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Although he was a popular president among the people, Jackson was censured by Congress—a censure eventually repealed—for acts deemed contrary to the public interest.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.