Andrew Jackson, a frontier general and Indian fighter, was elected seventh president of the United States on a platform that proclaimed him the champion of democracy and of the common man. Jackson served two terms of office (1829-37) that were marked by bitter controversies over state rights, nullification, the tariff, the spoils system, Indian removal, and banking policies. A man of strong convictions, iron will, and fiery temperament, Jackson used the presidential power vigorously and left his mark on the era, often termed the "Age of Jackson." EARLY POLITICAL AND MILITARY CAREER Born Mar. 15, 1767, in the Waxhaw settlement on the border of North Carolina and South Carolina, Jackson was orphaned at the age of 14. After reading law and gaining admission to the bar in North Carolina, he migrated to Nashville, Tenn., where he allied himself with the powerful political faction led by William \TBlount\t. In 1791, Jackson married Rachel Donelson Robards; both he and Rachel mistakenly believed that she and her first husband had received a legal divorce. When they discovered their error, they remarried (1794). Jackson served as a delegate to the Tennessee constitutional convention in 1796 and as congressman from Tennessee (1796-97). His congressional career was undistinguished, marked primarily by his fierce opposition to the Washington administration's conciliatory stance toward Great Britain and the Western Indian tribes. Jackson was elected U.S. senator in 1797, but financial problems forced his resignation and return to Tennessee in less than a year. After serving (1798-1804) as a Tennessee superior court judge, he retired from the bench to devote all his energies to business ventures and to his plantation, the Hermitage, near Nashville. His political career seemed to be over. For a time he appeared willing to aid Aaron \TBurr\t in his secret project in the West--but his involvement in Burr's conspiracy led only to embarrassment. Jackson's efforts to gain appointment as governor of Louisiana were rebuffed by the Jefferson administration. The \TWar of\t 1812 dramatically changed Jackson's political fortunes. In 1814, Jackson, a major general in the Tennessee militia, was ordered to march against the pro-British faction of the \TCreek\t Indians. Assisted by pro-American Indian allies, he crushed Creek resistance at Horseshoe Bend (March 1814). He then forced all the Indians of the region, friends and foes alike, to surrender enormous tracts of land in both Alabama and Georgia. Impressed by his stunning victory, the federal government placed Jackson in command of the defense of New Orleans. Old Hickory, as Jackson was known to his admirers, organized the defense of the city and on Jan. 8, 1815, decimated an invading British army. Coming at the end of a war marked by military ineptness and humiliating defeats, Jackson's victory was seized upon by a public hungry for vindication of national honor. (News that the British and the Americans had signed a peace treaty on Dec. 24, 1814, in Ghent, Belgium, reached the United States a few days later.) The Battle of New Orleans made Andrew Jackson a legend and a symbol of American virtue. Jackson was called into action in 1817 against the Seminole Indians. In the spring of 1818 (in the First \TSeminole War\t) he pursued the Indians into Spanish Florida, where he apparently exceeded his instructions by deposing the Spanish authorities and executing two British subjects: one a young officer, the other an elderly Scottish trader whom he charged with aiding the Indians. Jackson subsequently insisted that his actions had the tacit prior approval of the Monroe administration, and efforts of his enemies to secure his censure by Congress failed. His actions helped lead to the U.S. acquisition of Spanish Florida in 1819. Jackson resigned his army commission in 1821 and served briefly as territorial governor of Florida in the same year. RETURN TO POLITICS In 1822 the Tennessee legislature nominated Jackson for the presidency; the following year it elected him to the U.S. Senate. He soon became involved in the presidential campaign of 1824. He almost won the presidency, but the election of 1824 was bitterly contested. The demise of the \TFederalist party\t, discredited by its opposition to the War of 1812, had left the nation with a one-party system. The Democratic-Republicans were unable, however, to agree on a common presidential candidate. The congressional caucus nominated Georgia's William H. \TCrawford\t. Local party organizations and state legislatures, however, in addition to Jackson, placed in candidacy John Quincy \TAdams\t of Massachusetts, Henry \TClay\t of Kentucky, and John C. \TCalhoun\t of South Carolina, who soon withdrew to seek the