Jackson, Andrew

Jackson, Andrew (1767–1845), seventh president of the United States, founder of the Democratic party.Born in Waxhaw, South Carolina to Scotch‐Irish immigrants, Jackson fought as a boy in the Revolutionary War, studied law, and in 1788 moved west to Nashville. In 1791, he married Rachel Robards, believing that her divorce had been finalized. When this proved incorrect, they were remarried in 1794. Malicious rumors relating to the contretemps followed Jackson throughout his career. After serving as a Tennessee prosecutor, judge, congressman, senator, and militia general, he won fame in the War of 1812 with smashing victories against the Creek Indians in 1814 and against the British at the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815.

His triumph at New Orleans, which eventually acquired an almost mythical coloring, gave Jackson a heroic stature unrivaled since George Washington's. In 1818, he pursued Seminole Indians into Spanish Florida, creating an international incident. Appointed military governor of Florida (1821), he again served in the Senate in 1823–1825. In a confused, four‐candidate presidential race in 1824, Jackson led the popular and electoral vote but lost in the House of Representatives to John Quincy Adams through the machinations of Henry Clay. Jackson challenged Adams again in 1828 and defeated him. The campaign introduced new vote‐getting techniques but also exhibited a sectional pattern, with Jackson sweeping the South and West. In 1832, Jackson easily defeated Henry Clay.

Elected president more for his patriotic persona than his largely unformed political views, Jackson carved out a policy while in office and in doing so shaped his diffuse electoral coalition into an organized political party. He replaced many government officials on partisan grounds, inaugurating the so‐called spoils system. Serving his core southwestern constituency, he condemned abolitionism, advocated cheaper public lands, and strong‐armed Indian tribes into removing west of the Mississippi. In a confrontation between Georgia and the Cherokee Nation, Jackson backed state authority against tribal sovereignty and refused to protect Indians' treaty rights despite a ruling by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall.

Jackson's presidency defined itself in two central episodes: the nullification crisis and the “Bank War.” Jackson took office amid mounting sectional acrimony over the American System, a program of fostering economic development through protective tariffs and transportation improvements, policies that many southerners condemned as promoting northern growth at their expense. Jackson curbed the American System by vetoing congressional transportation subsidies (most famously the Maysville Road in 1830) on constitutional grounds and urging a lower tariff. When South Carolina, led by John Calhoun, declared the 1828 tariff null and void in 1832, and prepared to resist its collection, Jackson acted quickly to uphold federal supremacy, by force if necessary. In a ringing proclamation he declared the country indivisible, and nullification tantamount to treason. With Jackson's blessing, Congress lowered the tariff in 1833, and South Carolina backed down.

Another element in the American System was the Bank of the United States, a privately managed institution chartered by Congress to provide a stable currency and handle the government's finances. Following Thomas Jefferson, Jackson deemed a national bank dangerous and unconstitutional. In 1832, he vetoed a bill engineered by bank president Nicholas Biddle (1786–1844) to renew its charter, scheduled to expire in 1836. His veto message counterposed the virtuous plain people against the bank's privileged stockholders. The following year, he transferred the federal government's deposits to selected state‐chartered banks, triggering a brief financial panic and prompting the Senate to censure him in 1834. Undeterred, Jackson launched a broader assault against all forms of government‐granted special privileges, including corporate charters. His Farewell Address in 1837 warned of the insidious “money power.” After his presidency, Jackson retired to the Hermitage, his cotton plantation near Nashville, where he died.

Jackson's Bank War and its populistic, egalitarian rhetoric provided the platform and vocabulary for the emerging Democratic party. (His policies also arguably helped trigger the Panic of 1837, which deepened into a severe depression.) By casting himself as the people's tribune against the moneyed elite and their tools in government, he introduced an enduring theme in American politics. Jackson exercised executive powers vigorously, defying Congress, vetoing more bills than all his predecessors, and frequently reshuffling his cabinet.

Jackson's political philosophy adapted Jeffersonian precepts to a developing democratizing society. Combining energetic nationalism and attacks on privilege with laissez‐faire and limited government policies, Jackson appealed simultaneously to the longing of many Americans for a purer republic and to their ambition for a more open future. Strong‐willed and sharp‐tempered, a fierce patriot and rabid partisan, Jackson himself was always controversial. For him, politics was personal, whether the opponent was Henry Clay, John Marshall, John Calhoun, or Nicholas Biddle. A cabinet crisis erupted in 1829 when the wife of Vice President Calhoun ostracized Peggy Eaton, the daughter of a Washington innkeeper and wife of Jackson's secretary of war. Jackson defended Peggy, and the resulting controversy helped push Calhoun into opposition and open the way for Martin Van Buren, Jackson's 1832 running mate to win the presidency in 1836.

Andrew Jackson was both a champion and symbol of democracy, the first westerner and self‐made man to achieve the presidency, yet also a wealthy slaveholder. The preeminent public figure between Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, he dominated and gave his name to an era.
See also Antebellum Era; Bank of the United States, First and Second; Depressions, Economic; Federal Government, Executive Branch: The Presidency; Indian History and Culture: From 1800 to 1900; Indian Wars; Monetary Policy, Federal; Roads and Turnpikes; Seminole Wars; Veto Power.

Bibliography

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. , The Age of Jackson, 1945.
John William Ward , Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age, 1955.
Edward Pessen , Jacksonian America, rev. ed., 1978.
Robert V. Remini , Andrew Jackson, 3 vols., 1977–1984.
Harry L. Watson , Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America, 1990.
Charles Sellers , The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1991.
Daniel Feller , The Jacksonian Promise: America, 1815–1840, 1995.

Daniel Feller