| Notes |
- Andrew Jackson, Jr. was a general at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, the first governor of Florida in 1821, co-founder of the Democratic party and the 7th president of the United States, serving two terms from 1829 to 1837, and a Justice of the Tennessee Superior Court.
He was the first president to ride on a railroad train, the first to be born in a log cabin and the first president to be nominated by a political party. He survived the first attempt to assassinate a president and is known historically for creating a strong executive branch.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/aj7.html
He was born in poverty in the Carolina backwoods in 1767. His father died before he was born and his mother died when he was 14 while nursing Revolutionary War wounded. At age 13, while serving in the army, he was captured by the British. The British officer in charge ordered Jackson to clean his boots. Jackson refused; the officer struck him with his sword, leaving Jackson's face and hand permanently scarred.
Andrew received sporadic education, but in his late teens he read law for about two years and he became an outstanding young lawyer in Tennessee. He served in the state militia where he rose to general and was notorious for fighting the Indians. He was fiercely jealous of his honor and engaged in brawls. He killed a man in a duel for and unjustified slur on his wife Rachel. He married after she thought she divorced Lewis Robards, but the divorce wasn't finalized due to a legal error, which fueled his critics' antagonism, labeling him an adulterer, hangman and murderer.
Jackson prospered sufficiently to buy slaves and to build a mansion, the Hermitage, near Nashville. He was the first man elected from Tennessee to the House of Representatives, and he served briefly in the Senate. A major general in the War of 1812, Jackson became a national hero when he defeated the British at New Orleans.
In 1828 he endured a very divisive campaign and was elected to serve as the seventh president of the United States. His beloved wife Rachel died within a month of his election to president. Perhaps the stresses of the vicious campaign and the pressures of the move to Washington precipitated her death. Jackson never got over her death and believed his enemies had caused it. Once he took office he attempted to get even with them. He built the shrine to her in her beloved garden at The Hermitage and surrounded it with weeping willows.
In January of 1832, while the President was dining with friends at the White House, someone whispered to him that the Senate had rejected the nomination of Martin Van Buren as Minister to England. Jackson jumped to his feet and exclaimed, "By the Eternal! I'll smash them!" So he did. His favorite, Van Buren, became Vice President, and succeeded to the Presidency when "Old Hickory" retired to the Hermitage, where he died in June 1845.
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1767 - 1845 (78 years)
