Andrew Jackson - Good Evil & The Presidency - PBS Documentary

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- [Martin] He learned to fight
in the Revolutionary War.

He used what he'd learned

to kill a man over a gambling debt.

He led the American Army

to the most surprising
victory in its history,

but he also launched an
unauthorized invasion of Florida.

He added vast regions of the
South to the United States,

but it was land he brutally
wrested from Native Americans.

He was the champion of
the common white man,

but he owned over 100 black Americans.

He was the founder of
the Democratic Party,

but his enemies accused him
of being an American Napoleon.

His name was Andrew Jackson.

- [Announcer] Andrew
Jackson is made possible by

a major grant

from The National Endowment
for the Humanities,

democracy demands wisdom,

by The Ahmanson Foundation,

committed to the creative pursuit

of quality education in the arts,

by The Corporation for
Public Broadcasting,

and by contributions to your PBS station

from viewers like you.

Thank you.

(piano music)

- [Martin] In 1859,

as America was rushing towards civil war,

James Parton,

the first historian

to attempt a biography of Andrew Jackson,

arrived at the Hermitage,
Jackson's beloved home.

He was escorted through the
mansion by Hannah Jackson,

who had been Andrew Jackson's slave

from the time she was
10 until Jackson died.

Parton knew that many Americans
considered Andrew Jackson

the country's greatest leader
since the Founding Fathers.

Parton wrote...

- [Parton] During the
last 30 years of his life,

he was the idle of the American people.

Columbus had sailed, Washington fought,

Jefferson written.

50 years of Democratic
government had passed,

and the result of it all

was that the people of the United States

honored Andrew Jackson
before all over living men.

- Andrew Jackson, in my mind,

is one of the great presidents.

And it's not surprising
that he was so loved.

In fact, it is said,

that when the Civil War broke out in 1861,

people wanted to vote for Andrew Jackson,

hoping he would come
back and save the Union.

He was that beloved.

- For all of his flaws,

for all of his contradictions,

Andrew Jackson did more

than any other American of his generation

to enlarge the possibilities
of American democracy.

In doing that, and seeing
himself as president,

as the tribune of the people,

he did more than anyone to change,

to enlarge the possibilities
of the American presidency.

- [Martin] But Jackson was also

one of the most controversial presidents

in American history.

His policies on issues like
Indian removal and slavery

provoked fierce opposition,

not only in his lifetime, but beyond.

- Andrew Jackson, for African Americans,

is not the sort of figure
as one holds very dear.

He wouldn't form part of the,

the ranks of the great
men of American society,

because, never in his reign as president,

in his terms as president,

did he ever attempt to
expand rights of people.

On the contrary, he did everything
he could, it seems to me,

to constrict those rights,
to limit those rights.

- People talk about Andrew
Jackson's black moods,

people talk about Andrew
Jackson's red hot temper,

but the color of this story is green,

and it's the green of envy,

and it's the green of
coveting Indian lands.

- [Martin] At the Hermitage,

Parton discovered a portrait of Jackson

finished just before he died.

It was completely unlike

the many heroic portraits
of the great man,

and the vulnerability it
captured brought to life

Parton's most insightful
description of Jackson.

- [Parton] He was a democratic autocrat,

an urbane savage,

an atrocious saint.

- Americans have always
looked at Andrew Jackson

and seen themselves.

But, over the years, they've
looked at Andrew Jackson

and seen different versions of themselves.

At one time they saw the frontiersman,

the poor boy made good,

the classic self-made man.

Today, some Americans look back at Jackson

and they see the slaveholder,

the Indian oppressor,
even the Indian hater.

So, the debate about Andrew Jackson

is a very contemporary one.

He's an inescapable,
quintessential American,

but of what kind?

Is he a man whom we should admire,

or is he a man whom we should despise?

Is he a man whom we should celebrate,

or is he a man for whom
we should apologize?

- [Jefferson] Thomas Jefferson.

He could never speak

on account of the
rashness of his feelings.

I have seen him attempt it repeatedly,

and as often choke with rage.

(folk music)

- [Martin] In the 1760s,

Andrew Jackson's parents traded
desperate poverty in Ireland

for an equally hard life
on the Carolina Frontier.

Andrew never met his father,

for he died when his wife
was pregnant with Andrew,

leaving the boy and his two older brothers

to fend for themselves.

When the Revolutionary War began in 1775,

the Carolina Frontier
became a dangerous place,

with one farmer siding with the patriots

and his next door
neighbor with the British.

- It was a brawling,
violent way to grow up.

You made a living with your
hands and with your spirit,

your military spirit to defend yourself,

and your hands to pull
something out of the soil.

So, you had a constant wariness

and a constant threat of violence,

and I think that's one of the many reasons

Jackson became a man who
was so prone to violence,

he grew up with it, he
didn't know anything else.

(tense music)
(heavy breathing)

- [Martin] During the Revolution,

the fighting in the Carolinas

was the most vicious of the entire war.

(guns fire)

Both sides executed men they captured,

and committed atrocities
against civilians.

Outnumbered and desperate,

the patriots relied on young boys

who knew every twist and turn in the woods

to carry orders to the battle lines.

One of them was Andrew Jackson.

- There's a famous story about
young Andrew, 13 years old,

being commanded by the British
officer who captured him

to clean his boots,

and Jackson refused to
take such a servile job,

and the officer slashed him
across the face with a sword,

and Jackson put his arm
up to defend himself,

and he carried the scars all his life.

