Andrew Jackson's Presidency: Successes and Failures

Introduction

Andrew Jackson is lauded by many as one of the greatest generals and presidents in United States history, and vilified by others as one of the most damaging. The fact is that he had some incredible successes in his career that were accompanied by dramatic failures, at least in the minds of some. Jackson himself had so much self-confidence that he would never have acknowledged failure in any endeavor. During his time as a commanding general in the United States military, he achieved success at the Battle of New Orleans and met with serious controversy during the Florida campaign. During his presidency, he is associated with the historical failures of the Trail of Tears and cronyism, and the successes of the federal banking decision and the solidification of the two-party system.

Although he was a popular president among the people, Jackson was censured by Congress—a censure eventually repealed—for acts deemed contrary to the public interest. He had enemies who actively campaigned for his demise and loyal friends who formed part of his "kitchen cabinet." This paper discusses Andrew Jackson's negative and positive decisions, how they were shaped by his boyhood, and how they have continued to affect the country.

His Early Life

Many biographies of Jackson describe him as a self-made man who was able to turn a difficult childhood into one of the greatest American stories. His parents were Scotch-Irish immigrants who settled in South Carolina, as were many of the people who populated the southern states at the time. Jackson's father died before he was born in a logging accident, and Jackson and his brothers were raised by their single mother—a very unusual circumstance at the time—until Jackson was ten, when they moved in with his aunt.

He began his long career in the military very young, working as a courier for the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War at the age of thirteen. Jackson was particularly well-suited to military life; having grown up with a strong mother and two older brothers, he had been prepared from an early age for the deprivations and discipline military service required. A character trait that would follow him because of this service was an extreme hatred of the British. He was captured by the British near the end of the war and taken to an infamous prison hulk near Norfolk, Virginia. A British officer ordered him to clean the officer's boots, and he refused. The officer struck him, leaving him with only partial hearing in his left ear and a lifelong animosity toward anything British.

After the war, there was little work for a soldier, so Jackson "read" for the law and became a barrister. His constant need for adventure, however, saw him moving west—which at that time consisted of lands just beyond the Appalachian Mountains—after he was admitted to the bar. At this point in his life he was described as "the most roaring, rollicking, game-cocking, horse-racing, card-playing, mischievous fellow that ever lived." The description of Jackson as a "hard liver" would endear him to some and make an anathema of him to others. The stories that grew up around him—mostly events that actually happened but were embellished during and after his life—were legendary before he even became president, owing to the manner in which he conducted himself throughout his career.

He was always a person who believed in struggling for what he wanted and would pursue whatever he thought was right, or to his best advantage, until he accomplished it. This can be said of his early soldiering, his time in Congress as a Representative and Senator from Tennessee, and even in his marital relations. Even though he knew that having lived with a married woman would haunt him, he did not take the precautions that someone else with his aspirations might have. His enemies—such as Henry Clay and William H. Crawford, who served as his Secretary of War for a period and as an antagonist within the administration—used these qualities to try to destroy him. Others, however, who considered themselves his "cronies," and the public in general, always believed that his antics made him a strong and popular leader. His early life set the stage for who he was to become and the decisions, good and bad, that he was to make as both a popular president and an even more popular war hero.

Andrew Jackson served as a senator and representative from Tennessee—one of the colorful early characters, alongside figures such as Davy Crockett, who represented that state—but he found the job dull and distasteful. He did not have the power he craved, and he was not able to influence people the way he could in his adopted state. Ratner states that "early in his life, he had a taste of politics when he served briefly as a congressman and then as Tennessee's first United States senator, but the political game gave him no more pleasure than he derived from being a lawyer or a judge." This dissatisfaction with his current role was something that plagued him throughout his life. Later, during his presidency, many believed that he was bored with the trappings of the office, and that this boredom shaped some of his decisions. It seemed easier, by his own admission, to delegate decisions to another person than to sit through diplomatic meetings of state and then render a judgment himself. Although he had the authority, both as a commanding general and as president, to make policy, he often allowed policy to be made by other men.

Jackson the Soldier

Two events framed the legacy of Andrew Jackson's life as a soldier—one positive, the other negative. Jackson was famously involved in the last major battle of the War of 1812, known as the Battle of New Orleans. After that war, he was involved in many other skirmishes and campaigns as a commanding general in the U.S. Army, but he is perhaps most infamous for his handling of the unauthorized conquest of Florida. These two episodes cast Jackson as a hero to his admirers and as a villain to his detractors.

