Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson Click to enlarge

• Born: 15 March 1767
• Birthplace: Waxhaw, South Carolina
• Died: 8 June 1845
• Best Known As: President of the United States, 1829-37

A veteran of the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, Andrew Jackson was popularly known as "Old Hickory" for his ruggedness. He gained national fame when he ran the British out of New Orleans in 1815, and he governed the Florida territory from 1821-23. Elected to the U.S. Senate by the Tennessee legislature in 1823, he was sent to Washington as a presidential contender on the strength of his image as a hero of the wild frontier. The confusion of the 1824 election led to the House of Representatives electing John Quincy Adams over Jackson, but Jackson won the 1828 election and denied Adams a second term. Jackson was re-elected in 1832, then followed the example of George Washington and chose not to seek a third term. Jackson, in ill health, returned to his estate in Tennessee, the Hermitage, and continued to play a role in party politics after handpicking Martin Van Buren as the Democratic party's nominee in 1836 (Van Buren won and succeeded Jackson). Jackson's efforts to limit the power of the affluent elite led to his reputation for "Jacksonian Democracy," but his administration was known for a heavy hand when it came to the power of the executive branch. He was a staunch champion of states' rights against federalism, and his administration was marked by expansion in Texas, wars with the Indians and his rejection of the Bank of the United States.

Jackson's wife Rachel died on 22 December 1828, just weeks after his election to the presidency... Harvard College conferred an honorary degree on President Jackson in 1833, much to the disapproval of Harvard alumnus John Quincy Adams, who called Jackson "a barbarian who could not write a sentence of grammar and hardly could spell his own name."... Both North Carolina and South Carolina have claimed Jackson as a native son, as his hometown of Waxhaw was in border territory... Jackson was a notorious brawler and duellist; in 1806 he killed a man named Charles Dickinson in a duel (with pistols) over Mrs. Jackson's honor.

(1767–1845), War of 1812 general and seventh president of the United States

Jackson first experienced war at thirteen, fighting in the Battle of Hanging Rock, South Carolina (6 August 1780). Subsequently captured, he remained uncooperative and was slashed by a British officer, creating an antipathy as permanent as the scar on his face. Jackson's entire family perished in the Revolutionary War.

In 1788, Jackson moved to western North Carolina (now Tennessee), where he served as a field‐grade officer in the Tennessee militia and was elected, 1802, as major general—a post considered second only to that of the governor. In 1813, he commanded the Tennessee troops sent to subdue the Creeks in present‐day Alabama. After several minor victories that significantly weakened the Indians, Jackson delivered a devastating blow at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, 27–28 March 1814.

Thereafter, Jackson was given a major generalship in the U.S. Army and put in charge of the Gulf Coast region. He seized Spanish Pensacola in the fall of 1814 and then marched to New Orleans to counter a British invasion. After a series of largely successful preliminary engagements, on 8 January 1815 he and his troops won the main Battle of New Orleans, one of the severest defeats ever suffered by a British army. Jackson emerged a national hero.

Retaining his major generalship after the war, Jackson in 1818 pursued Indians into Spanish Florida and again occupied Pensacola. The Monroe administration reluctantly supported him, using the conquest to force Spain to sell the Floridas to the United States. Jackson resigned his commission in 1821. Except while acting as commander in chief during his presidency, he never held another command.

Jackson was a superb general. Although unschooled in theory, he was a competent tactician and strategist. He thoroughly prepared for battle and acted quickly and resourcefully to take the war to the enemy and to catch him by surprise. Among his greatest assets as a leader was an indomitable will, which earned him the nickname “Old Hickory” in 1813 when he continued to campaign despite a nearly crippling case of dysentery. He expected the same devotion to duty from others. During the War of 1812, he sanctioned the hanging of seven militiamen for disobedience or desertion, and jailed several New Orleans officials (including a federal judge) who challenged his decision to continue martial law after the British had left. Jackson often inspired fierce loyalty in officers and enlisted men alike; even his critics followed him into battle, if only because they feared him more than the enemy.

Jackson was the first westerner to become a national military hero. Like few of his contemporaries, he demonstrated a talent for commanding militia and volunteers no less than regulars, and showed equal skill in conducting conventional operations against European regulars and unconventional warfare against Indians.

[See also Commander in Chief, President as; Native American Wars: Wars Between Native Americans and Europeans and Euro‐Americans; Seminole Wars.]

Bibliography

• Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson, 3 vols., 1977–84

(b. Waxhaw, S.C., 15 Mar. 1767; d. near Nashville, Tenn., 8 June 1845), president of the United States, 1829–1837. During his two terms, President Andrew Jackson made six appointments to the high court, more than any other president except George Washington, William Howard Taft, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Though Jackson took account of such traditional criteria as geography and public service, he calculated the political gain to be realized through his selections. In nominating John McLean of Ohio, a presidential aspirant popular in the West, Jackson extracted from him a promise not to seek the presidency in return for a place on the Court. Jackson thereby shelved a potential rival. Politics also figured in Jackson's other Court nominations. In 1830 he selected Henry Baldwin, a Pennsylvania congressman who had helped deliver that state to Jackson in 1828. James M. Wayne (1835), Philip P. Barbour (1836), and John Catron (1837) had also rendered valuable political service to the president. Jackson's most controversial nominee, however, was Roger B. Taney of Maryland. Taney as secretary of the treasury had played a crucial role in Jackson's attack on the Second Bank of the United States. Senate Whigs and disaffected Democrats thwarted Taney's first nomination in 1835. Jackson refused to make another appointment, however, and when Chief Justice John Marshall died on 6 July 1835, the president had not one but two positions to fill. In December he nominated Philip P. Barbour, a strong states' rights Democrat from Virginia, to replace Gabriel Duvall and Taney to fill Marshall's post. The Senate agreed to the selections only after three months of wrangling.