- [Martin] The war inflicted other,

even more horrible scars on Jackson.

One of his brothers died of
heat stroke while in battle,

and his mother and other
brother died of disease.

(guns fire)

In the boy's eyes,

it was the British who were to blame

for leaving him suddenly
alone in the world.

- For Andrew Jackson,

the American Revolution
was a formative psychic,

as well as political event.

For the rest of his life,

he would despise the British Empire,

he would grow up feeling
as if he owed the British

a kind of repayment

for all the British had
done to him personally,

and to his family.

(tense music)

- Andrew Jackson, with
that kind of a background,

you would expect him to be a very angry

and frustrated young man, and he was.

And he made quite a reputation for himself

as a man who is getting into trouble,

causing all kinds of problems.

a fellow resident of the town of Salisbury

described the young troublemaker this way.

- [Resident] Andrew Jackson
was the most roaring,

rollicking, horse-racing, card-playing,

mischievous fellow that
ever lived in Salisbury.

- He got a small inheritance

from a grandfather back in Ireland.

And he went down to
Charleston to collect it

and spent the whole thing in a week,

on horses and liquor and
maybe some girls too,

but it was all gone pretty fast,

and he had to trudge back to
the upcountry of South Carolina

to somehow pull his life together again.

There are a lot of 15 year olds
who would not have made it,

and it wouldn't have surprised anybody

if Andrew Jackson just went down the tubes

and was forgotten at that point.

But all the people who knew him

when he was a boy and a young man,

said he had passion, fire,
determination, audacity,

and a refusal to be crushed
by the kinds of things

that might wipe out anybody else.

- [Martin] After
apprenticing with a lawyer,

Jackson became a lawyer
himself at the age of 20.

And when he was offered a job

as a prosecutor on the frontier,

he jumped at the opportunity

to join the waves of
Americans heading west.

- When the revolution ends,

particularly for young men like Jackson,

with very little going
for them in the East,

there is this huge expanse of territory,

Kentucky and Tennessee, to be precise,

that was the place you could start over.

One of the attractive features
of this frontier experience

was that all of these new places were

in need of founding fathers, so to speak,

and, like a job placement,

new founding father needed
for country in Tennessee,

and people like Jackson could apply.

And basically, you show up and say,

"I'm here to create a new community."

(folk music)

- [Martin] In 1788,

three months before George
Washington was elected

the first president of the United States,

Andrew Jackson arrived at a new settlement

on the edge of the American West.

Its name was Nashville, Tennessee.

Besides practicing law,

Nashville's newest citizen bred
horses, speculated in land,

and, most significantly, fell in love

with Rachel Donelson Robards,

daughter of one of Nashville's
most prominent families.

Rachel returned Andrew's feelings,

but their relationship faced
an insurmountable barrier.

Rachel was already married

to a man from Kentucky
named Lewis Robards.

- When Jackson arrives,
here's this wild kid,

and Rachel, you know,
was sort of wild herself.

She should never have
married Lewis Robards.

And she finds, I think, companionship

and a kind of kindred spirit in Jackson.

And they fall in love.

- [Martin] But in most of 1790s America,

Women literally belonged
to their husbands.

- I think it's very hard
for us to understand

that there was a time in
the history of our country,

where it was virtually
impossible for people to divorce.

The woman became a part of the husband,

and she had no separate
legal rights whatsoever

from her husband.

So in the event a woman
wanted to leave the household,

she had to leave her children behind,

because the children
did not belong to her.

She had no legal ownership
to children, to property.

A woman had no legal identity whatsoever,

except as a part of her husband.

- [Martin] Most unhappy couples
lived in loveless marriages

rather than flout the law,

but Andrew and Rachel were
not the kind of people

who let social convention stop them

from following their hearts.

- These two hapless people,
up until this point,

find each other, and the
opportunity and the desire

merge for a really extraordinary decision,

which is for the two to elope to Natchez.

- [Martin] The two young
lovers headed south

along the Natchez Trace Trail.

Their goal was the wild
and wooly town of Natchez,

on the Mississippi River,
which was governed by Spain.

By running off with Andrew,
Rachel was making it clear

that she was never going
back to her husband,

no matter what the consequences.

- For a woman to choose
to leave her husband,

especially one who came from
Rachel Donelson's background,

was an extraordinarily
courageous decision on her part,

because, in Rachel's case,

she knew that she was, essentially,

setting herself up to be condemned

by the society that she lived in.

And the shadow of this decision

would haunt them through
the rest of their days.

- [Martin] In the beginning,

the couple's daring
elopement was worth it,

for they made an ideal match.

- Where others could
not tame him, she could.

There's one incident that occurred

when they were floating
down the Mississippi River,

and there were some people
that annoyed Jackson,

I don't recall exactly
what it is they did,

and he took a rifle, and
he starts shooting at them.

And right away,

they ran down into the
cabin and told Rachel.

She said, "Please tell Mr.
Jackson I would like to see him."

She could handle him, she
was the right person for him.

- [Martin] With Nashville
still a frontier town,

with few churches and fewer courts,

Rachel and Andrew were able to
return home after six months

and be accepted by most of
the community as man and wife.

But Rachel's husband was not so forgiving,

and he took his case against
her to the state legislature,

where he won permission to sue for divorce

on the grounds of adultery.

In 1793, the courts granted
Lewis the first divorce

in the history of the state of Kentucky.

