Andrew Jackson

Essential Question:

How did America evolve towards greater democracy between 1800 and 1840? How did President Jackson reflect this change?

  • From 1800 to 1840, states removed property and tax restrictions which allowed 90% of “common” white men to vote (“universal white male suffrage”)

  • Andrew Jackson’s victory in the election of 1828 changed American politics

  • Andrew Jackson was the first “common man” president

  • He was born poor, uneducated, and from the west

  • Jackson’s victory split the Democratic-Republicans and led to the formation of the Democratic Party

  • Jackson and his supporters hoped to return to the Jeffersonian ideas of state’s rights, protection of liberty, and westward expansion

  • But, during his eight years in office, Andrew Jackson greatly expanded presidential power

  • Oppositions to Jackson led to the formation of the Whig Party and the return of the two-party system

  • When Jackson entered office, he encouraged using the “spoils system.”

  • He replaced the government bureaucrats from previous administrations with his own loyal party supporters

  • Andrew Jackson’s two-term presidency (1829-1837) was defined by three major conflicts

  • By the time Jackson entered office, Americans were spreading West in search of new land to cultivate

  • The discovery of gold in north Georgia in 1828 led the Georgia government to seize Cherokee lands

  • The Cherokee sued in the Supreme Court (Cherokee Nation v. Georgia) and won

  • Five “civilized tribes” in the South stood in the way of American westward expansion

  • But, Congress passed, and Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, forcing all Indian tribes to relocate west of the Mississippi River

  • In 1838, the U.S. Army forced the Cherokees west on the “Trail of Tears.”

  • By the 1830s, sectionalism was becoming more obvious, especially over the issue of tariffs

  • Northern states favored tariffs because they profited when people bought more American-made goods

  • Southern states opposed tariffs because they made goods more expensive and led to European tariffs on cotton

  • VP John Calhoun threatened that South Carolina would nullify (ignore) the “unfair” federal tax

  • The Nullification Crisis came to an end when Henry Clay introduced a lower tariff (compromise of 1833)

  • The third conflict of the Jackson presidency was his war against the Second Bank of the United States

  • Jackson vetoed the bank recharter, which would kill the Bank of the U.S. in 4 years