The Patriot Post® · The Frontier Comes to the White House

I have a confession before I launch into today’s history story. I’m a Tennessean who had three great-great-grandfathers who fought alongside General Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans; a Tennessean who grew up with stories of the general as the hero of the War of 1812. I am still a Tennessean, but one who has lived for the last 46 years in Chattanooga — the origin of the Trail of Tears — and who now understands more clearly the multi-faceted Jackson, who defies a simple analysis as a man and as a president.

With that understanding, let’s attempt to catalog President Andrew Jackson’s legacy.

Jackson came into office with an agenda that was based on two distinct factors: revenge for the “stolen” election of 1824 and his beloved Rachel’s death due to the horrors of the campaign of 1828, and his desire to serve the common people that he felt were excluded from governmental policies and programs.

Why was Jackson determined to champion the voiceless, common people of the western frontier?

The simplest explanation is that Jackson was one of them.

Jackson was born in the Waxhaws of South Carolina as the anger toward Britain’s “unfair” governmental policies of taxation increased and resistance grew. His Irish immigrant father died shortly before Andrew’s birth in the spring of 1767, and his mother, also Irish, focused her strength on raising her three sons: Hugh, Robert, and the new baby. Surrounded by Scots-Irish neighbors, the family understood the Patriot cause because the Irish and Scots had been in some state of rebellion for centuries.

When Andrew was only 13, he and his brothers volunteered to fight against the British in the American Revolutionary War. His brother Hugh died in 1779 following the Battle of Stono Ferry, and two years later, Robert and Andrew were captured by the British. When Jackson refused to polish a British officer’s boots, the officer responded by slashing Jackson across his face with his sword. Instead of humbling and subduing the young boy, the officer provided fuel for Jackson’s fight for independence that would help determine the course of his life. Robert died during their imprisonment. When his mother died only months later while nursing the wounded in Charleston, Andrew was alone in the world — and only 14.

The Revolutionary War had given birth to the Andrew Jackson who would chart his own course.

In March 1829, Jackson took the oath of office and began to unravel what he perceived as the corrupt, elitist bureaucracy of the wealthy landed gentry and merchant classes that had dominated the government since the revolution. Believing that government offices should include people from all walks of life and social classes, Jackson introduced a new system of patronage.

Did it improve the function of government? No. Several appointments resulted in the mishandling of public monies and clearly unethical practices, but one of Jackson’s strong supporters, Senator William L. Marcy of New York, justified the practice as the right of the president — “to the victor belong the spoils of the enemy.” Whatever the effects of patronage, the “spoils system” would be a part of the U.S. government for decades to come.

While Jackson dealt with his political appointments, he faced the most controversial of the domestic issues confronting his presidency — “the American System,” drafted by Henry Clay, Jackson’s rival. As a senator, he had voted in 1824 for the bill creating the program because he viewed it from a national viewpoint as a positive action for creating links between regions of the nation that would improve national defense. By 1829, President Jackson was angered by the fights in Congress, as senators and representatives focused on their own states and regions and not on the nation’s needs. Now, he believed that the protective tariffs and subsidies were simply “corrupting” factors. (Today, we know the term “pork barrel politics.”)

In 1830, Jackson vetoed the Maysville Road bill, and the fight was on. (Was his veto influenced by the fact that Kentucky’s favorite son was Henry Clay? Hmm…) Government spending on intrastate projects halted, and Jackson often spoke of Thomas Jefferson’s understanding that a simple, frugal government was a government of the people.

His most troublesome issue was about to present itself to Jackson via his friend and former War of 1812 veteran of the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, Chief John Ross of the Cherokee Nation. Troubling times were coming.

Next week, we’ll examine the “Indian Removal” of the 1830s.