Help in 2 history Discussion Board 150 word each

Andrew Jackson

The Early Life of Andrew Jackson

From humble beginnings, Andrew Jackson worked his way up to wealth and national prominence. His early life was colorful and filled with adventure. Born in 1767 in the Carolinas to a Scots-Irish immigrant family of modest means, Jackson became involved in politics as a child during the Revolutionary War when he worked as a courier for the revolutionary cause. At the tender age of 13, he was captured by the British and suffered both a head injury that left him permanently scarred and an outbreak of smallpox.

Jackson survived and went on to study law, amass a personal fortune, serve as a colonel in the Tennessee militia, and represent the state of Tennessee in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. In 1806, he shot and killed a man in a duel to defend the honor of his wife, Rachel.

Jackson achieved national distinction for his performance in the War of 1812 . In the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, he oversaw the destruction of 15 percent of the Creek population; the treaty that ended hostilities forced the Creek to cede over 20 million acres of their ancestral lands. Jackson is most remembered for his performance in the Battle of New Orleans, during which he led his troops to a decisive victory over the British after the Treaty of Ghent had been signed and hostilities had officially ended.

In December 1817, President James Monroe authorized Jackson to lead an offensive against the Seminole and Creek Indians in Georgia and Florida, sparking the First Seminole War. Jackson ordered his troops to destroy Seminole settlements, capture a Spanish fort, and execute two British citizens whom Jackson blamed for supporting the Seminoles against white people. In 1819, the Spanish ceded all of Florida to the United States in the Adams-Onís—or Transcontinental—Treaty.

The election of 1828 and the Bank War

The presidential election of 1828 pitted incumbent John Quincy Adams against Andrew Jackson. Adams was the candidate of the National Republicans, while the party that arose around Jackson became known as the Jacksonian Democrats, or simply, the Democrats.

Observers of the 1828 presidential election witnessed the first truly national political campaigns. Styling himself the “man of the people,” Jackson campaigned on an anti-elitist platform that attacked the eastern elites and Congressional land policies. Though Adams retained the support of New England, Jackson swept the South and West, and even took parts of the Northeast.

The election marked a transition from the small, elite political parties of the past to the mass political parties that the United States continues to host today.

Consistent with his anti-elite sentiments, Jackson was a fierce opponent of the Bank of the United States, which he contended was run by and for the eastern banking and manufacturing elites, and operated in direct conflict with the interests of the common man. Jackson became embroiled in a political battle with Nicholas Biddle, the president of the Second Bank of the United States. Although the US Supreme Court had declared the bank constitutional and had renewed its charter until 1836, after Jackson was reelected in 1832, he made it his personal mission to shut the bank down. As a direct result of a series of policies enacted by Jackson for the explicit purpose of weakening the Bank of the United States, the country was thrown into financial turmoil and an economic recession hit in 1837.

A political cartoon criticizing the economic situation of the United States in 1837. In the cartoon, families are begging, young men are drunken and unemployed, and pawn shops line the streets. Image credit: courtesy of the US Library of Congress .

Jackson’s Indian policy

Jackson early on established himself as a champion of the white settler against the interests of Native Americans. As president, Jackson instituted his pro-white sentiment in a series of policies that culminated with the forced removal of Native Americans from their native lands.

In 1830, Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, which authorized the forced relocation of Indian tribes from their ancestral territories in the East and South to lands west of the Mississippi River. These involuntary relocations became known as the “Trail of Tears.” Those who resisted were compelled to either go into hiding or suffer violence at the hands of the US Army and white settlers keen on enforcing vigilante justice.

A history of conflict between Euro-Americans and Native Americans

From the earliest days of colonial contact, relations between white European settlers and indigenous people in the Americas were plagued by conflict over land and its natural resources. John C. Calhoun, who served as Secretary of War under President James Monroe, was the first to design a plan for removing Native Americans to lands west of the Mississippi River, but the Georgia delegation in the House of Representatives sunk the bill.

President John Quincy Adams believed the issue should be resolved peaceably, but Georgia again proved an obstacle when they blocked the implementation of voluntary removal of Native Americans from territories in the southeast United States. It wasn't until the presidency of Andrew Jackson that "Indian removal" became official US policy.

Andrew Jackson’s policies towards Native Americans

Before becoming president, Andrew Jackson had distinguished himself as a champion of white settlers against indigenous people. In the War of 1812, Jackson had led an offensive against the Creek nation in an attempt to clear the Mississippi Territory for white settlement, and under President James Monroe, he had participated in the First Seminole War, which devastated the Seminole tribe of Florida.

By the time Jackson entered the White House, white settlers in Georgia had been complaining for some time about the continued presence of Cherokee and Creek people on the lands they wished to inhabit. These white settlers were emboldened by the election of Jackson in 1828 and revoked the constitution of the Cherokee nation in Georgia, declaring that indigenous people were subject to the laws of the state of Georgia. In 1830, the Cherokee nation took the state of Georgia to the Supreme Court, arguing that it was an independent nation and as such, was not subject to the authority of the state of Georgia. Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Marshall agreed that the Cherokee nation was a distinct society but not that it was a foreign nation.

In Worcester v. Georgia , Chief Justice Marshall expanded on this argument, declaring that the state of Georgia had no authority over the Cherokee, which as a sovereign nation could only be subject to the authority of the federal government. The ruling established the nature of relations between the federal government and indigenous peoples as that between sovereign nations. But President Jackson refused to enforce the ruling and pursued a policy of genocide. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 authorized the voluntary relocation of Native Americans to the lands west of the Mississippi River but was frequently abused by government officials and resulted in some forced removals.

The Trail of Tears

The Indian Removal Act was applied to the "Five Civilized Tribes"—Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole—so named by people of the time because they had to some degree assimilated into white European culture and society. In September 1830, Choctaws became the first tribe to sign a treaty and voluntarily relocate to the territory that would become the state of Arkansas. Seminoles refused to leave their ancestral lands in Florida, sparking the Second Seminole War in 1835. Seminole chief Osceola led the resistance, which proved costly to the United States in terms of both money and casualties. The US Army ultimately emerged victorious, however, and forced remaining Seminoles out of Florida and into the area west of the Mississippi River that became known as Indian Territory.

Portrait of Osceola, who led the Seminoles in the First Seminole War

George Catlin, Portrait of Osceola, who led the Seminoles in the Second Seminole War, 1838. Image credit: courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Chickasaws agreed to leave their lands in exchange for a monetary settlement of $3 million, which the United States refused to pay until almost 30 years later. The Creeks had been forced to cede over 20,000 acres of their ancestral lands in the Treaty of Fort Jackson following the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in the War of 1812; the remaining Creeks signed over the rest of their lands after the enactment of the Indian Removal Act and relocated to Indian Territory through the Trail of Tears.

Map depicting the territories of Chickasaws, Choctaws, Cherokees, Creeks and Seminoles c. 1830 and the routes they took during their forced relocation—The Trail of Tears—to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

As for Cherokees, a small faction had signed a treaty with the US government in 1835, but that faction did not represent Cherokee leadership, who refused to leave their lands voluntarily. As a result, the US government forcibly relocated Cherokees to the Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River. Of the 17,000 Cherokees who were forced to move, at least 4,000—and possibly as many as 8,000—perished.