Andrew Jackson’s parents had emigrated from Ireland to the Waxhaws, an area that straddled the border between North and South Carolina. Jackson was the third son and his father died soon after he was born on March 15, 1767. The American Revolution (1775-1783) took a heavy toll on his family and left him with an intense hatred of the British. His eldest brother enlisted in the Patriot army and died from heatstroke, while Jackson and his other brother served as messengers for Patriot officers, but they were captured by the British after the defeat of the main rebel army in the south at Camden on August 16, 1780. When he refused to clean the boots of a British officer, his hand and head were both badly cut blocking the officer’s sword. The brothers would have probably died from the mistreatment and lack of food but their mother won their release. Unfortunately, his brother did not live long and Jackson only recovered after months of care. Soon after, his mother died of cholera while looking after prisoners at Charleston, leaving him a fourteen year old orphan.

Lacking parents, his first year on his own was wild, but the need to earn a living drove him to teach school, although he began studying the law when he was eighteen because it offered a more prosperous future. The days were spent clerking in a law office and the evenings were devoted to racing horses, playing cards and looking for trouble. Although he passed the bar, few people were willing to give business to a twenty year old lawyer, so he prevailed upon a friend who was a superior court judge to appoint him public prosecutor for a recently settled area of North Carolina. His tough nature made him well-suited for the rough and tumble style of legal proceedings on the frontier and friendship with the territorial governor won him the position of attorney-general.

However, rumors spread that he had persuaded a married woman to leave her husband. She was Rachel Donelson, the daughter of a well-connected family he had boarded with, a lively woman who had left her strict, jealous husband. To what degree they decided to live in adultery as part of a frontier tradition, rather than deal with a lengthy divorce process is unknown. Although Jackson claimed to be surprised to learn that Rachel was not already divorced, it may have simply been an attempt to ensure that the scandal did not affect his political career. In the end, they were a happy couple and Rachel’s management skills kept their plantation running smoothly. Jackson had accumulated a great deal of property and hung on to it until enough new settlers had arrived to push up the price of land. He soon became one of the leading men in the county and was selected to help draft a constitution for Tennessee to become a state. He moved up in the world when he became Tennessee’s sole representative in Congress in 1796.

Although Jackson seemed poised for a prosperous future, he had sold his huge land holdings to a single individual in exchange for notes instead of gold dollars, and the notes became worthless when the buyer went bankrupt in 1797. Unfortunately, he had used the notes to purchase goods for a store and would spend the next few years struggling to fight his way out of debt. The experience instilled within him a deep mistrust of paper money. When his mentor lost his Senate seat, Jackson was chosen to replace him, but it soon became apparent that he was not ready for senatorial responsibility, especially since his financial problems began to develop at the same time. A leave of absence was obtained in 1798 and he immediately took a position on the state superior court, which required him to travel all around the state, thus broadening his personal network.

These efforts paid off when he won the 1802 election for the post of major-general of the state militia against former governor John Sevier, hero of the battle at King’s Mountain during the Revolution. In revenge, Sevier arranged for the military district to be split in two, so Jackson had to settle for command of the western district. Bad feeling on both sides escalated until a comment was made about Jackson’s wife and the two men fought a duel, although no one was hurt. He took his wife’s honor very seriously and killed another man in a duel in 1806, while Jackson would carry a bullet in his chest for the rest of his life.

After retiring from the bench in 1804 and failing to win appointment as governor of the newly acquired territory of Louisiana, he focused on his plantation. He also became friends with former vice-president Aaron Burr, who was acquitted in 1807 of conspiring to seize control of recently annexed Louisiana or lead a rebellion in Mexico. Although Jackson’s involvement in any conspiracy was superficial, he was known to be an opponent of President Thomas Jefferson and he lacked military experience, so when the War of 1812 commenced his offer to command an army was ignored. Only his Tennessee connections ensured that he was asked to lead fifteen hundred volunteers to help defend New Orleans. However, the commander of New Orleans, General James Wilkinson, thought that Jackson was a dangerous hothead, so before he even reached New Orleans, he was ordered to dismiss his troops and return home. Despite a lack of supplies and transportation, he led the men back to Tennessee safely. His tough, resilient attitude during the march earned him the admiration of his troops and the nickname Old Hickory (hickory was the toughest wood on the frontier). Unfortunately, this achievement was marred by Jackson’s involvement in a duel between two of his officers, and he later received a serious wound during a later confrontation with one of the officers’ brother.

