Andrew Jackson, the orphaned frontier brawler who wiped out America's national debt
In 1835 the United States owed nothing, the only time a president has ever cleared the national debt. The man in charge was Andrew Jackson, an orphan who carried a British officer's sword scars, fought duels, and built a presidency that historians still argue over bitterly.
His father died three weeks before he was born in March 1767, somewhere in the Waxhaws region straddling the two Carolinas; even the exact spot is uncertain. His parents were Scots-Irish Presbyterians who had left Ulster two years earlier. During the Revolutionary War, Andrew and his brother Robert were captured in 1781. When Andrew refused to polish a British officer's boots, the officer cut his hand and head with a sword. Both boys caught smallpox in captivity; Robert died soon after release, and their mother died nursing prisoners, leaving Andrew alone at 14.
He trained as a lawyer, moved to Nashville in 1788, and prospered through land speculation and slave trading. After the Panic of 1796 to 1797 nearly bankrupted him, he rebuilt on a plantation he named the Hermitage, which grew into one of Tennessee's largest cotton estates. Across his life he owned some 300 enslaved people. His temper was notorious: a feud with John Sevier ended in a street shootout.
Military fame came through the Creek War, where a treaty stripped the Creek of vast lands in Alabama and Georgia, and through victory over the British at New Orleans in 1815. He topped the popular and electoral vote in 1824 yet lost when the House chose John Quincy Adams, a result his backers called a corrupt bargain. Their anger built the Democratic Party, and he beat Adams easily in 1828.
As president he signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which drove tens of thousands of Native Americans from their homelands and led to thousands of deaths on the Trail of Tears. He faced down South Carolina over tariffs and killed the Second Bank of the United States. Historians once ranked him near the top of presidents; his standing has fallen sharply this century.
Source: Andrew Jackson