vice-presidency. The popular and electoral votes were indecisive because no candidate received a majority. Although Jackson led in both tallies, the House of Representatives chose John Quincy Adams as president. Jackson's supporters charged that Adams's election was the result of a "corrupt bargain" with Henry Clay, whom Adams named secretary of state. During the Adams administration, Jackson's supporters, aided by Vice-President Calhoun and Sen. Martin \TVan Buren\t, built a powerful political machine dedicated to Jackson's election in 1828. That machine became the nucleus of the \TDemocratic party\t. Critical of Adams's nationalist policies and lack of concern for \Tstate rights\t, the Jackson organization represented Old Hickory as champion of the common man. They attacked Adams and Clay for the "corrupt bargain" that, they alleged, revealed the aristocratic principles of Adams and Clay and their contempt for democracy. Adams's supporters in turn attacked Jackson for the irregularity of the first years of his marriage and portrayed him as an ignorant and uncouth barbarian. Yet the Jacksonian Democracy was triumphant in 1828. In an election marked by mudslinging and character assassination on both sides, Jackson defeated Adams's bid for a second term. THE PRESIDENCY Saddened by the death of his wife late in 1828, Jackson, although close to his first secretary of war, John H. \TEaton\t, relied more heavily on his \TKitchen Cabinet\t, a group of unofficial advisors, than on his official cabinet. Rotation in Office President Jackson sought to make government more sensitive to the will of the people through his principle of "rotation in office." Proclaiming that no person should regard officeholding as a right, Jackson declared all intelligent citizens equally qualified to serve and announced his intention to protect the nation from a permanent aristocratic officeholding clique by removing long-term officeholders. Although only a minority of federal officials (estimated at no more than ten percent) were actually removed by Jackson, his political foes charged him with seeking to corrupt the civil service for political reasons and dubbed his principle of "rotation in office" the "spoils system" (see \Tpatronage\t). State Rights Although Jackson declared his belief in state rights and in limitations on the activities of the federal government, he was inconsistent in applying these principles. In 1830 he vetoed a bill appropriating funds to construct a road between Maysville and Lexington entirely within Kentucky, the state of his rival Henry Clay. Since many of Jackson's supporters in Western states favored internal improvements at federal expense, however, his administration increased rather than limited federal spending for road, canal, and harbor construction. In another case, that of the \TCherokee\t Indians of Georgia, Jackson effectively supported a state rights position (and asserted his independence of the Supreme Court). Despite two U.S. Supreme Court decisions (1831 and 1832) upholding the rights of the Cherokee nation against the state of Georgia, which was attempting to destroy Cherokee sovereignty and take the Indians' land, Jackson refused to intervene on behalf of the Indians. Many tribes were resettled west of the Mississippi while he was in office. The removal of the Cherokee was finally accomplished (1838-39) by a forced trek westward during the administration of Jackson's successor, Martin Van Buren. The Tariff Question and Nullification Jackson's followers were divided on the tariff question. Southerners were generally opposed to a protective tariff and had supported Jackson in the belief that he would lower duties drastically from the levels established in 1828; but Jacksonians in other areas tended to be protectionists. In 1832 his administration approved only modest reductions in duties (see \Ttariff acts\t). On Nov. 24, 1832, however, South Carolina, acting on the doctrine of \Tnullification\t espoused by Vice-President Calhoun, declared the federal tariff laws of 1828 and 1832 null and void and prohibited the collection of tariffs in South Carolina after Feb. 1, 1833. Jackson, in his Nullification Proclamation of Dec. 10, 1832, declared his intent to enforce the law but also promised to seek further downward adjustment of the tariff. In 1833, Congress passed both a force bill, empowering Jackson to coerce South Carolina, and a compromise tariff. Other southern states failed to rally to the support of South Carolina, which accepted the new tariff (but not the force bill), and the threat of disunion was averted. Economic Policy Although Jackson had not made the Second \TBank of the United States\t an issue in the 1828 election, he soon announced his belief that the bank, a