It can easily be said that the War of 1812 would have been little more than a footnote in history texts without the actions—unnecessary because of the slow methods of communication available in 1814—taken by Major General Jackson and his riflemen. Jackson was focused on deliberate confrontation with the British because of a slight he had suffered thirty years before. His ability to remember and hold grudges was legendary among those who knew him, and the demeaning order and the blow he had received had never been forgotten. The General wrote to his wife, "I owe to Britain a debt of retaliatory vengeance; should our forces meet I trust I shall pay the debt." It could be said that he sought a fight against the British to avenge this personal wrong, but it can equally be said that Jackson was deeply loved and trusted by his men. He was an incredible leader in that he could engender the deepest feelings of loyalty in anyone who served under him—a trait that followed him throughout his life.

General Jackson was an astute tactician, and he was also aided by excellent intelligence gathered from spies who monitored every British movement. The American Navy fought largely on the defensive against the larger British fleet, but the heavy frigates employed by the Americans were able to create enough disruption to aid ground forces throughout the region. Jackson learned, through this network of ships and spies, that a British force of ten thousand soldiers was leaving Jamaica and planning to disembark at New Orleans. From this information, Jackson understood that he would be severely outnumbered—his forces numbered just over two thousand trained troops—and he had little hope of reinforcement from the city itself. Placed in command of New Orleans's defenses, he had to devise a plan that would allow his small force to turn back the far larger British army.

Remini writes that "from today's perspective, the battle looks tactical and almost feeble: a few thousand American troops defending a barricade behind a ditch along the Mississippi River south of New Orleans, with a weak and unprotected flank guard across the river." The plan was to bottle up the British forces advancing on the Americans. New Orleans was a crucial position for Jackson to hold because it was a gateway to the Mississippi River and the interior of the United States. With British troops pressing from the front and threatening from behind, it would have been extremely difficult for the fledgling nation to withstand the assault. Everything depended on Jackson's ability to lead his men in securing New Orleans and preventing any further British advance.

The waterway leading into New Orleans was notoriously difficult to navigate, and only pilots with many years of experience could guide boats to the precise channel needed to reach the city. This natural confusion benefited Jackson, as it gave him time to plan and prepare the battlefield. He realized that his force could not survive a frontal assault against such a large, hardened enemy, so he adopted techniques he had learned from American Indians throughout his life. By consulting city leaders, he located a narrow neck of land that led to the city and had his soldiers position large bales of cotton between the river and a deep channel that bordered the passage. The Americans were aided by poor weather and the incompetence of the leading British general, but it was also the brilliant leadership of General Jackson that empowered his troops to repulse the British advance. Because of this victory, Jackson believed he had been given broad latitude by the army, and he drew on that confidence in his next endeavor—which would prove to be a public relations disaster.

Andrew Jackson was a great leader of men and exhibited personal bravery and even heroism, but he also possessed a very large ego and a deep need to be admired by the public. In 1815, he was treated as a hero, and the accolades from the public and the government were well deserved. Yet Jackson was a personality that required action and attention. Shortly after he returned to his troops, rumors began to spread of unrest in Spanish Florida involving the Seminole Indians. This tribe—actually rather peaceful and well governed—would become the launching point of General Jackson's next controversial campaign.

Jackson was dissatisfied with the directions he had been given by politicians in Washington regarding the advisability of entering Florida and suppressing what he characterized as a threat to citizens in the southern United States. Jackson claimed it was his duty to enter Florida and assist the absent Spanish government in maintaining peace for its people, but many in the government opposed his plan. As one account notes, "in the autumn, Jackson finally received the orders he had long awaited. Along the Gulf of Mexico lay the disputed territory of West Florida. The Americans claimed it was theirs under the terms of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803." General Jackson understood that his orders were to secure only those possessions that America disputed as its own, but he went further, believing that the entire peninsula was rightfully part of the United States.

"Once in charge he acted decisively, aggressively, and always, in his mind, honorably. In the eyes of some of his contemporaries, but not his own or his friends', he also often acted unwisely, such as in seizing Pensacola, in Spanish Florida." Jackson also used the order to pursue his broader ambitions of American expansion. He not only seized the Spanish town of Pensacola but risked outright war with a foreign power by marching further into Florida, using the Seminole threat as his justification. He ultimately marched to the southern tip of Florida and claimed the whole territory as part of the United States. Without proper orders, and risking war with Spain so soon after the conclusion of the war with Britain, Jackson was vilified by most, ordered to appear before Congress, and found very few supporters at the time.

Conclusion

Although Jackson was a successful president by virtue of his popularity and his ability to accomplish some much-needed changes for the average person, he had serious and recurring conflicts with Congress, and the end results of his decisions were not always positive. He nearly caused an international incident with Spain as a general, and he was directly responsible for the displacement of thousands of American Indians and the deaths of many along the Trail of Tears. That he remains a popular historical figure to this day can probably be explained by the fact that he was the first self-made, people's president. His popularity has endured through the years because of his extraordinary ability to lead and to inspire loyalty in those around him.