Andrew Jackson Dbq

Andrew Jackson is known for being the founder of the Democratic Party and for his support of individual liberty. When the war between Britain and the United States of America, Andrew Jackson had become a well-off Tennessee lawyer and expanding young politician by 1812, even though he was born in poverty, when war broke out between the United States and Britain. On March 15, 1767, Andrew Jackson was born to Andrew and Elizabeth Hutchinson Jackson. His Parents were Scots-Irish colonists who emigrated from Ireland in 1765. In 1796, Jackson was a member of the convention that recognized the Tennessee Constitution and was elected Tennessee's first representative in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was elected to the U.S. Senate the next year,

but after serving for only eight months, he resigned. From 1798 to 1804, Jackson was appointed a circuit judge on the Tennessee superior court. During that same year, Jackson acquired an expansive plantation in Davidson County, Tennessee, called the Hermitage.
In 1824, state factions rallied around “Old Hickory,” and a Pennsylvania convention nominated him for the U.S.

presidency. Although Jackson won the popular vote, there was not a candidate that had gotten most of the Electoral College vote, giving the House of Representative the election. Speaker of the House Henry Clay vowed his support to Jackson’s top rival, John Quincy Adams, who came out as the winner. Jackson accepted the defeat between him and Adams at one point, but when Adams named Clay as secretary of state, his backers saw this as a backroom deal that became known as the “Corrupt Bargain.” The negative reaction to the House's decision caused Jackson's re-nomination for the presidency in 1825. It was the cause in the split of the Democratic-Republican Party. The main supporters of “Old Hickory” called themselves Democrats and would eventually create the Democratic Party. Jackson's opponents nicknamed him "jackass," which he liked so he decided to use the symbol of a donkey to represent himself. Though the use of that symbol is didn’t last very long, it later become the emblem of the new Democratic Party. After a bruising campaign, Andrew Jackson won the presidential election of 1828 by a landslide over Adams. With his election, Jackson became the first frontier president and the first chief executive. Jackson gained his popularity because he was the first president to invite the public to attend the inauguration ball at the White

House.
Andrew Jackson did not submit to Congress in policy-making and was the first president to assume command with his veto power.

While prior presidents rejected only bills they believed unconstitutional, Jackson set a new precedent by wielding the veto pen as a matter of policy. Still upset at the results of the 1824 election, he believed in giving the power to elect the president and vice president to the American people by abolishing the Electoral College, garnering him the nickname the "people's president." Campaigning against corruption, Jackson became the first president to widely replace incumbent officeholders with his supporters, which became known as the “spoils system.” In perhaps his greatest feat as president, Jackson became involved in a battle with the Second Bank of the United States, a theoretically private corporation that served as a government-sponsored monopoly. Jackson saw the bank as a corrupt, elitist institution that manipulated paper money and wielded too much power over the economy. His opponent for re-election in 1832, Henry Clay, believed the bank fostered a strong economy. Seeking to make the bank a central campaign issue, Clay and his supporters passed a bill through Congress to re-charter the institution. In July 1832, Jackson vetoed the re-charter because it backed “the advancement of the few at the expense of the many.” Jackson also ordered the federal government's deposits removed from the Bank of the United States and placed in state or

"PET" BANKS. The people were with Jackson, and he was overwhelmingly elected to a second term in 1832. Nicholas Biddle retaliated by making it more difficult for businesses and others to get the money they needed. This caused an economic contraction at the end of 1833 and into 1834. The bank charter expired in 1836. During Jackson’s second term, attempts to re-charter the bank fizzled, and the institution was shuttered in 1836.
Another political opponent faced by Jackson in 1832 was an unlikely one—his own vice president. Following the passage of federal tariffs in 1828 and 1832 that they believed favored Northern manufacturers at their expense, opponents in South Carolina passed a resolution declaring the measures null and void in the state and even threatened secession. Vice President Calhoun supported the principle of nullification along with the notion that states could secede from the Union. Although he believed the tariff to be too high, Jackson threatened to use force to enforce federal law in South Carolina. Already replaced by New York’s Martin Van Buren, Jackson’s former secretary of state, on the 1832 ticket, Calhoun protested and became the first vice president in American history to resign his office on December 28, 1832. Within weeks, a compromise was passed that included a modest reduction in the tariff along with a provision that empowered the president to use the armed forces if necessary to enforce federal laws. A crisis was averted, but the battle over states’ rights foreshadowed the Civil War three decades later. During Jackson’s second term, he was the target of the first presidential assassination attempt in American history. As he was leaving a memorial service for a congressman inside the U.S. Capitol on January 30, 1835, deranged house painter Richard Lawrence emerged from the crowd and pointed a single-shot gold pistol at the president. When the gun failed to shoot, Lawrence pulled out a second pistol, which also misfired. The infuriated Jackson charged the shooter and hammered him with his cane while bystanders subdued the attempted assassin. The English-born Lawrence, who believed he was an heir to the British throne and owed a massive amount of money by the U.S. government, was found not guilty because of insanity and confined to institutions for the rest of his life.
Despite his popularity and success, Jackson's presidency was not without its controversies. One particularly troubling aspect of it was his dealings with Native Americans. He signed and implemented the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which gave him the power to make treaties with tribes that resulted in their displacement to territory west of the Mississippi River in return for their ancestral homelands. Jackson also stood by as Georgia violated a federal treaty and seized nine million acres inside the state that had been guaranteed to the Cherokee tribe. Although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in two cases that Georgia had no authority over the tribal lands, Jackson refused to enforce the decisions. Thus, the president brokered a deal in which the Cherokees would vacate their land in return for territory west of Arkansas. The agreement resulted after Jackson’s presidency in the Trail of Tears, the forced relocation westward of an estimated 15,000 Cherokee Indians that claimed the lives of approximately 4,000 who died of starvation, exposure and illness. Jackson also nominated his supporter Roger Taney to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Senate rejected the initial nomination in 1835, but when Chief Justice John Marshall died, Jackson re-nominated Taney, who was subsequently approved the following year. Justice Taney went on to be best known for the infamous Dred Scott decision, which declared African Americans were not citizens of the United States and as such lacked legal standing to file a suit. He also stated that the federal government could not forbid slavery in U.S. territories. In his career, as Supreme Court Justice, Taney would go on to swear in Abraham Lincoln as president.
Jackson was elected the seventh president of the United States in 1828. Known as the "people's president," Jackson destroyed the Second Bank of the United States, founded the Democratic Party, supported individual liberty and instituted policies that resulted in the forced migration of Native Americans. After completing his second term in the White House, Jackson returned to the Hermitage, where he died on June 8, 1845, at the age of 78. The cause of death was lead poisoning caused by two bullets that had remained in his chest for several years. He was buried in the plantation’s garden next to his beloved Rachel. Jackson continues to be widely regarded as one of the most influential U.S. presidents in history, as well as one of the most aggressive and controversial. His ardent support of individual liberty fostered political and governmental change, including many prominent and lasting national policies.