal law). Although Jackson was politically
conservative and a strong advocate of states' rights, he was also intensely nationalistic, and he
regarded nullification as an abomination. At a dinner commemorating Thomas Jefferson's
birthday, Jackson found the opportunity to express his feelings. When called upon to deliver a
toast, he is said to have looked straight at Calhoun and said, "Our Federal Union. It must be
preserved."
The final break between Jackson and Calhoun occurred when it was disclosed that, earlier, as
secretary of war in James Monroe's Cabinet, Calhoun had sought to censure Jackson for his
invasion of Florida. In self-defense, Calhoun gave his side of the controversy in a newspaper
statement and ended by arguing that Van Buren had deliberately sought his downfall in order to
eliminate him as a presidential rival. Van Buren there-upon resigned from the Cabinet, thus
forcing the resignation of the remaining members, which gave Jackson the opportunity of
reconstituting his Cabinet and ridding himself of Calhoun's friends. Later, however, when
Jackson made Van Buren U.S. minister to Great Britain, confirmation of this appointment
resulted in a tie vote in the Senate, and Calhoun, as vice president, gained a measure of revenge
by voting against it. This action prompted Jackson to insist on Van Buren as his vice-presidential
running mate in the next election.
Bank War
The presidential contest of 1832 involved not only personal vindication for Van Buren but also
the important political issue of the national bank. The issue developed because of Jackson's
prejudice against paper money and banks and because of his contention that the Second Bank of
the United States (established in 1816) was not only unconstitutional but had failed to establish a
sound and uniform currency. Moreover, he suspected the Bank of improper interference in the
political process. Jackson had informed the Bank's president, Nicholas Biddle, of his displeasure
in his first message to Congress back in December 1829. Following this, Biddle, at the urging of
Henry Clay and other National Republicans, asked Congress for a recharter of the Bank 4 years
before it came due. In this way the issue could be submitted to the people during the 1832
election if Jackson blocked the recharter.
Although the bank bill passed Congress rather handily, Jackson vetoed it in a strong message that
lamented how "the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish
purposes." This veto message broadened presidential power because it went beyond strictly
constitutional reasons in faulting the bill. By citing social, political, and economic reasons,
Jackson went beyond what all his predecessors had considered the limit of the presidential veto
power.
In the 1832 election Henry Clay, running against Jackson on the bank issue, was decisively
defeated. Jackson interpreted his reelection as a mandate to destroy the Bank of the United
States. He therefore directed his secretary of the Treasury to remove Federal deposits and place
them in selected state banks (called pet banks). Biddle counterattacked by a severe contraction of
credit that produced a brief financial panic during the winter of 1833/1834. But Jackson held his
ground, Biddle was finally forced to relax the pressure, and the Bank of the United States
eventually collapsed. With the dispersal of government money among state banks and, later, with
the distribution of surplus Federal funds to individual states, the nation entered a period of steep
inflation. Jackson unsuccessfully tried to halt the inflation by issuing the Specie Circular (1836),
which directed specie payments in the purchase of public land.
At the beginning of his second term, Jackson informed Congress of his intention to pay off the
national debt. This goal was achieved on Jan. 1, 1835, thanks to income the Federal government
received from land sales and tariff revenues. Jackson also advocated a policy of "rotation" with
respect to Federal offices. In a democratic country, he declared, "no one man has any more
intrinsic right to official station than another." He was accused of inaugurating the spoils system,
but this was unfair for, actually, he removed only a modest number of officeholders. Jackson also
advocated moving Native Americans west of the Mississippi River as the most humane policy
the government could pursue in dealing with the Native American problem. Consequently he
signed over 90 treaties with various tribes, in which lands owned by Native Americans within the
existing states were exchanged for new lands in the open West. Jackson's veto of the Maysville
Road Bill as an unwarranted exercise of Federal authority was widely interpreted as an
expression of his opposition to Federal aid for public works.
Nullification Ordinance
Jackson also sought to modify tariff rates because they provoked sectional controversy. The
North advocated high protective rates, but the South considered them a way of subsidizing
northern manufacturers at the expense of southern and western purchasers. With the passage of
the Tariff of 1832, South Carolina reacted violently by invoking Calhoun's doctrine of
nullification. At a special convention in November 1832, South Carolina adopted the Ordinance
of Nullification, declaring the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 null and void and warning the Federal
government that if force were used to execute the law, the state would secede from the Union. In
response to this threat, Jackson issued the Proclamation to the People of South Carolina that
blended warning with entreaty, demand with understanding. "The laws of the United States must
be executed," he said. "Those who told you that you might peaceably prevent their execution
deceived you…. Disunion by armed force is treason."
Meanwhile a compromise tariff was hurried through Congress to reduce the rates schedule over a
10-year period, while another bill was passed giving Jackson permission to use the military to
force South Carolina to obey the laws. The state chose to accept the compromise tariff and
repealed its nullification ordinance, thereby averting a national crisis. Jackson's actions during
the controversy were masterful. Through the careful use of presidential powers, by rallying the
public to his side, alerting the military, and offering compromise while preparing for possible
hostilities, he preserved the Union and upheld the supremacy of Federal law.
Foreign Affairs
Jackson also exercised forceful leadership in his relations with foreign nations, and he scored a
number of notable diplomatic victories. He obtained favorable treaties with Turkey, Cochin
China, and Siam (the first United States treaties with Asiatic powers), and he was also able to
reopen American trade with the British West Indies. Furthermore, he forced France into agreeing
to pay the debts owed to American citizens for the destruction of American property during the
Napoleonic Wars. However, when the French chamber of deputies failed to appropriate the
money to pay the debt, Jackson asked Congress to permit reprisals against French property in the
United States. The French interpreted this as a deliberate insult, and for a time war between the
two countries seemed unavoidable. The French demanded an apology, which Jackson refused to
give, although in a message to Congress he denied any intention "to menace or insult" the French
government. France chose to accept Jackson's disclaimer as an apology and forthwith paid the
debt; thus hostilities were avoided.
At the end of his two terms in office, having participated in the inauguration of his successor,
Martin Van Buren, Jackson retired to his plantation. He continued to keep his hand in national
politics until his death on June 8, 1845.
Further Reading
The most scholarly, but not the most interesting, study of Jackson's life is John Spencer Bassett,
The Life of Andrew Jackson (2 vols., 1911; new ed. 1916). More colorful is Marquis James, The
Life of Andrew Jackson (1938), but its analysis of Jackson's character is superficial. James
Parton, Life of Andrew Jackson (3 vols., 1860), is old but extremely valuable, particularly since it
was researched among many people who actually knew Jackson. A brief biography is Robert V.
Remini, Andrew Jackson (1966).
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., is generally sympathetic to Jackson in The Age of Jackson (1945),
while Glyndon G. Van Deusen in The Jacksonian Era (1959) and Edward Pessen in
JacksonianAmerica (1969) are more critical. See also Harold Coffin Syrett, Andrew Jackson:
His Contributions to the American Tradition (1953), and Leonard D. White, The Jacksonians: A
Study in Administrative History, 1829-1861 (1954). For the elections of 1828 and 1832 see
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., History of American Presidential Elections, vol. 1 (1971).

Oxford Guide to the US Government:

Andrew Jackson, 7th President
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Home > Library > History, Politics & Society > US Government Guide
• Born: Mar. 15, 1767, Waxhaw settlement, S.C.
• Political party: Democrat
• Education: read law in Salisbury, N.C., 1784–87
• Military service: Waxhaw settlement militia, 1780; Tennessee Militia, 1802–14; U.S. Army,
1814–18
• Previous government service: public prosecutor, Mero District, Tenn., 1787; Tennessee
Constitutional Convention, 1796; U.S. House of Representatives, 1796–97; U.S. Senate, 1797–
98; Superior Court justice and member of the Tennessee Supreme Court, 1799–1804; territorial
governor of Florida, 1821; U.S. Senate, 1823–25
• Elected President, 1828; served, 1829–37
• Died: June 8, 1845, near Nashville, Tenn.

Andrew Jackson was born on the Carolina frontier, the only American President born of
immigrant parents. He brought the ways of the West to American politics, revitalizing and
democratizing it, and carrying with him a whole generation of men who owed their careers to
him. He created the Democratic party, the longest-lasting political party in American history, and
he was the dominant political figure between Jefferson and Lincoln.

Jackson's father died just before he was born, soon after arriving from Ireland, and his mother
and two brothers died during the revolutionary war. Jackson entered the war as an orderly, was
captured by the British in 1780, and suffered a scar from a saber injury delivered by one of his
guards. Jackson read law in North Carolina and became a frontier gambler, lawyer, land
speculator, and cotton and tobacco farmer at Hunter's Hill, his plantation near Nashville,
Tennessee. He married Rachel Donelson Robards, the daughter of one of the founders of
Nashville, worked as a lawyer in debt collection cases, and was closely allied politically with
large landowners and local bankers. Jackson helped to draft the state constitution in 1795, served
at the state constitutional convention in 1796, and was sent to the U.S. House the following year
and then the Senate in 1797, serving one year. He served on the Tennessee Superior Court from
1799 to 1804 but resigned to devote himself to business. Several reverses forced him to sell
Hunter's Hill and move to a smaller plantation, the Hermitage. He bred, raised, and raced horses
successfully. In a duel on May 30, 1806, Jackson shot and killed Charles Dickinson for making
unflattering remarks about Jackson's wife; one of Dickinson's bullets remained in his chest. In
1813 Jackson was shot in a hotel brawl with Thomas Hart Benton and Jesse Benton, two brothers
who dominated politics in Missouri, and the bullet was not removed until 1832.

Jackson took command of the Tennessee state militia during the War of 1812. Fighting the Creek
Indians, who were allied with the British, he won the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in Alabama in
March 1814. This victory ended the Creek War, forcing the tribe to cede more than 23 million
acres to the United States. In May he was commissioned a major general of the regular army. He
then captured Pensacola, Florida, and defeated the British at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815.
The British suffered more than 2,000 dead, including their commanding general; American
losses totaled 8 killed and 13 wounded. These military victories made Jackson, known as Sharp
Knife to the Indians and Old Hickory to the Americans, a national figure.

After the war Jackson fought other Indian tribes, defeating the Chickasaw, the Choctaw, and the
Cherokee. In 1818 he commanded troops in the Seminole Wars in Georgia. He invaded Spanish
Florida and executed two British subjects who had stirred up an Indian revolt, causing a
diplomatic furor. Jackson defeated an attempt by the House of Representatives to censure him.
After the United States acquired Florida from Spain, President James Monroe appointed him the
first territorial governor.

Jackson was elected to the Senate in 1823, occupying a seat next to Thomas Hart Benton, the
man who had nearly killed him in 1813. The two soon became political allies, and Jackson began
campaigning for the Presidency. In the election of 1824 he received the most popular and
electoral votes of any candidate in the four-person race but not enough to win election. In the
contingency election—held because no candidate received a majority of electoral college votes
—the House of Representatives chose John Quincy Adams over Jackson and William Crawford.
As Speaker of the House, Henry Clay had controlled the key House votes that elected Adams.
Adams then named Clay secretary of state, an appointment that led Jackson's followers to charge
that a “corrupt bargain” had been made. Jackson resigned from the Senate in 1825 to organize
his next run for the Presidency.

By 1828 the number of voters had almost quadrupled, and in every state except South Carolina
electors were chosen directly by the voters, not by the state legislatures. Jackson and Martin Van
Buren organized state parties to mobilize and turn out this large electorate. The huge turnout in
what was the first fully democratic election in the United States gave Jackson an overwhelming
popular and electoral college vote over his opponent, John Quincy Adams, who ran on the
National Republican ticket. But tragedy marred his victory: between his election and
inauguration his wife, Rachel, died.

Jackson's accession to power in Washington was akin to a political, social, and economic
revolution. By his clothing, his speech, and his manners, Jackson was a “man of the people” with
little in common with the Virginia or Massachusetts aristocrats who had previously sat in the
White House. He was a military man with little Washington experience, a man with almost no
formal education, and the first “outsider” to win the White House. Jackson had swept away the
party-less Era of Good Feelings and soon created a new political party, the Democrats, with a
strong Southern and Western base among frontiersmen, small farmers, and workers.

