Andrew Jackson: The Controversial Father of the Modern Presidency #sponsored

If there's one thing Americans love, it's an underdog story. Just look at the

popularity of the Karate Kid franchise and the story of a son of immigrant

parents raised in the rural backwoods of America, orphaned as a teenager who not

only rose to the heights of respectability, but to the very pinnacle

of American politics, the presidency. That is one of the all-time underdog

stories. For Andrew Jackson, this wasn't merely a story. However, this was the

remarkable story of his own life. For many years, Andrew Jackson was

considered among the very greatest of American presidents. He helped to define

the office itself in its modern sense. Beginning the transition of the job from

that of an administrator obeying the dictates of Congress to the center of

American political life that it is today. He was seen as a man of the

people, a war hero who had defended the nation from the wrath of the Native

Americans and the British who now sought to defend it from the corrupt government

institutions and wicked financial interests who profited at the expense of

the common man. He was brave, he was bold, and he was decisive. All the

things the ideal American man should be. But underneath this polished veneer was

an undisputed dark side. a dark side that made Jackson a polarizing figure

even within his own lifetime. He had a truly volcanic temper, a temper that

manifested itself in his younger days with sudden outbursts of violence and in

later years with a steely determination to destroy his opponents, whatever the

cost. But it isn't the despicable things that he did when he lost his temper that

have caused a relatively recent, largely negative historical re-evaluation of

America's seventh president. It is the despicable things he did with a clear

mind and even clearer conscience. Jackson's personal fortune was built on

the backs of enslaved human beings, buying and selling and treating them

like livestock, as many as 150 at a time. and he was the driving force

behind one of the worst things the American government has ever done, the

forcible removal of Native American tribes from their ancestral lands to new

reservations west of the Mississippi River, resulting in thousands of deaths

on the Trail of Tears. This was not only condoned by the American people at the

time, but celebrated as one of Jackson's landmark achievements, enriching

thousands of white settlers at the Native Americans expense. Andrew

Jackson's story is a complicated one to tell, full of triumphs and personal

tragedies, heroic moments and shameful ones in almost equal measure. Overall,

it is the story of a man determined to overcome his unfortunate circumstances

and make his mark on the world. And for better or worse, he did.

Welcome back to Biographics. I'm your host, Eric Malikite, and today's script

was provided by Ben Adelman. So, be sure to show them some love in the comments

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Andrew Jackson was born on March 15th, 1767. The son of Irish immigrants who

had moved to the Waxaw region of the colonial Carolina territory 2 years

earlier. No one is exactly sure whether he was born in North or South Carolina

since the border in that area was largely undefined. Jackson never knew

his father, also named Andrew. He had died 3 weeks before he was born, leaving

his mother Elizabeth alone to raise him and his two older brothers in one of the

most remote regions of colonial America. The American Revolution would bring

further tragedy to young Andrew. Both his brothers died fighting for the

patriot cause and Andrew himself was taken prisoner by the British at the

tender age of 14, fighting as a patriot partisan. Soon after being captured, an

officer ordered Jackson to polish his boots. When the boy refused, claiming to

be a prisoner of war, the officer slashed him with his sword, cutting open

his left hand and the top of his head, leaving scars he carried for the rest of

his life. Jackson very nearly died in captivity and soon after his mother had

nursed him back to health after securing his release. She herself died of chalera

while tending to sick relatives. The teenager was now an orphan passed around

from relative to relative when they tired of the boy's explosive temper and

brash nature. It seemed like Andrew Jackson was destined for a life of poor

prospects. But Jackson was determined to make something of himself. He was not,

as his detractors later suggested, an illiterate country bumpkin. His mother

made sure her son received as good an education as possible, considering his

remote upbringing, eventually hoping he would pursue a career in the ministry.

Instead, Jackson studied the law, being admitted to the North Carolina bar in

1787 and the next year moved to the town of Nashville in what was then the far

western part of the state. You know what's almost as bad as Andrew Jackson's

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me.com/bioraphics. Codebioraphics. If he wanted to earn a place among the higher echelons of society, he would