Jackson's appointees dominated American constitutional development down to the Civil War, and some historians even argue that they, especially Taney in Dred Scott (1857), contributed to the war's coming. Yet like most of the justices that he appointed, Jackson's view of the Court and constitutional law blended states' rights and nationalism. He was pragmatic though assertive; he pushed his criticism of the Court when it was effective and backed off when it was not. He was also determined to use his office to shape the nation's destiny without being encumbered by the other branches. Jackson used the appointment process to impress his political views on the Court but also claimed that as the tribune of the people he was obliged to interpret the Constitution as he understood it. In his veto of the act rechartering the Second Bank of the United States in 1832, Jackson argued for strict construction of the Constitution and asserted a departmental theory of constitutional interpretation. He held that each of the branches of government had the right and duty to interpret the Constitution independently of the other branches. No previous president, not even Thomas Jefferson, had ever gone so far in claiming that the Court's opinions could be ignored.

Yet Jackson's hostility to the Court had limits. He allegedly remarked, following the Supreme Court's decision in Worcester v. Georgia (1832), that “John Marshall had made his decision, now let him enforce it” (see Cherokee Cases). Jackson did not make that statement (although he did nothing to stop Georgia from defying the Court's decision) and he never asserted an inherent prerogative to disregard judicial decisions. He merely wanted equality among the branches of government in matters of constitutional interpretation.

See also Selection of Justices; Judicial Power and Jurisdiction.

Bibliography

• Henry J. Abraham, Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court, 2d ed. (1985)

— Kermit L. Hall

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.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), seventh president of the United States, symbolized the democratic advances of his time. His actions strengthened the power of the presidential office in American government.

When Andrew Jackson emerged on the national scene, the United States was undergoing profound social and economic changes as the new, postrevolutionary generation pushed forward in search of material gain and political power. Jackson was a classic example of the self-made man who rose from a log cabin to the White House, and he came to represent the aspirations of the ordinary citizen struggling to achieve wealth and status. He symbolized the "rise of the common man." So total was his identification with this period of American history that the years between 1828 and 1848 are frequently designated the "Age of Jackson."

Andrew Jackson was born on March 15, 1767, in Waxhaw country, which straddles North and South Carolina. His father, who died shortly before Andrew's birth, had come with his wife to America from Ireland in 1765. Andrew attended several academies in the Waxhaw settlement, but his education was spotty and he never developed a taste for learning.

After the outbreak of the American Revolution, Jackson, barely 13 years old, served as an orderly to Col. William Richardson. Following one engagement, Jackson and his brother were captured by the British and taken to a prison camp. When Jackson refused to clean an officer's boots, the officer slashed him with a sword, leaving a permanent scar on his forehead and left hand. Jackson was the only member of his family to survive the war, and it is generally believed that his harsh, adventuresome, early life developed his strong, aggressive qualities of leadership, his violent temper, and his need for intense loyalty from friends.

After the war Jackson drifted from one occupation to another and from one relative to another. He squandered a small inheritance and for a time lived a wild, undisciplined life that gave free rein to his passionate nature. He developed lifelong interests in horse racing and cock-fighting and frequently indulged in outrageous practical jokes. Standing just over 6 feet tall, with long, sharp, bony features lighted by intense blue eyes, Jackson presented an imposing figure that gave every impression of a will and need to command.

After learning the saddler's trade, Jackson tried school-teaching for a season or two, then left in 1784 for Salisbury, N. C., where he studied law in a local office. Three years later, licensed to practice law in North Carolina, he migrated to the western district that eventually became Tennessee. Appointed public prosecutor for the district, he took up residence in Nashville. A successful prosecutor and lawyer, he was particularly useful to creditors who had trouble collecting debts. Since money was scarce in the West, he accepted land in payment for his services and within 10 years became one of the most important landowners in Tennessee. Unfortunately his speculations in land failed, and he spiraled deeply into debt, a misadventure that left him with lasting monetary prejudices. He came to condemn credit because it encouraged speculation and indebtedness. He distrusted the note-issuing, credit-producing aspects of banking and abhorred paper money. He regarded hard money - specie - as the only legitimate means by which honest men could engage in business transactions.

While Jackson was emerging as an important citizen by virtue of his land holdings, he also achieved social status by marrying Rachel Donelson, the daughter of one of the region's original settlers. The Jacksons had no children of their own, but they adopted one of Rachel's nephews and named him Andrew Jackson, Jr.

When Congress created the Southwest Territory in 1790, Jackson was appointed an attorney general for the Mero District and judge advocate of the Davidson County militia. In 1796 the northern portion of the territory held a constitutional convention to petition Congress for admission as a state to the Union. Jackson attended the convention as a delegate from his county. Although he played a modest part in the proceedings, one tradition does credit him with suggesting the name of the state: Tennessee, derived from the name of a Cherokee Indian chief.

In 1796, with the admission of Tennessee as the sixteenth state of the Union, Jackson was elected to its sole seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. His voting record revealed strong nationalistic tendencies. The following year he was elected U.S. senator but he soon resigned to become judge of the Superior Court of Tennessee. His decisions as judge were described by one man as "short, untechnical, unlearned, sometimes ungrammatical, and generally right." He resigned from the bench in 1804 to devote himself exclusively to his plantation, where he later built a graceful mansion called the "Hermitage," and to his other business enterprises, including boatbuilding, horse breeding, and storekeeping.

Military Career

By the beginning of the War of 1812, Jackson had achieved the rank of major general of the Tennessee militia. He and his militia were directed to subdue the Creek Indians in Alabama who had massacred white settlers at Ft. Mims. At the Battle of Horseshoe Bend (1814) Jackson inflicted such a decisive defeat that the Creek's power to wage war was permanently broken. During this engagement Jackson's men acknowledged his toughness and indomitable will by calling him "Old Hickory."

When the U.S. government heard rumors of an impending British penetration of the South through one of the ports on the Gulf of Mexico, Jackson was ordered to block the invasion. Supposing that New Orleans was the likeliest point of attack, he established a triple line of defense south of the city. After several minor skirmishes and an artillery bombardment, the British attacked in force on Jan. 8, 1815, and were decisively defeated. Over 2,000 British soldiers, including their commanding general, perished in the battle, while only 13 Americans were killed. It was a stupendous victory. Jackson became a national hero overnight, for he had infused Americans with confidence in their ability to defend their new liberty.