private corporation established in 1816 and operating under a federal charter, had failed to provide a stable currency, had favored the privileged few at the expense of the common people in its financial operations, and had received a charter in violation of the Constitution. The bank's charter was not due to expire until 1836, but in July 1832 the president of the bank, Nicholas \TBiddle\t, encouraged by Jackson's political enemies--particularly Henry Clay and Daniel \TWebster\t--pushed a bill through Congress granting recharter. Jackson quickly vetoed the bill. The bank recharter was a major issue in the 1832 presidential election, in which Jackson (with Martin Van Buren as his running mate) overwhelmingly defeated Clay. Jackson's war against the Bank of the United States extended throughout his second term of office. Angered by Biddle's use of bank funds to support anti-Jacksonian candidates, Jackson ordered federal deposits withdrawn from the bank in 1833. When two secretaries of the treasury refused to comply, Jackson, in another bold assertion of presidential power, removed both. That action earned him the censure of the Senate and, along with his use of the presidential veto, prompted his foes to charge him with abuse of power. Although Jackson destroyed the Second Bank of the United States by withdrawing government money, his administration failed to develop a coherent national banking policy. In many states, especially in the South and West, state-chartered banks engaged in irresponsible and speculative issuance of paper currency--a policy that Jackson and other hard-money advocates opposed. (The federal government issued no paper legal tender prior to the Civil War.) Thus during the mid-1830s the United States was swept by a land boom. Sales of federal lands soared, helping to wipe out the national debt and creating a large federal surplus. By 1836, however, the boom was becoming increasingly speculative. Alarmed and determined to curb extensive use of paper currency issued by private state-chartered banks, Jackson, in the Specie Circular of 1836, forbade further purchases of federal land or payment of federal debts in any currency except federally issued coins. His actions, which created a demand for specie that led to many bank failures, were opposed by conservatives in the business community; they charged him with responsibility for disrupting the economy and blamed him for the ensuing Panic of 1837. Foreign Policy Jackson's foreign policy was marked by firm defense of American interests in forcing the French government to pay long-overdue spoliation claims and reopening the British West Indian trade. Although personally sympathetic to the American-organized rebellion of Texas against Mexico, Jackson took a cautious stance on Texan independence. He was reluctant to split the Democratic party in a domestic controversy over the expansion of slavery or to go to war with Mexico. Jackson did not recognize the Lone Star Republic until the day before he left office in 1837; he left the troublesome problem of Texas annexation to his successors. LAST YEARS AND INFLUENCE Even after his retirement, Jackson was a powerful force in the Democratic party. He switched his support from his successor, Van Buren, to James K. Polk, who won the Democratic nomination and subsequently the presidency in 1844. Jackson died at the Hermitage on June 8, 1845. A symbol of the self-made man and the virtues of the American frontier, he helped shape both an important concept--that of mass democracy--and a powerful political organization, the Democratic party. Of his many accomplishments, Jackson's strengthening of the powers of the presidency has probably been the most enduring. The first president to proclaim himself the elected representative of all the American people, Jackson did not hesitate to use the power of veto. (He vetoed 12 bills, more than all of his predecessors combined.) His use of the powers of removal and of executive orders paved the way for the modern American presidency. Alfred A. Cave Bibliography: Davis, Burke, Old Hickory: A Life of Andrew Jackson (1977); James, Marquis, Andrew Jackson: Portrait of a President, 2 vols. (1937); Meyers, Marvin, The Jacksonian Persuasion (1957); Remini, Robert V., Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire, 1767-1821 (1977); Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Freedom, 1822-1832 (1981); and Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Democracy, 1833-1845 (1984); Rogin, Michael, Fathers and Children: Andrew Jackson and the Subjugation of the American Indian (1975); Schlesinger, Arthur M., The Age of Jackson (1945); Sellers, Charles, Andrew Jackson: A Profile (1971); Van Deusen, Glyndon G., The Jacksonian Era (1959).