Andrew Jackson: the hero of New Orleans

Jackson's war record runs from the American Revolution, in which he was captured as a teenage courier, through the Creek War of 1813 and 1814, in which he fought the Red Sticks at Talladega, Emuckfau Creek and Horseshoe Bend, to the War of 1812, whose last major battle he won at New Orleans.²

What was Andrew Jackson famous for?

Jackson was famous first as the general who defeated a larger British army at New Orleans on 8 January 1815, a victory that made him a national hero. He then became the seventh president, a founder of the Democratic Party and the president who signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830.³

From the Waxhaws to Nashville

Jackson was born on 15 March 1767 in the Waxhaws settlement on the border between North and South Carolina; his father had died shortly before his birth. Both of his older brothers died as a result of the Revolutionary War. In 1781 Andrew was captured by the British, and when he refused to clean an officer's boots, the officer slashed him with a sword. He and his brother Robert caught smallpox as prisoners, and Robert died. Later that year their mother died of cholera while nursing the sick in Charleston, leaving Andrew an orphan at 14.⁴

He studied law in Salisbury, North Carolina, was admitted to the bar in 1787 and in 1788 moved to Nashville as a public prosecutor. There he met Rachel Donelson Robards, whom he formally married in January 1794 after her divorce. In 1796 he sat in Tennessee's constitutional convention and became the new state's first congressman; a year later he went to the US Senate, which he left to become a judge of the state superior court. In 1802 he was elected major general of the Tennessee militia, and in 1804 he bought the Hermitage farm near Nashville, his home for the rest of his life.⁵

What did Andrew Jackson do in the Creek War?

After Red Stick Creeks attacked Fort Mims in August 1813, Jackson led Tennessee troops into Creek country. He fought the Red Sticks at Talladega in November 1813 and at Emuckfau and Enotachopco Creeks in January 1814, then crushed them at Horseshoe Bend on 27 March 1814 and imposed the Treaty of Fort Jackson that August.⁶

At Horseshoe Bend, on the Tallapoosa River in present-day Alabama, Jackson's Cherokee and Creek allies crossed the river and attacked the Red Stick village from the rear while his infantry stormed the log barricade across the neck of the bend. At least 800 Red Stick warriors were killed. The treaty took a land cession that the National Park Service puts at 23 million acres and the Tennessee Encyclopedia at 22 million.⁷

The war years also gave Jackson his nickname. In the winter of 1812 to 1813 his Tennessee volunteers were ordered dismissed at Natchez, far from home; Jackson refused to abandon them and marched them back to Tennessee, sharing their hardships, and the march earned him the name "Old Hickory." The American Battlefield Trust instead dates the nickname to after New Orleans. Among the Tennessee volunteers of the Creek War was the young Davy Crockett.⁸

How did Andrew Jackson win the Battle of New Orleans?

Made a major general in the regular army in 1814, Jackson reached New Orleans in early December and gathered regulars, militia, free men of color, Choctaw warriors and Jean Lafitte's privateers behind an earthwork below the city. On 8 January 1815 a larger British army attacked across open ground and was beaten off in about 30 minutes.⁹

The British commander, Sir Edward Pakenham, was mortally wounded. The American Battlefield Trust puts the casualties of 8 January at 71 Americans and 2,034 British; the National Park Service's history of the battle cites a British report of nearly 2,000 killed, wounded and missing, against 7 killed and 6 wounded behind Jackson's main line. Neither army knew that a peace treaty had been signed at Ghent on 24 December 1814.¹⁰

Jackson's rule in the city drew criticism: he proclaimed martial law and defied a federal judge. The victory nonetheless made him a national hero.¹¹

How did Andrew Jackson become president?

New Orleans made Jackson a presidential contender. In 1824 he won the most popular and electoral votes but no majority, and the House of Representatives chose John Quincy Adams, who then made Henry Clay secretary of state. Jackson denounced a "corrupt bargain" and in 1828 beat Adams, campaigning as a man of the people.¹²

Before that, in 1818, he pursued the Seminoles into Spanish Florida and executed two British subjects accused of arming them, setting off an international crisis that ended when Spain ceded Florida in 1819. He served briefly as territorial governor and from 1823 to 1825 as a senator from Tennessee. Rachel died after the 1828 election, before he left for Washington, and he blamed the campaign's attacks on her.¹³

What did Andrew Jackson do as president?

