Jackson, Andrew, nicknamed Old Hickory 1767-1845
7th President of the USA

Born into an Irish immigrant family in Waxhaw, South Carolina, he was raised on the frontier and fought in the Revolution aged 13, losing almost all of his immediate family in the war. After studying law and heading west he became public prosecutor in Nashville in 1788. He helped to frame the constitution of Tennessee, and became its representative in Congress in 1796, its senator in 1797 and a judge of its Supreme Court (1798-1804). When war was declared against Great Britain in 1812, as major-general of the state militia he took the field against the Creek Indians (allies of the British) in Alabama, achieving a decisive victory at Horseshoe Bend in 1814. Created major-general in the regular army and appointed to the command of the South, 'Old Hickory' invaded Spanish soil, stormed Pensacola, being then used by the British as a base of operations, and successfully defended New Orleans against Sir Edward Pakenham (1815), who was killed in the attack. The victory at New Orleans made him a national hero, though a treaty ending the War of 1812 had in fact been signed shortly before the battle took place. In 1818 Jackson again invaded Florida, defeated the Seminoles and became the state's first governor. He soon resigned, and in 1823 was re-elected to the US Senate. In 1824 as a Democratic candidate for the presidency, he had the highest popular vote, but not a majority of electoral votes, and in the House of Representatives the election was decided in favour of John Quincy Adams. Strongly supported in the West and South, Jackson was elected President in 1828. Fearless and honest, he was prompt to decide everything for personal reasons, and replaced a great number of minor officials with his partisans. He relied heavily on a set of informal advisers (his 'Kitchen Cabinet') and he quarrelled with his Vice-President, John C Calhoun, on the issue of states' rights, with Jackson defending union at all costs and Calhoun resigning over South Carolina's right to nullify the protective tariff of 1828. He favoured extended suffrage and sought to limit the power of the monied �lite, and so is said to have ushered in the era of 'Jacksonian Democracy', though paradoxically he had little respect for the checks and balances of the democratic system and was high-handed in his use of executive power. He vetoed legislation much more freely than any of his predecessors and was particularly vehement in opposing the effort to recharter the Bank of the United States, which he saw as the malignant agent of centralized money power. On this issue he was re-elected President by an overwhelming majority in 1832, and in his second term he pursued hard-money policies, transferring federal funds to state banks and issuing the Specie Circular, which helped bring about the financial panic of 1837. Throughout his presidency he pressed for Indian removal in order to free new lands for settlement on the frontier, and his most shameful act was his deliberate refusal to enforce the 1832 Supreme Court decision invalidating Georgia's effort to annex the territory of the Cherokee. As a plain-speaking champion of the common man, however, he won enormous and enduring popularity. In 1837 he retired to the Hermitage, his Tennessee plantation.

Bibliography: Marquis James, Andrew Jackson: The Border Captain (1933)