Early in his term Jackson dismissed about one-tenth of the officeholders in Washington and
replaced them with his followers. Jackson embraced the principle of rotation in office, in which
government officials are appointed on the basis of political ties, rather than a permanent civil
service with lifetime appointments.

Jackson soon became embroiled in traditional Washington society. Peggy O'Neale, the daughter
of a saloon keeper, married Jackson's secretary of war, John Eaton, and was ostracized by other
cabinet wives, who claimed she had been having an adulterous affair with Eaton prior to their
marriage. Rumors about Mrs. Eaton were spread by the wife of Vice President John C. Calhoun.
Jackson took Peggy Eaton's side against the leaders of Washington society. He began to rely on a
“kitchen cabinet” of political advisers rather than his cabinet secretaries. Later, his disagreement
with Calhoun over the Tariff of Abominations of 1828 led to an open split between them. In the
spring of 1831 Jackson forced out the three members of the cabinet who would not accept Peggy
Eaton. He established the principle, new in American government, that the cabinet secretaries
serve at the pleasure of the President and are subordinate to his will.

Jackson took on the Second Bank of the United States, a private corporation created as the
linchpin of national economic policy-making. The national government held one-fifth of the
bank's stock and kept its deposits there, and the bank's notes were legal tender (currency). On
July 10, 1832, Jackson vetoed a bill passed by Congress that would have rechartered the bank,
which was due to expire in 1836, attacking it as a law “to make the rich richer and the potent
more powerful.” Congress was unable to override his veto.

Jackson made the veto a major issue in his 1832 reelection campaign. He identified the bank
with “special privileges” that the government had given to local bankers affiliated with the
national bank. He argued that government should remain neutral among financial institutions.
The appeal made Jackson seem like a representative of the common man against the wealthy and
privileged, though Jackson had not explicitly called for class conflict.

With Martin Van Buren on his ticket, Jackson won an overwhelming victory over Henry Clay.
He claimed he had a mandate to destroy the bank. He ordered his secretary of the Treasury,
William Duane, to remove Treasury deposits from that bank and place them in state banks that
were affiliated with his new party. When Duane refused, Jackson fired him, appointed his
attorney general, Roger Taney, to his place, and had the deposits removed. Jackson's opponents
in Congress organized a new political party, the Whigs, to oppose his policies and his exercise of
Presidential power. The bank went out of existence in 1836. By the end of Jackson's term, the
national debt had been entirely paid and the government was running a surplus that Jackson's
successor, Van Buren, distributed to the states.

Jackson took personal charge of Indian policy. In 1830 he got Congress to pass a law authorizing
him to create new Indian lands west of the Mississippi River and to transport Indians there. He
then negotiated with Indian tribes, forcing the Chickasaw, the Choctaw, and the Creek to move
west. In 1832 he encouraged Georgia to violate an 1831 Supreme Court ruling, Cherokee Nation
v. Georgia, that was supposed to prevent Georgia from taking over Cherokee lands, and that tribe
was removed forcibly after Jackson left office. Many Indians died along the “trail of tears”
during these removals.

As the first President whose election rested on a truly popular base, Jackson translated electoral
support directly into Presidential power. When Jackson vetoed a bill rechartering the Second
Bank on the grounds that it was unconstitutional (even though the Supreme Court, in the case of
McCulloch v. Maryland, had already ruled that the bank was constitutional), Jackson asserted his
authority to make his own decisions about the constitutionality of laws. In firing Duane, he
asserted the power of a President to remove cabinet-level officials whose appointments had been
approved by the Senate, even though the Constitution makes no mention of a removal power for
the President, and many senators thought that such removals would require the concurrence of
the Senate as well. The Senate responded by rejecting Jackson's nominations for governors on
the bank board and his nomination of Taney as associate justice of the Supreme Court. It also
censured Jackson, adopting Henry Clay's resolution that “the President, in the late Executive
proceedings in relation to the public revenue, has assumed upon himself authority and power not
conferred by the Constitution and laws, but in derogation of both.” Jackson protested this
resolution, and in 1836 it was expunged by the Senate.

Jackson also used Presidential power in a nullification controversy. In November 1832, with
Vice President Calhoun's support, South Carolina passed a resolution nullifying, or preventing
enforcement of, the high tariffs of 1828 and 1832 within the state. In December, Jackson
responded with a proclamation to the people of South Carolina warning them against
nullification or secession and reminding them of the supremacy of the national government and
its law. He warned the citizens who were preparing to defend South Carolina militarily that
“disunion by armed force is treason.” Calhoun resigned his office in protest over these tariffs and
Jackson's strong stance. In March 1833 Jackson gained from Congress a “Force Bill” giving him
the power to use federal force to ensure compliance with the tariff as well as a reduction in the
high rates designed to defuse the crisis. After Jackson sent warships to Charleston Harbor, South
Carolina backed down, withdrawing its nullification of the tariff on Jackson's birthday. The state
tried to save face by passing a new bill nullifying Jackson's Force Bill, however.

The struggle between Jackson and Calhoun epitomized the strains that would eventually tear the
Union apart. At a dinner in Washington in 1830 Jackson had given a famous toast: “Our federal
Union—it must be preserved.” But Vice President Calhoun had responded, “The Union—next to
our liberty, most dear.” The question of national supremacy would remain an open issue until the
end of the Civil War.

After leaving the White House, Jackson retired to the Hermitage, where he lived in poor health
until his death on June 8, 1845.

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(1767-1845), seventh president of the United States. A forceful, at times violent personality,
Jackson continues to provoke controversy among historians, who see in him reflections of both
the best and the worst tendencies of the new Republic.
Jackson was a southwestern parvenu who combined a sense of rough-hewn egalitarianism with
the gentlemanly honor typical of his class. Born in the Carolina backwoods to an immigrant
farming family from Ireland, he fought in the Revolution and was captured and imprisoned by
the British. By war's end, all but one member of his immediate family had died in connection
with the conflict. A teenager alone and adrift, Jackson eventually decided to study law and then
to head farther west. Although immensely ambitious, he would never lose touch with his
plebeian roots.
Jackson's rise, helped along by some fortunate contacts, was mercurial. Starting out as a
prosecuting attorney for the western district of North Carolina (what is now Tennessee), he went
on to serve as a delegate to the Tennessee constitutional convention, Tennessee's first elected
congressman, and (briefly) U.S. senator, before he returned to Nashville in 1798 and won a seat
on the state supreme court. He also set himself up as a slaveholder on a modest estate he would
build into a major cotton plantation, the Hermitage.
Jackson won national fame, however, in the military. During the War of 1812, he and his troops
crushed the Creek Indians after a lengthy campaign in the Mississippi Territory. Rewarded with
a U.S. Army commission, he led the American forces to victory at the Battle of New Orleans,
emerging as the war's greatest hero. In 1818, he ruthlessly pursued the government's war with the
Seminoles into Spanish Florida, and provoked controversy by summarily executing two British
subjects suspected of aiding the Indians. In 1821, he was named military governor of the Florida
Territory.
By now, Jackson had gained a huge popular following as an Indian fighter and foe of British
tyranny--and at the urging of friends he returned to politics. He reclaimed his Senate seat in 1823
and then ran for the presidency the following year in a four-man race, collecting a plurality of the
popular tally but insufficient electoral votes to win. When the House of Representatives decided
in favor of John Quincy Adams, Jackson thundered that he was the victim of a "corrupt bargain"
between Adams and Henry Clay. But building a fresh coalition of southern strict
constructionists, western expansionists, and antiadministration forces in the Mid-Atlantic states,
he defeated Adams in 1828, believing he had vindicated his principle that "the majority is to
govern."
It soon became clear that Jackson's ascent marked a change in the nation's political direction.
Early on, he established the principle of rotation in office, on the premise that any plain and
simple man could do the people's business. He checked the program of federal internal
improvements proffered by Adams and Clay, believing it a dangerous expansion of federal
power favorable to established wealth. On Indian affairs, he ran roughshod over his critics and
proclaimed a policy of forced relocation of eastern tribes west of the Mississippi River, opening
fresh lands for settlers. As antislavery agitation mounted--a danger, he thought, to national
tranquillity and his own democratic political project--he condemned the abolitionists and backed
efforts to curtail their activities. At the same time, he angrily defeated those emerging southern
nationalists (led by his former ally, John C. Calhoun) who defied federal authority in the name of
states' rights.
But it was Jackson's war on the Second Bank of the United States that consolidated his
reputation as a champion of the common man. A hard-money advocate, suspicious of personal
debt, Jackson viewed the Bank as a monstrosity that gave power over the people's money to a
few unelected private bankers. After vetoing the Bank's recharter in 1832--a move that helped
secure his reelection--he ordered the removal of U.S. funds, tried to put the nation's economy on
a hard-money footing, and revived populist, anticapitalist sentiments latent since Thomas
Jefferson's presidency.
By the close of his second term, Jackson and his supporters had transformed his following into
an effective national party, fashioned more or less in his own image. After seeing his protégé
Martin Van Buren elected as his successor, he returned to the Hermitage, where he lived out his
final years as a country gentleman and elder statesman.
Jackson's career exemplified, and in many ways molded, the contradictory forces at work in the
democratization of the early Republic. In his appeals to the common man, his attacks on
privileged wealth, and his help in building a new sort of mass political party, he advanced the
causes of equal rights and majoritarian democracy. Yet those advances went hand in hand with
the continued subjugation of Native Americans and a determination not to disturb the slavery
issue. Jackson stood for a more egalitarian America, but his vision of democracy stopped
squarely at the color line.