Not long after,

Rachel and Andrew were
quietly married in Nashville.

Rachel hoped

that if she and Andrew
were loving and faithful,

the fact that she had been
branded a scarlet woman

would soon be forgotten.

But her new husband was
interested in politics,

and her adultery would
one day be a central issue

in the race for president
of the United States.

For all his wildness,
the young Andrew Jackson

also had the determination, vision,

and charisma of a born
leader, and in 1796,

the state of Tennessee sent him

as its lone representative to Congress.

But the learned statesmen who
filled the nation's capitol

didn't quite know what to make
of the fiery frontiersman.

- Jackson was so passionate

when he came to Congress in the 1790s,

that Thomas Jefferson remembered

that he would get on his feet

and become overwhelmed with his emotions,

literally choked with rage,
could not get out a word,

and, red-faced, had to sit down again.

- [Martin] If the Washington elite

were unimpressed with the
passionate Mr. Jackson,

the feeling was mutual.

- Congress was stifling for Jackson.

It was a place where
people met in committees

and did backroom deals,

and Jackson despised backroom deals.

It was a place where people
traded favors with one another

in order to get what they wanted,

and Jackson thought that
was hideously corrupt.

- [Martin] After just
over a year in congress,

Jackson resigned, declaring...

- [Jackson] I was born for the storm,

and a calm does not suit me.

- [Martin] Raising racehorses

now became his favorite pastime,

and betting enormous sums on
those horses in match races

became his passion.

- Andrew Jackson loved
horses, violence, whiskey,

he was also someone who,

if you were his friend, you
were his friend forever.

If you were his enemy, God help you.

- [Martin] In 1805, Jackson
won a huge sum of money

when his opponent's horse came up lame.

But a dispute over how
the payoff was made,

led to an escalating series of insults

between Jackson and a young Tennessean

named Charles Dickinson.

- Later, his friends insisted

that Dickinson had said
something about Rachel Jackson.

And here's something else

that Jackson is very sensitive about,

because his whole marriage to Rachel

had been under a cloud from the beginning,

and anybody, to raise that point,

in any direct or even indirect way,

would trigger a very violent response.

- [Martin] On May 30, 1806,

Charles Dickinson and Andrew Jackson

met on a dueling ground.

Dickinson was reputed to be
the best shot in Tennessee,

and when the signal was given
to fire, he fired first.

(gun fires)

But to his shock, he apparently missed.

Then, Andrew Jackson took careful aim

(gun fires)

and mortally wounded Dickinson.

Only then did Jackson's second
notice that he was bleeding.

Jackson had, in fact,
been shot in the chest,

with the bullet lodging next to his heart.

When his shocked second asked how

he could possibly have
fired back accurately,

Jackson replied...

- [Jackson] I should have hit him

if he had shot me through the brain.

- [Martin] Jackson carried the bullet

for the rest of his life.

It was unmistakable evidence
of how unsuited he was

to the give-and-take of politics,

but his future in a different arena

could not have been brighter.

- [Sam Houston] Sam Houston.

The reputation of General Jackson

will adorn the proudest, brightest pages

in the nation's history.

He wears the laurel wreath,
which his own valor won.

(drums beat)

- [Martin] In 1812,

the United States declared
war on Great Britain.

Andrew Jackson had been
yearning since he was 13,

for another shot at the British,

and, having been voted commander
of the Tennessee militia,

his dream had now come true.

To inspire fellow
Tennesseans to join his army,

he declared...

- [Jackson] Who are we, and
for what are we going to fight?

Are we the titled slaves of George III,

the military conscripts
of Napoleon the Great,

or the frozen peasants
of the Russian Tsar?

No, we are the free-born sons of America,

the citizens of the only republic
now existing in the world,

and the only people on earth

who possess rights,
liberties, and property

which they dare call their own.

- [Martin] But the mission

Jackson and his men were ultimately given

was far from glamorous,
tramping and slogging

through the forests and
swamps of the southeast

until they had found and
defeated Creek Indian warriors

who were allied with the British.

- Well, Jackson is in
an unenviable position.

He has one of four armies
assigned to punish the Creeks,

he is poorly supplied,

his troops are very poorly trained,

they have very short enlistments,

and it's cold and wet, and
they want to return home.

Things are not going well.

- [Martin] After months in the field,

Jackson's supply lines broke down.

Fearing starvation, some
of his soldiers mutinied

and began to walk home to Tennessee.

But Andrew Jackson threatened to kill them

if they took another step.

It was not an idle threat,

for on two other occasions,

Jackson had men under
his command executed.

(guns fire)

- I see, in Jackson's Indian campaigns,

a ruthlessness that is
frightful to behold.

He seemed possessed, almost,

with a determination to
go on no matter what.

- [Martin] Finally, in March of 1814,

Jackson cornered the main Creek force.

It was camped on a peninsula
called Horseshoe Bend,

because it was protected on three sides

by the Tallapoosa River.

With the fourth side protected

by a mammoth breastwork
of logs they had built,

the Creeks were convinced

that their position was impregnable.

But then, Cherokee warriors
fighting with Jackson

swam across the river to the Creek village

and set it on fire.

Jackson saw his chance

and ordered his men to
storm the barricade.

(guns fire)

(shouting)

(guns fire)

After brutal hand-to-hand fighting,

Jackson's forces took the barricade.

