Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson was born on March 15, 1767, in the Waxhaws area, which straddled the present-day border of North and South CarolinaSouth CarolinaSouth Carolina (officially the State of South Carolina) is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Ocean bordering Georgia and North Carolina; its capital is Columbia and its most populous city is Charleston. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on May 23, 1788, the eighth state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 5,118,425.Open the full entry; both states have claimed him.⁠[1][2]

His parents, Andrew and Elizabeth Hutchinson Jackson, were Scots-Irish farmers who emigrated from Carrickfergus, Ireland, in 1765 with his older brothers, Hugh and Robert. His father died shortly before he was born, and he was named after him.⁠[1][3]

At 13 Jackson volunteered with his brothers to fight the British. Hugh died of heatstroke after the Battle of Stono Ferry in 1779. In 1781 Jackson and Robert were captured, and a British officer slashed Jackson with a sword after he refused to polish the officer’s boots.⁠[1][4]

Both brothers contracted smallpox in captivity; their mother arranged their release in a prisoner exchange, and Robert died soon afterward. Their mother then went to Charleston, South Carolina, to nurse sick and wounded soldiers and died there of cholera, leaving Jackson an orphan at 14.⁠[1]

In 1784, at 17, Jackson decided to become a lawyer; he moved to Salisbury, North CarolinaNorth CarolinaNorth Carolina is a state in the South Atlantic region of the United States; its capital is Raleigh and its largest city is Charlotte. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on November 21, 1789, becoming the 12th state, and its population in the 2020 census was 10,439,388.Open the full entry, studied law as an apprentice to established lawyers and was licensed in 1787.⁠[1][3]

He began practicing in Washington County, now in TennesseeTennesseeTennessee is a U.S. state in the southeast-central United States, with its capital at Nashville. It was admitted to the Union on June 1, 1796, as the 16th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 6,910,840 residents.Open the full entry, and in October 1788 became district attorney for the Mero District and moved to Nashville.⁠[3]

Rachel Donelson had been married to Lewis Robards. Jackson married her at Natchez in August 1791, before Robards’s divorce was final; the divorce decree was issued on September 27, 1793, and the couple remarried on January 18, 1794.⁠[3]

Jackson attended Tennessee’s first constitutional convention. In the fall of 1796 voters sent him to Philadelphia as the state’s first U.S. representative, and in 1797 the legislature elected him to the U.S. Senate. He resigned in 1798 to become a judge of the Tennessee Superior Court, serving until April 1804.⁠[3]

In 1802, after a tied election, the governor chose Jackson as general of the Tennessee militia.⁠[5][3]

In 1804 Jackson bought the Hermitage farm, which covered 425 acres when the family moved in; a cluster of log buildings served for housing and storage.⁠[6]

In December 1812 President James MadisonJames MadisonJames Madison (1751–1836) was the fourth president of the United States, serving from 1809 to 1817. He helped frame the Constitution, co-wrote The Federalist and guided the Bill of Rights through Congress, and earlier served as a U.S. representative and secretary of state.Open the full entry commissioned Jackson a major general of U.S. Volunteers and ordered him to lead 1,500 troops south. In March 1813 the War Department ordered the force dismissed, and Jackson marched it back to Tennessee at his own expense; his troops nicknamed him “Old Hickory” for his toughness on the march.⁠[5]

In October 1813 Jackson marched south against the Creeks and in November won battles at Tallushatchee and Talladega; by January 1814 new troops had brought his force to 5,000 men. At the Battle of Horseshoe Bend on March 27, 1814, U.S. forces inflicted 75 percent casualties on the Red Sticks.⁠[5][4]

In May 1814 Jackson was commissioned a major general in the U.S. Army. In August that year he imposed the Treaty of Fort Jackson, which forced the Creeks to give up nearly 23 million acres, including most of their land in AlabamaAlabamaAlabama is a U.S. state in the Southeast on the Gulf of Mexico, with its capital at Montgomery. It was admitted to the Union on December 14, 1819, as the 22nd state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 5,024,279 residents.Open the full entry and southern Georgia.⁠[3][5]

