Andrew Jackson

President of the United States (1829-1837)

• Born: March 15, 1767
• Birthplace: Waxhaw Settlement, Carolinas (now part of the border of North Carolina and South Carolina)
• Died: June 8, 1845
• Place of death: The Hermitage, near Nashville, Tennessee

Possessing the characteristics of the roughly hewn Western frontiersman—in contrast to the aristocratic propensities of the eastern and Virginia “establishment”—Jackson came to symbolize the common person in the United States and the rise of democracy.

Early Life

Andrew Jackson was born into a family that had come from County Antrim, Ireland. His father, also named Andrew, arrived in America in 1765 and died shortly before his son, the future president, was born. The younger Jackson’s teenage years were “rough and tumble.” Acquiring little formal education, Jackson made his way through early life by hand-to-mouth jobs, helping his two older brothers support their widowed mother.

During the Revolutionary War, the British invaded Waxhaw, an event that shaped much of Jackson’s subsequent life and career. His two brothers were killed, and his mother died of cholera while caring for prisoners of war. Jackson, taken prisoner by the British, was orphaned at the age of fourteen, a situation that taught him independence, both in action and in thought.

In 1784, Jackson went to Salisbury, North Carolina, apprenticed to the law firm of Spruce McKay. Within three years, he was admitted to the bar, and in 1788, Jackson made the decision to go west, to Nashville, Tennessee, to seek his fortune.

While Jackson pursued a legal career as a practicing attorney, superior court solicitor, and judge, he also ventured into other activities. He became an avid horse breeder and racer, as well as a plantation owner. Jackson had no formal military training, but he quickly earned a reputation as an Indian fighter, and it was undoubtedly his experience in this area that led to his election in 1802 as major general of the western Tennessee militia. In 1791, Jackson married Rachel Donelson Robards, who had, she thought, been recently divorced from Lewis Robards. The divorce decree had not been issued in Virginia at the time Andrew and Rachel were wed in Natchez, Mississippi. Three years later, when Jackson learned of the error, he and Rachel remarried, but this action did not stop enemies from slandering his wife in subsequent political campaigns.

Jackson was one of few serious duelists in American history (Aaron Burr was another), and his most famous confrontation was with Charles Dickinson, essentially over a problem that started with race horses. On the occasion, Jackson wore a borrowed coat that was too large for him. When Dickinson fired, he aimed for the heart, located, he thought, at the top of Jackson’s coat pocket. Because the coat was too big, the top of the pocket was below Jackson’s heart. Dickinson hit the target, but Jackson still stood. Dickinson exclaimed, “Great God, have I missed?” Jackson then fired at Dickinson, mortally wounding him. Dickinson lived for a time after being shot, and it was characteristic of Jackson not to allow anyone to tell Dickinson that he really had hit his opponent; he died thinking that he had missed. Jackson was seriously wounded in the duel, and he convalesced for several weeks.

Jackson was a tall, thin man, six feet one inch in height, usually weighing 150 pounds. His nose was straight and prominent, and his blue eyes blazed fiercely whenever he lost his temper, which was often. During the early years, his hair was reddish-brown; in old age, it was white. He had a firmly set chin and a high forehead. Paintings and daguerreotypes suggest a man accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed.

Life’s Work

Jackson became a nationally known figure during the War of 1812. Though he had been elected to his rank rather than earning it by training and experience, he soon proved to be a capable leader. He endeavored to neutralize the Creek Indians in Alabama, who periodically attacked white settlers. He accomplished this objective at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. So tough and unremitting was he at this engagement that his soldiers began to call him Old Hickory. His greatest battle was against the British at New Orleans. Amazingly, there were some two thousand British casualties, and less than a dozen for the army of Westerners, black people, and pirates that Jackson had put together. Although the war was essentially over before the battle took place—news traveled slowly before the advent of modern communications—Jackson became a national military hero, and there was talk in some quarters of running him for president of the United States.

After the war, in 1818, President James Monroe ordered Jackson and his army to Florida, to deal with Indian problems. While there, Jackson torched Pensacola and hanged two Englishmen whom he thought were in collusion with the Indians as they attacked settlers across the border in Alabama. Jackson’s deeds in Florida caused diplomatic rifts with Spain and England, and he clearly had exceeded his orders, but his actions appealed to a pragmatic American public, and the general’s popularity soared.

When Jackson became a presidential candidate in 1824, some believed that it was the office to which all of his previous activities pointed. If ever there was a “natural” for the presidency, his supporters argued, it was Andrew Jackson. His opponents feared that if Jackson were elected, there would be too much popular government; Jackson, they argued, might turn the republic into a “Mobocracy.” Worse yet, he had little experience with foreign policy, and his confrontational style might create one diplomatic crisis after another.

Jackson missed the presidency in 1824, although he received more electoral votes than anyone else. It was necessary to get a majority of electoral votes—more than all the other candidates combined. Because there was no majority in 1824, the election was decided by the House of Representatives, which selected John Quincy Adams; Jackson protested that Adams’s victory was engineered by a “corrupt bargain” with Henry Clay, whom Adams appointed as secretary of state after Clay’s supporters in the House ensured Adams’s election. In 1828, however, there was no doubt that Jackson would defeat Adams. A political “revolution” had occurred in the four-year term. In 1824, four candidates amassed altogether less than a half million popular votes. In 1828, however, two candidates, Jackson and Adams, collected about 1,200,000, meaning that in four years 800,000 voters had been added to the polls—in large part the result of liberalized voting qualifications—and most of them voted for Jackson.