- From that point on, after
the barricade was breached,

it's no longer a battle.

It is a search and destroy mission.

It is a slaughter.

- [Martin] Of the 1,000 Creek
warriors, not one surrendered.

It was Andrew Jackson's
first great triumph,

but to his friend Sam Houston,
who fought beside him,

it was also a tragedy.

- [Sam Houston] The sun was going down,

and it set on the ruins
of the Creek Nation.

Where but a few hours before,

a thousand brave warriors had
scowled on their assailants,

there was nothing to be seen
but volumes of dense smoke

rising heavily over the
corpses of painted warriors,

the burning ruins of their fortifications.

- [Martin] More Native
Americans were killed

in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend

than on any other day in the
history of the United States.

- One of the American participants

who went down to the river
that night to fill his canteen,

said it very, very nicely.

The Tallapoosa might very well
be called a river of blood,

because, as the dead and
dying made it to the river,

the Tallapoosa was turned red.

- [Martin] Horseshoe Bend

was one of the only victories in a war

that was turning out to be a
disaster for the United States.

- The British had captured Washington, DC

following the battle of Bladensburg,

which military historians have called

the worst disgrace in
American military history.

When the American militia broke and ran,

hardly firing a shot,

the British then moved in,

burned the White House and the capitol.

So, the war had been going very badly.

- [Martin] With Britain threatening

to further humiliate America
by conquering New Orleans,

the army was desperate to find a general

who could get his men to stand and fight.

The general finally chosen was
incredibly tough on his men,

and yet his men were
fiercely loyal to him,

a riddle explained by his
nickname, Old Hickory.

- Andrew Jackson became Old Hickory

when he was coming back from
the front down the Mississippi.

And he decided that he would
walk while the wounded rode.

And, so, he walked all the way home.

And his men loved him for it.

It was an example of amazing
spiritual leadership,

and they started calling him Old Hickory,

because they thought he was
as tough as a hickory stick.

- [Martin] Old Hickory

had never had a day of formal
military training in his life.

And yet, the Battle of New Orleans

would be depicted in song, story, and art

for the next 100 years,

for Andrew Jackson and his men

were about to shock the world.

To even out the odds with the British,

Jackson enlisted the aid of
the French pirate Jean Lafitte,

Choctaw Indians, and the
free blacks of New Orleans.

Then he mashed them beside his men

on a narrow stretch of ground

between a swamp and the Mississippi River.

On January 8, 1815,

a huge wave of
battle-hardened British troops

swept down on Jackson's irregulars.

(guns fire)

Instead of turning and running,

as the British has
watched American troops do

in numerous battles before,

Jackson and his men

marched into the pages
of American history.

- They really thought that
once these professionals

came marching towards these
frontiersmen, they'd all run.

And to their surprise,
they not only didn't run,

they stood and fired
one volley after another

right into the faces of these
poor oncoming British soldiers

and just mowed them down.

- [Martin] Jackson had proved that America

could stand up to the world's
greatest military power

and win.

- The victory that he won
was almost unbelievable.

The British lost hundreds of
men dead on the battlefield.

Jackson's casualties in the main battle

were eight killed and 13 wounded.

It was astonishing.
It's still astonishing.

- [Martin] As news of the victory
spread across the country,

America was swept up
in a wave of patriotism

unrivaled in its history.

- I think the whole character
of the American people changed

after the War of 1812.

Prior to that time,

if you asked a person
who or what they were,

they'd say, I'm a New Yorker.

I'm a Virginian.

I'm from Connecticut.
I'm from Massachusetts.

After New Orleans, they
said, "I am an American."

- [Martin] Americans pride in the victory

was stoked by a flood
of images of the battle.

For a new invention, aquatint engraving,

enabled artists to make
multiple color copies

of the same image must
faster than ever before.

A delighted American public
bought up thousands of pictures

of the glorious American
victory at New Orleans.

And at the center of many
of these new engravings

was the new American hero, Andrew Jackson.

- [Historian] Andrew Jackson
was really one of the first

national celebrities.

Songs were written about him,
clubs were founded for him.

January 8th, the anniversary
of the Battle of New Orleans,

towns would have Jackson
dinners and banquets.

He was a cultural force before
he was a political force.

- [Martin] The festivities
were boisterous,

for Americans had more

than just the Battle of
New Orleans to celebrate.

- After 1815, the Americans
were very much free

to work out their own destiny

without interference from Europe.

This meant that they
were enthused, excited.

They thought they could
accomplish anything they wanted.

It also lent a sense of urgency.

They believed that if they
didn't get it right now

they might not get another chance.

That this was the time, this was the place

on which a new world
was going to be created.

They had to make sure that
it was the right new world.

- [Martin] This turbulent age

would become the only
period in American history

known by the name of a single man.

The Jacksonian Era.

Yet, as the era began,

Andrew Jackson was once again
living on a farm in Tennessee

with no clear future in American politics.

For Rachel Jackson, having
Andrew home was a break

from what was, in many
ways, a lonely life.

She and Andrew had proven
unable to have children,

and her dream of spending her life

surrounded by a loving
husband and large family

had not come true.

- I think that when Rachel
ran off with Andrew Jackson,

she thought that she
was gonna get a husband

who was devoted to her, and
that they would have this

warm circle around the
family fire every night

with children running about,

very similar to the household
she had grown up in.

But, instead, she's married a man

who's got tremendous ambition.