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Jackson, Andrew, 1767-1845, 7th President of the United States (1829-37), b. Waxhaw
settlement on the border of South Carolina and North Carolina (both states claim him).
Early Career
A child of the backwoods, he was left an orphan at 14. His long military career began in 1781,
when he fought against the British in a skirmish at Hanging Rock. He and his brother were
captured and imprisoned at Camden, S.C. After studying law at Salisbury, N.C., he was admitted
to the bar in 1787 and practiced in the vicinity until he was appointed solicitor for the western
district of North Carolina (now Tennessee).
In 1788 he moved west to Nashville. He was prosperous in his law practice and in land
speculation until the Panic of 1795 struck, leaving him with little more than his estate, the
Hermitage. There, he built (1819-31) a home, on which he lived as a cotton planter during the
intervals of his political career. The house, a handsome example of a Tennessee planter's home,
with a fine formal garden, was constructed of bricks made on the estate. Jackson married Rachel
Donelson before she had secured a legal divorce from her first husband, and though the
ceremony was later repeated, his enemies made capital of the circumstance.
He rose in politics, was a member of the convention that drafted the Tennessee Constitution, and
was elected (1796) as the sole member from the new state in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The next year when his political chief, William Blount, was expelled from the Senate, Jackson
resigned and, to vindicate his party, ran for the vacant seat. He won, but in 1798 he resigned.
From 1798 to 1804 he served notably as judge of the Tennessee superior court.
War Hero
In the War of 1812 Jackson defeated the Creek warriors, tacit allies of the British, at Horseshoe
Bend, Ala. (Mar., 1814) after a strenuous campaign and won the rank of major general in the
U.S. army. He was given command of an expedition to defend New Orleans against the British.
The decisive victory gained there over seasoned British troops under Gen. Edward Pakenham,
though it came after peace had already been signed in Europe, made Jackson the war's one great
military hero.
In 1818 he was sent to take reprisals against the Seminole, who were raiding settlements near the
Florida border, but, misinterpreting orders, he crossed the boundary line, captured Pensacola, and
executed two British subjects as punishment for their stirring up the Native Americans. He thus
involved the United States in serious trouble with both Spain and Great Britain. John Q. Adams,
then Secretary of State, was the only cabinet member to defend him, but the conduct of Old
Hickory, as Jackson was called by his admirers, pleased the people of the West. He moved on to
the national scene as the standard-bearer of one wing of the old Republican party.
President
Jackson rode on a wave of popularity that almost took him into the presidency in the election of
1824. The vote was split with Henry Clay, John Quincy Adams, and William H. Crawford, and
when the election was decided in the House of Representatives, Clay threw his influence to
Adams, and Adams became President.
By the time of the election of 1828, Jackson's cause was more assured. John C. Calhoun, who
was the candidate for Vice President with Jackson, brought most of Crawford's former following
to Jackson, while Martin Van Buren and the Albany Regency swung liberal-controlled New
York state to him. The result was a sweeping victory; Jackson polled four times the popular vote
that he had received in 1824. His inauguration brought the "rabble" into the White House, to the
distaste of the established families.
There was a strong element of personalism in the rule of the hotheaded Jackson, and the Kitchen
Cabinet-a small group of favorite advisers-was powerful. Vigorous publicity and violent
journalistic attacks on anti-Jacksonians were ably handled by such men as the elder Francis P.
Blair, Duff Green, and Amos Kendall. Party loyalty was intense, and party members were
rewarded with government posts in what came to be known as the spoils system. Personal
relationships were of utmost importance, and the social slights suffered by the wife of Secretary
of War John H. Eaton (see O'Neill, Margaret) helped to break up the cabinet.
Calhoun's antagonism was more fundamental, however. Calhoun and the South generally felt
threatened by the protective tariff that favored the industrial East, and Calhoun evolved the
doctrine of nullification and resigned from the vice presidency. Jackson stood firmly for the
Union and had the Force Bill of 1833 (see force bill) passed to coerce South Carolina into
accepting the federal tariff, but a compromise tariff was rushed through and the affair ended.
Jackson, on the other hand, took the part of Georgia in its insistence on states' rights and the
privilege of ousting the Cherokee; he refused to aid in enforcing the Supreme Court's decision
against Georgia, and the tribe was removed.
More important than the estrangement of Calhoun was Jackson's long fight against the Bank of
the United States. Although its charter did not expire until 1836, Henry Clay succeeded in having
a bill to recharter it passed in 1832, thus bringing the issue into the 1832 presidential election.
Jackson vetoed the measure, and the powerful interests of the bank were joined with the other
opponents of Jackson in a bitter struggle with the antibank Jacksonians.
Jackson in the election of 1832 triumphed over Clay. His second administration-more bitterly
resented by his enemies than the first-was dominated by the bank issue. Jackson promptly
removed the funds from the bank and put them in chosen state banks (the "pet banks"). Secretary
of Treasury Louis McLane refused to make the transfer as did his successor W. J. Duane, but
Roger B. Taney agreed with Jackson's views and made the transfer (see also Independent
Treasury System).
Jackson was a firm believer in a specie basis for currency, and the Specie Circular in 1836,
which stipulated that all public lands must be paid for in specie, broke the speculation boom in
Western lands, cast suspicion on many of the bank notes in circulation, and hastened the Panic of
1837. The panic, which had some of its roots in earlier crop failures and in overextended
speculation, was a factor in the administration of Martin Van Buren, who was Jackson's choice
and a successful candidate for the presidency in 1836.
Retirement
Jackson retired to the Hermitage and lived out his life there. He was still despised as a high-
handed and capricious dictator by his enemies and revered as a forceful democratic leader by his
followers. Although he was known as a frontiersman, Jackson was personally dignified,
courteous, and gentlemanly-with a devotion to the "gentleman's code" that led him to fight
several duels.
Jacksonian Democracy
The greatest popular hero of his time, a man of action, and an expansionist, Jackson was
associated with the movement toward increased popular participation in government. He was
regarded by many as the symbol of the democratic feelings of the time, and later generations
were to speak of Jacksonian democracy. Although in broadest terms this movement often
attacked citadels of privilege or monopoly and sought to broaden opportunities in many areas of
life, there has been much dispute among historians over its essential social nature. At one time it
was characterized as being rooted in the democratic nature of the frontier. Later historians
pointed to the workers of the eastern cities as the defining element in the Jacksonian political
coalition. More recently the older interpretations have been challenged by those seeing the age as
one that primarily offered new opportunities to the middle class-an era of liberal capitalism.
Jackson had appeal for the farmer, for the artisan, and for the small-business ower; he was
viewed with suspicion and fear by people of established position, who considered him a
dangerous upstart.

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Andrew Jackson achieved prominence as a frontiersman, jurist, and military hero, and as seventh
president of the United States. His two administrations, famous for ideologies labeled Jacksonian
Democracy, encouraged participation in government by the people, particularly the middle class.
Jackson was born March 15, 1767, in Waxhaw, South Carolina. In 1781, Jackson entered the
military, fought in the Revolutionary War, and was subsequently taken prisoner and incarcerated
at Camden, South Carolina. After his release, he pursued legal studies in North Carolina and was
admitted to the bar of that state in 1787.
Jackson relocated to Nashville in 1788 and established a successful law practice. Three years
later, he married Rachel Donelson. When it was subsequently discovered that Mrs. Jackson was
not legally divorced from her previous husband, Jackson remarried her in 1794 after her divorce
became final. His enemies, however, used the scandal to their advantage.
Jackson began his public service career in 1791 and performed the duties of prosecuting attorney
for the Southwest Territory. He attended the Tennessee constitutional convention in 1796 and
entered the federal government system in that same year.
As a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Jackson represented Tennessee for a year
before filling the vacant position of senator from Tennessee in the U.S. Senate during 1797 and
1798.
Jackson embarked on the judicial phase of his career in 1798, presiding as judge of the
Tennessee Superior Court until 1804.
During the War of 1812, Jackson returned to the military and was victorious at the Horseshoe
Bend battle in 1814. He conquered the British at New Orleans at the close of the war, which
resulted in national recognition as a war hero.
In 1818, Jackson was involved in a military incident that almost catapulted the United States into
another war with Great Britain and Spain. Dispatched to the Florida border to quell Seminole
Indian uprisings, Jackson misunderstood his orders, took control of the Spanish possession of
Pensacola, and killed two British subjects responsible for inciting the Indians. Spain and Great
Britain were in an uproar over the incident, but Secretary of State John Quincy Adams supported
Jackson. The incident added to Jackson's popularity as a rugged hero.
Jackson sought the office of president of the United States in 1824 against Henry Clay, John
Quincy Adams, and William Crawford. No single candidate received a majority of electoral
votes, and the House of Representatives decided the election in favor of Adams. Four years later,
Jackson defeated the incumbent Adams and began the first of two terms as chief executive.
During his first administration, Jackson relied on a group of informal advisers known as the
Kitchen Cabinet. The unofficial members included journalists and politicians, as opposed to the
formal cabinet members traditionally involved in policymaking. He also initiated the spoils
system, rewarding dutiful and faithful party members with government appointments, regardless
of their qualifications for the positions. Many of Jackson's intimate associations did not include
members from the traditional families associated with politics, and public dissatisfaction came to
a head with the marriage of his Secretary of War John Eaton to the provincial Margaret O'Neill.
The social politics employed by cabinet members and their wives, particularly Vice President
and Mrs. John C. Calhoun, caused much upheaval in the Jackson cabinet, and the eventual
resignation of Eaton.
Calhoun and Jackson disagreed again in 1832 over a protective tariff, which Calhoun believed
was not beneficial to the South. Calhoun initiated the policy of nullification, by which a state
could judge a federal regulation null and void and, therefore, refuse to comply with it if the state
believed the regulation to be adverse to the tenets of the Constitution. Calhoun resigned from the
office of vice president after South Carolina adopted the nullification policy against the tariff act,
and Jackson requested the enactment of the Force Bill from Congress to authorize his use of
militia, if necessary, to enforce federal law. The Force Bill proved to be solely a strong threat,
because Jackson sympathized with the South and advocated the drafting of a tariff compromise.
Henry Clay was instrumental in the creation of this agreement, which appeased South Carolina.
The most significant issue during Jackson's term was the controversy over the Bank of the
United States. The bank became a topic in the 1832 presidential campaign and continued into the
second administration of the victorious Jackson.
The charter of the bank expired in 1836, but Henry Clay encouraged the passage of a bill to
secure its recharter in 1832. Jackson was against the powerful bank and overruled the recharter.
He proceeded to transfer federal funds from the bank to selected state banks, called "pet banks,"
which significantly diminished the power of the bank. Secretary of Treasury Louis McLane
refused to remove the funds and was dismissed; similarly, the new treasury secretary, W.J.
Duane, also refused. Jackson replaced him with Roger B. Taney, who supported Jackson's views
and complied with his wishes. In response to this loyalty, Jackson subsequently nominated
Taney as a U.S. Supreme Court justice in 1836.
In 1836, Jackson faced another financial crisis. He issued the Specie Circular of 1836, which
declared that all payments for public property must be made in gold or silver, as opposed to the
previous use of paper currency. This proclamation precipitated the economic panic of 1837,
which ended Jackson's second term and extended into the new presidential administration of
Martin Van Buren.
Jackson spent his remaining years in retirement at his estate in Tennessee, "The Hermitage,"
where he died on June 8, 1845.

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Quotes:

"Never take counsel of your fears."

"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses."

"As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their
will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of
the press, it will be worth defending."

"Heaven will be no heaven to me if I do not meet my wife there."

"It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word."

"You must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing."

See more famous quotes by Andrew Jackson

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Jackson was born to Presbyterian Scotch-Irish colonists Andrew and Elizabeth Hutchinson
Jackson, on March 15, 1767, two years after they had emigrated from Ireland.[5][6] Jackson's
father was born in Carrickfergus, County Antrim, in Ireland around 1738.[7] He married
Elizabeth, sold his land and emigrated to America in 1765. The Jacksons probably landed in
Pennsylvania and made their way overland to the Scotch-Irish community in the Waxhaws
region, straddling the border between North and South Carolina.[8] Jackson had two brothers,
Hugh (born 1763) and Robert (born 1764). Jackson's father died in an accident in February 1767,
at the age of 29, three weeks before Jackson was born. The house that Jackson's parents lived in
is now preserved as the Andrew Jackson Centre and is open to the public. Jackson was born in
the Waxhaws area, but his exact birth site was the subject of conflicting lore in the area. He
claimed to have been born in a cabin just inside South Carolina. Controversies about Jackson's
birthplace went far beyond the dispute between North and South Carolina. Because of his heroic
stature and humble origins, there was much speculation.
Jackson received a sporadic education in the local "old-field" school. During the American
Revolutionary War, Jackson, at age thirteen, joined a local militia as a courier.[9] His eldest
brother, Hugh, died from heat exhaustion during the Battle of Stono Ferry, on June 20, 1779.
Jackson and his brother Robert were captured by the British and held as prisoners; they nearly
starved to death in captivity. When Jackson refused to clean the boots of a British officer, he
slashed at the youth with a sword, giving him scars on his left hand and head, as well as an
intense hatred for the British.[10] While imprisoned, the brothers contracted smallpox. Robert died
a few days after their mother secured their release, on April 27, 1781. After his mother was
assured Andrew would recover, she volunteered to nurse prisoners of war on board two ships in
Charleston harbor, where there had been an outbreak of cholera. She died from the disease in
November 1781, and was buried in an unmarked grave, leaving Jackson an orphan at age 14.[10]
Jackson's entire immediate family had died from hardships during the war; Jackson blamed the
British.
Jackson was the last U.S. President to have been a veteran of the American Revolution.

