Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was the seventh President of the United States. He was elected for two terms from 1829 to 1837. He was the military governor of Florida (1821), commander of the American forces during the battle of New Orleans (1815) and the man at the base of the era Jacksonian democracy. He was an important figure who dominated American politics in the 1820s and 1830s. His political ambitions combined with greater political participation by the population led to the creation of political parties as we know them today. His legacy is seen more contrastingly today, as a protector of grassroots democracy and individual freedom but maligned by some for his support for the deportation of Native Americans west of the Mississippi and slavery. Renowned for being impenetrable and hard, it was nicknamed Old Hickory (referring to the hardness of walnut wood). Basing his career in nascent Tennessee, Jackson was the first president to be associated with the "American frontier." His portrait appears on the twenty dollar bills.
Youth
Andrew Jackson was born to Andrew and Elizabeth Jackson, an Irish-Scottish family, on March 15, 1767, approximately two years after their emigration from Carrickfergus. Three weeks after his father's death, Andrew was born near Waxhaws between North and South Carolina. The exact location of his birth is debatable, Jackson claimed to have been born in a cabin within the borders of South Carolina.
He received a sporadic education at the village school. During the Revolutionary War, Jackson, at the age of 13, joined the local regiment. Andrew and one of his two brothers, Robert Jackson, were taken prisoner of war by the English and nearly died of starvation in captivity. When Andrew refuses to clean the boots of a British officer, the latter throws sword blows at him, leaving him with scars on his left hand and on his head, as well as a great hatred for the English. During their imprisonment, the two brothers catch smallpox. Their mother obtains their release by arguing about their age, but Robert dies a few days later. His mother died six months later of cholera. All of Andrew Jackson's immediate family died of a war-related cause, which he blamed on the English. He became an orphan at the age of 14.
Jackson is the last president of the United States to be a veteran of the Revolutionary War, and the second to have been a prisoner of war after Washington.
Tennessee
Returning to his studies, after the expulsion of the English, he became a lawyer at the bar of Salisbury in North Carolina (1784), then district attorney general in Nashville, Tennessee (1788). Jackson made his debut in military command there, at the head of a few militias, against the Indians whom he pushed far from the borders.
With Tennessee admitted to the Union, Lawyer Jackson was commissioned to draft the new state's constitution. Representative of Tennessee in the General Congress (1796), senator the following year, he resigned and returned to his homes.
Justice of the Supreme Court and commander-in-chief of the Tennessee militia, he retained only the latter title (1799), and devoted himself to agriculture. Thirteen years later, hostilities broke out in 1812 between the United States and England, making Jackson, a former magistrate, legislator and laborer, the Union's first man-of-war, or, to use the emphatic expression adopted by the English, the lion of North America.
Military career
The Indian Wars, the heart of the War of 1812
Jackson became known for the Creeks War and then the First Seminole War which forced the Indians to emigrate west of the Mississippi to allow the pioneers to settle. In the South, these wars are at the center of the war of 1812 against the English, accused of fomenting them (a pretext for the spoliation of the Indians, despite the promises and commitments of the federal government).
His friend Edward Livingston, former mayor and prosecutor of New York, knows maritime law and litigation following the War of Independence. He worked on the War of 1812, which kept federal troops away, allowing Andrew Jackson to raise a militia to fight the Creeks, then to annex their lands during the Alabama fever.
Raised to the rank of major general of the militias, Jackson was charged with leading a body of volunteers on the Mississippi in December 1812. By resisting the contradictory and unjust orders of a central government employee, he wins the affection of the militiamen. It was during this war that it seems to have earned its nickname Old Hickory, in reference to its hard walnut wood.
His difficult and perilous campaign against the Creek Indians (1813) ended in a coup that made history in the military annals of the Union. Jackson is informed that the Creeks, refugees in the Floridas, possession of Spain, are armed by the Spanish governor of Pensacola, in violation of his neutrality. Without waiting for the authorization he asks for from his government, Jackson enters the Floridas. Two English spies whom he had tried by court-martial were hanged. The place of Pensacola is taken by main force; the Spanish governor, the Indians and the English are chastised and Jackson withdraws.