Jackson entered New Orleans on December 1, 1814, and the British invasion of LouisianaLouisianaLouisiana is a state in the southern United States on the Gulf of Mexico, bordered by Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas; its capital is Baton Rouge and its largest city is New Orleans. It entered the Union on April 30, 1812, as the 18th state, and had a population of 4,657,757 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry began on December 14. On January 8, 1815, he defeated the British at the Battle of New Orleans, a few weeks after the Treaty of Ghent had been signed.⁠[5][3]

In 1818 Jackson invaded Spanish Florida to attack the Seminoles, seized Pensacola again and ordered the execution of two British subjects. The Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819 transferred FloridaFloridaFlorida is a U.S. state occupying mainly the Florida peninsula, with its capital at Tallahassee; its most populous city is Jacksonville. It entered the Union on March 3, 1845, as the 27th state, and had a population of 21,538,187 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry to the United States.⁠[3][5]

Jackson resigned from the army on June 1, 1821; on July 17 he took possession of Florida from Spain as military territorial governor, and he resigned as governor that November.⁠[3][5]

In 1822 the Tennessee legislature nominated Jackson for president; in 1823 he was elected to the U.S. Senate, from which he resigned in 1825.⁠[3][7]

In the 1824 election Jackson led with 99 electoral votes and 151,271 popular votes (41.3 percent) but fell short of an electoral majority; John Quincy AdamsJohn Quincy AdamsJohn Quincy Adams (1767–1848) was an American diplomat and politician who served as secretary of state from 1817 to 1825 and as the sixth President of the United States from 1825 to 1829, and afterwards sat in the House of Representatives until his death.Open the full entry received 84 electoral votes, William H. Crawford 41 and Henry Clay 37.⁠[8]

On February 9, 1825, the House of Representatives elected Adams with Clay as his chief supporter; after Adams named Clay secretary of state, Jackson called the arrangement “a corrupt bargain.”⁠[7][3]

Jackson then returned to Tennessee to prepare for the 1828 election; a grassroots party formed around him, first called the Democratic-Republicans and later the Democratic Party.⁠[7]

In the 1828 presidential election Jackson defeated Adams by 178 electoral votes to 83, with a popular vote of 647,276 to 508,064.⁠[9]

Rachel Jackson died on the evening of December 22, 1828, and was buried in the Hermitage garden two days later. Jackson blamed her death on the slanders of the campaign.⁠[7][3]

Jackson took office as president in March 1829 and served until 1837. He vetoed the Maysville Road bill.⁠[3][10]

On May 28, 1830, Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act passed by Congress. It authorized the president to negotiate removal treaties with tribes living east of the Mississippi River, mainly in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, MississippiMississippiMississippi is a state of the United States on the Gulf of Mexico; Jackson is both its capital and its largest city. It was admitted to the Union on December 10, 1817, as the 20th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 2,961,279.Open the full entry and North Carolina, to move them to unsettled land in the West.⁠[11]

In his annual message of December 6, 1830, Jackson informed Congress of the progress of removal, describing the policy as approaching “a happy consummation.”⁠[11]

Under the Treaty of New Echota, ratified in 1836, the Cherokees of Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama were removed; in the fall and winter of 1838–39 they were forcibly moved to Indian Territory, some walking as many as 1,000 miles over about four months, and approximately 4,000 of 16,000 Cherokees died on the way, a journey known as the Trail of Tears.⁠[11]

In 1832 Jackson vetoed a bill to recharter the Bank of the United States, and the veto became a major issue in his reelection campaign.⁠[12]

In the 1832 election Jackson and his running mate, Martin Van BurenMartin Van BurenMartin Van Buren (1782–1862) was an American politician who served as governor of New York, secretary of state and vice president before becoming President of the United States from 1837 to 1841; in 1848 he ran for president again as the Free Soil Party candidate.Open the full entry, received 219 electoral votes and 701,780 popular votes (54.2 percent), and the National Republican candidate Henry Clay 49 electoral votes and 484,205 popular votes (37.4 percent); John Floyd received South Carolina’s 11 electoral votes, chosen by its legislature, and the Anti-Masonic candidate William Wirt received 7.⁠[13]