Young Jackson Refusing to Clean Major Coffin's Boots (1876

lithograph).
In 1781, Jackson worked for a time in a saddle-maker's shop.[11] Later, he taught school and
studied law in Salisbury, North Carolina. In 1787, he was admitted to the bar, and moved to
Jonesborough, in what was then the Western District of North Carolina. This area later became
the Southwest Territory (1790), the precursor to the state of Tennessee.
Though his legal education was scanty, Jackson knew enough to be a country lawyer on the
frontier. Since he was not from a distinguished family, he had to make his career by his own
merits; soon he began to prosper in the rough-and-tumble world of frontier law. Most of the
actions grew out of disputed land-claims, or from assault and battery. In 1788, he was appointed
Solicitor of the Western District and held the same position in the government of the Territory
South of the River Ohio after 1791.
In 1796, Jackson was a delegate to the Tennessee constitutional convention. When Tennessee
achieved statehood that year, Jackson was elected its U.S. Representative. In 1797, he was
elected U.S. Senator as a Democratic-Republican. He resigned within a year. In 1798, he was
appointed a judge of the Tennessee Supreme Court, serving until 1804.[12]
Besides his legal and political career, Jackson prospered as a slave owner, planter, and merchant.
In 1803 he owned a lot, and built a home and the first general store in Gallatin, Tennessee. In
1804, he acquired the Hermitage, a 640-acre (2.6 km2) plantation in Davidson County, near
Nashville, Tennessee. Jackson later added 360 acres (1.5 km2) to the farm. The plantation
eventually grew to 1,050 acres (425 ha). The primary crop was cotton, grown by enslaved
workers. Jackson started with nine slaves, by 1820 he held as many as 44, and later held up to
150 slaves. Throughout his lifetime Jackson may have owned as many as 300 slaves.[13][14]
Jackson was a major land speculator in West Tennessee after he had negotiated the sale of the
land from the Chickasaw Nation in 1818 (termed the Jackson Purchase) and was one of the three
original investors who founded Memphis, Tennessee in 1819 (see History of Memphis,
Tennessee).[15]
Military career
War of 1812
Main articles: Creek War and Battle of New Orleans
Jackson was appointed commander of the Tennessee militia in 1801, with the rank of colonel.
During the War of 1812, Tecumseh incited the "Red Stick" Creek Indians of northern Alabama
and Georgia to attack white settlements. Four hundred settlers were killed in the Fort Mims
Massacre. In the resulting Creek War, Jackson commanded the American forces, which included
Tennessee militia, U.S. regulars, and Cherokee, Choctaw, and Southern Creek Indians.
Jackson defeated the Red Stick Creeks at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814. Eight hundred
"Red Sticks" were killed, but Jackson spared chief William Weatherford. Sam Houston and
David Crockett served under Jackson in this campaign. After the victory, Jackson imposed the
Treaty of Fort Jackson upon both the Northern Creek enemies and the Southern Creek allies,
wresting twenty million acres (81,000 km²) from all Creeks for white settlement. Jackson was
appointed Major General after this action.

The Battle of New Orleans. General Andrew Jackson stands on the parapet of
his makeshift defenses as his troops repulse attacking Highlanders, as
imagined by painter Edward Percy Moran in 1910.
Jackson's service in the War of 1812 against the United Kingdom was conspicuous for bravery
and success. When British forces threatened New Orleans, Jackson took command of the
defenses, including militia from several western states and territories. He was a strict officer but
was popular with his troops. It was said he was "tough as old hickory" wood on the battlefield,
which gave him his nickname. In the Battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815, Jackson's 5,000
soldiers won a victory over 7,500 British. At the end of the day, the British had 2,037 casualties:
291 dead (including three senior generals), 1,262 wounded, and 484 captured or missing. The
Americans had 71 casualties: 13 dead, 39 wounded, and 19 missing.[16]
The war, and especially this victory, made Jackson a national hero. He received the Thanks of
Congress and a gold medal by resolution of February 27, 1815. Alexis de Tocqueville later
commented in Democracy in America that Jackson "...was raised to the Presidency, and has been
maintained there, solely by the recollection of a victory which he gained, twenty years ago, under
the walls of New Orleans."
First Seminole War
Main article: Seminole Wars
Jackson served in the military again during the First Seminole War. He was ordered by President
James Monroe in December 1817 to lead a campaign in Georgia against the Seminole and Creek
Indians. Jackson was also charged with preventing Spanish Florida from becoming a refuge for
runaway slaves. Critics later alleged that Jackson exceeded orders in his Florida actions. His
directions were to "terminate the conflict."[17] Jackson believed the best way to do this was to
seize Florida. Before going, Jackson wrote to Monroe, "Let it be signified to me through any
channel... that the possession of the Floridas would be desirable to the United States, and in sixty
days it will be accomplished."[18] Monroe gave Jackson orders that were purposely ambiguous,
sufficient for international denials.

Military governor Jackson was sworn in at Plaza Ferdinand VII in Pensacola,

Florida
The Seminoles attacked Jackson's Tennessee volunteers. The Seminoles' attack, however, left
their villages vulnerable, and Jackson burned them and the crops. He found letters that indicated
that the Spanish and British were secretly assisting the Indians. Jackson believed that the United
States could not be secure as long as Spain and the United Kingdom encouraged Indians to fight,
and argued that his actions were undertaken in self-defense. Jackson captured Pensacola, Florida,
with little more than some warning shots, and deposed the Spanish governor. He captured and
then tried and executed two British subjects, Robert Ambrister and Alexander Arbuthnot, who
had been supplying and advising the Indians. Jackson's action also struck fear into the Seminole
tribes as word spread of his ruthlessness in battle (Jackson was known as "Sharp Knife").
The executions, and Jackson's invasion of territory belonging to Spain, a country with which the
U.S. was not at war, created an international incident. Many in the Monroe administration called
for Jackson to be censured. Jackson's actions were defended by Secretary of State John Quincy
Adams, an early believer in Manifest Destiny. When the Spanish minister demanded a "suitable
punishment" for Jackson, Adams wrote back, "Spain must immediately [decide] either to place a
force in Florida adequate at once to the protection of her territory ... or cede to the United States
a province, of which she retains nothing but the nominal possession, but which is, in fact ... a
post of annoyance to them."[19] Adams used Jackson's conquest, and Spain's own weakness, to get
Spain to cede Florida to the United States by the Adams-Onís Treaty. Jackson was subsequently
named military governor and served from March 10, 1821, to December 31, 1821.
Election of 1824
Main article: United States presidential election, 1824
The Tennessee legislature nominated Jackson for President in 1822. It also elected him U.S.
Senator again.

Jackson in 1824, painting by Thomas Sully

By 1824, the Democratic-Republican Party had become the only functioning national party. Its
Presidential candidates had been chosen by an informal Congressional nominating caucus, but
this had become unpopular. In 1824, most of the Democratic-Republicans in Congress boycotted
the caucus. Those who attended backed Treasury Secretary William H. Crawford for President
and Albert Gallatin for Vice President. A Pennsylvanian convention nominated Jackson for
President a month later, stating that the irregular caucus ignored the "voice of the people" and
was a "vain hope that the American people might be thus deceived into a belief that he
[Crawford] was the regular democratic candidate."[20] Gallatin criticized Jackson as "an honest
man and the idol of the worshippers of military glory, but from incapacity, military habits, and
habitual disregard of laws and constitutional provisions, altogether unfit for the office."[21]
 1st Jackson postage stamp
issue of 1863
Besides Jackson and Crawford, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams and House Speaker
Henry Clay were also candidates. Jackson received the most popular votes (but not a majority,
and four states had no popular ballot). The Electoral votes were split four ways, with Jackson
having a plurality. Since no candidate received a majority, the election was decided by the House
of Representatives, which chose Adams. Jackson supporters denounced this result as a "corrupt
bargain" because Clay gave his state's support to Adams, and subsequently Adams appointed
Clay as Secretary of State. As none of Kentucky's electors had initially voted for Adams, and
Jackson had won the popular vote, it appeared that Henry Clay had violated the will of the
people and substituted his own judgment in return for personal political favors. Jackson's defeat
burnished his political credentials, however; many voters believed the "man of the people" had
been robbed by the "corrupt aristocrats of the East."
Election of 1828
Main article: United States presidential election, 1828
Jackson resigned from the Senate in October 1825, but continued his quest for the Presidency.
The Tennessee legislature again nominated Jackson for President. Jackson attracted Vice
President John C. Calhoun, Martin Van Buren, and Thomas Ritchie into his camp (Van Buren
and Ritchie were previous supporters of Crawford). Van Buren, with help from his friends in
Philadelphia and Richmond, revived the old Republican Party, gave it a new name as the
Democratic Party, "restored party rivalries," and forged a national organization of durability.[22]
The Jackson coalition handily defeated Adams in 1828.
Statue of Jackson as General in front of Jackson County Courthouse in Kansas
City, Missouri
During the election, Jackson's opponents referred to him as a "jackass". Jackson liked the name
and used the jackass as a symbol for a while, but it died out. However, it later became the symbol
for the Democratic Party when cartoonist Thomas Nast popularized it.[23]
The campaign was very much a personal one. Although neither candidate personally
campaigned, their political followers organized many campaign events. Both candidates were
rhetorically attacked in the press, which reached a low point when the press accused Jackson's
wife Rachel of bigamy. Though the accusation was true, as were most personal attacks leveled
against him during the campaign, it was based on events that occurred many years prior (1791 to
1794). Jackson said he would forgive those who insulted him, but he would never forgive the
ones who attacked his wife. Rachel died suddenly on December 22, 1828, before his
inauguration, and was buried on Christmas Eve.
Inauguration
Main article: Andrew Jackson 1829 presidential inauguration
Jackson was the first President to invite the public to attend the White House ball honoring his
first inauguration. Many poor people came to the inaugural ball in their homemade clothes. The
crowd became so large that Jackson's guards could not hold them out of the White House. The
White House became so crowded with people that dishes and decorative pieces in the White
House began to break. Some people stood on good chairs in muddied boots just to get a look at
the President. The crowd had become so wild that the attendants poured punch in tubs and put it
on the White House lawn to lure people out of the White House. Jackson's raucous populism
earned him the nickname King Mob.
Election of 1832
Main article: United States presidential election, 1832
In the 1832 presidential election, Jackson easily won reelection as the candidate of the
Democratic Party against Henry Clay, of the National Republican Party, and William Wirt, of
the Anti-Masonic Party. Jackson jettisoned Vice President John C. Calhoun because of his
support for nullification and involvement in the Petticoat affair, replacing him with longtime
confidant Martin Van Buren of New York.
Presidency 1829–1837
See also: Jacksonian democracy
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Federal debt
See also: Panic of 1837
In 1835, Jackson managed to reduce the federal debt to only $33,733.05, the lowest it had been
since the first fiscal year of 1791.[24] By implementing a tariff and limits on terms of elected
officials President Jackson remains the only president in United States history to have paid off
the national debt.[25] However, this accomplishment was short lived. A severe depression from
1837 to 1844 caused a tenfold increase in national debt within its first year.[26]
Electoral College
Jackson repeatedly called for the abolition of the Electoral College by constitutional amendment
in his annual messages to Congress as President.[27][28] In his third annual message to Congress,
he expressed the view "I have heretofore recommended amendments of the Federal Constitution
giving the election of President and Vice-President to the people and limiting the service of the
former to a single term. So important do I consider these changes in our fundamental law that I
can not, in accordance with my sense of duty, omit to press them upon the consideration of a new
Congress."[29] The institution Jackson railed against remains to the present day.
Spoils system
Main article: Spoils system
When Jackson became President, he implemented the theory of rotation in office, declaring it "a
leading principle in the republican creed."[27] He believed that rotation in office would prevent
the development of a corrupt bureaucracy. To strengthen party loyalty, Jackson's supporters
wanted to give the posts to party members. In practice, this meant replacing federal employees
with friends or party loyalists.[30] However, the effect was not as drastic as expected or portrayed.
By the end of his term, Jackson dismissed less than twenty percent of the Federal employees at
the start of it.[31] While Jackson did not start the "spoils system," he did indirectly encourage its
growth for many years to come.
Opposition to the National Bank
Main article: Bank War

Democratic cartoon shows Jackson fighting the monster Bank. "The Bank,"
Jackson told Martin Van Buren, "is trying to kill me, but I will kill it!"
The Second Bank of the United States was authorized for a twenty year period during James
Madison's tenure in 1816. As President, Jackson worked to rescind the bank's federal charter. In
Jackson's veto message (written by George Bancroft), the bank needed to be abolished because:
• It concentrated the nation's financial strength in a single institution.
• It exposed the government to control by foreign interests.
• It served mainly to make the rich richer.
• It exercised too much control over members of Congress.
• It favored northeastern states over southern and western states.
• Banks are controlled by a few select families.
• Banks have a long history of instigating wars between nations, forcing
them to borrow funding to pay for them.
Following Jefferson, Jackson supported an "agricultural republic" and felt the Bank improved the
fortunes of an "elite circle" of commercial and industrial entrepreneurs at the expense of farmers
and laborers. After a titanic struggle, Jackson succeeded in destroying the Bank by vetoing its
1832 re-charter by Congress and by withdrawing U.S. funds in 1833. (See Banking in the
Jacksonian Era)