While Jackson was healing, a minor civil war between two factions of the Creek Indians became a major concern when hundreds of settlers were massacred at Fort Mims on August 30, 1813 by Red Sticks, Creek Indians who opposed cooperation with whites. With the regular army busy fighting the British, the militia of Tennessee, Georgia and Mississippi would have to avenge the massacre, and Tennessee would supply the majority of the manpower. The separate militia armies made their way into Creek territory and won a number of victories but short-term enlistments meant that Jackson would find himself almost alone by January. In fact, only his steel will kept the men in camp until their enlistment expired. Since he possessed greater organizational skills and charisma than the other militia commanders, he was given command of the campaign. After receiving additional militia and regular troops, he led them to victory at Horseshoe Bend, where the main force of Red Sticks was butchered on March 27, 1814, thus ending the war and earning Jackson the rank of major-general in the regular army.

Convinced that the British had been using Spanish controlled Florida to arm the Red Sticks, Jackson invaded without waiting for permission from Washington. After driving the British out of Florida in early November, he learned that he was in charge of defending New Orleans against an expected British invasion.

Although he was taken by surprise by the British in late December, an aggressive attack convinced the commander of the advance force, Major-General John Keane, to leave the Americans alone long enough for the construction of defensive fortifications that blocked the main land route to New Orleans. When the overall commander, Sir Edward Pakenham, arrived, he thought that the position was ill-chosen but having come from fighting Napoleon’s best troops, he had little respect for the Americans. Jackson had set up a battery on the other side of the river, so attacking troops would be placed in a murderous crossfire. Pakenham wisely decided to send troops to eliminate the battery but rashly continued with his frontal assault even though the battery had not been captured. As a result, the battle on January 7 was a slaughter, and both Pakenham and his second-in-command, Major-General Samuel Gibbs, lost their lives. When the navy failed to force its way up the Mississippi, the surviving senior officer, Major-General John Lambert, concluded that a withdrawal was the best option.

The greatest victory in the War of 1812 made Jackson a national hero and he was given command of the southern military division. He made a leisurely tour home that enabled a large part of the country to see the hero, which was obviously the first step in a political campaign. When Seminole Indians began raiding settlements in revenge for illegal penetration of their land, Jackson was asked to punish them, which was used as an excuse to invade Florida. Unfortunately, he believed that he had received permission from the president but whether Munroe was unwilling to publicly support his actions or vague comments had been misinterpreted by Jackson soon became a controversy that could not be resolved. Regardless, Jackson was not one to care for international borders, so he led his army into Florida and quickly subdued the Seminoles. In addition to hanging two British subjects, he had the Spanish garrison transported to Cuba. Stuck between a furious Spain and an intensely popular Jackson, Munroe disavowed any support for his actions but refused to publicly censure him, largely due to persuasion by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams.

Returning to Tennessee, he began to build a dedicated core of friends and colleagues, who all shared a common desire to see Jackson become president of the United States. Therefore, his patronage was employed to place them in positions where they could help him achieve that goal. A key first step was his acceptance of the position as territorial governor of Florida in 1821. Jackson’s powerful temper and strong will had proven excellent assets in a military career, but they were less suitable for a governor, and he felt that he was being intentionally sidelined, so he resigned the position after less than a year. While Jackson’s hero status made him a natural presidential candidate, he also had the good fortune to symbolize the aggressive settlers who were advancing the borders of the frontier and had little liking for the traditional power elites that dominated Washington. He ran for the Senate as preparation for a run at the presidency and his careful gathering of support enabled him to win a majority in the Tennessee legislature in 1823, while he mended fences with a number of old adversaries.

When national attention led to calls for Jackson to run as president in the 1824 election, he graciously accepted those calls. Although he received the largest number of votes and electoral college votes among the four candidates, he did not have a majority, so it was decided that a runoff vote would be held in the House of Representatives where each state had a single vote. After a great deal of maneuvering, John Quincy Adams was chosen as president, and Jackson was convinced that Adams and powerful senator Henry Clay had struck a deal that Clay would become secretary of state if Adams received his support, since secretary of state was the traditional steppingstone to the presidency. He quickly forged an alliance with the newly elected vice-president, John C. Calhoun, who had found himself sidelined by Clay, and won the support of shrewd political operator Martin Van Buren. The “corrupt bargain” between Adams and Clay became the rallying cry of Jackson’s followers, which combined with a well-oiled political machine, ensured that Jackson received 56% of the popular vote in 1828. Unfortunately, his beloved wife Rachel died from a heart attack shortly before he became president.

