       During his lifetime, Andrew Jackson was overall considered a hero by the general public of America. Jackson came into the public during his military career, most prominently in 1815 after the Battle of New Orleans where he became known as a national hero for his perseverance in the battle against the British. He even was nicknamed “Old Hickory” because he was "as tough as old hickory wood" on the battlefield (Andrew Jackson Biography). This national view of Jackson as a hero was a key factor in getting him elected as president in 1829. Although Jackson may have been viewed as a hero during his time of life, throughout the years, after evaluation of his actions as a president, there is evidence to prove that his actions were not those of a hero, but of a tyrant. A tyrant is, by definition, “someone who uses power in a cruel and unfair way” (Tyrant), typically a ruler. Jackson, as a president, fits these qualifications. Though some of his actions, during his presidency, may have seemed honest and ethical, the effects over time have been harmful to our country. Jackson’s moral character as a whole could be questioned when analyzed through the scope of C.E. Johnson’s list of moral leadership qualities from “Meeting the ethical challenges of leadership; Casting light or shadow” (Traxler and Covrig). At times, he may have even believed that his decisions were for the prosperity of our nation, but as years passed it is obvious that the decisions did not enhance life or government for all of the citizens of America. Take for instance the role Jackson played in the spoils system, the removal of Indians, and the Bank of the United States. In the decisions Jackson made in each of these instances, he believed his judgement was the best for all, but in the aftermath of these events, each have been assessed as negative incidents in the history of the United States. 

Jackson was voted into office largely in part due to his favorability among the common American citizen. He was known as the people’s president. Jackson’s popularity among the American public was due in part to his humble, impoverished roots and his strong belief in individual liberty. When Jackson was fourteen, he was orphaned and from then on raised by his uncles. Under the care of his uncles, Jackson was able to attend law school and accumulate a successful living from his profits. He helped to create the Tennessee constitution and also served as Tennessee’s first representative in the House of Representatives. In 1802, Jackson became a major general in the Tennessee militia. The defining moment that brought Jackson into noteable fame was the role he played in the victory during the Battle of New Orleans. The American army and Jackson were the prominent underdogs in the battle, however Jackson was able to overcome the British with only 5,000 soldiers. It was during these days as a strong, dependent general that Jackson earned the name “Old Hickory” for being “as tough as old hickory wood”. Jackson’s many military triumphs turned him into a well-known political figure which led to him being nominated for president in the 1824 United States election. Despite winning the popular vote of the American people, Jackson lost the election to John Quincy Adams after the election came down to the House of Representatives to decide. When Adams went on to appoint those in the House of representatives to high office positions, Jackson first hand got to witness what some consider to be a corruption in our governmental system. This action is thought to be the main motivator for Jackson to create the Democratic party, which was supposed to be a party that focused on voicing the concerns on the individual American. Through his promises of bringing about change and political fairness, Jackson got elected into office. Until this point, he was considered an absolute hero in the people’s eyes. His favorability got him elected in many ways, however over time it can be analyzed that some of the things he did after he got into office are not that popular among the people. (Andrew Jackson Biography).        

        In an attempt for Andrew Jackson to “drain the swamp” and rid the government of its so-called corrupt leaders, Jackson did just what he critiqued Adams for doing. Jackson appointed many of his own men into high positions. Jackson didn’t purposely begin the spoils system, or the practice of a president to place his own appointees into official government positions, however he was the precedent for this process. As a president, Jackson began what he would call “rotation in office”, where he would remove officials in high ranking positions. He excused this practice by claiming “to be purging the corruption, laxity, and arrogance that came with long tenure, and restoring the opportunity for government service to the citizenry at large”(American President: Andrew Jackson: Domestic Affairs). However, in actuality he used the spoils system as a dirty way to gain more support for himself in government. In Jackson’s first term he removed about ten to twenty percent of his office out of 11,000 officials. That’s forty-five percent more officials removed then all of the officials removed by his predecessors (Yoo). Jackson wanted an administration that fully supported him and his decisions, yet to achieve this he “ruined a relatively honest and official bureaucracy” (Yoo). Jackson especially used the spoils system to his advantage in his second term as president. John C. Calhoun was Jackson’s vice president during his second term. “Calhoun had criticized him in Monroe's cabinet while publicly posturing as his defender,” (American President: Andrew Jackson: Domestic Affairs) and began to stir up other kinds of trouble in the form of rumors. In return, Jackson accused Calhoun of treachery, but could not remove his own vice president from office for betraying him. Instead Jackson removed all the cabinet members that supported Calhoun, and because of the spoils system Jackson was not forced to justify his removals (Yoo). But not only does the spoils system give a president a dangerous political weapon, but the easy removal and addition of government officials can also backfire severely. For example, while Jackson was in office he appointed “an old army comrade and political sycophant named Samuel Swartwout” as “collector of the New York City customhouse” (American President: Andrew Jackson: Domestic Affairs). Swartwout had new power in his new high position, and abused his power by embezzling over $1 million. This is the perfect example of how negative the spoils system can become. Because of this precedent Jackson set, presidents have the easy authority to replace government officials and over the years the spoils system has proved to be a corrupt system.

