Andrew Jackson, the seventh President of the United States, embodied the spirit of the western frontier. Self confident, strong willed, and self reliant, he was an individualist of the most belligerent kind. Though exceedingly intelligent, his mind was untrained. He lacked the discipline needed to make rational decisions and relied instead on intuition and emotion. Wild and unrefined in temperament, he was prone to using physical force to settle his disputes. His honesty and simplicity endeared him to the public, causing him to be the first American President ever elected by an overwhelming popular mandate of the common citizen.
On March 5, 1767 Andrew Jackson was born in the Waxhaw settlement of South Carolina. He was the youngest of three sons born to Elizabeth and Andrew Jackson, a poor farmer who had emigrated to the United States from his birthplace in County Antrim, Ireland. The older Jackson died a few days before his son was born, and Andrew was raised by his mother. Andrew Jackson's elementary education was poor and sporadic. When he was thirteen, Andrew and his older brother Robert joined the Continental Army; the eldest Jackson boy, Hugh, had already been killed in the war by this time. The boys were wounded and taken prisoner when the British overran Charleston, South Carolina in 1781. While in prison Andrew and Robert were starved, and Andrew was stabbed in the hand when he refused to clean the boots of a British officer. The boys contracted small pox and, as a result, were released from prison and allowed to return home. Robert died only a few days after his release. Later that same year Andrew's mother died, and the boy was left in the custody of his mother's relatives. When he was sixteen, Andrew received an inheritance from his grandfather's estate in Ireland. Though it was a considerable amount, the young Andrew Jackson managed to drink and gamble the whole of his inheritance away within a year.
In 1784 Andrew Jackson moved to Salisbury, North Carolina where he took up studying law in the office of Spruce Macay. He passed the bar in 1787 and became a frontier lawyer. His knowledge of the law was scarce, but his wild temperament was well suited to the justice system of the frontier.
In 1788 Andrew Jackson moved to Nashville where he was to take the position of prosecuting attorney for the western district of North Carolina (later known as Tennessee). While in Nashville Andrew Jackson met and married Rachel Donelson Robards. It was later learned that Rachel's divorce from Lewis Robards had not been granted until 1793, two years after Jackson had married her. Fearing that their marriage was not legal, the couple retook their vows in 1794. They had no children together, but in 1810 they adopted Rachel's nephew and renamed him Andrew Jackson Jr. Rachel Jackson died on December 22, 1828, after her husband's election to the Presidency, but before his inauguration.
In 1796 Andrew Jackson attended the convention to draft Tennessee's Constitution. His immense popularity at the convention won him a seat in the Tennessee House of Representatives, to which he was elected unanimously at the end of that same year.
In November of 1797 the people of Tennessee selected Andrew Jackson to fill a vacancy in the United States Senate. While in the Senate, Jackson was one of few to vote against offering George Washington a farewell tribute. Jackson hated Washington for his support of the Jay Treaty, a document he felt was pro-British. Financial troubles and homesickness forced Jackson to resign from the Senate early. He left Washington in April 1798 and returned home to take a seat on the Tennessee Superior Court.
In 1802 Jackson was appointed major general of the Tennessee militia, a position which he assumed without resigning his seat on the Tennessee Superior Court.
Despite his rise in social status, Andrew Jackson had not lost his tendency toward solving disputes with physical force. In 1803 Jackson challenged John Sevier, the Governor of Tennessee, to a duel. The matter was settled without either men firing a shot. In 1806 Jackson challenged Charles Dickinson to a duel when the latter made comments about the questionable legality of Jackson's marriage. Dickenson fired a bullet into Jackson's chest. Jackson managed to gather enough strength to stand and return fire, mortally wounding Dickenson. Dickenson's bullet was never removed, as it had lodged too close to Jackson's heart. The wound caused Jackson considerable pain throughout his life. In 1813 Jackson got into fights with Thomas Heart and Jesse Benton. Jackson received two bullet wounds, one of which almost resulted in the amputation of his arm.