In 1814, Jackson commanded at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, Alabama, where 700 Creek Indians were killed while he lost only 49 men. The Cherokees, taking the Creeks from behind, allow Jackson and his militiamen to win this battle. A peace treaty is signed giving American settlers access to a territory of nearly 100,000 km2.
At the end of the same year, Jackson was in Florida where he fought against the Seminole Indians. These agricultural people occupied northern Florida at the request of the Spaniards, in order to protect the colony against the United States. They also welcomed runaway slaves, slaves who fought alongside them. Jackson was appointed military governor of the state in 1819 and the territory was ceded by Spain in 1821 by the Treaty of Adams-Onís, for a rather derisory sum of money considering the size of Florida, and without the slightest battle with the Spaniards (who, it is true, were preoccupied with their possessions in South America as well as the Caribbean).
The Battle of New Orleans, alongside Jean Lafitte
Finally, on December 13, 1814, Jackson was in New Orleans, Louisiana to fight against the British in the last battle of the War of 1812. News of the armistice signed on Christmas Eve 1814 (December 24) by the Treaty of Ghent having not been reached, the battle took place on January 8, 18151 between 8,000 trained British soldiers and around 4,000 rustics, a large part of whom were supporters of the corsair-pirate Jean Lafitte who ruled the region of Caribbean. Victory will earn Jackson a national hero; British losses amounted to 386 dead, 1,521 wounded and 552 missing while American losses were only 55 dead, 185 wounded, 93 missing.
This is the time when resentment against England remains strong and the temptation to go to Mexico, to populate new territories, more and more strong. The government gives the green light to the Vine and Olive Colony, a vast colonial company cultivating in fact cotton and extending over 370 square kilometers of virgin land, founded by hundreds of French planters from Santo Domingo, in what is not was not yet the state of Alabama but the vast territory of Louisiana, repurchased from Napoleonic France in 1803. This sector became a high place in the history of cotton cultivation.
Before the supreme magistracy
On July 17, 1821, Jackson was elected governor of Florida. He withdrew again to the countryside, and we can notice that it was after having spent another fourteen years there, as a farmer, that he was raised by the votes of his fellow citizens to the supreme magistracy (March 4, 1829) .
He ran in the presidential election of 1824 and obtained more popular votes and votes from the electors than his competitors, but he did not have an absolute majority. A vote of the House of Representatives gives the presidency to John Quincy Adams. Jackson ran again in 1828 and this time won the election by a substantial majority. He is the first president elected by universal suffrage who has just been installed in a large number of states and his reputation as a man of the people and an Indian hunter is no stranger to this. He also belonged to Freemasonry.
Presidency
March 4, 1829:Inauguration of Andrew Jackson as the seventh President of the United States. He is the first elected president who is not part of the circle of politicians who participated in the War of Independence and the drafting of the Constitution. He enjoys the support of farmers in the West as much as that of city dwellers, who appreciate his humble origins (he is nicknamed the “friend of the common man”). In his inaugural speech he announces that he will do what is necessary to empty the east of the continent of the Indians, and occupy their territories.
May 28, 1830:Congress votes and Jackson signs the law for the expulsion of the Indians from all the states on the East Coast and their establishment in the territories west of the Mississippi plain. This was called "The Trail of Tears", because he deported nearly 80,000 Indians, more than 10,000 of whom died before arriving in Oklahoma. This act is the most spectacular of the genocide that affected the Amerindians. In this memory, Native Americans still refuse to use the 20 dollar bill with his effigy
May 21, 1831:first national convention of the Democratic Party which chooses Jackson as its candidate for the presidential election.
July 10, 1832:Jackson vetoes the creation of a central bank.
December 5, 1832:Jackson is re-elected for a second term against the candidate of the Whig Party.
January 29, 1834:Jackson uses the army for the first time to break a strike by workers building the canal between Washington and Ohio.
Assassination attempt on January 30, 1835.
January 1835:The United States' federal public debt is fully repaid for the only time in its history.
January 30, 1835, Jackson was the victim of the first assassination attempt against an American president in Capitol. By incredible luck, the two pistols of the assassin, an unbalanced, jammed. A famous engraving, made 20 years later, shows Jackson hitting this man's head with his cane.
1836:Jackson again vetoes the creation of a central bank. The Federal Reserve of the United States will not have a monopoly on the issue of money until 1913.
