Andrew Jackson

I

Introduction

Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), seventh president of the United States (1829-1837) and the first Westerner to be elected president. His election marked the end of a political era dominated by the planter aristocracy of Virginia and the commercial aristocracy of New England. Jackson himself was an aristocrat, but from a rougher mold than his predecessors. He fought his way to leadership and wealth in a frontier society, and his success established a bond between him and the common people that was never broken. Small farmers, laborers, mechanics, and many other Americans struggling to better themselves looked to Jackson for leadership.

Jackson’s followers considered themselves the party of the people and denounced their political opponents, the National Republicans and later the Whigs, as aristocrats. In fact, Jacksonian leaders were nearly all as wealthy, and as different from the common people, as the Whigs. For all of Jackson’s talk about helping working people, his policies accomplished little for them. His banking policies destabilized the nation’s currency and, some historians think, were designed to help bankers friendly to his Democratic Party.

However benevolent Jackson may have been toward blacks and Native Americans in his personal life, they clearly were not included in the “common people” he sought to aid in his public life. His Native American policy deprived America’s original peoples of millions of acres despite prior treaties and the disapproval of the Supreme Court of the United States. His party promoted the interests of slaveholders and thereby helped to delay a solution to the slavery question until it erupted into the Civil War in 1861.

Jackson left a legacy of a strong presidency. Since his time it has been commonplace for presidents to repeat his assertion that the president represents the will of the people better than Congress does. His example has also made it mandatory for presidents, as well as other American politicians, to appeal to the people at large rather than special interests.

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II

Early Life

Jackson’s Scotch-Irish parents, Andrew and Elizabeth Hutchinson Jackson, emigrated to America from northern Ireland in 1765. At this time they had two sons, Hugh and Robert. The elder Jackson took up farming in the backwoods Waxhaw settlement on the border between North and South Carolina. He died in 1767. A few days later, on March 15, Andrew was born. The widow Jackson moved her family into the home of a nearby relative, James Crawford, where Andrew spent his boyhood. He attended frontier schools and acquired the reputation of being fiery-tempered and willing to fight all comers. He also learned to read, and he was often called on by the community to read aloud the news from the Philadelphia papers.

A

American Revolution

The American Revolution, begun in 1775, did not reach the Carolinas until 1780. When it did, Andrew, then only 13 years old, became an orderly and messenger in the mounted militia of South Carolina. He took part in the Battle of Hanging Rock against the British and in a few small skirmishes with British sympathizers known as Loyalists or Tories. His brother Hugh was killed, and when the British raided Waxhaw, both he and Robert were captured. Because Jackson refused to polish the boots of a British officer, he was struck across the arm and face with a saber.

The boys were put in a British prison in Camden, South Carolina, where an epidemic of smallpox broke out. Mrs. Jackson gained her boys’ release, but Robert soon died. Mrs. Jackson then volunteered to nurse other American prisoners, and she too caught smallpox and died.

Andrew was now 14 years old and without any immediate family. With the war over, he took up saddle making and schoolteaching. With a $300 inheritance from his grandfather, he went to Charleston, South Carolina, then the biggest city in the South. There he cut a dashing figure in society until his money ran out.

B

Lawyer

Jackson next studied law under Spruce Macay, a lawyer in Salisbury, North Carolina. He was admitted to practice in 1787, and he set up his office in McLeanville, Guilford County, North Carolina. The next year he and a lawyer companion, John McNairy, crossed the Cumberland Mountains. They settled in the frontier village of Nashville, which was then in the western district of North Carolina. McNairy had connections and was made a judge of the district’s superior court. He appointed Jackson solicitor general. Jackson’s duty was to prepare court cases on behalf of the state.

Jackson quickly made a name for himself prosecuting debtors. He built up a successful law practice and engaged in land speculation. He also opened a store on the Cumberland River. Later he was forced to sell the store when he unwittingly became involved in the financial manipulations of his creditor, a Philadelphia speculator. This experience and others like it made Jackson an opponent of paper credit.