Florida Territory

When the war ended, Jackson returned to his plantation. However, he soon resumed military duty to subdue Indian raids along the southern frontier emanating from Spanish Florida. In a series of rapid moves he invaded Florida, subdued the Seminole Indians, extinguished Spanish authority, and executed two British subjects for inciting Indian attacks. Despite an international furor over this invasion, President James Monroe defended Jackson's actions and prevailed upon Spain to sell Florida to the United States for $5 million. Jackson served as governor of the Florida Territory briefly, but he was highhanded, was antagonistic to the Spanish, and tried to exercise absolute authority. He quit in disgust after serving only a few months.

These exploits served to increase Jackson's popularity throughout the country, alerting his friends in Tennessee to the possibility of making him a presidential candidate. First, he was elected to the U.S. Senate in October 1823. Then, the following year four candidates sought the presidency, each representing a different section of the country: Jackson of Tennessee, William H. Crawford of Georgia, John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, and Henry Clay of Kentucky. In the election Jackson won the highest plurality of popular and electoral votes, but because he did not have the constitutionally mandated majority of electoral votes, the issue of selecting the president went to the House of Representatives. Here, on the first ballot, John Quincy Adams was chosen president. Adams's subsequent selection of Clay as his secretary of state convinced Jackson that a "bargain" had been concluded between the two to "fix" the election and cheat him of the presidency. For the next 4 years Jackson's friends battered the Adams administration with the accusation of a "corrupt bargain." In the election of 1828 Jackson won an overwhelming victory. During the campaign Martin Van Buren of New York and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina joined forces behind Jackson, and out of this coalition emerged the Democratic party. Supporters of Adams and Clay were now called National Republicans.

"Old Hickory" as President

Jackson's presidential inauguration demonstrated the beginning of a new political age as thousands of people swarmed into Washington to witness the outdoor inauguration, then poured through the White House to congratulate their hero, nearly wrecking the building in the process. Jackson appointed many second-rate men to his Cabinet, with the exception of Martin Van Buren, his secretary of state.

An initial estrangement between Jackson and his vice president, John C. Calhoun, soon grew worse because of their obvious disagreement over the important constitutional question of the nature of the Union. During a Senate debate between Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina, Hayne articulated Calhoun's doctrine of nullification (that is, the right of a state to nullify any objectionable Federal law). Although Jackson was politically conservative and a strong advocate of states' rights, he was also intensely nationalistic, and he regarded nullification as an abomination. At a dinner commemorating Thomas Jefferson's birthday, Jackson found the opportunity to express his feelings. When called upon to deliver a toast, he is said to have looked straight at Calhoun and said, "Our Federal Union. It must be preserved."

The final break between Jackson and Calhoun occurred when it was disclosed that, earlier, as secretary of war in James Monroe's Cabinet, Calhoun had sought to censure Jackson for his invasion of Florida. In self-defense, Calhoun gave his side of the controversy in a newspaper statement and ended by arguing that Van Buren had deliberately sought his downfall in order to eliminate him as a presidential rival. Van Buren there-upon resigned from the Cabinet, thus forcing the resignation of the remaining members, which gave Jackson the opportunity of reconstituting his Cabinet and ridding himself of Calhoun's friends. Later, however, when Jackson made Van Buren U.S. minister to Great Britain, confirmation of this appointment resulted in a tie vote in the Senate, and Calhoun, as vice president, gained a measure of revenge by voting against it. This action prompted Jackson to insist on Van Buren as his vice-presidential running mate in the next election.

Bank War

The presidential contest of 1832 involved not only personal vindication for Van Buren but also the important political issue of the national bank. The issue developed because of Jackson's prejudice against paper money and banks and because of his contention that the Second Bank of the United States (established in 1816) was not only unconstitutional but had failed to establish a sound and uniform currency. Moreover, he suspected the Bank of improper interference in the political process. Jackson had informed the Bank's president, Nicholas Biddle, of his displeasure in his first message to Congress back in December 1829. Following this, Biddle, at the urging of Henry Clay and other National Republicans, asked Congress for a recharter of the Bank 4 years before it came due. In this way the issue could be submitted to the people during the 1832 election if Jackson blocked the recharter.

Although the bank bill passed Congress rather handily, Jackson vetoed it in a strong message that lamented how "the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes." This veto message broadened presidential power because it went beyond strictly constitutional reasons in faulting the bill. By citing social, political, and economic reasons, Jackson went beyond what all his predecessors had considered the limit of the presidential veto power.

In the 1832 election Henry Clay, running against Jackson on the bank issue, was decisively defeated. Jackson interpreted his reelection as a mandate to destroy the Bank of the United States. He therefore directed his secretary of the Treasury to remove Federal deposits and place them in selected state banks (called pet banks). Biddle counterattacked by a severe contraction of credit that produced a brief financial panic during the winter of 1833/1834. But Jackson held his ground, Biddle was finally forced to relax the pressure, and the Bank of the United States eventually collapsed. With the dispersal of government money among state banks and, later, with the distribution of surplus Federal funds to individual states, the nation entered a period of steep inflation. Jackson unsuccessfully tried to halt the inflation by issuing the Specie Circular (1836), which directed specie payments in the purchase of public land.

At the beginning of his second term, Jackson informed Congress of his intention to pay off the national debt. This goal was achieved on Jan. 1, 1835, thanks to income the Federal government received from land sales and tariff revenues. Jackson also advocated a policy of "rotation" with respect to Federal offices. In a democratic country, he declared, "no one man has any more intrinsic right to official station than another." He was accused of inaugurating the spoils system, but this was unfair for, actually, he removed only a modest number of officeholders. Jackson also advocated moving Native Americans west of the Mississippi River as the most humane policy the government could pursue in dealing with the Native American problem. Consequently he signed over 90 treaties with various tribes, in which lands owned by Native Americans within the existing states were exchanged for new lands in the open West. Jackson's veto of the Maysville Road Bill as an unwarranted exercise of Federal authority was widely interpreted as an expression of his opposition to Federal aid for public works.