In 1812 Jackson used the Tennessee troops under his command to aid the United States in its war against the British. Congress sent Jackson to fight the Creek Indians which had allied themselves to Britain. Jackson's victory over the Creeks at Horseshoe Bend along the Tallapoosa River in Alabama won him the position of brigadier in the United States Army. By the time Jackson traveled west with orders to defend the city of New Orleans against the advancing British, he had risen to the rank major general. When the British attacked New Orleans on January 8, 1815, Jackson's troops were already in the city and waiting. The Battle of New Orleans was a major victory for the United States, making Andrew Jackson a national hero.
After the War of 1812 ended, Jackson was appointed Commander of the South District Forces of the United States Army. At this time, Florida was in turmoil primarily because it was largely populated by criminals and runaway slaves. Spain was preoccupied with uprisings in South America and did not have the military strength to return order to Florida. The United States decided to move a military presence to the southern border to protect its southernmost states should an uprising occur. In 1817 Andrew Jackson was sent to the border between the United States and Florida with what he interpreted as orders to take Florida away from the Spanish. The unprovoked attack on Florida outraged the Spanish. Jackson was in danger of losing his command for overstepping his authority and there was talk of trying him for the infringement on Congresses' right to declare war. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams came to Jackson's aid. Adams praised Jackson's attack, as it placed more pressure on the troubled Spain to cede Florida to the United States. President Monroe, at John Quincy Adams' bequest, cleared Jackson of all wrong doing. Florida was ceded to the United States with the signing of the Adams-Onis Treaty in 1819. Four years later Andrew Jackson was elected to the United States Senate.
In 1824 Andrew Jackson ran as one of the four regional candidates which the splintering Democratic-Republican Party nominated for President. Though he received a majority of the popular vote and the highest number of electoral votes, the number of candidates that year split the vote so that no one candidate received the majority required to elect a President. The job of picking the President fell to the House. Last place candidate Henry Clay threw his support to second place candidate John Quincy Adams, and Adams was named President. Jackson was furious and accused Adams of making corrupt deals in the House. The charges were never proven, but Jackson turned the issue into a political movement that intended to take power away from the upper class and give it to the common man.
Andrew Jackson defeated John Quincy Adams by a landslide in the general election. He became the first President from the West and the first President to have the overwhelming support of common citizens. Andrew Jackson became the seventh President of the United States on March 4, 1829.
In 1832 Congress passed a high tariff on imports. The Southern states opposed the tariff as it protected the northern industry at the expense of southern agriculture, which they predicted would suffer when the other nations of the world imposed retaliatory tariffs. South Carolina went so far as to declare the tariff null in that state. They threatened that any attempt to enforce the tariff would be met with South Carolina's secession from the Union. Jackson asked Congress to send troops to South Carolina. South Carolina backed down and accepted a compromise tariff which Jackson supported. The incident resulted in Jackson's estrangement from his Vice President John C. Calhoun, who had supported South Carolina's right to nullification.
Near the end of Jackson's first term as President, the charter on the National Bank came before Congress for reinstatement. Jackson vetoed the bill, not because it was unconstitutional, but because he disliked the bill's supporters and felt that it was an attempt to preserve the rich's monopoly on money. Jackson's veto had two far-reaching consequences: 1. Free from the controls of a centralized national bank, inflation occurred, and state and local banks began to speculate beyond their means. When the bottom fell out in 1837, after Jackson had left office, a severe depression resulted. 2. In using the veto for political reasons rather than legal reasons, President Jackson had increased the power of the Presidency. Previous Presidents felt obliged to veto bills only when they were unconstitutional; future Presidents would feel no such restraints in exercising their power of veto.
Henry Clay knew of Jackson's prejudices against the bank charter, and intended to turn the President's opposition to the national bank into a political tool to be used against him during the next election. Clay's plan failed. President Andrew Jackson was re-elected by a landslide victory in the election of 1832.
On January 30, 1835 Andrew Jackson became the first President targeted for assassination. As he was leaving the Capitol building, a man stepped from the crowd and fired two shots, point blank. The shots misfired. Members of the crowd seized the man, and President Jackson began to retaliate with the raw end of his walking stick. There was no political reason for the attempt, and the man was later committed to an insane asylum.
On March 4, 1836 President Andrew Jackson left the White House after two terms. He returned to his estate, The Hermitage, near Nashville, where he died on January 8, 1845.
