Anywhere from 20 to 25 percent of Eastern Cherokees died either being rounded up or transported West. The problem was not one of faulty implementation; Jackson's own actions made the process of removal bloodier and crueler.
The actual death toll of removal is uncertain. But thousands more Creek, Choctaw, Seminole, and other Indians died in the process as well, direct victims of the signature policy of the Jackson administration. It's genuinely bizarre that some modern liberals, like Sean Wilentz and Arthur Schlesinger , have claimed Jackson for liberalism, ostensibly for his embrace of "populism" read: rejection of northern anti-slavery white men in favor of Southern pro-slavery white men.
In reality, Jackson's economic policy views were almost cartoonishly right wing. Context is important here. Jackson was succeeding John Quincy Adams, a truly great, scandalously underrated president who was an enthusiastic supporter of government intervention to build necessary infrastructure "internal improvements" and fuel economic development.
Adams believed that "taxing and being taxed were essential to responsible self-government; the country required a modern, national, and regulated banking system … and the federal government had an important role to play regarding the 'general welfare' in the creation of educational, scientific, and artistic institutions, such as the Smithsonian Museum, the national parks, the service academies, and land grant universities," according to recent biographer Fred Kaplan.
Jackson believed none of that. He believed government was a threat to be contained, that national banks like the one originated by Alexander Hamilton were abominations and threats to freedom, and that the federal government's role in building infrastructure should be limited.
He vetoed a bill to run a road in Kentucky, arguing that federal funding of such infrastructure projects was unconstitutional. Jackson was a strict adherent to the gold standard, a position as silly in the s as it remains today.
Contrary to Jacksonian propaganda, the Second National Bank worked quite well. It produced reliable paper currency of consistent value across the country. But Jackson, as an avowed opponent of paper money and of national economic institutions like the Bank, vetoed the renewal of its charter in His rhetoric against the bank drew upon populist anti-bank sentiment, but its real crime in Jacksonian eyes was propping up a powerful government. Jackson's war on the bank, combined with his intent on paying off the national debt, would lead to one of the worst depressions in American history.
Once the government started running a surplus, Jackson had nowhere to put the money, without the bank around. So he divided it among the states. The land bubble was out of control. Not all economic historians accept this story of the Panic. Others think Jackson screwed up in other ways that caused it. Vanderbilt's Peter Rousseau , for instance, blames two actions Jackson took in — requiring public lands be purchased with coins rather than paper money, and "supplemental" transfers of money between banks by the Treasury that summer — for causing the crash.
Leaving aside whether Jackson's acts of ethnic cleansing against Native Americans technically count as war crimes or just ordinary crimes against humanity, his career as a general included numerous actions which would absolutely warrant criminal action today.
Before and after Jackson's career-making victory in the Battle of New Orleans in — won after the war was technically over — he ruled the city as a tyrant, as Caleb Crain notes in the New Yorker:. He censored a newspaper, came close to executing two deserters, and jailed a state congressman, a judge, and a district attorney. He defied a writ of habeas corpus, the legal privilege recognized by the Constitution which allows someone being detained to insist that a judge look into his case.
Andrew Jackson and his supporters opposed the bank, seeing it as a privileged institution and the enemy of the common people; meanwhile, Clay and Webster led the argument in Congress for its recharter. In , South Carolina adopted a resolution declaring federal tariffs passed in and null and void and prohibiting their enforcement within state boundaries.
While urging Congress to lower the high tariffs, Jackson sought and obtained the authority to order federal armed forces to South Carolina to enforce federal laws.
Violence seemed imminent, but South Carolina backed down, and Jackson earned credit for preserving the Union in its greatest moment of crisis to that date. Jackson survived an assassination attempt on January 30, , beating his would-be assassin, Richard Lawrence, with his walking cane.
Andrew Jackson died at his home, the Hermitage, of congestive heart failure on June 8, In contrast to his strong stand against South Carolina, Andrew Jackson took no action after Georgia claimed millions of acres of land that had been guaranteed to the Cherokee Indians under federal law, and he declined to enforce a U.
Supreme Court ruling that Georgia had no authority over Native American tribal lands. In , the Cherokees signed a treaty giving up their land in exchange for territory west of Arkansas , where in some 15, would head on foot along the so-called Trail of Tears.
The relocation resulted in the deaths of thousands. As a slave-owner himself , Jackson opposed policies that would have outlawed slavery in western territories as the United States expanded. After leaving office, Jackson retired to the Hermitage, where he died in June Start your free trial today. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present.
Andrew Johnson , the 17th U. Johnson, who served from to , was the first American president to be impeached. After quitting as Senator, he was a judge on the Tennessee Supreme Court until he resigned in He served in Congress at a young age. He quit after nine months to become a senator but quit that job after seven months and returned to Tennessee.
Jackson made his money in the cotton business and owned slaves. He bought a plantation in Tennessee called The Hermitage in and already owned nine slaves. When Jackson left Tennessee to become president, the plantation had more than slaves. Jackson was also a self-taught military leader. His victory, along with his militia at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in , led to his commission in the U. Army, where he defeated the British at New Orleans. Jackson fought the Indians but adopted two as children.
A subsequent investigation found the pistols to be in perfect working order. The odds of both guns misfiring were found to be , to 1. After moving to Nashville, Tennessee, in the s, Jackson fell in love with the unhappily married Rachel Donelson Robards. After she separated from her husband and believing that she was granted a legal divorce, Robards wed Jackson. In fact, however, the divorce had not yet been finalized, and her first husband accused her of adultery.
In April , he was taken prisoner along with his brother Robert. When a British officer ordered Jackson to polish his boots, the future president refused.
The British released the brothers after two weeks of ill treatment in captivity, and within days Robert died from an illness contracted during his confinement.
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