1833 Democratic cartoon shows Jackson destroying the devil's Bank.

The bank's money-lending functions were taken over by the legions of local and state banks that
sprang up. This fed an expansion of credit and speculation. At first, as Jackson withdrew money
from the Bank to invest it in other banks, land sales, canal construction, cotton production, and
manufacturing boomed.[32] However, due to the practice of banks issuing paper banknotes that
were not backed by gold or silver reserves, there was soon rapid inflation and mounting state
debts.[33] Then, in 1836, Jackson issued the Specie Circular, which required buyers of
government lands to pay in "specie" (gold or silver coins). The result was a great demand for
specie, which many banks did not have enough of to exchange for their notes. These banks
collapsed.[32] This was a direct cause of the Panic of 1837, which threw the national economy
into a deep depression. It took years for the economy to recover from the damage.
The U.S. Senate censured Jackson on March 28, 1834, for his action in removing U.S. funds
from the Bank of the United States. When the Jacksonians had a majority in the Senate, the
censure was expunged.
Nullification crisis
Main article: Nullification Crisis
Another notable crisis during Jackson's period of office was the "Nullification Crisis", or
"secession crisis," of 1828 – 1832, which merged issues of sectional strife with disagreements
over tariffs. Critics alleged that high tariffs (the "Tariff of Abominations") on imports of
common manufactured goods made in Europe made those goods more expensive than ones from
the northern U.S., raising the prices paid by planters in the South. Southern politicians argued
that tariffs benefited northern industrialists at the expense of southern farmers.
The issue came to a head when Vice President Calhoun, in the South Carolina Exposition and
Protest of 1828, supported the claim of his home state, South Carolina, that it had the right to
"nullify"—declare void—the tariff legislation of 1828, and more generally the right of a state to
nullify any Federal laws that went against its interests. Although Jackson sympathized with the
South in the tariff debate, he was also a strong supporter of a strong union, with effective powers
for the central government. Jackson attempted to face down Calhoun over the issue, which
developed into a bitter rivalry between the two men.
Particularly notable was an incident at the April 13, 1830, Jefferson Day dinner, involving after-
dinner toasts. Robert Hayne began by toasting to "The Union of the States, and the Sovereignty
of the States." Jackson then rose, and in a booming voice added "Our federal Union: It must be
preserved!" – a clear challenge to Calhoun. Calhoun clarified his position by responding "The
Union: Next to our Liberty, the most dear!"[34]

Jackson Presidential Dollar

The next year, Calhoun and Jackson broke apart politically from one another. Around this time,
the Petticoat affair caused further resignations from Jackson's cabinet, leading to its
reorganization as the "Kitchen Cabinet". Martin Van Buren, despite resigning as Secretary of
State, played a leading role in the new unofficial cabinet.[35] At the first Democratic National
Convention, privately engineered by members of the Kitchen Cabinet,[36] Van Buren replaced
Calhoun as Jackson's running mate. In December 1832, Calhoun resigned as Vice President to
become a U.S. Senator for South Carolina.
In response to South Carolina's nullification claim, Jackson vowed to send troops to South
Carolina to enforce the laws. In December 1832, he issued a resounding proclamation against the
"nullifiers," stating that he considered "the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by
one State, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of
the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was
founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed." South Carolina, the
President declared, stood on "the brink of insurrection and treason," and he appealed to the
people of the state to reassert their allegiance to that Union for which their ancestors had fought.
Jackson also denied the right of secession: "The Constitution... forms a government not a
league... To say that any State may at pleasure secede from the Union is to say that the United
States is not a nation."[37]
Jackson asked Congress to pass a "Force Bill" explicitly authorizing the use of military force to
enforce the tariff, but its passage was delayed until protectionists led by Clay agreed to a reduced
Compromise Tariff. The Force Bill and Compromise Tariff passed on March 1, 1833, and
Jackson signed both. The South Carolina Convention then met and rescinded its nullification
ordinance. The Force Bill became moot because it was no longer needed.
Indian removal
Main article: Indian removal

Jackson in 1845
Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Jackson's presidency was his policy regarding American
Indians, which involved the ethnic cleansing of several Indian tribes.[38][39] Jackson was a leading
advocate of a policy known as Indian removal. Jackson had been negotiating treaties and
removal policies with Indian leaders for years before his election as president. Many tribes and
portions of tribes had been removed to Arkansas Territory and further west of the Mississippi
River without the suffering and tragedies of what later became known as the Trail of Tears.
Further, many white Americans advocated total extermination of the "savages," particularly
those who had experienced frontier wars. Jackson's support of removal policies can be best
understood by examination of those prior cases he had personally negotiated, rather than those in
post-presidential years. Nevertheless, Jackson is often held responsible for all that took place in
the 1830s.
In his December 8, 1829, First Annual Message to Congress, Jackson stated:
This emigration should be voluntary, for it would be as cruel as unjust to
compel the aborigines to abandon the graves of their fathers and seek a
home in a distant land. But they should be distinctly informed that if they
remain within the limits of the States they must be subject to their laws. In
return for their obedience as individuals they will without doubt be protected
in the enjoyment of those possessions which they have improved by their
industry.[40]
Before his election as president, Jackson had been involved with the issue of Indian removal for
over ten years. The removal of the Native Americans to the west of the Mississippi River had
been a major part of his political agenda in both the 1824 and 1828 presidential elections.[41]
After his election he signed the Indian Removal Act into law in 1830. The Act authorized the
President to negotiate treaties to buy tribal lands in the east in exchange for lands further west,
outside of existing U.S. state borders.
While frequently frowned upon in the North, and opposed by Jeremiah Evarts and Theodore
Frelinghuysen, the Removal Act was popular in the South, where population growth and the
discovery of gold on Cherokee land had increased pressure on tribal lands. The state of Georgia
became involved in a contentious jurisdictional dispute with the Cherokees, culminating in the
1832 U.S. Supreme Court decision (Worcester v. Georgia), which ruled that Georgia could not
impose its laws upon Cherokee tribal lands. Jackson is often quoted (regarding the decision) as
having said, "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it!" Whether he said it is
disputed.[42]
In any case, Jackson used the Georgia crisis to pressure Cherokee leaders to sign a removal
treaty. A small faction of Cherokees led by John Ridge negotiated the Treaty of New Echota
with Jackson's representatives. Ridge was not a recognized leader of the Cherokee Nation, and
this document was rejected by most Cherokees as illegitimate.[43] Over 15,000 Cherokees signed
a petition in protest of the proposed removal; the list was ignored by the Supreme Court and the
U.S. legislature, in part due to unfortunate and tragic delays and timing.[44] The treaty was
enforced by Jackson's successor, Van Buren, who ordered 7,000 armed troops to remove the
Cherokees. Due to the infighting between political factions, many Cherokees thought their
appeals were still being considered until troops arrived.[45] This abrupt and forced removal
resulted in the deaths of over 4,000 Cherokees on the "Trail of Tears".

A daguerreotype of Jackson.
By the 1830s, under constant pressure from settlers, each of the five southern tribes had ceded
most of its lands, but sizable self-government groups lived in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi,
and Florida. All of these (except the Seminoles) had moved far in the coexistence with whites,
and they resisted suggestions that they should voluntarily remove themselves. Their nonviolent
methods earned them the title the Five Civilized Tribes.[46]
In all, more than 45,000 American Indians were relocated to the West during Jackson's
administration. A few Cherokees escaped forced relocation, or walked back afterwards, escaping
to the high Smoky Mountains along the North Carolina and Tennessee border.[47]
During the Jacksonian era, the administration bought about 100 million acres (400,000 km²) of
Indian land for about $68 million and 32 million acres (130,000 km²) of western land. Jackson
was criticized at the time for his role in these events, and the criticism has grown over the years.
Remini characterizes the Indian Removal era as "one of the unhappiest chapters in American
history."[48]
Attack and assassination attempt

Richard Lawrence's attempt on Jackson's life, as depicted in an 1835 etching.

The first attempt to do bodily harm to a President was against Jackson. Jackson ordered the
dismissal of Robert B. Randolph from the Navy for embezzlement. On May 6, 1833, Jackson
sailed on USS Cygnet to Fredericksburg, Virginia, where he was to lay the cornerstone on a
monument near the grave of Mary Ball Washington, George Washington's mother. During a
stopover near Alexandria, Virginia, Randolph appeared and struck the President. He then fled the
scene with several members of Jackson's party chasing him, including the well known writer
Washington Irving. Jackson decided not to press charges.[11]
On January 30, 1835, what is believed to be the first attempt to kill a sitting President of the
United States occurred just outside the United States Capitol. When Jackson was leaving the
Capitol out of the East Portico after the funeral of South Carolina Representative Warren R.
Davis, Richard Lawrence, an unemployed and deranged housepainter from England, either burst
from a crowd or stepped out from hiding behind a column and aimed a pistol at Jackson, which
misfired. Lawrence then pulled out a second pistol, which also misfired. It has been postulated
that moisture from the humid weather contributed to the double misfiring.[49] Lawrence was then
restrained, with legend saying that Jackson attacked Lawrence with his cane, prompting his aides
to restrain him. Others present, including David Crockett, restrained and disarmed Lawrence.
Richard Lawrence gave the doctors several reasons for the shooting. He had recently lost his job
painting houses and somehow blamed Jackson. He claimed that with the President dead, "money
would be more plenty" (a reference to Jackson's struggle with the Bank of the United States) and
that he "could not rise until the President fell." Finally, he informed his interrogators that he was
a deposed English King—specifically, Richard III, dead since 1485—and that Jackson was
merely his clerk. He was deemed insane, institutionalized, and never punished for his
assassination attempt.
Afterward, due to curiosity concerning the double misfires, the pistols were tested and retested.
Each time they performed perfectly. When these results were known, many believed that Jackson
had been protected by the same Providence that had protected the young nation. This national
pride was a large part of the Jacksonian cultural myth fueling American expansion in the 1830s.

Clipper ship Andrew Jackson

Judicial appointments
Main article: List of federal judges appointed by Andrew Jackson
In total Jackson appointed 24 federal judges: six Justices to the Supreme Court of the United
States and eighteen judges to the United States district courts.
Supreme Court appointments
• John McLean – 1830.
• Henry Baldwin – 1830.
• James Moore Wayne – 1835.
• Roger Brooke Taney (Chief Justice) – 1836.
• Philip Pendleton Barbour – 1836.
• John Catron – 1837.

Major Supreme Court cases

• Cherokee Nation v. Georgia – 1831.
• Worcester v. Georgia – 1832.
• Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge – 1837.
States admitted to the Union
• Arkansas – June 15, 1836.
• Michigan – January 26, 1837.
Family and personal life

Daguerreotype of Andrew Jackson at age 77 or 78 (1844 or 1845)

Shortly after Jackson first arrived in Nashville in 1788, he lived as a boarder with Rachel
Stockley Donelson, the widow of John Donelson. Here Jackson became acquainted with their
daughter, Rachel Donelson Robards. At the time, Rachel Robards was in an unhappy marriage
with Captain Lewis Robards, a man subject to irrational[dubious – discuss] fits of jealous rage. Due to
Lewis Robards' temperament, the two were separated in 1790. According to Jackson, he married
Rachel after hearing that Robards had obtained a divorce. However, the divorce had never been
completed, making Rachel's marriage to Jackson technically bigamous and therefore invalid.
After the divorce was officially completed, Rachel and Jackson remarried in 1794.[50] However,
there is evidence that Donelson had been living with Jackson and referred to herself as Mrs.
Jackson before the petition for divorce was ever made.[51] It was not uncommon on the frontier
for relationships to be formed and dissolved unofficially, as long as they were recognized by the
community.
The controversy surrounding their marriage remained a sore point for Jackson, who deeply
resented attacks on his wife's honor. Jackson fought 13 duels, many nominally over his wife's
honor.[citation needed] Charles Dickinson, the only man Jackson ever killed in a duel, had been goaded
into angering Jackson by Jackson's political opponents. In the duel, fought over a horse-racing
debt and an insult to his wife on May 30, 1806, Dickinson shot Jackson in the ribs before
Jackson returned the fatal shot; Jackson allowed Dickinson to shoot first, knowing him to be an
excellent shot, and as his opponent reloaded, Jackson shot, even as the bullet lodged itself in his
chest. The bullet that struck Jackson was so close to his heart that it could never be safely
removed. Jackson had been wounded so frequently in duels that it was said he "rattled like a bag
of marbles."[52] At times he coughed up blood, and he experienced considerable pain from his
wounds for the rest of his life.
Rachel died of a heart attack on December 22, 1828, two weeks after her husband's victory in the
election and two months before Jackson taking office as President. Jackson blamed John Quincy
Adams for Rachel's death because the marital scandal was brought up in the election of 1828. He
felt that this had hastened her death and never forgave Adams.
Jackson had two adopted sons, Andrew Jackson Jr., the son of Rachel's brother Severn Donelson,
and Lyncoya, a Creek Indian orphan adopted by Jackson after the Creek War. Lyncoya died of
tuberculosis in 1828, at the age of sixteen.[53]
The Jacksons also acted as guardians for eight other children. John Samuel Donelson, Daniel
Smith Donelson and Andrew Jackson Donelson were the sons of Rachel's brother Samuel
Donelson, who died in 1804. Andrew Jackson Hutchings was Rachel's orphaned grand nephew.
Caroline Butler, Eliza Butler, Edward Butler, and Anthony Butler were the orphaned children of
Edward Butler, a family friend. They came to live with the Jacksons after the death of their
father.