So, instead of having
this quiet family home,

which, I think, was at the
heart of Rachel's desires,

instead she's married
to a very ambitious man

who pursues national politics,

becomes a military leader,
and, in her own words,

spends less than a fourth of his nights

under his own roof.

- [Martin] As he waited to see

what avenue for his
ambition might open next,

Andrew Jackson tended to
his farm and his horses

and became a wealthy man.

His admirers were soon
touting the political appeal

of a penniless orphan

who had pulled himself
up by his own bootstraps.

But the real story of how Andrew Jackson

became a wealthy man was more complicated.

- [Frederick Douglass] Frederick Douglass.

General Jackson has to own

that he owes his farm on
the banks of the Mobile

to the strong arm of the negro.

(folk music)

- [Martin] For millions
of poor, white Americans,

many of whom had come from
Europe seeking a better life,

the ideal America was one
in which they could prosper.

To give them that opportunity,

General Andrew Jackson had
forced the Creek Nation

to cede vast amounts of
land in what would become

Alabama and Mississippi
to the United States.

The treasured myth was
that this was a place

where white Americans
could improve their lot

by relying solely on their own hard labor.

The harsh reality was that
it was black Americans

who were often doing much of the labor.

Jackson himself founded a
plantation in Northern Alabama,

on land from which he had
just driven the Creeks.

To work the land, he brought in slaves.

- Jackson firmly believed

that slaves were put
on this earth to labor,

and whites are here to rule and to govern

and to lead society,

and they are on the top
of the pecking order,

they are at the top of the social order,

they are at the top of
the political order,

and, therefore, they
are the ones who rule.

Superior whites lead,
inferior blacks follow.

- [Martin] Jackson named
his biggest parcel of land

near Nashville the Hermitage.

At the height of its operation,

well over 100 slaves at the Hermitage

called Andrew Jackson Master.

- He would've been a very
paternalistic person,

and he would've made the slaves think

he was their mother and father
and God all wrapped into one.

But to enslave another
person, another human being,

you can't be a good person.

You have to be a pretty
tough, vicious, mean person

to hold another person,
or 140 people, in slavery

for all of their lives.

- [Martin] When one of
Jackson's slaves escaped,

he offered a reward to anyone

who would give the man 300 lashes.

- 300 lashes could kill a man,

because of the infection
from 300 lashes on his back.

Perhaps they would put
some grease into the wound,

some ointment into the wound.

They may pour some
whiskey on it, you know,

which would make the man go into shock.

But, he could die from those wounds.

He certainly would be ill for a long time.

And that would remind all the other slaves

here's what you're gonna get

if you try to run away from this place.

- [Martin] Though a few white Americans

were starting to question the
morality of enslaving blacks,

the fact was that slavery was
vital to American prosperity.

And men like Andrew Jackson

could not envision a world without it.

- Human slavery was the powerhouse

of the early American economy.

Slave-grown products were
the most valuable exports

that the United States produced.

Slave grown cotton, slave grown rice,

slave grown tobacco

spilled out of the
plantations of the South,

crowded onto boats,

enriched the harbors
of New York and Boston,

and then fed an appetite of
a hungry and shivering world.

And that's where the money came from.

So, the people who owned the slaves,

and the people who bought and sold

the produce that the slaves made

were the richest people in the country.

And it was the desire to
get more of those riches

that drove Americans

into the best cotton country in the world,

the country that was possessed

by the Creek, and the
Choctaw, and the Cherokee,

and the Chickasaw Indians.

- [Martin] The relentless
demand for Indian land

on which to grow cotton,

created intense conflict
with Native Americans.

Some of the bloodiest fighting
was in southern Georgia,

where white settlers were
battling Seminoles and Creeks

who were staging cross
border raids from Florida.

With Florida still owned by Spain,

president James Monroe called up a man

he knew he could depend on
to defend America's borders.

But, General Jackson
had even bigger plans.

- Jackson really wasn't
simply concerned with

Indian insurgency in Florida.

He was really concerned
about the growing numbers

of free and escaped blacks who were there,

free and escaped slaves who were there,

who were armed and potentially dangerous

and a magnet for other slaves.

It's a threat to the plantation economy.

The combination of an
Indian-Slave alliance

had haunted Americans from
the 18th century onward,

and this was something that
concerned Jackson terribly.

- [Martin] Without orders from Washington,

Jackson launched an invasion
of Florida and conquered it.

During the invasion, he
captured two British men

who he believed were inciting
attacks on Americans.

Ignoring the ruling of
his own military tribunal,

he had both men executed.

When news of the unauthorized
invasion reached Washington,

the Speaker of the House, Henry Clay,

declared that Jackson

had the makings of an American Napoleon.

He called on Congress to censure Jackson.

Being censured would
have disgraced Jackson,

but his conquest of Florida

was enormously popular
with most Americans,

and Congress refused to
censure the great war hero.

- [Henry Clay] Henry Clay.

I fail to see how the killing

of 2,000 English persons at New Orleans

qualifies a person for the difficult

and complicated duties of the presidency.

- [Martin] In 1824,
James Monroe was retiring

after two terms as president.

Andrew Jackson thought he
was an excellent candidate

to be the next occupant
of the White House,

but he was not the only one
with his eye on the job.

John Quincy Adams was
the son of John Adams,

America's second president.

He had spent much of his childhood

in Europe with his father,

and was now Secretary of State.

His worldview was as
different from Jackson's

as his upbringing.

