Jackson, Andrew

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.