 

        At the end of Jackson’s First Annual Message to Congress, Jackson shared his displeasement with the current Bank of the United States, and even said, “it has failed in the great end of establishing a uniform and sound currency” (Yoo). The legislation that created the first bank, before the current bank, had expired just before the War of 1812, in 1811. Due to this, a large problem during the War of 1812 was the issue of trying to finance a war without a national bank. Legislation learned its lesson and built the Second Bank of the United States under the presidential rule of Madison in 1816. However, the Second Bank was not designed the best and many blame the bank as the primary cause for the Panic of 1819. “After the Panic, Jackson remained hostile to the Second Bank because he believed it concentrated economic and political power in the few hands that dictated legislation, handed out patronage, guided elections, and influenced government operations” (Yoo).  However, by the time Jackson was in office the bank had actually stabilized and had become “a powerful aid to the striking economic expansion of the 1820s and 1830s” (Yoo). Jackson was too blinded by his previous opinions that the bank was unconstitutional to see the positive influence that the current bank had on the American economy. This blindness caused Jackson to commit one of the most controversial actions of his presidency. In 1832, some Senators sought a congressional recharter for the bank. Because they were aware of his feelings on the touchy bank subject, they issued the congressional recharter bill on the eve of Jackson’s election for his second presidential term. Surprising many, Jackson issued a veto for the new recharter bill anyway (American President: Andrew Jackson: Domestic Affairs). By doing this Jackson demonstrated a declaration of independence from the other branches of government, such as Congress, that had supported the Bank and the new bill. Therefore exhibiting a personal belief of Jackson’s that the president was above any other form of government and should use the presidential authority as a means to do what he believes is right, even if he is the minority in that belief (Yoo).

 

        The spoils system and the bank veto are minor controversial topics when compared to Jackson’s largest fault as president. Throughout the 1820s and 1830s, Georgia had led a crusade to remove the Cherokee Indians from their lands. Georgia, like most of the country, was continuing to grow and prosper and expand. The majority of Georgians believed that these expansions should be into the Indian inhabited lands. The state created laws that “annexed the Cherokee lands; abolished their government, courts, and laws; and established a process for seizing Cherokee land and distributing it to the state's white citizens” (Garrison). The Cherokees responded by taking their quarrel to the US Supreme court in the case Cherokee Nation vs Georgia, where the Cherokee nation challenged the constitutionality of the Georgia laws against their people who are citizens of the US. The Cherokees lost however, and the US Supreme Court ruled that it did not have the jurisdiction to contradict Georgia’s laws and that the Cherokees were to be considered “a domestic, dependent nation that existed under the guardianship of the United States” (Garrison). Jackson did not despise the Indians or hate them in any way, he was always very friendly with the native people and even had taken home a Creek Indian orphan to be a companion for his adopted son. But it was always very clear that Jackson held the opinion that the Indian civilization was of much less value than that of the white (American President: Andrew Jackson: Domestic Affairs). Because of his beliefs, when it came to the different situations of disputes between different Indian nations and the states, Jackson always sided with the states. As the animosity grew between the Indian nations and the states, it became obvious to Jackson that some sort of effort must be made to calm the tensions and solve the disputes. Finally, Jackson stated that “if the Indians wished to maintain their tribal government and land ownership, they must remove beyond the existing states” (American President: Andrew Jackson: Domestic Affairs). To facilitate the removal of the Indians, in 1830, Jackson passed the Indian Removal Act (Wallace). The Indian Removal Act was “a bill empowering him to lay off new Indian homelands west of the Mississippi, exchange them for current tribal holdings, purchase the Indians' capital improvements, and pay the costs of their westward transportation” (American President: Andrew Jackson: Domestic Affairs). After the bill was passed, the long progression of Native American Nations along the Trail of Tears to the new territories in the West began. The long dangerous journey along the Trail of Tears ended up killing between 2,000 and 6,000 people. The execution of the Indian Removal Act was extremely poor and led to tons of deaths, which Jackson promptly ignored. “It is abundantly clear that Jackson and his administration were deter­mined to permit the extension of state sovereignty because it would result in the harassment of Indians, powerless to resist, by speculators and intruders hun­gry for Indian land” (Wallace). This situation was undoubtedly the biggest mistake of his political career, and although Jackson thought he was making the best choice for the American citizens as a whole during that time, the removal was a cruel decision that murdered thousands.

In many ways Jackson can be considered a tyrant just by analyzing his actions. However, to truly decide whether or not he was a just leader, one must analyze Jackson’s moral motivations. Analyzing one’s moral motivations is a much trickier thing to judge than one’s actions. There is no absolute way to ever determine a person’s thought process and it is also difficult to entirely determine what should be considered moral or not. In Brian Traxler and Duane M. Covrig’s “Moral Biography of Andrew Jackson”, these two authors attempt to defy the improbable and look at certain actions of the late president over time to determine whether Jackson demonstrated strong moral leadership as a president. The two authors’ used C.E. Johnson’s list of moral qualities from his “Meeting the Ethical Challenges of Leadership: Casting Light or Shadow” to determine whether or not Jackson would measure up as a moral president. The moral list was composed of qualities such as, “courage, integrity, humility, reverence, optimism, compassion, justice, and prudence (Traxler and Covrig). According to the conclusion drawn by the authors, Jackson ranked far less moral than his reputation as a successful president would have suggested. He was described as self-willed and devoid of humility. Jackson would often partake in trivial duels to the death, which showed a willingness to kill opponents and therefore a lack in prudence. Overall his moral compass is strongly questioned when he failed in so many moral categories. 

 

        Although there are many great feats that were accomplished and made possible thanks to Jackson, the decisions Jackson made during his presidency demonstrated that over the years he has proved to be a tyrant. Jackson made poor decisions that were self-serving or beneficial to only a portion of the American population instead of the country as a whole. The spoils system, the bank situation, and the trail of tears are all examples of tyrannical actions that Jackson took as president that ended negatively. Jackson hurt many people and abused his power as president. Although some of the negative after-effects of his decisions were not intentional, he still caused much turmoil. Even by analyzing his inner most moral motivations, Jackson failed as a leader in many regards. So while some may call this past president a great man and a hero, time has truly shown the tyrant that was Andrew Jackson.
