Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson (1767 to 1845) was the seventh president of the United States, serving from 1829 to 1837, after a career as a frontier lawyer, a brief member of both houses of Congress, a Tennessee judge and a general in the Tennessee militia and the United States Army. His victories in the Creek War and at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815 made him a national hero, and his supporters formed the coalition that grew into the Democratic Party after the disputed election of 1824. As president he signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which displaced tens of thousands of Native Americans and led to the Trail of Tears, faced down the South Carolina nullification crisis, and vetoed the recharter of the Second Bank of the United States. He was also a wealthy planter who held hundreds of enslaved people. Historians remain polarized about him, and his standing in scholarly rankings of presidents has fallen since the late twentieth century.