The tomb of Andrew and Rachel Donelson Jackson located at their home, The
Hermitage.
The widower Jackson invited Rachel's niece Emily Donelson to serve as host at the White
House. Emily was married to Andrew Jackson Donelson, who acted as Jackson's private
secretary and in 1856 would run for Vice President on the American Party ticket. The
relationship between the President and Emily became strained during the Petticoat affair, and the
two became estranged for over a year. They eventually reconciled and she resumed her duties as
White House host. Sarah Yorke Jackson, the wife of Andrew Jackson Jr., became cohost of the
White House in 1834. It was the only time in history when two women simultaneously acted as
unofficial First Lady. Sarah took over all hosting duties after Emily died from tuberculosis in
1836. Jackson used Rip Raps as a retreat, visiting between August 19, 1829 through August 16,
1835.[54]
Jackson remained influential in both national and state politics after retiring to The Hermitage in
1837. Though a slave-holder, Jackson was a firm advocate of the federal union of the states, and
declined to give any support to talk of secession.
Jackson was a lean figure standing at 6 feet, 1 inch (1.85 m) tall, and weighing between 130 and
140 pounds (64 kg) on average. Jackson also had an unruly shock of red hair, which had
completely grayed by the time he became president at age 61. He had penetrating deep blue eyes.
Jackson was one of the more sickly presidents, suffering from chronic headaches, abdominal
pains, and a hacking cough, caused by a musket ball in his lung that was never removed, that
often brought up blood and sometimes made his whole body shake. After retiring to Nashville,
he enjoyed eight years of retirement and died at The Hermitage on June 8, 1845, at the age of 78,
of chronic tuberculosis, dropsy, and heart failure.
In his will, Jackson left his entire estate to his adopted son, Andrew Jackson Jr., except for
specifically enumerated items that were left to various other friends and family members. About
a year after retiring the presidency,[55] Jackson became a member of the First Presbyterian Church
in Nashville.
Jackson on U.S. Postage
Few American presidents ever appear on US Postage more than the usual two or three times, and
Andrew Jackson is one of them. Jackson died in 1845, but the U.S. Post Office did not release a
Postage stamp in his honor until 18 years after his death, with the issue of 1863, a 2-cent black
issue, commonly referred to by collectors as the 'Black Jack', displayed above. In contrast, the
first Warren Harding stamp was released only one month after his death, Lincoln, one year
exactly. As Jackson was a controversial figure in his day there is speculation that officials in
Washington chose to wait a period of time before issuing a stamp with his portrait. In all,
Jackson has appeared on thirteen different US postage stamps, more than that of most US
presidents and second only to the number of times Washington, Franklin and Lincoln have
appeared.[56][57] During the American Civil War the Confederate government also issued two
Confederate postage stamps bearing Jackson's portrait, one a 2-cent red stamp and the other a 2-
cent green stamp, both issued in 1863.[58]

Issue of Issue of Issue of Issue of

1870 1903 1938 1994
Jackson also appears on other U.S. Postage stamps of the 19th and 20th centuries. In all, Jackson
appears on twelve US Postage stamps to date.
Memorials

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/andrew-jackson#ixzz1CixfyV7h

GENOLOGY

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Andrew Jackson

Born: 15-Mar-1767
Birthplace: Waxhaw, SC
Died: 8-Jun-1845
Location of death: Nashville, TN
Cause of death: unspecified
Remains: Buried, The Hermitage,
Nashville, TN
Gender: Male
Religion: Presbyterian
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Head of State, Military
Party Affiliation: Democratic
Nationality: United States
Executive summary: 7th US President,
1829-37
Military service: Continental Army; US
Army
Seventh president of the United States, born on the 15th of March 1767, at the
Waxhaw or Warsaw settlement, in Union county, North Carolina, or in Lancaster
County, South Carolina, to where his parents had immigrated from
Carrickfergus, Ireland, in 1765. He played a slight part in the War of
Independence, and was taken prisoner in 1781, his treatment resulting in a
lifelong dislike of Great Britain. He studied law at Salisbury, North Carolina,
was admitted to the bar there in 1787, and began to practice at McLeansville,
Guilford County, North Carolina, where for a time he was a constable and deputy
sheriff. In 1788, having been appointed prosecuting attorney of the western
district of North Carolina (now the state of Tennessee), he removed to Nashville,
the seat of justice of the district. In 1791 he married Mrs. Rachel Robards (née
Donelson), having heard that her husband had obtained a divorce through the
legislature of Virginia. The legislative act, however, had only authorized the
courts to determine whether or not there were sufficient grounds for a divorce
and to grant or withhold it accordingly. It was more than two years before the
divorce was actually granted, and only on the basis of the fact that Jackson and
Mrs. Robards were then living together. On receiving this information, Jackson
had the marriage ceremony performed a second time.
In 1796 Jackson assisted in framing the constitution of Tennessee. From
December 1796 to March 1797 he represented that state in the Federal House of
Representatives, where he distinguished himself as an irreconcilable opponent of
President George Washington, and was one of the twelve representatives who
voted against the address to him by the House. In 1797 he was elected a United
States senator; but he resigned in the following year. He was judge of the
supreme court of Tennessee from 1798 to 1804. In 1804-05 he contracted a
friendship with Aaron Burr; and at the latter's trial in 1807 Jackson was one of
his conspicuous champions. Up to the time of his nomination for the presidency,
the biographer of Jackson finds nothing to record but military exploits in which
he displayed perseverance, energy and skill of a very high order, and a
succession of personal acts in which he showed himself ignorant, violent,
perverse, quarrelsome and astonishingly indiscreet. His combative disposition led
him into numerous personal difficulties. In 1795 he fought a duel with Colonel
Waitstill Avery (1745-1821), an opposing counsel, over some angry words
uttered in a courtroom; but both, it appears, intentionally fired wild. In 1806 in
another duel, after a long and bitter quarrel, he killed Charles Dickinson, and
Jackson himself received a wound from which he never fully recovered. In 1813
he exchanged shots with Thomas Hart Benton and his brother Jesse in a
Nashville tavern, and received a second wound. Jackson and Thomas Hart
Benton were later reconciled.
In 1813-14, as major-general of militia, he commanded in the campaign against
the Creek Indians in Georgia and Alabama, defeated them (at Talladega, on the
9th of November 1813, and at Tohopeka, on the 29th of March 1814), and thus
first attracted public notice by his talents. In May 1814 he was commissioned as
major-general in the regular army to serve against the British; in November he
captured Pensacola, Florida, then owned by Spain, but used by the British as a
base of operations; and on the 8th of January 1815 he inflicted a severe defeat on
the enemy before New Orleans, the contestants being unaware that a treaty of
peace had already been signed. During his stay in New Orleans he proclaimed
martial law, and carried out his measures with unrelenting sternness, banishing
from the town a judge who attempted resistance. When civil law was restored,
Jackson was fined $l000 for contempt of court; in 1844 Congress ordered the
fine with interest ($2700) to be repaid. In 1818 Jackson received the command
against the Seminoles. His conduct in following them up into the Spanish
territory of Florida, in seizing Pensacola, and in arresting and executing two
British subjects, Alexander Arbuthnot and Robert Ambrister, gave rise to much
hostile comment in the cabinet and in Congress; but the negotiations for the
purchase of Florida put an end to the diplomatic difficulty. In 1821 Jackson was
military governor of the territory of Florida, and there again he came into
collision with the civil authority. From this, as from previous troubles, John
Quincy Adams, then secretary of state, extricated him.
In July 1822 the general assembly of Tennessee nominated Jackson for president;
and in 1823 he was elected to the United States Senate, from which he resigned
in 1825. The rival candidates for the office of president in the campaign of 1824
were Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William H. Crawford and Henry Clay.
Jackson obtained the largest number of votes (99) in the electoral college (Adams
receiving 84, Crawford 41 and Clay 37); but no one had an absolute majority,
and it thus became the duty of the House of Representatives to choose one of the
three candidates -- Adams, Jackson and Crawford -- who had received the
greatest numbers of electoral votes. At the election by the house (February 9,
1825) Adams was chosen, receiving the votes of 13 states, while Jackson
received the votes of 7 and Crawford the votes of 4. Jackson, however, was
recognized by the abler politicians as the coming man. Martin Van Buren and
others, going into opposition under his banner, waged from the first a relentless
and factious war on the administration. Van Buren was the most adroit politician
of his time; and Jackson was in the hands of very astute men, who advised and
controlled him. He was easy to lead when his mind was in solution; and he gave
his confidence freely where he had once placed it. He was not suspicious, but if
he withdrew his confidence he was implacable. When his mind crystallized on a
notion that had a personal significance to himself, that notion became a hard fact
that filled his field of vision. When he was told that he had been cheated in the
matter of the presidency, he was sure of it, although those who told him were by
no means so.
There was great significance in the election of Jackson in 1828. A new
generation was growing up under new economic and social conditions. They felt
great confidence in themselves and great independence. They despised tradition
and Old World ways and notions; and they accepted the Jeffersonian dogmas, not
only as maxims, but as social forces -- the causes of the material prosperity of the
country. By this generation, therefore, Jackson was recognized as a man after
their own heart. They liked him because he was vigorous, brusque, uncouth,
relentless, straightforward and open. They made him president in 1828, and he
fulfilled all their expectations. He had 178 votes in the electoral college against
83 given for Adams. Though the work of redistribution of offices began almost at
his inauguration, it is yet an incorrect account of the matter to say that Jackson
corrupted the civil service. His administration is rather the date at which a system
of democracy, organized by the use of patronage, was introduced into the federal
arena by Van Buren. It was at this time that the Democratic or Republican party
divided, largely along personal lines, into Jacksonian Democrats and National
Republicans, the latter led by such men as Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams.
The administration itself had two factions in it from the first, the faction of Van
Buren, the secretary of state in 1829-31, and that of John C. Calhoun, Vice
President in 1829-32. The refusal of the wives of the cabinet and of Mrs.
Calhoun to accord social recognition to Margaret O'Neill Eaton brought about a
rupture, and in April 1831 the whole cabinet was reorganized. Van Buren, a
widower, sided with the president in this affair and grew in his favor. Jackson in
the meantime had learned that Calhoun as secretary of war had wished to censure
him for his actions during the Seminole war in Florida in 1818, and henceforth
he regarded the South Carolina statesman as his enemy. The result was that
Jackson transferred to Van Buren his support for succession in the presidency.
The relations between Jackson and his cabinet were unlike those existing under
his predecessors. Having a military point of view, he was inclined to look upon
the cabinet members as inferior officers, and when in need of advice he usually
consulted a group of personal friends, who came to be called the "Kitchen
Cabinet." The principal members of this clique were William B. Lewis (1784-
1866), Amos Kendall and Duff Green, the last named being editor of the United
States Telegraph, the organ of the administration.
In 1832 Jackson was re-elected by a large majority (219 electoral votes to 49)
over Henry Clay, his chief opponent. The battle raged mainly around the re-
charter of the Bank of the United States. It is probable that Jackson's advisers in
1828 had told him, though erroneously, that the bank had worked against him,
and then were not able to control him. The first message of his first presidency
had contained a severe reflection on the bank; and in the very height of this
second campaign (July 1832) he vetoed the re-charter, which had been passed in
the session of 1831-32. Jackson interpreted his re-election as an approval by the
people of his war on the bank, and he pushed it with energy. In September 1833
he ordered the public deposits in the bank to be transferred to selected local
banks, and entered upon the "experiment" whether these could not act as fiscal
agents for the government, and whether the desire to get the deposits would not
induce the local banks to adopt sound rules of currency. During the next session
the Senate passed a resolution condemning his conduct. Jackson protested, and
after a hard struggle, in which Jackson's friends were led by Senator Thomas
Hart Benton, the resolution was ordered to be expunged from the record, on the
16th of January 1837.
In 1832, when the state of South Carolina attempted to "nullify" the tariff laws,
Jackson at once took steps to enforce the authority of the federal government,
ordering two war vessels to Charleston and placing troops within convenient
distance. He also issued a proclamation warning the people of South Carolina
against the consequences of their conduct. In the troubles between Georgia and
the Cherokee Indians, however, he took a different stand. Shortly after his first
election Georgia passed an act extending over the Cherokee country the civil
laws of the state. This was contrary to the rights of the Cherokees under a federal
treaty, and the Supreme Court consequently declared the act void (1832).
Jackson, however, having the frontiersman's contempt for the Indian, refused to
enforce the decision of the court.
Jackson was very successful in collecting old claims against various European
nations for spoliations inflicted under Napoleon's continental system, especially
the French spoliation claims, with reference to which he acted with
aggressiveness and firmness. Aiming at a currency to consist largely of specie, he
caused the payment of these claims to be received and imported in specie as far
as possible; and in 1836 he ordered land-agents to receive for land nothing but
specie. About the same time a law passed Congress for distributing among the
states some $35,000,000 balance belonging to the United States, the public debt
having all been paid. The eighty banks of deposit in which it was lying had
regarded this sum almost as a permanent loan, and had inflated credit on the
basis of it. The necessary calling in of their loans in order to meet the drafts in
favour of the states, combining with the breach of the overstrained credit
between America and Europe and the decline in the price of cotton, brought
about a crash which prostrated the whole financial, industrial and commercial
system of the country for six or seven years. The crash came just as Jackson was
leaving office; the whole burden fell on his successor, Van Buren.
In the 18th century the influences at work in the American colonies developed
democratic notions. In fact, the circumstances were those which create equality
of wealth and condition, as far as civilized men ever can be equal. The War of
Independence was attended by a grand outburst of political dogmatism of the
democratic type. A class of men were produced who believed in very broad
dogmas of popular power and rights. There were a few rich men, but they were
almost ashamed to differ from their neighbours and, in some known cases, they
endorsed democracy in order to win popularity. After the 19th century began the
class of rich men rapidly increased. In the first years of the century a little clique
at Philadelphia became alarmed at the increase of the "money power", and at the
growing perils to democracy. They attacked with some violence, but little skill,
the first Bank of the United States, and they prevented its re-charter. The most
permanent interest of the history of the United States is the picture it offers of a
primitive democratic society transformed by prosperity and the acquisition of
capital into a great republican commonwealth. The denunciations of the "money
power" and the reiteration of democratic dogmas deserve earnest attention. They
show the development of classes or parties in the old undifferentiated mass.
Jackson came upon the political stage just when a wealthy class first existed. It
was an industrial and commercial class greatly interested in the tariff, and deeply
interested also in the then current forms of issue banking. The southern planters
also were rich, but were agriculturists and remained philosophical Democrats.
Jackson was a man of low birth, uneducated, prejudiced, and marked by strong
personal feeling in all his beliefs and disbeliefs. He showed, in his military work
and in his early political doings, great lack of discipline. The proposal to make
him president won his assent and awakened his ambition. In anything which he
undertook he always wanted to carry his point almost regardless of incidental
effects on himself or others. He soon became completely engaged in the effort to
be made president. The men nearest to him understood his character and played
on it. It was suggested to him that the money power was against him. That meant
that, to the educated or cultivated class of that day, he did not seem to be in the
class from which a president should be chosen. He took the idea that the Bank of
the United States was leading the money power against him, and that he was the
champion of the masses of democracy and of the common people. The opposite
party, led by Clay, Adams, Biddle, etc., had schemes for banks and tariffs,
enterprises which were open to severe criticism. The political struggle was very
intense and there were two good sides to it. Men like Thomas Hart Benton,
Edward Livingston, Amos Kendall, and the southern statesmen, found material
for strong attacks on the Whigs. The great mass of voters felt the issue as
Jackson's managers stated it. That meant that the masses recognized Jackson as
their champion. Therefore, Jackson's personality and name became a power on
the side opposed to banks, corporations and other forms of the new growing
power of capital. That Jackson was a typical man of his generation is certain. He
represents the spirit and temper of the free American of that day, and it was a
part of his way of thinking and acting that he put his whole life and interest into
the conflict. He accomplished two things of great importance in the history: he
crushed excessive state-rights and established the contrary doctrine in fact and in
the political orthodoxy of the democrats; he destroyed the great bank. The
subsequent history of the bank left it without an apologist, and prejudiced the
whole later judgment about it. The way in which Jackson accomplished these
things was such that it cost the country ten years of the severest liquidation, and
left conflicting traditions of public policy in the Democratic party. After he left
Washington, Jackson fell into discord with his most intimate old friends, and
turned his interest to the cause of slavery, which he thought to be attacked and in
danger.
Jackson is one of the few presidents of whom it may be said that he went out of
office far more popular than he was when he entered. When he went into office
he had no political opinions, only some popular notions. He left his party strong,
perfectly organized and enthusiastic on a platform of low expenditure, payment
of the debt, no expenditure for public improvement or for glory or display in any
form and low taxes. His name still remained a spell to conjure with, and the
politicians sought to obtain the assistance of his approval for their schemes; but
in general his last years were quiet and uneventful. He died at his residence, The
Hermitage, near Nashville. Tennessee, on the 8th of June 1845.
Father: Andrew Jackson (b. circa 1730, d.)
Mother: Elizabeth Hutchinson Jackson (b. circa 1740, d. 1782)
Brother: Robert Jackson (older, d., smallpox)
Brother: Hugh Jackson (older, d., heat stroke)
Wife: Rachel Donelson Robards Jackson (b. Jun-1767, m. 15-May-1791, m.
1794, d. 22-Dec-1828)
Son: Andrew Jackson Jr (b. 4-Dec-1808 adopted, d. 1865)
Son: Lyncoya Jackson (saddlemaker, b. 1811 adopted, d. 1828 tuberculosis)
Son: Andrew Jackson Hutchings (b. 1812 adopted, d. 1841)
Law School: Salisbury, NC
US President 1829-37
US Senator, Tennessee 1823-25
US Senator, Tennessee 1797-98
US Congressman, Tennessee 1796-97
Congressional Gold Medal
South Carolina Hall of Fame 1979
Taken Prisoner of War
Duel: Pistols 1795, with Col. Waitstill Avery
Duel: Pistols 30-May-1806, killed Charles Dickinson
Shot: Dueling
Censured by Congress 27-Mar-1834, for dismantling the Bank of the United
States
 Assassination Attempt 30-Jan-1835, shot at by Richard Lawrence
Slaveowners
Portrait on American currency $20
Portrait on American currency Confederate $1000
National Statuary Hall (1928)
Irish Ancestry
Scottish Ancestry
Risk Factors: Depression, Malaria, Smoking

