Andrew Jackson was born on March 15, 1767, in the Waxhaws region on the border of North and South Carolina. Jackson himself maintained he was from South Carolina. The son of Irish immigrants, Jackson received little formal schooling. The British invaded the Carolinas in 1780-1781, and Jackson’s mother and two brothers died during the fight, leaving him with a lifelong anger toward Great Britain. He soon moved west of the Appalachians to the region that would soon become the state of Tennessee, and began working as a prosecuting lawyer in Nashville. He later set up his own private practice and met and married Rachel Donelson Robards. Jackson grew prosperous enough to build a mansion, the Hermitage, near Nashville, and to buy slaves. In 1796, …show more content…
At first he professed no interest in the office, but by 1824 his supporters had gathered enough support to get him a nomination as well as a seat in the U.S. Senate. Jackson won the popular vote, but for the first time in history no candidate received a majority of electoral votes. The House of Representatives was deciding between the three leading candidates, which were Jackson, Adams and William H. Crawford. Critically ill after a stroke, Crawford was out, and Speaker of the House Henry Clay threw his support behind Adams, who later made Clay his secretary of state. Jackson’s supporters argued against what they called the “corrupt bargain” between Clay and Adams, and Jackson himself left from the Senate. Andrew Jackson won four years later in an election. But, Jackson and his wife were accused of adultery on the basis that Rachel had not been legally divorced from her first husband when she married Jackson. After his victory in 1828, Rachel died at the Hermitage; Jackson believed this had rushed her death. The Jacksons did not have any children but were close to their nephews and nieces, and one niece, Emily Donelson, would serve as Jackson’s hostess in the White House. Jackson was the nation’s first frontier president, and his election marked a turning point in American politics, as the center of political power moved from East to West. “Old Hickory” was an undoubtedly strong personality, and his supporters and …show more content…
The Indian Removal policy of President Andrew Jackson was prompted by the desire of white settlers in the South to expand into lands belonging Indian tribes. After Jackson succeeded in pushing the Indian Removal Act through Congress in 1830, the U.S. government spent nearly 30 years forcing Indians to move westward, beyond the Mississippi River. In the most dishonorable example of this policy, more than 15,000 members of the Cherokee tribe were forced to walk from their homes in the southern states to designate Indian Territory in present day Oklahoma in 1838. This became known as the “Trail of Tears” because of the great suffering faced by Cherokees. In brutal conditions, nearly 4,000 Cherokees died on the Trail of Tears. Jackson called for, and the United States government implement, the removal of thousands of American Indians from the southeast in the 1830’s because the Indian Removal Act cleared people out of areas in the southeastern United States, so that it could be settled by white Americans. Andrew Jackson held a disrespectful attitude towards Native Americans ever since the Creek Wars and the War of 1812. The Cherokees in Georgia took steps in an attempt to avoid "removal" and hold onto their traditional lands. The Cherokee, whose ancestral tribal lands overlapped the boundaries of Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Alabama,