Nullification Ordinance

Jackson also sought to modify tariff rates because they provoked sectional controversy. The North advocated high protective rates, but the South considered them a way of subsidizing northern manufacturers at the expense of southern and western purchasers. With the passage of the Tariff of 1832, South Carolina reacted violently by invoking Calhoun's doctrine of nullification. At a special convention in November 1832, South Carolina adopted the Ordinance of Nullification, declaring the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 null and void and warning the Federal government that if force were used to execute the law, the state would secede from the Union. In response to this threat, Jackson issued the Proclamation to the People of South Carolina that blended warning with entreaty, demand with understanding. "The laws of the United States must be executed," he said. "Those who told you that you might peaceably prevent their execution deceived you…. Disunion by armed force is treason."

Meanwhile a compromise tariff was hurried through Congress to reduce the rates schedule over a 10-year period, while another bill was passed giving Jackson permission to use the military to force South Carolina to obey the laws. The state chose to accept the compromise tariff and repealed its nullification ordinance, thereby averting a national crisis. Jackson's actions during the controversy were masterful. Through the careful use of presidential powers, by rallying the public to his side, alerting the military, and offering compromise while preparing for possible hostilities, he preserved the Union and upheld the supremacy of Federal law.

Foreign Affairs

Jackson also exercised forceful leadership in his relations with foreign nations, and he scored a number of notable diplomatic victories. He obtained favorable treaties with Turkey, Cochin China, and Siam (the first United States treaties with Asiatic powers), and he was also able to reopen American trade with the British West Indies. Furthermore, he forced France into agreeing to pay the debts owed to American citizens for the destruction of American property during the Napoleonic Wars. However, when the French chamber of deputies failed to appropriate the money to pay the debt, Jackson asked Congress to permit reprisals against French property in the United States. The French interpreted this as a deliberate insult, and for a time war between the two countries seemed unavoidable. The French demanded an apology, which Jackson refused to give, although in a message to Congress he denied any intention "to menace or insult" the French government. France chose to accept Jackson's disclaimer as an apology and forthwith paid the debt; thus hostilities were avoided.

At the end of his two terms in office, having participated in the inauguration of his successor, Martin Van Buren, Jackson retired to his plantation. He continued to keep his hand in national politics until his death on June 8, 1845.

Further Reading

The most scholarly, but not the most interesting, study of Jackson's life is John Spencer Bassett, The Life of Andrew Jackson (2 vols., 1911; new ed. 1916). More colorful is Marquis James, The Life of Andrew Jackson (1938), but its analysis of Jackson's character is superficial. James Parton, Life of Andrew Jackson (3 vols., 1860), is old but extremely valuable, particularly since it was researched among many people who actually knew Jackson. A brief biography is Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson (1966).

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., is generally sympathetic to Jackson in The Age of Jackson (1945), while Glyndon G. Van Deusen in The Jacksonian Era (1959) and Edward Pessen in JacksonianAmerica (1969) are more critical. See also Harold Coffin Syrett, Andrew Jackson: His Contributions to the American Tradition (1953), and Leonard D. White, The Jacksonians: A Study in Administrative History, 1829-1861 (1954). For the elections of 1828 and 1832 see Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., History of American Presidential Elections, vol. 1 (1971).

For more information on Andrew Jackson, visit Britannica.com.

• Born: Mar. 15, 1767, Waxhaw settlement, S.C.
• Political party: Democrat
• Education: read law in Salisbury, N.C., 1784–87
• Military service: Waxhaw settlement militia, 1780; Tennessee Militia, 1802–14; U.S. Army, 1814–18
• Previous government service: public prosecutor, Mero District, Tenn., 1787; Tennessee Constitutional Convention, 1796; U.S. House of Representatives, 1796–97; U.S. Senate, 1797–98; Superior Court justice and member of the Tennessee Supreme Court, 1799–1804; territorial governor of Florida, 1821; U.S. Senate, 1823–25
• Elected President, 1828; served, 1829–37
• Died: June 8, 1845, near Nashville, Tenn.

Andrew Jackson was born on the Carolina frontier, the only American President born of immigrant parents. He brought the ways of the West to American politics, revitalizing and democratizing it, and carrying with him a whole generation of men who owed their careers to him. He created the Democratic party, the longest-lasting political party in American history, and he was the dominant political figure between Jefferson and Lincoln.

Jackson's father died just before he was born, soon after arriving from Ireland, and his mother and two brothers died during the revolutionary war. Jackson entered the war as an orderly, was captured by the British in 1780, and suffered a scar from a saber injury delivered by one of his guards. Jackson read law in North Carolina and became a frontier gambler, lawyer, land speculator, and cotton and tobacco farmer at Hunter's Hill, his plantation near Nashville, Tennessee. He married Rachel Donelson Robards, the daughter of one of the founders of Nashville, worked as a lawyer in debt collection cases, and was closely allied politically with large landowners and local bankers. Jackson helped to draft the state constitution in 1795, served at the state constitutional convention in 1796, and was sent to the U.S. House the following year and then the Senate in 1797, serving one year. He served on the Tennessee Superior Court from 1799 to 1804 but resigned to devote himself to business. Several reverses forced him to sell Hunter's Hill and move to a smaller plantation, the Hermitage. He bred, raised, and raced horses successfully. In a duel on May 30, 1806, Jackson shot and killed Charles Dickinson for making unflattering remarks about Jackson's wife; one of Dickinson's bullets remained in his chest. In 1813 Jackson was shot in a hotel brawl with Thomas Hart Benton and Jesse Benton, two brothers who dominated politics in Missouri, and the bullet was not removed until 1832.

Jackson took command of the Tennessee state militia during the War of 1812. Fighting the Creek Indians, who were allied with the British, he won the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in Alabama in March 1814. This victory ended the Creek War, forcing the tribe to cede more than 23 million acres to the United States. In May he was commissioned a major general of the regular army. He then captured Pensacola, Florida, and defeated the British at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. The British suffered more than 2,000 dead, including their commanding general; American losses totaled 8 killed and 13 wounded. These military victories made Jackson, known as Sharp Knife to the Indians and Old Hickory to the Americans, a national figure.