Foreign policy
The United States still faces the rivalry between France and the United Kingdom which hinders trade. Andrew Jackson strongly supports the claim of 25 million, raised by the United States government against the French cabinet.
The problems would not be settled until around 1836. However, Jackson succeeded in negotiating an agreement which, in 1830, authorized trade with the British possessions in the Caribbean. In 1837 Jackson recognizes the independence of the Republic of Texas which was under Mexican domination.
Domestic politics
Close to the people, Jackson resents professional politicians and institutions that tend to acquire independent power. He vetoed the renewal of the central bank created in 1781 by Alexander Hamilton to manage the national debt and strengthen federal power.
Nor does he bother with a government with which he often quarrels and he surrounds himself with advisers, his "government in the kitchen", with whom he makes his decisions.
The south, especially agricultural, did not want high customs duties, unlike the north which was setting up its industry. The crisis was resolved in 1833 by a sharp drop in customs duties and marked the victory of the individual interests of the States over the federal government.
Civil rights, minorities and immigration policy
In 1829, with the increase in the population and the discovery of gold on the territories of the Cherokees, Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act (law allowing the displacement (removal) of the Indians by force) passed by Congress for the use of these lands. The Supreme Court rules the law unconstitutional, but Jackson refuses to enforce the judgment. The state of Georgia allocates the lands of the Cherokees during a lottery and Jackson sends troops to deport the Indians by forced marches beyond the Mississippi. This episode claimed the lives of approximately 4,000 Cherokee Indians (25% of the population) during a journey along the trail known as the Trail of Tears.
Partisan politics
He introduces the system where high federal offices are awarded to friends who have helped during the election campaign (Spoils System) and he puts pressure on the states to broaden the electoral base. Thus, under his presidency, the number of citizens participating in political life is multiplied by 7.
Retirement
At the end of his second term in 1837, Jackson returned to his home in Tennessee. After serving in the military, becoming a hero, and being president for eight years, he says he's going home with "barely $80 in his pocket." He died on June 8, 1845; his death is now attributed to lead poisoning following a wound received in 1813.
Privacy
Andrew Jackson's wife, Rachel Jackson, died on December 22, 1828 between the election and the presidential installation ceremony. When Jackson married her, he was 21 and she was living apart from her first husband, whom she believed to be legally divorced. In fact the divorce had not been pronounced and the two spouses had to remarry afterwards. This episode was considered scandalous by good society and gave rise to rumors during the election campaign. Jackson long blamed his opponents for being behind, according to him, the death of his wife. It is therefore his niece Emily Donelson who assumes the office of First Lady of the United States, then his daughter-in-law Sarah Jackson.
Anecdotes
On May 30, 1806, Jackson killed a man in a duel, Charles Dickinson, who had published an article in a local newspaper calling him "a coward and a coward". He receives a bullet in the chest, near the heart, which he will keep until his death.
On the day of his inauguration, a cheering crowd (admirers) swarmed the White House so they could approach him.
His nephew, Andrew Jackson Donelson, who was his aide-de-camp and then his secretary, was a candidate for vice-president in 1856. He was then the running mate of former president Millard Fillmore and both were supported by the American Party (political expression of the Know Nothing nativist movement) and by the remnants of the Whig party.
A 1790 court file from Sumner County, Tennessee, was discovered in 1859 by a historian named Waldo Albigence Putnam. In it, Andrew Jackson apparently "proved a bill of sale from Hugh McGary to Kasper Mansker, for a Negro man, which was OK" OK”), first mention of the term “OK”[citation needed]. In fact, it would be a spelling mistake:"OK" for "Oll Korrect" instead of "All Correct".
In 1825 in Nashville, Tennessee, General Jackson showed his modest home to General Lafayette and his son during the triumphal voyage of 1824 and 1825. Jackson presented Lafayette with two pistols that he had given to George Washington in 1777. Lafayette felt a real satisfaction in finding them in the hands of a man worthy of such a heritage. At her words, Jackson's face flushed with a modest blush, and his eye sparkled as if on the day of a victory. "Yes, I believe myself worthy of it," he cried, pressing his pistols and Lafayette's hands to his chest; "if it is not by what I have done, it is at least by what I wish to do for my country..."