- He was a politician with imagination.

He imagined an America

that was much more economically developed.

He imagined an America

with much broader educational
opportunities for everybody.

He imagined an America

in which the rights of
Indians and black people

and women were actually respected.

- [Martin] Treasury
secretary William Crawford,

and Speaker of the House Henry Clay

were also candidates for president.

As in every previous election,

the candidates did not campaign.

And, in some states,

residents did not even
get to vote for president.

Instead, the state legislature

chose that state's members
of the electoral college.

- In the early years of the republic,

voters were not called on

to choose the president
of the United States.

Choosing the president was,

quite honestly and quite
deliberately, an elitist operation.

The people who were thought to be

the insiders in state government

became the presidential electors,

and they chose the president

based on which set of Washington insiders

they thought was the best.

And the people were basically expected

to accept that decision without complaint.

- [Martin] In an election controlled

by Washington politicians,

the frontiersman from Tennessee

seemed certain to finish last.

- When Andrew Jackson's
name was first floated about

as a candidate for the presidency,

all kinds of leading
politicians were aghast.

They understood him to be a
wild eyes military chieftain,

a hot-tempered individual

who had executed a couple
of Brits down in Florida

without authority or apparent reason.

And, as Jefferson said,

he was the most unfit man imaginable

for the office of the presidency.

- [Martin] To counter the view

that Jackson was unfit to be president,

one of his advisors, John Eaton,

published a series of letters

that proposed an entirely new rationale

for what was important in a president.

- [Eaton] In the selection

of a chief magistrate of this Union,

it is not necessary that
we should look exclusively

to the mental qualifications
of a candidate.

It is strength of character,

a perseverance and steadiness of purpose

that makes the distinguished man.

- What John Eaton does
in the Letters of Wyoming

is simply stand on its head,
the conventional understanding

of the qualifications of a president.

The very qualities that
made a candidate before,

John Quincy Adams being the ideal,

experience in courts of Europe,

experience in diplomacy,

experience as his father's secretary

in various offices of government,

all of this is proof of corruption,

proof of insider status,

proof of being out of
touch with the people,

whereas Jackson's complete
absence of a resume

becomes his primary
qualification for office.

- [Martin] When the votes
were counted in 1824,

the Washington establishment
was stunned to discover

that Andrew Jackson had won

both the most popular and electoral votes.

But with four men dividing
up the electoral vote,

Jackson did not win a majority,

and the election was thrown

into the House of Representatives.

Speaker of the House, Henry
Clay, had finished last

and was out of the running.

But he had enough support
to play kingmaker.

Clay believed with all of his heart

that Andrew Jackson was
unfit to be president.

So he threw his support
to John Quincy Adams,

and, with it, Adams was elected president.

Adams them immediately offered Clay

the job of Secretary of State.

Outraged Jackson supporters

began railing against what
they were convinced was

a corrupt bargain between
Washington insiders

to steal the presidency
from Andrew Jackson.

One newspaper which had
endorsed Jackson, declared...

- [Man] Expired at Washington,

on the 9th of February, 1825,

the virtue, liberty, and
independence of the United States,

caused by poison

administered by the assassin hand

of John Quincy Adams, the
usurper, and Henry Clay.

- What they were absolutely convinced of

was the popular will had been thwarted,

the election had been stolen,

Washington insiders had
cooked up the whole thing,

and they had to make sure
it didn't happen again.

- [Martin] By 1828, when Andrew Jackson

ran against John Quincy
Adams a second time,

the Jacksonians were ready to launch

the first true political
campaign in American history.

Their strategy was driven
by the fact that most states

had finally given the
vote to all white males.

To inspire those men

to get out and vote for the
first time in their lives,

Jackson's campaign took advantage

of the latest media
revolution, lithography,

to flood America with lithographs

of the hero of the Battle of New Orleans.

- If you're going to elect the president

by appealing to the people as a whole,

you change the ground rules completely,

because you have to win the popular vote

down there at the grassroots,
at the militia grounds,

in the taverns, in the
fairs, in the streets

all across the country.

So, somehow you have to be
able to reach those people.

You've got to fire them up.

(parade music)

- [Martin] The Jacksonians' plan

was to rally average
Americans around a new idea,

that they should choose the
president of the United States.

- So, they organized all kinds
of popular demonstrations,

rallies, conventions, assemblies of people

who would get together
and hurrah for Jackson.

They would pass a set of resolutions

and then they would all have a barbecue,

and they would all have a drink,

and they would start to cheer,

and, pretty soon, you'd get the sense

that everybody in this
precinct is for Jackson,

and they'd send the results
of that to the newspaper

and try to publicize it
as much as they could.

And this was the kind of tactic

that didn't require finagling
behind closed doors.

It could take place in the boondocks.

It could happen in rural
Tennessee, rural Alabama,

rural New York.

And this kind of stirring up popular vote

and giving the people the notion

that they should choose the president,

and not the caucus members in Washington,

that revolutionized American politics.

The people have not
been willing to give up

the choice of president ever since.

- [Martin] The revolutionary
new style of campaigning

soon made Jackson into the heavy favorite.

But, then his opponents
discovered the skeleton

inside Andrew and Rachel's closet.

The man behind the mischief was
a confidant of Henry Clay's,

who edited a Cincinnati newspaper.

He uncovered and printed the court record

of Rachel Jackson's divorce proceedings,

which revealed that Rachel
had lived with Andrew

while she was married to another man.