After the war Jackson fought other Indian tribes, defeating the Chickasaw, the Choctaw, and the Cherokee. In 1818 he commanded troops in the Seminole Wars in Georgia. He invaded Spanish Florida and executed two British subjects who had stirred up an Indian revolt, causing a diplomatic furor. Jackson defeated an attempt by the House of Representatives to censure him. After the United States acquired Florida from Spain, President James Monroe appointed him the first territorial governor.

Jackson was elected to the Senate in 1823, occupying a seat next to Thomas Hart Benton, the man who had nearly killed him in 1813. The two soon became political allies, and Jackson began campaigning for the Presidency. In the election of 1824 he received the most popular and electoral votes of any candidate in the four-person race but not enough to win election. In the contingency election—held because no candidate received a majority of electoral college votes—the House of Representatives chose John Quincy Adams over Jackson and William Crawford. As Speaker of the House, Henry Clay had controlled the key House votes that elected Adams. Adams then named Clay secretary of state, an appointment that led Jackson's followers to charge that a “corrupt bargain” had been made. Jackson resigned from the Senate in 1825 to organize his next run for the Presidency.

By 1828 the number of voters had almost quadrupled, and in every state except South Carolina electors were chosen directly by the voters, not by the state legislatures. Jackson and Martin Van Buren organized state parties to mobilize and turn out this large electorate. The huge turnout in what was the first fully democratic election in the United States gave Jackson an overwhelming popular and electoral college vote over his opponent, John Quincy Adams, who ran on the National Republican ticket. But tragedy marred his victory: between his election and inauguration his wife, Rachel, died.

Jackson's accession to power in Washington was akin to a political, social, and economic revolution. By his clothing, his speech, and his manners, Jackson was a “man of the people” with little in common with the Virginia or Massachusetts aristocrats who had previously sat in the White House. He was a military man with little Washington experience, a man with almost no formal education, and the first “outsider” to win the White House. Jackson had swept away the party-less Era of Good Feelings and soon created a new political party, the Democrats, with a strong Southern and Western base among frontiersmen, small farmers, and workers.

Early in his term Jackson dismissed about one-tenth of the officeholders in Washington and replaced them with his followers. Jackson embraced the principle of rotation in office, in which government officials are appointed on the basis of political ties, rather than a permanent civil service with lifetime appointments.

Jackson soon became embroiled in traditional Washington society. Peggy O'Neale, the daughter of a saloon keeper, married Jackson's secretary of war, John Eaton, and was ostracized by other cabinet wives, who claimed she had been having an adulterous affair with Eaton prior to their marriage. Rumors about Mrs. Eaton were spread by the wife of Vice President John C. Calhoun. Jackson took Peggy Eaton's side against the leaders of Washington society. He began to rely on a “kitchen cabinet” of political advisers rather than his cabinet secretaries. Later, his disagreement with Calhoun over the Tariff of Abominations of 1828 led to an open split between them. In the spring of 1831 Jackson forced out the three members of the cabinet who would not accept Peggy Eaton. He established the principle, new in American government, that the cabinet secretaries serve at the pleasure of the President and are subordinate to his will.

Jackson took on the Second Bank of the United States, a private corporation created as the linchpin of national economic policy-making. The national government held one-fifth of the bank's stock and kept its deposits there, and the bank's notes were legal tender (currency). On July 10, 1832, Jackson vetoed a bill passed by Congress that would have rechartered the bank, which was due to expire in 1836, attacking it as a law “to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful.” Congress was unable to override his veto.

Jackson made the veto a major issue in his 1832 reelection campaign. He identified the bank with “special privileges” that the government had given to local bankers affiliated with the national bank. He argued that government should remain neutral among financial institutions. The appeal made Jackson seem like a representative of the common man against the wealthy and privileged, though Jackson had not explicitly called for class conflict.

With Martin Van Buren on his ticket, Jackson won an overwhelming victory over Henry Clay. He claimed he had a mandate to destroy the bank. He ordered his secretary of the Treasury, William Duane, to remove Treasury deposits from that bank and place them in state banks that were affiliated with his new party. When Duane refused, Jackson fired him, appointed his attorney general, Roger Taney, to his place, and had the deposits removed. Jackson's opponents in Congress organized a new political party, the Whigs, to oppose his policies and his exercise of Presidential power. The bank went out of existence in 1836. By the end of Jackson's term, the national debt had been entirely paid and the government was running a surplus that Jackson's successor, Van Buren, distributed to the states.

Jackson took personal charge of Indian policy. In 1830 he got Congress to pass a law authorizing him to create new Indian lands west of the Mississippi River and to transport Indians there. He then negotiated with Indian tribes, forcing the Chickasaw, the Choctaw, and the Creek to move west. In 1832 he encouraged Georgia to violate an 1831 Supreme Court ruling, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, that was supposed to prevent Georgia from taking over Cherokee lands, and that tribe was removed forcibly after Jackson left office. Many Indians died along the “trail of tears” during these removals.

As the first President whose election rested on a truly popular base, Jackson translated electoral support directly into Presidential power. When Jackson vetoed a bill rechartering the Second Bank on the grounds that it was unconstitutional (even though the Supreme Court, in the case of McCulloch v. Maryland, had already ruled that the bank was constitutional), Jackson asserted his authority to make his own decisions about the constitutionality of laws. In firing Duane, he asserted the power of a President to remove cabinet-level officials whose appointments had been approved by the Senate, even though the Constitution makes no mention of a removal power for the President, and many senators thought that such removals would require the concurrence of the Senate as well. The Senate responded by rejecting Jackson's nominations for governors on the bank board and his nomination of Taney as associate justice of the Supreme Court. It also censured Jackson, adopting Henry Clay's resolution that “the President, in the late Executive proceedings in relation to the public revenue, has assumed upon himself authority and power not conferred by the Constitution and laws, but in derogation of both.” Jackson protested this resolution, and in 1836 it was expunged by the Senate.

