Andrew Jackson (15 March 1767 - 8 June 1845) was the seventh President of the United States, serving two terms from 1829 to 1837. Born on the Scots-Irish frontier settlement straddling the border of North and South Carolina, he rose from poverty and orphanhood to become a lawyer, military general, land speculator, and national hero before entering politics. His presidency marked a significant shift in American political culture, democratizing participation among white male voters while simultaneously concentrating executive power and pursuing policies - most notably Indian removal - that remain subjects of sustained historical and ethical debate. The political movement associated with his name, Jacksonian democracy, shaped the Democratic Party and American populism for generations.

Jackson was orphaned during the Revolutionary War, in which he served as a courier at age thirteen. He later read law in North Carolina, was admitted to the bar in 1787, and relocated to the frontier settlement that would become Nashville, Tennessee. He served as a delegate to the Tennessee constitutional convention, as a U.S. Representative, and briefly as a U.S. Senator before his national profile was established primarily through military command. His defeat of British forces at the Battle of New Orleans on 8 January 1815 - fought two weeks after the Treaty of Ghent had ended the War of 1812 but before news reached North America - made him a national celebrity. He ran for president in 1824, won a plurality of both the popular and electoral vote, but lost the election in the House of Representatives to John Quincy Adams, a result Jackson's supporters called the Corrupt Bargain. He won decisively in 1828 and again in 1832.

Jackson's two terms were defined by several major conflicts and actions: the spoils system and rotation in office as an explicit policy; the Nullification Crisis of 1832-1833, in which South Carolina claimed the right to void federal tariff law and Jackson threatened military force in response; the Bank War and his veto of the recharter of the Second Bank of the United States in 1832; the forced relocation of southeastern Native American nations under the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and its implementation, including the Trail of Tears; and the assertion of broad executive prerogative in conflicts with Congress and the judiciary. In January 1835, Jackson survived the first assassination attempt on a sitting U.S. president, when a gunman's two pistols both misfired at close range. His presidency is sometimes credited with the consolidation of executive power and sometimes with the expansion of participatory democracy. These interpretations are in tension and remain contested. See the debate page.

The Indian Removal Act of 1830 authorized the federal government to negotiate treaties exchanging Native American lands east of the Mississippi River for lands to the west. Implementation resulted in the forced displacement of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole nations - known collectively at the time as the Five Civilized Tribes, a term now considered dated - under conditions of hardship that caused substantial mortality, particularly during the Cherokee removal of 1838-1839. Jackson supported removal publicly as protective of Native peoples from state jurisdiction; critics then and now have characterized it as ethnic cleansing or genocide, though the applicability of those terms remains disputed among historians. The Supreme Court ruled in Worcester v. Georgia (1832) that Georgia had no jurisdiction over Cherokee lands; Jackson's administration declined to enforce the ruling. See the debate page.

Jackson's historical reputation has shifted considerably across different eras of American historiography. He was broadly lionized through much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a symbol of democratic populism and national resolve. Revisionist scholarship beginning in the mid-twentieth century emphasized the violence and injustice of Indian removal. Contemporary debate includes disputes about whether he should remain on the twenty-dollar bill, whether his populism is a useful or dangerous model for modern politics, and how his legacy should be weighted against the full scope of his career. See the defender viewpoint. See the critic viewpoint.

There is broad historical consensus that Indian removal caused severe suffering and death among displaced Native populations, and that Jackson exercised executive power in ways that expanded presidential authority beyond prior norms. Scholarly opinion is divided on how to weigh these facts against his other political contributions and on questions of moral culpability, intent, and historical context.

• The Defender Viewpoint - Jackson as a consequential democratic leader whose populism, national vision, and defense of federal supremacy over nullification outweigh or contextualize his other actions.
• The Critic Viewpoint - Jackson as a figure whose policies toward Native Americans constitute a moral atrocity that cannot be adequately offset by other political accomplishments.
• The Revisionist Viewpoint - Examinations of Jackson that emphasize class, race, and power structures as explanatory frameworks for his rise and governance.
• The Populist Model Viewpoint - Arguments about whether Jacksonian democracy offers a legitimate template for anti-establishment politics in the modern era.

• Andrew Jackson - History
• Andrew Jackson - Debate
• Andrew Jackson - Indian Removal Debate
• Andrew Jackson - Historical Consensus
• Jacksonian Democracy
• Indian Removal Act
• Trail of Tears
• Bank War
• Nullification Crisis
• United States of America - History

1. Remini, Robert V. Andrew Jackson: The Course of American Empire, 1767-1821. Harper & Row, 1977.
2. Remini, Robert V. Andrew Jackson: The Course of American Freedom, 1822-1832. Harper & Row, 1981.
3. Remini, Robert V. Andrew Jackson: The Course of American Democracy, 1833-1845. Harper & Row, 1984.
4. Howe, Daniel Walker. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848. Oxford University Press, 2007.
5. Wallace, Anthony F.C. The Long, Bitter Trail: Andrew Jackson and the Indians. Hill and Wang, 1993.
6. Meacham, Jon. American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House. Random House, 2008.
7. Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515 (1832).