need to use what he had. His brains and his ability to charm people. Being a

backwoods lawyer didn't pay particularly well. So to supplement his income, he

dabbled in land speculation and was also a prolific slave trader, regularly

shipping consignments of enslaved black men and women down river to Nachez,

Mississippi and New Orleans, Louisiana, where they were constantly in demand. As

much money as Jackson made, however, he spent it just as quickly on fine

clothes, exotic wines, on bad land deals, but his biggest money sync was

gambling. Jackson wagered and lost large amounts of money on horse races, card

games, and cockfights. All these activities, which caused him to be known

about town as a charming rake, also helped to ingratiate himself within the

planter class of Nashville society, which also gave him inside access to the

region's political powers. When the southwestern territory was admitted to

the Union as the state of Tennessee in 1796, Jackson was elected to be the

state's first congressman. He arrived in Philadelphia in time to see the end of

George Washington's political career and in a sign of things to come was one of

the few members of the House who refused to applaud the nation's first president

when he gave his farewell address because of his fury over the signing of

the J treaty with Great Britain. Jackson would carry a fervent hatred for the

British all his life. no doubt a result of his childhood experiences during the

revolution. He was then elected to the US Senate, but lasted in that job only

six months before he resigned and returned to Tennessee, where he was

appointed a judge in the state superior court. While Jackson could be charming

when he wanted to when he lost his temper, something that happened

frequently in his younger years, he often made the impulsive decision to

resolve quarrels with violence. He was involved in a dispute with the former

governor of Tennessee, John Seavir, that ended in a shootout on the streets of

Nashville in 1802. No one was hurt. In 1806, a quarrel over a gambling debt

with a man named Charles Dickinson ended in a formal duel. Dickinson shot Jackson

in the chest, but remarkably, the lead ball smashed into his sternum and broke

apart, saving his life. Bleeding profusely, Jackson remained on his feet

and calmly fired his own pistol, killing Dickinson instantly. In another fight in

1807, Jackson stabbed a man in the back with a sword cane, for which he was

brought up on charges of assault and attempted murder. He was acquitted of

the charge. Finally, there was the infamous frackus in a Nashville tavern

in 1813 between Jackson and the Benton brothers. Thomas, a future US senator,

and Jesse. It was a particularly ugly brawl involving knives and whips. And

then the guns came out. Jesse shot Jackson in the shoulder, a serious

injury which nearly killed him and left him in a sling for months.

In 1802, Jackson was elected to command Tennessee's state militia despite possessing little military experience

and no formal military education. However, Jackson was a natural leader,

the kind of man people gravitate around, particularly in a crisis. So, it wasn't

surprising he took to command very well. That would be put to the test during the

War of 1812, which again saw the Americans facing off against the

British. However, Jackson's first taste of formal combat would not come against

Great Britain, but against a faction of Creek Native Americans known as

Redsticks, who had heeded the call of Shaunie Chief Tecumpsa for a general

Native American uprising against the Americans who routinely encroached on

their lands and murdered tribal members. Jackson led a successful campaign

against the Red Sticks, culminating in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, deep

within the future state of Alabama, in which over 800 red sticks were killed.

Jackson forced the Creeks to sign the Treaty of Fort Jackson, seeding 23

million acres of land to the United States, including land occupied by

Creeks that had been allied to the US during the war. Jackson then turned his

attention to the British, who were preparing to attack the city of New

Orleans. It was an important strategic position near where the Mississippi

River emptied into the Gulf of Mexico and could not be lost. Jackson, now a

major general in the US Army, was ordered to protect it. Jackson arrived

in December 1814 and put the city under martial law. He scrambled to find any

troops he could get his hands on to oppose the British. freed slaves, Native

Americans, French creels, Spanish-sp speakaking men from Mexico and Florida,

even pirates from Beritaria Bay, led by their enigmatic commander, Gene Lefit.

Altogether, Jackson had a force of some 5,000 men to face off against the 10,000

British soldiers under General Sir Edward Packenham, who, like most of his

men, was a seasoned veteran of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe. Jackson made

a stand 5 mi southeast of the French Quarter in the modern-day suburb of

Shalmet. He turned the old Rodriguez Canal into Line Jackson, a formidable

earthwork that blocked the narrow avenue of approach to the city between the

river and an impassible swamp. The British arrogantly believed that their

army was superior to the scratch force put up by the Americans and on January

8th, 1815 launched a full frontal assault on Jackson's line. The Battle of

New Orleans was a complete disaster for the British. The red coats marched right

up to the American earthworks and were repulsed by heavy fire, including some

heavy naval cannons taken off of ships and manned by Lefit's pirates. In

roughly 30 minutes, the British suffered over 2,000 casualties, 25% of their

attacking force, while the Americans, protected by their fortifications, only

lost 13 men killed and 39 wounded. The dead included General Packenham and his

second in command, General Gibbs. The ironic part about the Battle of New Orleans was that it took place after the