Jackson’s inauguration became famous for the unprecedented mob of thousands of people that attended in the hope of seeing the first president who was a real man of the people. His cabinet was made up of representatives of several factions of Democrats, although aside from his secretary of state, Van Buren, there were no strong characters who could challenge his policies. Calhoun, the vice-president, was offended that none of his supporters were included in the cabinet and used the scandal that John Eaton, the Secretary of Defense, had married a much younger woman whose husband had killed himself when he learned of their affair, to manipulate the majority of Washington society to ostracize a powerful rival in the hope of forcing him to abandon his position. However, Jackson stood by Eaton, unsurprisingly since he had experienced the same ostracism when he married Rachel. Although many people believed that Van Buren was the power behind the throne, Jackson was his own man and worked to build a relationship with the legislature in order to ensure that he got the laws he wanted.

Although he was a nominal supporter of states’ rights, when a number of representatives began preaching Calhoun’s ideas about nullification, Jackson used the occasion of a celebration of Thomas Jefferson’s birthday to give a brief toast of seven words: “Our federal union, it must be preserved.” This public repudiation of Calhoun’s policy led him to take the offensive by publishing a pamphlet revealing the infighting in the cabinet and placing the blame on Van Buren, hoping that it would clear the way for him to become president in 1832. All that resulted was that he lost the support of the Democratic Party who did not want Calhoun’s ambition to make the party look weak and divided. At the same time, Van Buren and Eaton both resigned, which gave Jackson the excuse to dissolve the entire cabinet and purge it of Calhoun’s faction.

Jackson won re-election against Clay by a greater margin than he had won against Adams, which reflected the fact that it was the first election where the popular vote was introduced into the presidential election.

Although Jackson was aware that greed motivated the desire of white settlers to ignore existing legal agreements and push Indian tribes such as the Cherokee off their land, he was unwilling to risk a confrontation with state governments to protect the rights of Indians. Instead, he thought it would be better for everyone concerned if the Indians left their land, so Congress passed the Indian Removal Act in 1830, which exchanged the Indians’ current land for land west of the Mississippi River. If a tribe resisted, the US army would give it an offer it could not refuse. Even so, some tribes did fight back and the most effective were the Seminoles who proved to be skilled guerrillas, but in the end the Second Seminole War (1835-1842) ended in defeat.

While Jackson was willing to defend states’ rights against Indians, it was a different matter when they threatened the Union. Angered by a tariff that favored northern manufacturers, southern states threatened to use nullification to leave the Union unless the tariff was changed in their favor, but Jackson managed to arrange for a compromise bill to pass. Unfortunately, the compromise was rejected by South Carolina, which appeared poised to start the nullification process. Jackson’s reaction was to prepare the military to forcibly prevent secession, while publishing an appeal to the people of South Carolina to reject nullification. The mixture of threat and charm proved effective, and fear of civil war ensured that a compromise bill passed just as his term ended.

Jackson had been the first president to realize the power of the veto and he vetoed more bills than all of his predecessors combined. His long-standing bias against banks drove him to arrange for the destruction of the Second Bank of the United States but he had to wait until his second term because its charter ran out in 1836. Although the bank had smoothly performed its duties of regulating the nation’s credit and currency, Jackson feared its power since it had a third of the country’s bank deposits and the bank’s management used its huge resources to buy influence among the legislators. When the head of the bank overplayed his hand by seeking a renewal four years early in the belief that Jackson would never dare end the bank during an election year, Jackson accepted the challenge and organized enough support in Congress and among the public to ensure that his veto of recharter did not prevent his re-election. His direct appeal to the people paid off because he won an overwhelming victory in the electoral college, although the popular vote was much closer, and he actually received fewer votes than his first election, which shows that the bank issue had hurt him. The bank was closed and its business was divided up among state banks but the operation was badly handled and anger against the veto led to a mix of disenchanted Democrats, National Republicans, nullifiers, states rightists and pro-Bank supporters forming the Whig party to oppose the strong executive power. At the same time, many Democrats tried to persuade him to restore the bank’s charter but he stood firm and eventually the rest of the party fell into line.

Aside from his domestic success with the Bank, Jackson also achieved several victories in foreign affairs, including winning reciprocal trade between the United States and Britain’s West Indies colonies, and persuading the French government to pay American citizens for property destroyed during the Napoleonic Wars. Actually, most of the credit should really go to his secretaries of state, Van Buren and Edward Livingston, since most of the work was entrusted to them.