Jackson served two terms, from 1829 to 1837. He replaced many federal officials with his own supporters, vetoed the recharter of the Second Bank of the United States in 1832, faced down South Carolina in the Nullification Crisis of 1832 and 1833, and in 1830 signed the Indian Removal Act, which forced Native nations west.¹⁴

In December 1832 he issued a proclamation declaring the Union indivisible, and a lower tariff passed in 1833 ended the crisis. His opponents united in the Whig Party, and in 1836 his vice president, Martin Van Buren, was elected to succeed him. Harold D. Moser, an editor of The Papers of Andrew Jackson, writes that "in all estimates, he was one of the strongest presidents, as well as one of the most controversial."¹⁵

What was Andrew Jackson's role in the Trail of Tears?

Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act on 28 May 1830, and his administration pressed the Native nations of the Southeast into removal treaties. The Cherokee were forced west in 1838 and 1839, after he left office, under a treaty his government had concluded in 1835; that journey became known as the Trail of Tears.¹⁶

The act passed the Senate by 28 votes to 19 and the House by 102 to 97, according to the Library of Congress (the National Park Service gives 101 to 97). It authorized the president to exchange land west of the Mississippi for Native lands within the existing states. In December 1830 Jackson told Congress that "the benevolent policy of the Government" of removal "is approaching to a happy consummation." When the Supreme Court ruled in Worcester v. Georgia (1832) that Georgia law had no force in the Cherokee Nation, Jackson backed Georgia.¹⁷

By the end of his presidency, according to the National Archives and the American Battlefield Trust, his administration had negotiated almost 70 removal treaties and relocated nearly 50,000 people to Indian Territory, in present-day Oklahoma. The Cherokee were bound by the Treaty of New Echota, signed in late 1835 by a small faction of the nation and ratified by the Senate in 1836 over the opposition of most Cherokee.¹⁸

How many people died on the Trail of Tears?

Estimates vary. The Library of Congress, the National Archives and the American Battlefield Trust put the Cherokee dead at about 4,000 of some 16,000 people forced west. The National Park Service counts more than a thousand deaths on the journey itself and perhaps several thousand more from its consequences.¹⁹

Army troops under General Winfield Scott, with state militia, forced the Cherokee from their homes in Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama in 1838. Most traveled west in the fall and winter of 1838 and 1839, some walking as many as 1,000 miles over four months.²⁰

How did Andrew Jackson die?

Jackson died at the Hermitage, his cotton plantation near Nashville, on 8 June 1845, at the age of 78. He had retired there after leaving the presidency in 1837 and spent his last years advising politicians and running the plantation. He was buried in the Hermitage garden.²¹

The Hermitage rested on enslaved labor, and Jackson was a slaveholder for most of his life. The Hermitage counts 95 people enslaved by Jackson when he was elected president in 1828 and about 150 at his death; the Tennessee Encyclopedia gives about 100 at his inauguration and nearly 150 in 1845.²²

Memory and legacy

Since the late 1880s the Hermitage has been a public site, run by the Ladies' Hermitage Association, now the Andrew Jackson Foundation. The New Orleans battlefield is preserved as Chalmette Battlefield in Jean Lafitte National Historical Park, where 8 January was long celebrated as a national holiday, and Horseshoe Bend is a national military park in Alabama.²³

Judgments of him remain divided. To many contemporaries, Moser writes, Jackson was "second only to George Washington in service to the Republic," and he gave his name to an era, the Age of Jackson. The Papers of Andrew Jackson project notes that his rise "accelerated the dispossession of Native Americans and the expansion of slavery," and the Hermitage describes a complex legacy.²⁴

See the battle that made him at New Orleans, or meet the other great American commanders.