Jackson also used Presidential power in a nullification controversy. In November 1832, with Vice President Calhoun's support, South Carolina passed a resolution nullifying, or preventing enforcement of, the high tariffs of 1828 and 1832 within the state. In December, Jackson responded with a proclamation to the people of South Carolina warning them against nullification or secession and reminding them of the supremacy of the national government and its law. He warned the citizens who were preparing to defend South Carolina militarily that “disunion by armed force is treason.” Calhoun resigned his office in protest over these tariffs and Jackson's strong stance. In March 1833 Jackson gained from Congress a “Force Bill” giving him the power to use federal force to ensure compliance with the tariff as well as a reduction in the high rates designed to defuse the crisis. After Jackson sent warships to Charleston Harbor, South Carolina backed down, withdrawing its nullification of the tariff on Jackson's birthday. The state tried to save face by passing a new bill nullifying Jackson's Force Bill, however.

The struggle between Jackson and Calhoun epitomized the strains that would eventually tear the Union apart. At a dinner in Washington in 1830 Jackson had given a famous toast: “Our federal Union—it must be preserved.” But Vice President Calhoun had responded, “The Union—next to our liberty, most dear.” The question of national supremacy would remain an open issue until the end of the Civil War.

After leaving the White House, Jackson retired to the Hermitage, where he lived in poor health until his death on June 8, 1845.

See also Adams, John Quincy; Calhoun, John C.; Removal power; Van Buren, Martin

Sources

• Richard Ellis, The Union at Risk: Jacksonian Democracy, States' Rights, and the Nullification Crisis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
• Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson, 3 vols. (New York: Harper & Row, 1970–84).
• Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Age of Jackson (Boston: Little, Brown, 1945)

(1767-1845), seventh president of the United States. A forceful, at times violent personality, Jackson continues to provoke controversy among historians, who see in him reflections of both the best and the worst tendencies of the new Republic.

Jackson was a southwestern parvenu who combined a sense of rough-hewn egalitarianism with the gentlemanly honor typical of his class. Born in the Carolina backwoods to an immigrant farming family from Ireland, he fought in the Revolution and was captured and imprisoned by the British. By war's end, all but one member of his immediate family had died in connection with the conflict. A teenager alone and adrift, Jackson eventually decided to study law and then to head farther west. Although immensely ambitious, he would never lose touch with his plebeian roots.

Jackson's rise, helped along by some fortunate contacts, was mercurial. Starting out as a prosecuting attorney for the western district of North Carolina (what is now Tennessee), he went on to serve as a delegate to the Tennessee constitutional convention, Tennessee's first elected congressman, and (briefly) U.S. senator, before he returned to Nashville in 1798 and won a seat on the state supreme court. He also set himself up as a slaveholder on a modest estate he would build into a major cotton plantation, the Hermitage.

Jackson won national fame, however, in the military. During the War of 1812, he and his troops crushed the Creek Indians after a lengthy campaign in the Mississippi Territory. Rewarded with a U.S. Army commission, he led the American forces to victory at the Battle of New Orleans, emerging as the war's greatest hero. In 1818, he ruthlessly pursued the government's war with the Seminoles into Spanish Florida, and provoked controversy by summarily executing two British subjects suspected of aiding the Indians. In 1821, he was named military governor of the Florida Territory.

By now, Jackson had gained a huge popular following as an Indian fighter and foe of British tyranny--and at the urging of friends he returned to politics. He reclaimed his Senate seat in 1823 and then ran for the presidency the following year in a four-man race, collecting a plurality of the popular tally but insufficient electoral votes to win. When the House of Representatives decided in favor of John Quincy Adams, Jackson thundered that he was the victim of a "corrupt bargain" between Adams and Henry Clay. But building a fresh coalition of southern strict constructionists, western expansionists, and antiadministration forces in the Mid-Atlantic states, he defeated Adams in 1828, believing he had vindicated his principle that "the majority is to govern."

It soon became clear that Jackson's ascent marked a change in the nation's political direction. Early on, he established the principle of rotation in office, on the premise that any plain and simple man could do the people's business. He checked the program of federal internal improvements proffered by Adams and Clay, believing it a dangerous expansion of federal power favorable to established wealth. On Indian affairs, he ran roughshod over his critics and proclaimed a policy of forced relocation of eastern tribes west of the Mississippi River, opening fresh lands for settlers. As antislavery agitation mounted--a danger, he thought, to national tranquillity and his own democratic political project--he condemned the abolitionists and backed efforts to curtail their activities. At the same time, he angrily defeated those emerging southern nationalists (led by his former ally, John C. Calhoun) who defied federal authority in the name of states' rights.

But it was Jackson's war on the Second Bank of the United States that consolidated his reputation as a champion of the common man. A hard-money advocate, suspicious of personal debt, Jackson viewed the Bank as a monstrosity that gave power over the people's money to a few unelected private bankers. After vetoing the Bank's recharter in 1832--a move that helped secure his reelection--he ordered the removal of U.S. funds, tried to put the nation's economy on a hard-money footing, and revived populist, anticapitalist sentiments latent since Thomas Jefferson's presidency.

By the close of his second term, Jackson and his supporters had transformed his following into an effective national party, fashioned more or less in his own image. After seeing his protégé Martin Van Buren elected as his successor, he returned to the Hermitage, where he lived out his final years as a country gentleman and elder statesman.

Jackson's career exemplified, and in many ways molded, the contradictory forces at work in the democratization of the early Republic. In his appeals to the common man, his attacks on privileged wealth, and his help in building a new sort of mass political party, he advanced the causes of equal rights and majoritarian democracy. Yet those advances went hand in hand with the continued subjugation of Native Americans and a determination not to disturb the slavery issue. Jackson stood for a more egalitarian America, but his vision of democracy stopped squarely at the color line.

Bibliography:

Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire, 1767-1821 (1977), Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Freedom, 1822-1832 (1981), and Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Democracy, 1833-1845 (1984).

Author:

Sean Wilentz

See also Corrupt Bargain; Elections: 1824 , 1828 , 1832; Indians; Jacksonian Democracy; War of 1812. For events during Jackson's administration, see Anti-Masons; Banking; Bank of the United States; Black Hawk War; Cherokee Nation v. Georgia ; Kitchen Cabinet; Nullification Controversy; Specie Circular; Texas Revolution and Annexation; Webster-Hayne Debate; Whig Party.

Jackson, Andrew, 1767–1845, 7th President of the United States (1829–37), b. Waxhaw settlement on the border of South Carolina and North Carolina (both states claim him).