The story of Rachel's adultery
was soon on the front pages

of newspapers across the country.

- Jackson is called the western bluebeard.

Rachel is the American jezebel.

And, it's said, the touch of
a profligate women like Rachel

is going to pollute anyone.

How could someone like this
be put in the White House

and over the women in Washington society?

- [Martin] Jackson blamed Henry Clay

for the attacks on Rachel,

and he would later say

that it was one of the
great regrets of his life,

that he did not shoot Clay.

Instead, Jackson's campaign
fired back with the charge

that, while Adams was US envoy to Russia,

he had procured an American
whore for the Russian Tsar.

- This and other stories they
told about Adams were lies,

whereas the story that the Adams people

were telling about Jackson was true.

But, taken together,

they all made the campaign
of 1828 quite possibly

the dirtiest campaign
in all American history.

(somber music)

- [Martin] The viciousness of the campaign

would have consequences no
one could have foreseen.

Rachel was now 57, and had
become deeply religious.

She found it impossible to
accept that people across America

were now publicly calling
her a whore and worse,

just because she had fallen
in love with Andrew Jackson

so many years ago.

To a friend, she wrote...

- [Rachel] Who has been so
cruelly tried as I have?

Our enemies have dipped their
arrows in wormwood and gull

and sped them at me.

Almighty God, was there
every anything to equal it?

To think that 30 years have passed.

- I've come to see Rachel Jackson's life

as the plot of a grand opera.

You have a young woman

who makes a mistake in her first marriage,

and then chooses to escape that

with a very courageous protector.

But, by doing that,

she's made, perhaps, the
biggest mistake of her life,

because this whole story
of Rachel as a fallen woman

explodes on the scene again,

and becomes the moral wedge
issue of the 1820 campaigns.

- [Martin] When the
election of 1828 was over

and the votes were counted,

Andrew Jackson, the war hero

who had dramatically expanded America,

was elected president in a landslide.

In January of 1829, he boarded a steamboat

to begin his journey from
Nashville to Washington, DC.

At many stops along the way,

the townsfolk planned joyous celebrations

to honor the first man of humble origins

to become president.

But, Andrew Jackson declined

every single invitation he received.

For he was too bowed down with grief.

Just after the election,

Rachel Jackson had died of a heart attack.

- [Historian] Jackson was
devastated by Rachel's death.

From that day forward,
he carried her miniature

and would speak to Rachel every night

before he went to sleep,

whether he was at the
Hermitage or in Washington.

And when he was home at the Hermitage,

each evening he would go
and visit Rachel's grave.

- [Martin] And yet, Rachel's
death was seen by some

as a political godsend for Jackson.

- Everyone around Jackson knows

Rachel is going to be a
problem in the White House

because the women in Washington

will not accept her socially.

And, Rachel choosing, shall
we say, to die at that moment,

frees him to focus on all the challenges

he'll have in the White House.

And, in many ways, she's
like Madame Butterfly,

who realizes it's only through her death

that she'll be able to give
her lover what he needs.

- [Martin] But that was not
how Andrew Jackson saw it.

In his eyes,

his enemies had made an
unforgivable attack on his wife.

- He blames John Quincy Adams
for not putting a stop to it.

And he blamed Henry
Clay for initiating it.

Jackson actually believed
that they killed her,

and, so, as far as he was concerned,

they were her murderers.

- [Martin] Over the next eight years,

Jackson's anger at his enemies

would combine with his
passionate personality

and strong convictions

to produce one of the most
turbulent presidencies

America has ever experienced.

- [Webster] Daniel Webster.

When General Jackson comes,

he will bring a breeze with him.

Which way it will blow, I cannot tell.

- [Martin] On March 4th, 1829,

thousands of farmers and tradesmen,

who had never been to
Washington, DC before,

poured into the White House.

They had come to celebrate

the inauguration of the first president

who's life story they could identify with.

Andrew Jackson.

- His whole family is wiped
out in the revolution.

He's an orphan,

he's angry,

but he decides to make
something of himself.

And he becomes the president
of the United States.

It's an extraordinary career.

It's what America, we like
to think is all about.

- [Martin] To Jackson's
working class supporters,

their presence at the
inauguration celebration was proof

that America was entering
a far more democratic age.

And that was precisely what
worried the Washington elite.

Prominent socialite Margaret Bayard Smith

described how the inauguration
party turned into a riot.

- [Margaret] What a scene we did witness.

The majesty of the people disappeared,

and a rabble, a mob, was
scrambling, fighting, romping.

Cut glass and china,

to the amount of several thousand dollars,

was broken in the
struggle to get the punch.

Ladies fainted, men were to
be seen with bloody noses,

and such a scene of confusion took place

as is impossible to describe.

Those who got in could not
get out by the door again,

but had to scramble out of windows.

The president, after having
been nearly pressed to death,

and almost suffocated by the people

and their eagerness to shake
hands with Old Hickory,

had to retreat through the back way.

- [Martin] The riot deeply alarmed

the Washington establishment.

As men like Henry Clay saw it,

Jackson's motley supporters

had demonstrated why the Founding Fathers

had not trusted the masses
to choose the president.

Now, Clay and his allies
worried that Jackson,

a man famous for his
dictatorial disposition,

would use the support of
this same mindless mob

to turn himself into America's
first imperial president.