A South Carolina convention passed an ordinance declaring the tariff acts of May 29, 1828, and July 14, 1832, unconstitutional and “null and void.” On December 10, 1832, Jackson issued a proclamation warning that “disunion, by armed force, is TREASON.”⁠[14]

In 1833 Congress passed the Force Bill, authorizing military force against states resisting the tariffs, and later that year a compromise bill that gradually lowered tariffs over the next decade, which South Carolina accepted.⁠[14]

Jackson instructed Treasury Secretary William J. Duane to remove federal deposits from the bank, and Duane refused. On September 23, 1833, Jackson dismissed Duane and, by recess appointment, named Attorney General Roger Taney treasury secretary; Taney moved the deposits to state banks and submitted his reasons to Congress in December.⁠[12]

On December 26, 1833, Clay introduced a resolution charging that Jackson had assumed a power over the Treasury “not granted him by the Constitution and laws.” After a 10-week debate the Senate adopted a revised resolution by 26 votes to 20, and it was entered in the Senate Journal on March 28, 1834. Jackson responded with a lengthy protest denying the action’s validity, which the Senate refused to print in its Journal.⁠[12][15]

Opponents called him “King Andrew I” and formed the Whig Party.⁠[3]

In 1836 Jackson issued the Specie Circular, requiring debts owed to the government to be paid in hard money.⁠[3]

Missouri Democrat Thomas Hart Benton worked for nearly three years to expunge the censure and called for a vote when less than two months remained in Jackson’s term and Democrats had regained the majority; the Senate agreed by a five-vote margin. On January 16, 1837, the secretary of the Senate drew lines around the censure in the 1834 Journal and wrote “Expunged by order of the Senate.”⁠[15][12]

Jackson’s farewell address is dated March 4, 1837; early that year he returned to the Hermitage.⁠[10][3]

Jackson died at the Hermitage near Nashville on June 8, 1845, aged 78, and was buried in the Hermitage garden two days later, in the place he had prepared for himself beneath the monument over Rachel Jackson’s grave.⁠[2][3][6]

Debts forced the sale of the Hermitage to the State of Tennessee in 1856. After the 1888 General Assembly considered a use for the property, a group of Nashville women secured a charter to operate it as a public shrine; this group, the Ladies’ Hermitage Association, opened the Hermitage as a museum in 1889.⁠[6][16]

In 1819 Jackson began a large brick house, which the family occupied in 1821; a fire in late 1834 severely damaged it and destroyed the second story, and the rebuilt house took the Greek Revival style. Jackson spent his last eight years there.⁠[6]

About 100 enslaved people worked the Hermitage when Jackson became president, and their number had grown to nearly 150 by his death in 1845.⁠[6]

As of November 2026 the Hermitage is run by the Andrew Jackson Foundation, a nonprofit originally named the Ladies’ Hermitage Association; the estate covers 1,120 acres, the mansion is a National Historic Landmark, and the grounds include more than 20 historic buildings, among them Jackson’s tomb, restored slave cabins, a church and gardens.⁠[16][17]

BritannicaEncyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopedia first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768; the name also refers to its publisher, Chicago-based Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (which presents itself as The Britannica Group). The print edition ended in 2012, and the company’s main businesses since then have been the online encyclopedia Britannica.com, digital education products for schools and libraries, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.Open the full entry describes Jackson as the first president from the area west of the Appalachians and the first elected through a direct appeal to the mass of voters, and calls his political movement Jacksonian Democracy.⁠[2]

On the Hermitage website the Andrew Jackson Foundation credits Jackson with strengthening the presidency, defending the Union and pushing the country toward democracy, while noting that the expansion of democracy excluded enslaved people, Native Americans, women and free Black Americans; the page also notes that one of his earliest biographers called him “a democratic autocrat” and “an atrocious saint.”⁠[10]

Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage: Official website: https://thehermitage.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[18]