Early Career

A child of the backwoods, he was left an orphan at 14. His long military career began in 1781, when he fought against the British in a skirmish at Hanging Rock. He and his brother were captured and imprisoned at Camden, S.C. After studying law at Salisbury, N.C., he was admitted to the bar in 1787 and practiced in the vicinity until he was appointed solicitor for the western district of North Carolina (now Tennessee).

In 1788 he moved west to Nashville. He was prosperous in his law practice and in land speculation until the Panic of 1795 struck, leaving him with little more than his estate, the Hermitage. There, he built (1819–31) a home, on which he lived as a cotton planter during the intervals of his political career. The house, a handsome example of a Tennessee planter's home, with a fine formal garden, was constructed of bricks made on the estate. Jackson married Rachel Donelson before she had secured a legal divorce from her first husband, and though the ceremony was later repeated, his enemies made capital of the circumstance.

He rose in politics, was a member of the convention that drafted the Tennessee Constitution, and was elected (1796) as the sole member from the new state in the U.S. House of Representatives. The next year when his political chief, William Blount, was expelled from the Senate, Jackson resigned and, to vindicate his party, ran for the vacant seat. He won, but in 1798 he resigned. From 1798 to 1804 he served notably as judge of the Tennessee superior court.

War Hero

In the War of 1812 Jackson defeated the Creek warriors, tacit allies of the British, at Horseshoe Bend, Ala. (Mar., 1814) after a strenuous campaign and won the rank of major general in the U.S. army. He was given command of an expedition to defend New Orleans against the British. The decisive victory gained there over seasoned British troops under Gen. Edward Pakenham, though it came after peace had already been signed in Europe, made Jackson the war's one great military hero.

In 1818 he was sent to take reprisals against the Seminole, who were raiding settlements near the Florida border, but, misinterpreting orders, he crossed the boundary line, captured Pensacola, and executed two British subjects as punishment for their stirring up the Native Americans. He thus involved the United States in serious trouble with both Spain and Great Britain. John Q. Adams, then Secretary of State, was the only cabinet member to defend him, but the conduct of Old Hickory, as Jackson was called by his admirers, pleased the people of the West. He moved on to the national scene as the standard-bearer of one wing of the old Republican party.

President

Jackson rode on a wave of popularity that almost took him into the presidency in the election of 1824. The vote was split with Henry Clay, John Quincy Adams, and William H. Crawford, and when the election was decided in the House of Representatives, Clay threw his influence to Adams, and Adams became President.

By the time of the election of 1828, Jackson's cause was more assured. John C. Calhoun, who was the candidate for Vice President with Jackson, brought most of Crawford's former following to Jackson, while Martin Van Buren and the Albany Regency swung liberal-controlled New York state to him. The result was a sweeping victory; Jackson polled four times the popular vote that he had received in 1824. His inauguration brought the “rabble” into the White House, to the distaste of the established families.

There was a strong element of personalism in the rule of the hotheaded Jackson, and the Kitchen Cabinet—a small group of favorite advisers—was powerful. Vigorous publicity and violent journalistic attacks on anti-Jacksonians were ably handled by such men as the elder Francis P. Blair, Duff Green, and Amos Kendall. Party loyalty was intense, and party members were rewarded with government posts in what came to be known as the spoils system. Personal relationships were of utmost importance, and the social slights suffered by the wife of Secretary of War John H. Eaton (see O'Neill, Margaret) helped to break up the cabinet.

Calhoun's antagonism was more fundamental, however. Calhoun and the South generally felt threatened by the protective tariff that favored the industrial East, and Calhoun evolved the doctrine of nullification and resigned from the vice presidency. Jackson stood firmly for the Union and had the Force Bill of 1833 (see force bill) passed to coerce South Carolina into accepting the federal tariff, but a compromise tariff was rushed through and the affair ended. Jackson, on the other hand, took the part of Georgia in its insistence on states' rights and the privilege of ousting the Cherokee; he refused to aid in enforcing the Supreme Court's decision against Georgia, and the tribe was removed.

More important than the estrangement of Calhoun was Jackson's long fight against the Bank of the United States. Although its charter did not expire until 1836, Henry Clay succeeded in having a bill to recharter it passed in 1832, thus bringing the issue into the 1832 presidential election. Jackson vetoed the measure, and the powerful interests of the bank were joined with the other opponents of Jackson in a bitter struggle with the antibank Jacksonians.

Jackson in the election of 1832 triumphed over Clay. His second administration—more bitterly resented by his enemies than the first—was dominated by the bank issue. Jackson promptly removed the funds from the bank and put them in chosen state banks (the “pet banks”). Secretary of Treasury Louis McLane refused to make the transfer as did his successor W. J. Duane, but Roger B. Taney agreed with Jackson's views and made the transfer (see also Independent Treasury System).

Jackson was a firm believer in a specie basis for currency, and the Specie Circular in 1836, which stipulated that all public lands must be paid for in specie, broke the speculation boom in Western lands, cast suspicion on many of the bank notes in circulation, and hastened the Panic of 1837. The panic, which had some of its roots in earlier crop failures and in overextended speculation, was a factor in the administration of Martin Van Buren, who was Jackson's choice and a successful candidate for the presidency in 1836.

Retirement

Jackson retired to the Hermitage and lived out his life there. He was still despised as a high-handed and capricious dictator by his enemies and revered as a forceful democratic leader by his followers. Although he was known as a frontiersman, Jackson was personally dignified, courteous, and gentlemanly—with a devotion to the “gentleman's code” that led him to fight several duels.

Jacksonian Democracy

The greatest popular hero of his time, a man of action, and an expansionist, Jackson was associated with the movement toward increased popular participation in government. He was regarded by many as the symbol of the democratic feelings of the time, and later generations were to speak of Jacksonian democracy. Although in broadest terms this movement often attacked citadels of privilege or monopoly and sought to broaden opportunities in many areas of life, there has been much dispute among historians over its essential social nature. At one time it was characterized as being rooted in the democratic nature of the frontier. Later historians pointed to the workers of the eastern cities as the defining element in the Jacksonian political coalition. More recently the older interpretations have been challenged by those seeing the age as one that primarily offered new opportunities to the middle class—an era of liberal capitalism. Jackson had appeal for the farmer, for the artisan, and for the small-business ower; he was viewed with suspicion and fear by people of established position, who considered him a dangerous upstart.

