Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson was born March 15, 1767, in Waxhaws region, South Carolina [U.S. died June 8, 1845, in his home, the Hermitage, near Nashville, Tennessee, U.S..
Jackson was leading an army of 2,071 volunteers On January 10, 1813, to New Orleans to defend the region against attacks by British and Native American. Lacking adequate provisions in New Orleans his final orders were to dismiss his forces. But instead he march them back to Nashville.
Jackson and his part of The army arrived in Nashville in about a month, and because of the soldiers referring to their commander as “Hickory”, because of his toughness, Jackson became known as “Old Hickory.”
Jackson’s supporters began to form the modern Democratic Party as he became president in 1830, His time as president was 8 years, ending in the end of 1837.
During the 19th century the democrats party supported or tolerated slavery, and it opposed civil rights reforms after the American Civil War in order to retain the support of Southern voters.
Jackson repeatedly called for the abolition of the Electoral College by constitutional amendment in his annual messages to Congress Jackson remains one of the most studied and controversial figures in American history. Historian Charles Grier Sellers says,
“Andrew Jackson’s masterful personality was enough by itself to make him one of the most controversial figures ever to stride across the American stage.”
While as president He had also seized two British subjects, Alexander Arbuth not and Robert Ambrister, and hanged them.
On the last day of his presidency, Jackson admitted that he had but two regrets, that he “had been unable to shoot Henry Clay or to hang John C. Calhoun for treason.”
Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams created the National Republican Party. Where as President Abraham Lincoln is noted for creating the Republican Party.
On his deathbed, he was once again quoted as regretting that he had not hanged Calhoun for treason. “My country would have sustained me in the act, and his fate would have been a warning to traitors in all time to come,” he said.
Notes on the Trail of Tears
The Cherokee, left without a choice, signed another treaty in 1835 giving up their land in exchange for land in the Indian Territory west of Arkansas.
Three years later, having been rounded up by General Winfield Scott, some 15,000 Cherokees were forced to wend their way westward, mostly on foot, on a journey that became known as the Trail of Tears. On the way, during the cold and wet of winter, nearly a quarter of them died of starvation, illness, and exposure.
The plight of the Cherokee was a consequence of the Jackson government’s policy toward the Native American peoples who lived east of the Mississippi (especially in the Southeast) on lands that were desired for white settlement.
The Indian Removal Act of 1830 authorized Jackson to grant these Indian tribes unsettled western prairie land in exchange for their homelands. When members of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes, including the Cherokees, refused to relocate, military coercion was employed to force compliance.
Even more reluctant to leave their Florida home were the Seminoles, who would resist resettlement in the Second Seminole War, 1835 1842.
Slavery
During the 19th century the Democrat Party supported or tolerated slavery, and it opposed civil rights reforms after the American Civil War in order to retain the support of Southern voters.
In the southern states slavery was a part of the economics, the economy of the South relied on slavery. The big crop was cotton, and for the land owners slave workers meat cheap labor. The care of the slaves was a cost, but profit was maintained by slaves.
The Plantation owners lived in luxury, which included mansions and maids, cooks, house cleaners, etc, whiles slaves lived in poor conditions and subject to cruel mistreatment.
The Civil War was a huge impact on the nation, 600,000 men died, it was between freedom and slavery. Freedom won, but slavery was necessary for cheap labor and was part of the economy in the south.
It took Abraham Lincoln in the civil war to end it and then another 100 years for results to start. George Washington the most highly acclaimed Founding Father free his slaves upon his death.
The new nation barely in existence at this time didn’t promote any negative resistance to the immoral practice, feeling It could be a potentially mortal threat to the unity of the nation and possibly provoking a split in the new republic.
When the US became a nation in 1787 slavery wasn’t sought to end, as the economy of the South relied on slavery, and that was to much to tackle for a new nation.
Ben Franklin returned to America in his late seventies, serving as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention Writing an anti-slavery treatise in 1789 was One of his last public acts.
Thomas Jefferson privately struggled with the difficulty of slavery and freedom in this new nation where freedom is it’s highest attribute.
It took Abraham Lincoln in the civil war to end it and then another 100 years before it was finally brought to and end in the south by Martin Luther King.
During the 1840s and ’50s, however, the Democratic Party, as it officially named itself in 1844, suffered serious internal strains over the issue of extending slavery to the Western territories.
Southern Democrats, led by Jefferson Davis, wanted to allow slavery in all the territories.