War of 1812 was already over. The Treaty of Gent had been signed by the waring

parties 2 weeks before the battle. But word would not make it across the

Atlantic until February 1815. Though it had no effect on the outcome of the war,

the battle did leave a lasting impact in that it made Andrew Jackson a national

hero. In the aftermath of one of the most lopsided victories in American

history, everyone was singing the praises of Old Hickory, the nickname his

soldiers had given him because of his unbending toughness. Jackson remained in

the army until 1821 when budget cuts reduced the size of the armed forces and

eliminated his position. After a brief period as the territorial governor of

Florida, Jackson returned to the Hermitage, his sprawling 1,000 acre

cotton plantation outside of Nashville he'd purchased in 1804. It was one of

the largest estates in Tennessee and made Jackson one of the wealthiest men

in the state, but he wasn't to remain there for long. His military fame made

him the perfect candidate in the eyes of many for national political office,

namely the presidency of the United States. Originally seen as a longshot

candidate in the 1824 election, Jackson proved to be surprisingly popular and

ended up getting more votes than the other three candidates both in the

popular vote and in the electoral college. However, for only the second

time in history, no candidate received an outright majority of electoral votes,

throwing the election to the House of Representatives. Jackson was furious

when he lost the House vote to John Quincy Adams, alleging that there had

been a corrupt bargain between Adams and Speaker of the House Henry Clay. That

Clay had engineered Adams's election in return for being named Secretary of

State. Historians find this unlikely since Clay was outspoken in his view

that a Jonian presidency would be a disaster for the country. The two would

remain bitter enemies for the rest of their lives. Jackson returned to

Tennessee and almost immediately began preparations to try again in 1828. In

what has been described as the first modern presidential campaign, Jackson

built a national coalition of supporters, including Vice President John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, who became his running mate, and Senator

Martin Van Beern of New York. Jackson also benefited from steps taken to

increase suffrage to all white male voters, rescending most of the property

owning and taxpaying requirements that had been on the books previously.

Jackson ran on a campaign of representing the common people of the

country. His supporters called their political party the Democracy, the

nucleus of which would go on to form the modern-day Democratic Party. Their enemy

was what they called the entrenched elites of Washington who looked down

their nose at the common man while they ran the country among themselves.

The 1828 campaign was particularly vicious with both sides firing personal

attacks at each other. What was most unforgivable in Jackson's mind, however,

were the attacks made against his wife, Rachel. The point of contention was that

at the time Jackson married Rachel, she was still technically married to another

man, despite the fact that the marriage was unhappy and the couple no longer

lived together. What had been seen as simply a matter of slow paperwork was

blown up by Jackson's opponents into charges of adultery, which at the time

was not only considered societal suicide, but was in many places a crime.

Jackson won the election in a landslide in 1828, handily defeating Adams. But

Jackson never forgave the men he called his slanderers, particularly since he

was going to Washington DC without his wife. She had died in December 1828. And

Jackson blamed the stress caused by the campaign rhetoric for her death. From

the beginning of his time in office, Jackson was determined to be a different

kind of president than those who had preceded him. He started by remaking the

executive branch, firing thousands of federal appointees and replacing them

with Jackson loyalists. He argued that it was a president's privilege to do

this since he had won the election. And as the saying goes, to the victor goes

the spoils. The so-called spoil system of political patronage would endure for

decades and eventually become so corrupt that the modern civil service system was

devised to replace it. So think about that next time someone complains about

civil servants. Like many in the planter class, Jackson hated banks, particularly

the second bank of the United States, which he believed favored northern

manufacturing interests ahead of southern agricultural ones. He made it

his personal mission to destroy the national bank, vetoing a congressional

bill to recharter it and then ordering his Treasury Secretary to pull all

federal deposits out of it, fatally crippling it. His veto pen usage was

another novel way he was remaking the presidency. In the past, the presidents

had used that veto power sparingly, even signing bills they personally disagreed

with because it was the will of Congress. But Jackson, who believed he

had a mandate from the people, used it to kill bills he was politically opposed

to, vetoing more legislation during his presidency, during his time in office

than all six of his predecessors combined. Slowly but surely, Jackson was

remaking the office of the president, turning it into the center of American

political life, where it still remains to this day. Much of Jackson's time in office was spent resolving crises and

controversies. There was the petticoat affair in which his cabinet was fatally

split because most of Washington's society refused to socialize with

Secretary of War John Eaton, whose wife Margaret was demonized as a harlot. The

discord became so bad that Jackson asked his entire cabinet to resign in 1831

rather than admit he'd been wrong to defend his friend Eaton. Then there was

the nullification crisis, a standoff between the federal government and the

state of South Carolina over the issue of protective federal tariffs. South

Carolina pushed the theory of nullification forward, that if a state

disagreed with a law passed by Congress, that they could nullify it, making it

not apply within state borders. Jackson, who believed that if South Carolina was

permitted to defy the federal government, it would fatally weaken the

Union to the point of it breaking up, threatened to raise an army of 300,000

troops to enforce federal law in South Carolina. A potential civil war was

averted when a compromise amending the tariff was passed in Congress. But

Jackson correctly predicted that this particular issue was not over. South

Carolina would be the first state to secede from the Union following the

election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. Practically everything Jackson did was

controversial and he constantly had to fend off charges from his political foes

that his moves to consolidate executive power were steps towards a dictatorship.