Born: 3/15/1767
Birthplace: Waxhaw, S.C.

Andrew Jackson was born on March 15, 1767, in what is now generally agreed to be Waxhaw,
S.C. After a turbulent boyhood as an orphan and a British prisoner, he moved west to Tennessee,
where he soon qualified for law practice but found time for such frontier pleasures as horse
racing, cockfighting, and dueling. His marriage to Rachel Donelson Robards in 1791 was
complicated by subsequent legal uncertainties about the status of her divorce. During the 1790s,
Jackson served in the Tennessee Constitutional Convention, the United States House of
Representatives and Senate, and on the Tennessee Supreme Court.
After some years as a country gentleman, living at the Hermitage near Nashville, Jackson in
1812 was given command of Tennessee troops sent against the Creeks. He defeated the Indians
at Horseshoe Bend in 1814; subsequently he became a major general and won the Battle of New
Orleans over veteran British troops, though after the treaty of peace had been signed at Ghent. In
1818, Jackson invaded Florida, captured Pensacola, and hanged two Englishmen named
Arbuthnot and Ambrister, creating an international incident. A presidential boom began for him
in 1821, and to foster it, he returned to the Senate (1823–25). Though he won a plurality of
electoral votes in 1824, he lost in the House when Clay threw his strength to Adams. Four years
later, he easily defeated Adams. Jackson, the first president to come from humble origins, built
his reputation as a populist and a defender of the common man over the political elite.
As president, Jackson greatly expanded the power and prestige of the presidential office and
carried through an unprecedented program of domestic reform, vetoing the bill to extend the
United States Bank, moving toward a hard-money currency policy, and checking the program of
federal internal improvements. He also vindicated federal authority against South Carolina with
its doctrine of nullification and against France on the question of debts. The support given his
policies by the workingmen of the East as well as by the farmers of the East, West, and South
resulted in his triumphant reelection in 1832 over Clay.
After watching the inauguration of his handpicked successor, Martin Van Buren, Jackson retired
to the Hermitage, where he maintained a lively interest in national affairs until his death on June
8, 1845.

Read more: Andrew Jackson — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0760592.html#ixzz1Ciynk5VY

Rachel Donelson Jackson
The Adams Sentinel (Gettysburg, Pennsylvania) January 21 1829
[Transcribed by Nancy Piper]

Nashville, Tenn. Dec. 26.

The death of Mrs. Jackson, consort of General Andrew Jackson, which we
hastily announced in our paper on Tuesday last, came upon our community
like an electric shock. Arrangements had been made by the citizens of
Nashville for a public dinner and a ballon Tuesday, in honor of the General,
and he was expected in town that morning, to receive the congratulations of
his friends, and to partake with them a parting glass, preparatory to his
departure for the seat of the national government. On Thursday preceding,
Mrs. Jackson was attacked with severe pain in the arm, shoulder and side, and
violent palpitation of the heart. Medical assistance however soon afforded her
relief, and no serious result was apprehended. On Monday she again
complained of pain, and slight fever returned, but in the evening about 9
o’clock, when the physician visited her, she appeared relieved, and was free
from pain. No alarming symptoms appeared, nor was it then supposed that her
indisposition would be so great as to interfere with the arrangements of the
next day. In about half an hour, however she sent for the physician, who was in
an adjoining room, and before he could reach her, she fell from her chair, and
expired in less than two minutes. The immediate cause of this awful event is
supposed to have been a sudden spasmodic affection of the heart. The funeral
took place on Wednesday, and was attended by an immense crowd from
Nashville and the surrounding country.

Most sincerely do we sympathize with our distinguished fellow citizen in this

severe and trying affliction. At the moment of his high elevation, he is suddenly
depressed and cast down. His hope are disappointed, his plans deranged. Just
as he is about to feel the weight of new cares, responsibilities and duties, he is
deprived of that domestic solace, which he had been so long accustomed to
enjoy, and is left, solitary as it were, in the midst of society, to enter upon the
new theatre of action, where he had fondly anticipated the sharing of his
honors and pleasures and anxieties with the much loved partner of his bosom.
This in indeed a great and sudden reverse, and affords a striking lesson of the
uncertainty of human happiness, a forcible illustration of the mixture of alloy
with the richest and purest of human enjoyments. -- Banner

Rachel (Donelson) [Robards] Jackson

The Wife of Andrew Jackson

Rachel Donelson was the maiden name of General Jackson's wife. She was
born in Virginia, in the year 1767, and lived in Virginia until she was eleven
years of age. Her father, Colonel John Donelson, was a planter and land
surveyor, who possessed considerable wealth in land, cattle, and slaves. He
was one of those hardy pioneers who were never content unless they were
living away out in the woods, beyond the verge of civilization. Accordingly, in
1779, we find him near the headwaters of the Tennessee River, with all his
family, bound for the western parts of Tennessee, with a river voyage of two
thousand miles before him.

