Peg Robinson - Andrew Jackson: Populist President

Portrait of Andrew Jackson by Thomas Sully, 1845

Chapter One

Andrew Jackson, the Man Who Defined an Era

A ndrew Jackson was called Old Hickory and The Peoples President. He was loved and honored as a soldier, a statesman, a nation-builder, and a man who defended what many people of his era considered the core principles of the new American nation. He was a loyal husband, a bold general, and a generous friend but a vicious enemy. He served his nation as a judge, a general, a congressman, a senator, and as president.

His life, from his birth in a log cabin in frontier territory until his death as an honored and revered figure of a growing nation, was quickly woven into the United States myth of its own characterso much so that for generations to come, public servants drew on the legends and tropes of Jacksons life to bolster their own careers. Everyone wanted to be born in a frontier log cabin. Everyone wanted to fight in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, and conquer much of Spanish-owned Florida. Everyone wanted to be what was called back then an Indian Fighter. Everyone wanted to be part of the Jacksonian moment. They wanted to represent the sentiment of one man, one vote. Every American politician wanted to be seen as a populist, even if he wasnt one. Every candidate hoped to cleanse government of corruption. Everyone wanted to be both of the people and of the elite at the same time.

Jackson managed to represent everything the newborn United States admired in a man, and in itself. He was bold, rugged, and hot-tempered, but canny. He was fiercely patriotic. He believed in the union of the states and believed they must abide together, in spite of their many differences. He defined an era that sought to make the abolitionist lie down with the slave owner in good faith and mutual respect. He defined a culture that sought to combine the robust, freewheeling, adaptive traits of the frontier with the restrained, educated, refined expectations of the oldest colonies, aspiring to the highest standards of the cities of the Old World.

His accomplishments in his lifetime were outstanding and largely admired by the people of his time. He fought Native Americans in war and won. He fought them in law, too, and not only won, but forced them out of European-held territory. It was seen at the time as a brilliant and forceful victory for American settlement but is now seen as a genocidal tragedy. As a soldier, and later an officer, he fought the British twice, in the American Revolution and in the War of 1812, scoring a major victory in retaking and defending New Orleans. He wrested Floridian territory from the Spanish.

This map shows the results of the 1828 presidential election.

He expanded the voting franchise, granting the vote to all white American men, destroying the monopoly of the old pseudoaristocracy of moneyed landowners. He founded the Democratic Party (which was then pro-slavery), securing what became our current two-party system after a long struggle with the hopes of the original Founders, who had wanted to avoid a party-run government. As president, he successfully increased trade, improving the economy. He fought corruption and nepotism in the federal government. He negotiated a real, if short-lived, peace between the Southern slave states and the Northern free states. It avoided the problems involved in the nullification movement, in which states hoped to use states rights as an argument for ignoring federal power.

Much of that record, so shining in the eyes of his contemporaries, is tainted in the eyes of modern students of history. He believed firmly in conquest, he accepted slavery and worked to preserve that institution, and he held racial beliefs that may currently be considered deplorable. He was fierce, violent, and often vulgar. His principles do not match the people of the present as well as they matched the people of his own age.

Was Andrew Jackson a hero or a villain? The truth is complicated, and the final judgment is a matter of personal beliefs and principles. Even in his own time, there were many who disagreed with his politics and despised his personal behavior. Those of us in the present must judge Jackson warily, trying to balance the norms and ideals of his period with those of our own time. Its a challenge. The virtues Jackson demonstrated are jarring to modern eyes.

The West Frontier

Political geography of North America, 17951796

Many modern people think of the frontier as the far west of the North American continent and dont think anything east of the Mississippi counts as such. At the time of Andrew Jacksons birth, the area known to European settlers had not yet reached the interior of the continent. By the time Jackson left office, the United States holdings had expanded to the Mississippi and farther, with the frontier beginning to resemble those areas we now picture when we hear that term.