Andrew Jackson – Presidency, Job & Accomplishments

Before being involved with politics, Andrew Jackson was a wealthy Tennessee lawyer. By 1812, he started to be more involved with politics when war started between the US and Great Britain called the War of 1812. Andrew Jackson purchased “The Hermitage” in 1804. During that, he owned nine slaves. As the years go by, Andrew Jackson had about more than 100 slaves in total through purchase and reproduction. Some of his well known slaves was a woman named Hannah and a man named Aaron. Hannah was about 10-12 years old and Aaron was about 6 when they both got purchased by Jackson. Hannah was served as a house servant for Rachel Jackson, Andrew Jackson's wife, while Aaron was a blacksmith, which was known to be a really important job in plantations. In 1820, they officially got married and had 10 children. “?When Andrew Jackson Jr. and his wife Sarah briefly moved to Mississippi in between 1858 and 1860, they entrusted care of The Hermitage to Hannah and Aaron.”.?

Andrew Jackson believed that slavery was the source of his wealth. ?He believed that his family’s survival was possible due to the profit from the crops worked by the slaves on a daily basis. ?Due to his popularity, people suggested Jackson to run for president. He disagreed due to him not being interested in politics. But then in 1824, he had rallied enough support to get a nomination. Andrew Jackson was known as part of the Democratic-Republican Party. But later was called the Democratic Party when he and Martin Van Buren founded it. Feller notes that in the 1828 election, John Quincy Adams put his support behind Henry Clay’s program but then later got backfired as Jackson and his publicists “mounted a cry to clean out the corruptionists and restore purity and economy in government.”. But in that election, Jackson did not have a campaign platform and the election was known as a “one-sided presidential campaign”.

In the 1828 Election, Jackson went up against John Quincy Adams. During the whole election, both Adams and Jackson went back and forth with each other convincing the citizens on how the other was not good to be president. For example, Feller noted that Adams called Jackson a “bloodthirsty character, a budding tyrant in the model of Caesar or Napoleon, whose election would spell the death of the republic.” while Jackson called Adams a “corruptionist, an aristocrat, and—ridiculously—a libertine.“. Due to the popularity Jackson had over Adams, Jackson won with 178 electoral votes to Adam’s 83 votes.

In the 1832 Election, the US introduced the national nominating convention which helps selecting a candidate to run for president. Jackson again did not have a campaign platform in this election. In the 1832 Election, Jackson went up against Henry Clay. The election was basically a recap of the 1828 Election, but Clay and Jackson had a feud deciding whether to keep or remove The Bank of the United States. But as the election of 1828, due to Jackson’s popularity, he won the election with 219 electoral votes to Clay’s 49 electoral votes.

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