A Pictorial
Biography of
Andrew Jackson
By John Frost, 1860 first edition
560 pages, illustrated, indexed, searchable
- Bonus -
Andrew Jackson
And Early
Tennessee History
By S. C. Heiskill, 1918
687 pages, Illustrated, indexed, searchable
- Bonus -
American Statesmen
Andrew Jackson
By William Graham Sumner, 1882
687 pages, Illustrated, indexed, searchable
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Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) was the
seventh President of the United States (1829–1837). He was born into a recently
immigrated Scots-Irish farming family of relatively modest means, near the end
of the colonial era. He was born somewhere near the then-unmarked border
between North and South Carolina. During the American Revolutionary War
Jackson, whose family supported the revolutionary cause, acted as a courier. He
was captured, at age 13, and mistreated by his British captors. He later became
a lawyer, and in 1796 he was in Nashville and helped found the state of
Tennessee. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and then to the
U. S. Senate. In 1801, Jackson was appointed colonel in the Tennessee militia,
which became his political as well as military base. Jackson owned hundreds of
slaves who worked on the Hermitage plantation which he acquired in 1804.
Jackson killed a man in a duel in 1806, over a matter of honor regarding his
wife Rachel. Jackson gained national fame through his role in the War of 1812,
where he won decisive victories over the Indians and then over the main British
invasion army at the Battle of New Orleans. Jackson's army was sent to Florida
where, without orders, he deposed the small Spanish garrison. This led directly
to the treaty which formally transferred Florida from Spain to the United
States.
Nominated for president in 1824,
Jackson narrowly lost to John Quincy Adams. Jackson's supporters then founded
what became the Democratic Party. Nominated again in 1828, Jackson crusaded
against Adams and the "corrupt bargain" between Adams and Henry Clay
he said cost him the 1824 election. Building on his base in the West and new
support from Virginia and New York, he won by a landslide. The Adams
campaigners called him and his wife Rachel Jackson "bigamists"; she
died just after the election and he called the slanderers
"murderers," swearing never to forgive them.
+-His struggles with Congress were personified in his personal rivalry
with Henry Clay, whom Jackson deeply disliked, and who led the opposition (the
emerging Whig Party). As president, he faced a threat of secession from South
Carolina over the "Tariff of Abominations" which Congress had enacted
under Adams. In contrast to several of his immediate successors, he denied the
right of a state to secede from the union, or to nullify federal law. The
Nullification Crisis was defused when the tariff was amended and Jackson
threatened the use of military force if South Carolina (or any other state)
attempted to secede.