Andrew Jackson Legacy Essay

Honorable and infamous, courageous and alarmed, trustworthy and treasonous – one could claim that President Andrew Jackson fills the bill of each category. President Jackson’s legacy is one that is continuously being rewritten and reformed. Andrew Jackson, the man who set forth plans that would normally send men wallowing in fear, became a war hero during the War of 1812, destroyed the Second Bank of the United States, eliminated the national debt, and conquered and triumphed over the Supreme Court. In a sense a man larger than life, Jackson paved the way for the many liberties that we take for granted today. From nullification to Indian Removal, Andrew Jackson is a man who is cautiously studied. From his early childhood years to the deathbed,
A man of enormous energy, vigor, and ambition, he was the first president who was born into poverty to rise to the height of national political power. During his two-term presidency, Jackson triumphed over Congress, defied the Supreme Court, and conquered the age as if few politicians ever have before or since his presidency. In many respects, President Jackson’s personal power and vitality simply reflected an increasingly self-confident United States that was rapidly growing in demographic, geographic, and economic terms. Our seventh president, Andrew Jackson, is a hero and a villain, a beloved leader and an American dictator, a democratic autocrat, an urban savage, and an atrocious
William Weatherford later called Chief Red Eagle, by the natives, followed Tecumseh into the Battle of Fort Mims. On August 30, 1813, Tecumseh and Red Eagle led a charge of Red Sticks into Fort Mims. Once inside, the Red Sticks systematically slaughtered whoever lay in their way. Infants grabbed by their ankles and thrown against the cold, hard earth; women were shot, stabbed, speared, and gutted. This was a terrorist attack of its time, a massacre of whites. Equally, this sparked the beginnings of a tribal Civil War among the Red Stick people. Jackson, immediately, received new orders, to lead his men to Fort Mims and dismantle the Red