Jackson’s great objective while in office was “executive supremacy.” He reasoned: Who was the only government official universally elected to office? The answer was the president. Was it not reasonable, then, that the president was the chief symbol of the American people? Further, if he were the chief symbol, should not the executive branch be as powerful, or more so, than the Congress or the Supreme Court? This concept of executive supremacy displeased numerous congressional leaders. Congress had dominated the federal government since the Revolution, out of a general distrust of administrative centralization. After all, Britain’s king George III was a “typical” administrator.

Jackson pursued executive supremacy in a number of ways. One was the patronage system, by which he appointed friends to office. His enemies referred to this policy as the “spoils system”; Jackson called it “rotation in office.” The number of those displaced, however (about 10 percent of the government workforce), was no greater than previous or future executive terms. Another procedure that strengthened Jackson’s presidency, perhaps the most important, was the “county agent” system that Martin Van Buren created for the Democratic Party. The forerunners of what became known as “county chairmen,” these agents enabled the Democrats to practice politics on a grassroots level, going door to door, as it were, to collect votes and support for the president.

An important part of Jackson’s drive for executive supremacy was the presidential veto. He used this constitutional device twelve times, more than all of his predecessors put together. Moreover, he made good use of the “pocket veto.” (If a bill comes to the president less than ten days before Congress adjourns, he can “put it in his pocket” and not have to tell Congress why he disapproves of it. A “pocket veto” enhances presidential power by preventing Congress from reconsidering the bill, an action that caused presidential critics to call Jackson “King Andrew I.”) Though he was not the first president to use the pocket veto—James Madison was first—Jackson made more extensive use of it than any of his predecessors.

Perhaps the most significant presidential veto in American history was Jackson’s rejection, in 1832, of the recharter bill, a bill that would have rechartered the Bank of the United States. Among other things, Jackson argued that the executive had the power to judge the constitutionality of a bill brought before him. According to Jacksonian scholar Robert Remini, Jackson’s veto on this bill caused an ascendancy of presidential power that did not abate until Richard M. Nixon’s resignation in 1974.

In foreign affairs, Jackson conducted a lively policy that gained new respect for the United States from major European powers. He nurtured good relations with England by a conciliatory attitude on the Maine-Canada boundary question and promising to exempt many English goods from the harsh tariff of 1828 (the Tariff of Abominations). He even held out the prospect of lowering the tariff against the British through a treaty. His positive stance on boundary lines and the tariff helped reopen full West Indies trade with the British. Although Jackson may have been an Anglophobe most of his life, it is nevertheless true that he gained concessions from the English that had been denied to his predecessor, the so-called Anglophile, Adams.

The United States almost went to war with its oldest and most loyal ally while Jackson was president. The United States presented France with a “spoliation” bill, going back to the depredations of American shipping during the Napoleonic Wars. When, for various reasons, the French government refused payments, Jackson’s tone became strident. In a message to Congress, he said that a “collision” was possible between the two governments if the French remained obstinate. Ultimately, Britain intervened and urged the French to settle the “American matter,” because of mutual problems developing with Russia.

Though Jackson personally believed that Texas would one day be a part of the American Union, he did not push its annexation while in office, for he feared that the slavery question that Texas would engender would embarrass his chosen presidential successor, Van Buren. After Van Buren was safely elected, Jackson publicly supported the annexation of Texas, which took place in 1845, the year Jackson died.

While Jackson was president, reforms occurred on state levels. Numerous state constitutions were revised or rewritten, all with liberal trends. Women found it easier to prosecute abusive husbands and, increasingly, they could purchase property and dispose of it as they chose, without getting permission from their nearest male kin. Prison reforms began in some states, and mentally ill people were treated for their illnesses rather than being thought to be possessed by the devil. Public education systems started in several states, notably Massachusetts and New York. In all these reforms, suffrage ever widened, exemplifying the belief that political participation should be based on white manhood rather than property qualifications. Noted scholar Clinton Rossiter has shown that the Jacksonian presidency changed the base of American government from aristocracy to democracy without fundamentally altering its republican character.

After serving as president from 1829 to 1837, Jackson happily returned to the Hermitage. There, he continued as the father figure of his country, receiving dignitaries from around the world, and giving advice to those who followed him in the presidential office. He was especially pleased to see his protégé, James K. Polk, win the office in 1844 and become widely known as “Young Hickory.” Jackson died at the Hermitage on June 8, 1845.

Significance

It is fair to say that Andrew Jackson was first and foremost a beneficiary of rising democratic spirits in the United States. When he attained power, he put his stamp upon events and promulgated additional steps toward democracy. He suggested some reforms, many of which were ultimately enacted. He wanted senators to be popularly elected, as were members of the House of Representatives. He wanted additional judges to take the heavy burden off the judicial system. He believed that the United States Post Office should be reshaped into a semiprivate organization. He suggested some reforms that were not enacted but were widely discussed. He believed that a president should serve for six years and then be ineligible for further election. He thought that the electoral college should either be abandoned or drastically reformed, because, in his opinion, it did not always reflect the will of the electorate.

It is widely held that Jacksonian America heralded the “positive state,” where government dominates the private sector. Jackson’s presidency is frequently cited as starting the trend toward federal centralization. Jackson’s legacy is most visible in his personification of the common American man, even though he, himself, was hardly a “common” man. His was an age of entrepreneurship in which it was believed that government should not grant privileges to one group that it withholds from another. This thought has motivated many reform philosophies in the twentieth century, not the least of which was the civil rights movement. In this and other significant ways, Andrew Jackson has spoken to Americans of subsequent generations.

Bibliography

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