Although he failed in his main objective, the purchase of Texas from Mexico, when American colonists in Texas revolted in 1835 under the leadership of Jackson’s old protégé, Sam Houston, he sent a trusted comrade, General Gaines, to the US side of the border in the hope that Indian raids could be used as justification for invasion in support of the rebels. After Houston defeated Santa Anna at San Jacinto, Jackson was sorely tempted to recognize the new state, but it was an election year and given the growing debate over slavery, deliberate provocation of Mexico on behalf of slave owners would not help Van Buren’s chances. Jackson did pay off the national debt, leaving the country with a slight surplus for the first and only time. His efforts bore fruit when his appointed successor, Van Buren, easily won the 1836 election. Unfortunately, the Panic of 1837 weakened Jackson’s aura, even though it was part of a global depression. Someone had to pay the price and Van Buren lost the 1840 election to William Henry Harrison. Particularly galling to Jackson, several of his friends/supporters had, in his mind, betrayed him by joining the Whigs. In Jackson’s mind, he and he alone represented the people’s will, so to oppose him or fail to support him meant that you were opposing the people. To be fair, he had tremendous loyalty to friends but he was completely unable to distinguish between his interests and those of the nation.

He developed tuberculosis in one lung and died on June 8, 1845, but he lived long enough to learn that Texas had been admitted to the Union.

Related Movies:

The Gorgeous Hussy (1936)
Directed by Clarence Brown, starring Joan Crawford and Lionel Barrymore
The Secretary of Defense in Andrew Jackson’s first cabinet had married an inn-keeper’s daughter after she became a widow when her husband learned of the affair and killed himself. Hoping to defeat a rival, Vice President John Calhoun arranged for the couple to be ostracized, forcing Jackson to choose a side.

The Buccaneer (1938)
Directed by Cecil B. DeMille, starring Frederic March and Franciska Gaal
Powerful pirate Jean Lafitte debates whether to join the greatly outnumbered American army and defend New Orleans or play it safe by working with the invading British during the War of 1812.

Man of Conquest (1939)
Directed by George Nichols, Jr, starring Richard Dix and Gail Patrick
It tells the story of Sam Houston’s life, including his friendship with the Cherokee, his political career (guided by his mentor Andrew Jackson), his participation in the Texas Revolution and the annexation of the republic by the United States.

Lone Star (1952)
Directed by Vincent Sherman, starring Clark Gable and Ava Gardner
A cattle baron is sent by former president Andrew Jackson to investigate rumors that Sam Houston is getting cold feet about the United States annexing the new Republic of Texas.

The President’s Lady (1953)
Directed by Henry Levin, starring Susan Hayward and Charlton Heston
A young Andrew Jackson falls in love with an already married woman, who eventually becomes his wife, although the scandal that follows them everywhere they go drives Jackson to fight several duels.

The First Texan (1956)
Directed by Byron Haskin, starring Joel McCrea and Felicia Farr
Lawyer Sam Houston arrives in Texas looking for a fresh start but is ordered by President Andrew Jackson to join a group of men conspiring to make Texas independent of Mexico, although Jackson’s goal is for independent Texas to join the United States.

The Buccaneer (1958)
Directed by Anthony Quinn, starring Yul Brynner and Claire Bloom
Powerful pirate Jean Lafitte debates whether to join the greatly outnumbered American army and defend New Orleans or play it safe by working with the invading British during the War of 1812. (please click here to read the review)

Further Reading:

Andrew Jackson-Robert V. Remini, New York: Harper-Perennial, 1999.

Remini is widely considered the dean of the Jacksonian Era, having written numerous books about the period, notably his three volume biography on Jackson. For those who lack the time or the desire to read such a detailed account, this is a solid introduction to one of the United States’ most driven presidents.

The Passions of Andrew Jackson-Andrew Burstein, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003.

The author spends a bit too much time analyzing Jackson’s motives and attitudes, which reflects his lack of confidence that the available sources contain enough factual information to paint an accurate picture of Jackson. Furthermore, he is preoccupied with wading through the myths and exaggerations produced by the previous books on Jackson, most of which lack an impartial approach and presume in Jackson’s favor even when the facts are not clear. Therefore, he gives a detailed examination of whether Jackson and his wife Rachel actually thought she was already divorced when they married. The cursory treatment of the military campaigns that made him famous show that the author was much more interested in the inner workings of Jackson’s mind. The question of whether or not Jackson actively encouraged Houston to lead the rebellion in Texas, which would give him a valid reason to invade, is never even mentioned, never mind discussed.


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