His detractors began derisively calling him King Andrew I political party that

formed to oppose the jonian Democrats was called the wigs because that was the

party in Great Britain that opposed the interests of the monarchy. Jackson was

so controversial that it isn't really surprising that he was the first

president to face an assassination attempt. A man named Richard Lawrence

aimed two pistols at Jackson as he was leaving the capital building in January

1835. Fortunately for Jackson, both pistols misfired and the president retaliated by beating the man with his cane until the

two men were separated. Lawrence was later judged to be insane and confined

to a mental institution. Jackson also became the first president to be

censured by Congress over his move to remove the government deposits from the

national bank. The censure was later rescended by a more friendly Congress

just before Jackson left office. However, Jackson remained popular with

the voting public at large. He was overwhelmingly reelected to a second

term in 1832, and many of his initiatives were popular. This included

his support for the Indian Removal Act, which forced Native American tribes

living east of the Mississippi River to move to new lands in the as yet

unsettled West. Thousands died of disease and malnutrition on the Trail of

Tears, and modern scholars have referred to the act as a genocide. However, there

was little opposition to the removal among Americans at the time, and many in

the South celebrated the opportunity to get at the former Indian territories for

themselves. In 1835, Jackson paid off the national debt, the only time in

American history this has been done, and during his term added two new states to

the Union, Arkansas and Michigan. Jackson was also popular in the South

for his defense of the institution of slavery. He actually ordered the post

office not to deliver abolitionist mailings in slaveolding states, which

violated the First Amendment, and believed it was those who sought to

abolish slavery that were threatening to destroy the Union, not the slaveholders.

His views were no doubt influenced by his longtime status as a slaveholder

himself. He certainly viewed slaves as little better than livestock based on

his own personal writings on the subject, which is Yeah.

By the time Jackson left Washington in 1837, the entire American political landscape had changed. Jackson's

presidency had created two new political parties that would fight it out on the

national stage until the collapse of the wig party in the 1850s. It was soon

replaced by the new Republican party. Abraham Lincoln would use Jackson's

rhetoric in the nullification crisis as justification for preventing the

southern states from leaving the Union in 1861. and other strong-willed

presidents such as Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt would echo Jackson's ethos

that they, not Congress, not the judiciary, were the true voice of the

people. The presidency itself has slowly amassed more and more executive power as

time has gone on, so that the modern-day job little resembles what it was before

Jackson came to the White House. In addition, every populist politician from

William Jennings Brian to George Wallace to Bernie Sanders has used similar

rhetoric of the common man versus the elites. Though the definition of both

has been constantly evolving since Jackson's day, these are all the

legacies of Andrew Jackson, who retired to the Hermitage, and died in 1845,

being buried next to his beloved wife in the back garden. There are statues of

him in Washington DC, New Orleans, Nashville, and Jacksonville, Florida,

which was named for him. And his portrait to this day is printed on the

US $20 bill despite attempts to remove it. A rather ironic tribute to a man who

hated paper money and believed only gold and silver should be valid US currency.

However, Jackson is no longer the beloved icon he once was. Historic

reevaluation of his life and career have cast his deeds into a new darker light,

particularly his violent actions to enforce and enhance white supremacy in

America. The Trail of Tears is a particularly difficult stain to wash off

his reputation, not to mention the rise of the unitary executive theory.

However, for better or worse, Andrew Jackson rose from nothing to become one

of the most influential men in American history. His legacy will likely live on

for as long as the United States itself does. So profound was his impact. No

doubt he'd be pleased by this as a man obsessed with his own legacy, though

he'd probably be furious about some of the things said about him nowadays. Good

thing Dueling's gone out of fashion. And thanks again to Delete Me for sponsoring

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private data safe from bad actors. I hope you learned something today. And if

you enjoyed this video, be sure to deploy your likes, comment a historical

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with someone who loves learning about history's most important people. I'm

Eric Malikite and we'll see you next