Seldom has a little girl of eleven years shared in so perilous an adventure. The
party started in the depth of a severe winter, and battled for two months with
the ice before it had fairly begun the descent of the Tennessee. But, in the
spring, accompanied by a considerable fleet of boats, the craft occupied by
John Donelson and his family floated down the winding stream more rapidly.
Many misfortunes befell them. Sometimes a boat would get aground and
remain immovable till its whole cargo was landed. Sometimes a boat was
dashed against a projecting point and sunk. One man died of his frozen feet;
two children were born. On board one boat, containing twenty-eight persons,
the small-pox raged. As this boat always sailed at a certain distance behind the
rest, it was attacked by Indians, who captured it, killed all the men, and carried
off the women and children. The Indians caught the small-pox, of which some
hundreds died in the course of the season.

But during this voyage, which lasted several months, no misfortune befell the
boat of Colonel Donelson; and he and his family, including his daughter
Rachel, arrived safely at the site of the present city of Nashville, near which he
selected his land, built his log house, and established himself. Never has a
settlement been so infested with hostile Indians as this. When Rachel
Donelson, with her sisters and young friends, went blackberrying, a guard of
young men, with their rifles loaded and cocked, stood guard over the
surrounding thickets while the girls picked the fruit. It was not safe for a man to
stoop over a spring to drink unless some one else was on the watch with his
rifle in his arms; and when half a dozen men stood together, in conversation,
they turned their backs to each other, all facing different ways, to watch for a
lurking savage.
So the Donelsons lived for eight years, and gathered about them more
negroes, more cattle, and more horses than any other household in the
settlement. During one of the long winters, when a great tide of emigration had
reduced the stock of corn, and threatened the neighborhood with famine,
Colonel Donelson moved to Kentucky with all his family and dependents, and
there lived until the corn crop at Nashville was gathered. Rachel, by this time,
had grown to be a beautiful and vigorous young lady, well skilled in all the arts
of the back-woods, and a remarkably bold and graceful rider. She was a plump
little damsel, with the blackest hair and eyes, and of a very cheerful and
friendly disposition. During the temporary residence of her father in Kentucky
she gave her hand and heart to one Lewis Robards, and her father returned to
Nashville without her.

Colonel Donelson soon after, while in the woods surveying far from his home,
fell by the hand of an assassin. He was found pierced by bullets; but whether
they were fired by red savages or by white was never known. To comfort her
mother in her loneliness, Rachel and her husband came to Nashville and lived
with her, intending, as soon as the Indians were subdued, to occupy a farm of
their own.

In the year 1788, Andrew Jackson, a young lawyer from, North Carolina,
arrived at Nashville to enter upon the practice of his profession, and went to
board with Mrs. Donelson. He soon discovered that Mrs. Rachel Robards lived
most unhappily with her husband, who was a man of violent temper and most
jealous disposition. Young Jackson had not long resided in the family before
Mr. Robards began to be jealous of him, and many violent scenes took place
between them. The jealous Robards at length abandoned his wife, and went
off to his old home in Kentucky, leaving Jackson master of the field.
A rumor soon after reached the place that Robards had procured a divorce
from his wife in the legislature of Virginia; soon after which Andrew Jackson
and Rachel Donelson were married. The rumor proved to be false, and they
lived together for two years before a divorce was really granted, at the end of
which time they were married again. This marriage, though so inauspiciously
begun, was an eminently happy one, although, out of doors, it caused the
irascible Jackson a great deal of trouble. The peculiar circumstances attending
the marriage caused many calumnies to be uttered and printed respecting Mrs.
Jackson, and some of the bitterest quarrels which the general ever had, had
their origin in them.

At home, however, he was one of the happiest of men. His wife was an
excellent manager of a household and a kind mistress of slaves. She had a
remarkable memory, and delighted to relate anecdotes and tales of the early
settlement of the country. Daniel Boone had been one of her father's friends,
and she used to recount his adventures and escapes. Her abode was a seat of
hospitality, and she well knew how to make her guests feel at home. It used to
be said in Tennessee that she could not write; but, as I have had the pleasure
of reading nine letters in her own handwriting, one of which was eight pages
long, I presume I have a right to deny the imputation. It must be confessed,
however, that the spelling was exceedingly bad, and that the writing was so
much worse as to be nearly illegible. If she was ignorant of books, she was
most learned in the lore of the forest, the dairy, the kitchen, and the farm. I
remember walking about a remarkably fine spring that gushed from the earth
near where her dairy stood, and hearing one of her colored servants say that
there was nothing upon the estate which she valued so much as that spring.
She grew to be a stout woman, which made her appear shorter than she really
was. Her husband, on the contrary, was remarkably tall and slender; so that
when they danced a reel together, which they often did, with all the vigor of the
olden time, the spectacle was extremely curious.

It was a great grief to both husband and wife that they had no children, and it
was to supply this want in their household that they adopted one of Mrs.
Donelson's nephews, and named him Andrew Jackson. This boy was the
delight of them both as long as they lived.

Colonel Benton, who knew Mrs. Jackson well and long, has recorded his
opinion of her in the following forcible language:
"A more exemplary woman in all the relations of life - wife, friend, neighbor,
relation, mistress of slaves-never lived, and never presented a more quiet,
cheerful, and admirable management of her household. She had the general's
own warm heart, frank manners, and admirable temper; and no two persons
could have been better suited to each other, lived more happily together, or
made a house more attractive to visitors. No bashful youth or plain old man,
whose modesty sat them down at the lower end of the table, could escape her
cordial attention, any more than the titled gentlemen at her right and left.
Young persons were her delight, and she always had her house filled with
them, all calling her affectionately 'Aunt Rachel.'"

In the homely fashion of the time, she used to join her husband and guests in
smoking a pipe after dinner and in the evening. There are now living many
persons who well remember seeing her smoking by her fireside a long reed
pipe.

When General Jackson went forth to fight in the war of 1812, he was still living
in a log house of four rooms; and this house is now standing on his beautiful
farm ten miles from Nashville. I used to wonder, when walking about it, how it
was possible for Mrs. Jackson to accommodate so many guests as we know
she did. But a hospitable house, like a Third-Avenue car, is never full, and in
that mild climate the young men could sleep on the piazza or in the corn-crib,
content if their mothers and sisters had the shelter of the house. It was not until
long after the general's return from the wars that he built, or could afford to
build, the large brick mansion which he named the "Hermitage." The visitor
may still see in that commodious house the bed on which this happy pair slept
and died, the furniture they used, and the pictures upon which they were
accustomed to look. In the hall of the second story there is still preserved the
huge chest in which Mrs. Jackson used to stow away the woolen clothes of the
family in the summer, to keep them from the moths. Around the house are the
remains of the fine garden of which she used to be so proud, and, a little
beyond, are the cabins of the hundred and fifty slaves to whom she was more
a mother than a mistress.

A few weeks after the battle of New Orleans, when her husband was in the first
flush of his triumph, this plain planter's wife floated down the Mississippi to
New Orleans to visit her husband and to accompany him home. She had never
seen a city before, for Nashville, at that day, was little more than a village. The
elegant ladies of New Orleans were exceedingly pleased to observe that
General Jackson, though he was himself one of the most graceful and polite of
gentlemen, seemed totally unconscious of the homely bearing, the country
manners, and awkward dress of his wife. In all companies and on all occasions
he showed her every possible mark of respect. The ladies gathered about her
and presented her with all sorts of showy knick-knacks and jewelry, and one of
them undertook the task of selecting suitable clothes for her. She frankly
confessed that she knew nothing about such things, and was willing to wear
anything that the ladies thought proper. Much as she enjoyed her visit, I am
sure she was glad enough to return to her old home on the banks of the
Cumberland and resume her oversight of the daily and the plantation.

Soon after the peace, a remarkable change came over the spirit of this
excellent woman. Parson Blackburn, as the general always called him, was a
favorite preacher in that part of Tennessee, and his sermons made so powerful
an impression upon Mrs. Jackson that she joined the Presbyterian Church, and
was ever after devotedly religious. The general himself was almost persuaded
to follow her example. He did not, however; but he testified his sympathy with
his wife's feelings by building a church for her - a curious little brick edifice-on
his own farm; the smallest church, I suppose, in the United States. Of all the
churches I ever saw, this is the plainest and simplest in its construction. It
looks like a very small schoolhouse; it has no steeple, no portico, and but one
door; and the interior, which contains forty little pews, is unpainted, and the
floor is of brick. On Sundays, the congregation consisted chiefly of the general,
his family, and half a dozen neighbors, with as many negroes as the house
would hold, and could see through the windows. It was just after the
completion of this church that General Jackson made his famous reply to a
young man who objected to the doctrine of future punishment.

"I thank God," said this youth, "I have too much good sense to believe there is
such a place as hell."
"Well, sir," said General Jackson, "I thank God there is such a place."
"Why, general," asked the young man, " what do you want with such a place of
torment as hell?"
To which the general replied, as quick as lightning: "To put such rascals as you
are in, that oppose and vilify the Christian religion."
The young man said no more, and soon after found it convenient to take his
leave.

Mrs. Jackson did not live to see her husband President of the United States,
though she lived long enough to know that he was elected to that office. When
the news was brought to her of her husband's election, in December, 1828,
she quietly said:
"Well, for Mr. Jackson's sake" (she always called him Mr. Jackson), "I am glad;
for my own part, I never wished it."

The people of Nashville, proud of the success of their favorite, resolved to

celebrate the event by a great banquet on the 22d of December, the
anniversary of the day on which the general had first defeated the British below
New Orleans; and some of the ladies of Nashville were secretly preparing a
magnificent wardrobe for the future mistress of the White House. Six days
before the day appointed for the celebration, Mrs. Jackson, while busied about
her household affairs in the kitchen of the Hermitage, suddenly shrieked,
placed her hands upon her heart, sank upon a chair, and fell forward into the
arms of one of her servants. She was carried to her bed, where, for the space
of sixty hours, she suffered extreme agony, during the whole of which her
husband never left her side for ten minutes. Then she appeared much better,
and recovered the use of her tongue. This was only two days before the day of
the festival, and the first use she made of her recovered speech was, to
implore her exhausted husband to go to another room and sleep, so as to
recruit his strength for the banquet. He would not leave her, however, but lay
down upon a sofa and slept a little. The evening of the 22d she appeared to be
so much better that the general consented, after much persuasion, to sleep in
the next room, and leave his wife in the care of the doctor and two of his most
trusted servants.

At nine o'clock he bade her good-night, went into the next room, and took off
his coat, preparatory to lying down. "When he had been gone five minutes
from her room, Mrs. Jackson, who was sitting up, suddenly gave a long, loud,
inarticulate cry, which was immediately followed by the death-rattle in her
throat. By the time her husband had reached her side she had breathed her
last.

"Bleed her," cried the general. But no blood flowed from her arm.
"Try the temple, doctor."
A drop or two of blood stained her cap, but no more followed. Still, it was long
before he would believe her dead, and when there could no longer be any
doubt, and they were preparing a table upon which to lay her out, he cried, with
a choking voice:

"Spread four blankets upon it; for if she does come to she will lie so hard upon
the table."

All night long he sat in the room, occasionally looking into her face, and feeling
if there was any pulsation in her heart. The next morning, when one of his
friends arrived just before daylight, he was nearly speechless and utterly
inconsolable, looking twenty years older.

There was no banquet that day in Nashville. On the morning of the funeral, the
grounds were crowded with people, who saw, with emotion, the poor old
general supported to the grave between two of his old friends, scarcely able to
stand. The remains were interred in the garden of the Hermitage, in a tomb
which the general had recently completed. The tablet which covers her dust
contains the following inscription:
"Here lie the remains of Mrs. Rachel Jackson, wife of President Jackson, who
died the 22d of December, 1828, aged 61. Her face was fair, her person
pleasing, her temper amiable, her heart kind; she delighted in relieving the
wants of her fellow creatures, and cultivated that divine pleasure by the most
liberal and unpretending methods; to the poor she was a benefactor; to the rich
an example; to the wretched a comforter; to the prosperous an ornament; her
piety went hand in hand with her benevolence, and she thanked her Creator
for being permitted to do good. A being so gentle and so virtuous, slander
might wound but not dishonor. Even death, when he tore her from the arms of
her husband, could but transport her to the bosom of her God."
Andrew Jackson was never the same man again. During his presidency, he
never used the phrase: "By the Eternal," nor any other language which could
be considered profane. He mourned his wife until he himself rejoined her in the
tomb he had prepared for them both.
[Source: "People's Book of Biography", By James Parton, 1868 -- Submitted by Cathy
Danielson]