Bibliography

See biographies by M. James (2 vol., 1933–37, repr. 1968), H. Syrett (1953, repr. 1971), J. W. Ward (1955, repr. 1962), R. V. Remini (3 vol., 1977–84), and H. W. Brands (2005); A. M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Jackson (1945); G. G. Van Deusen, The Jacksonian Era (1959, repr. 1963); R. V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Bank War (1967), and ed., The Age of Jackson (1972); R. Latner, The Presidency of Andrew Jackson (1979); A. Burstein, The Passions of Andrew Jackson (2003); J. Meacham, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House (2008).

A general and political leader of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. As a general in the War of 1812, he defeated the British in the Battle of New Orleans. He was called “Old Hickory.” Jackson was elected president after John Quincy Adams as a candidate of the common man, and his style of government came to be known as Jacksonian democracy. He rewarded his political supporters with positions once he became president (see spoils system). A Democrat, Jackson was widely criticized for expanding the power of the presidency beyond what was customary before his time.

Andrew Jackson achieved prominence as a frontiersman, jurist, and military hero, and as seventh president of the United States. His two administrations, famous for ideologies labeled Jacksonian Democracy, encouraged participation in government by the people, particularly the middle class.

Jackson was born March 15, 1767, in Waxhaw, South Carolina. In 1781, Jackson entered the military, fought in the Revolutionary War, and was subsequently taken prisoner and incarcerated at Camden, South Carolina. After his release, he pursued legal studies in North Carolina and was admitted to the bar of that state in 1787.

Jackson relocated to Nashville in 1788 and established a successful law practice. Three years later, he married Rachel Donelson. When it was subsequently discovered that Mrs. Jackson was not legally divorced from her previous husband, Jackson remarried her in 1794 after her divorce became final. His enemies, however, used the scandal to their advantage.

Jackson began his public service career in 1791 and performed the duties of prosecuting attorney for the Southwest Territory. He attended the Tennessee constitutional convention in 1796 and entered the federal government system in that same year.

As a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Jackson represented Tennessee for a year before filling the vacant position of senator from Tennessee in the U.S. Senate during 1797 and 1798.

Jackson embarked on the judicial phase of his career in 1798, presiding as judge of the Tennessee Superior Court until 1804.

During the War of 1812, Jackson returned to the military and was victorious at the Horseshoe Bend battle in 1814. He conquered the British at New Orleans at the close of the war, which resulted in national recognition as a war hero.

In 1818, Jackson was involved in a military incident that almost catapulted the United States into another war with Great Britain and Spain. Dispatched to the Florida border to quell Seminole Indian uprisings, Jackson misunderstood his orders, took control of the Spanish possession of Pensacola, and killed two British subjects responsible for inciting the Indians. Spain and Great Britain were in an uproar over the incident, but Secretary of State John Quincy Adams supported Jackson. The incident added to Jackson's popularity as a rugged hero.

Jackson sought the office of president of the United States in 1824 against Henry Clay, John Quincy Adams, and William Crawford. No single candidate received a majority of electoral votes, and the House of Representatives decided the election in favor of Adams. Four years later, Jackson defeated the incumbent Adams and began the first of two terms as chief executive.

During his first administration, Jackson relied on a group of informal advisers known as the Kitchen Cabinet. The unofficial members included journalists and politicians, as opposed to the formal cabinet members traditionally involved in policymaking. He also initiated the spoils system, rewarding dutiful and faithful party members with government appointments, regardless of their qualifications for the positions. Many of Jackson's intimate associations did not include members from the traditional families associated with politics, and public dissatisfaction came to a head with the marriage of his Secretary of War John Eaton to the provincial Margaret O'Neill. The social politics employed by cabinet members and their wives, particularly Vice President and Mrs. John C. Calhoun, caused much upheaval in the Jackson cabinet, and the eventual resignation of Eaton.

Calhoun and Jackson disagreed again in 1832 over a protective tariff, which Calhoun believed was not beneficial to the South. Calhoun initiated the policy of nullification, by which a state could judge a federal regulation null and void and, therefore, refuse to comply with it if the state believed the regulation to be adverse to the tenets of the Constitution. Calhoun resigned from the office of vice president after South Carolina adopted the nullification policy against the tariff act, and Jackson requested the enactment of the Force Bill from Congress to authorize his use of militia, if necessary, to enforce federal law. The Force Bill proved to be solely a strong threat, because Jackson sympathized with the South and advocated the drafting of a tariff compromise. Henry Clay was instrumental in the creation of this agreement, which appeased South Carolina.

The most significant issue during Jackson's term was the controversy over the Bank of the United States. The bank became a topic in the 1832 presidential campaign and continued into the second administration of the victorious Jackson.

The charter of the bank expired in 1836, but Henry Clay encouraged the passage of a bill to secure its recharter in 1832. Jackson was against the powerful bank and overruled the recharter. He proceeded to transfer federal funds from the bank to selected state banks, called "pet banks," which significantly diminished the power of the bank. Secretary of Treasury Louis McLane refused to remove the funds and was dismissed; similarly, the new treasury secretary, W.J. Duane, also refused. Jackson replaced him with Roger B. Taney, who supported Jackson's views and complied with his wishes. In response to this loyalty, Jackson subsequently nominated Taney as a U.S. Supreme Court justice in 1836.

In 1836, Jackson faced another financial crisis. He issued the Specie Circular of 1836, which declared that all payments for public property must be made in gold or silver, as opposed to the previous use of paper currency. This proclamation precipitated the economic panic of 1837, which ended Jackson's second term and extended into the new presidential administration of Martin Van Buren.

Jackson spent his remaining years in retirement at his estate in Tennessee, "The Hermitage," where he died on June 8, 1845.

Quotes:

"Never take counsel of your fears."

"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses."

"As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending."

"Heaven will be no heaven to me if I do not meet my wife there."

"It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word."

"You must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing."

See more famous quotes by Andrew Jackson

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