- It's hard for us to imagine

how much that generation worried

that a republic could
so easily be taken over

by a strong man, by a military
chieftain, by an emperor.

Napoleon, of course, had just
recently done that in France.

Henry Clay was convinced that King Andrew

was the farthest thing from
the deliberative statesman

that a republic required,

that he was, in fact, a
dangerous, egomaniacal,

potential emperor.

- [Martin] President Jackson's plans

would only stoke Clay's fears,

for, over the next eight years,

he would attempt to do nothing less

than reinvent the presidency.

- Jackson as president was not
unlike Jackson as a general.

He was the leader.

He thought of himself as a leader.

He understood the separation of powers

under the Constitution,

but, nevertheless, he
thought that the president

had a very particular role

as the man that had been
elected by all of the people

to lead government in a way

that no previous president
could have even thought of

let alone execute.

- [Martin] Jackson's first assault

on the Washington establishment

was to fire dozens of federal employees,

including 13 district attorneys,

charging that they were
either incompetent or corrupt,

or both.

- Most of these high level
government bureaucrats

were regarded as untouchable.

Some of them had been there
since George Washington's day.

Jackson, within a few weeks,
fired a number of them.

He removed more government officials

than all of his predecessors put together.

(folk music)

- [Martin] But, while
the president claimed

pure motives for the firings,
his opponents took one look

at the replacements Jackson hired

and proclaimed it the work of the Devil.

- Some of these people
were personally unsavory.

Some of them had scandals
in their backgrounds.

And, as his opponents,

and even some of Jackson's
own supporters thought,

he was undercutting the competency

and efficiency of government
by nakedly rewarding

people for no virtue other than

being willing to say and do
anything to get him elected.

And, so, he was turning the
United States government

into his own personal political machine.

- [Martin] But, just as Andrew Jackson

was starting to look invincible,

the Washington elite

snared his administration
in a sex scandal.

(classical music)

Jackson's friend and
Secretary of War, John Eaton,

had long been friendly with
a woman named Peggy O'Neal.

Peggy was married to
an officer in the navy,

but it was whispered among
the ladies in Washington

that she was not entirely faithful.

In 1829, news arrived that Peggy's husband

had died on board a navy ship.

Instead of going into mourning,

Peggy almost immediately
married John Eaton.

And that was when the rumor
began racing through the capital

that the naval officer
had committed suicide

after finding out that
the Secretary of War

was having an affair with Peggy.

To the ladies of Washington,

it was proof that
Jackson's depraved rabble

was going to sully the cabinet

just as it had defiled the White House.

- Problem with Peggy Eaton,

part courtesan, part common tart,

is she had a scandalous sexual past.

And, whenever you see women
and sex in this period,

you know it's about fear.

And, there was a lot
of fear in Washington,

and anxiety about the coming of democracy.

The ladies of Washington maybe
couldn't do much about that,

but they could do something
about Margaret Eaton,

and they decided to
close their doors to her.

- [Martin] It was a decision

with stunning political consequences.

In the capitol's early
years, the social gatherings,

hosted by politicians' wives,

were a key venue for
Washington's movers and shakers

to discuss politics and form alliances.

But, now, prominent Washington wives,

including those of other
Jackson cabinet secretaries,

began demanding that their
husbands boycott all gatherings

to which Peggy Eaton was invited.

Suddenly, it became almost impossible

to conduct politics in Washington,

supposedly because of
a single scarlet woman.

- If you read the press,

you would imagine that
Margaret Eaton was some

Cleopatra or Madame Pompadour.

They called Peggy Eaton
the Doom of the Republic,

and they imputed all kinds of power to her

that she really didn't have.

But what was behind not so much fact

as this terrible anxiety and fear

about this man who could abuse power.

And, somehow, Peggy Eaton
symbolized that fear.

- [Martin] The simplest way

for the president to get
Washington functioning again

was to tell John Eaton to
accept Peggy's social isolation.

But for Jackson, the attacks on Peggy

were painfully reminiscent

of the mud-slinging against Rachel.

The president's wounds
from the loss of his wife

were still raw.

Each night he read from her prayer book,

and then went to sleep thinking about her.

And the more he thought about Rachel,

the more determined he became

to stop the same thing
from happening to Peggy.

And, so, for two years,

the president spent more of
his time defending Peggy Eaton

than on any other matter.

- For us today,

the Eaton affair can only be
compared to Monica Lewinsky.

But, actually, it was even more serious,

because, in the end, of course,

President Clinton did not lose his office,

but, as a result of, not
Margaret Eaton herself,

but what she symbolized,
the cabinet broke up,

which was the first time
this had ever happened

in the United States
History, and the last.

- [Martin] To put an end
to the scandal, John Eaton,

and the other members of
Jackson's cabinet, resigned,

enabling the president to replace them

with men not caught up in the feud.

The press lampooned
the cabinet secretaries

as rats fleeing Jackson's sinking ship.

- [Andrew Jackson] Andrew Jackson.

Disunion by armed force is treason.

Are you ready to incur its guilt?

- [Martin] If the Eaton affair
had an air of melodrama,

it was also a sign that tragedy
was waiting in the wings.

Vice President John C. Calhoun,

who's wife had battled
Jackson over Peggy Eaton,

was simultaneously
involved in another crisis,

one that threatened to bring
the nation to civil war.

- John C. Calhoun, from about 1830 on,

was obsessed for the remainder of his life

with one fundamental problem.

And that was the problem
of protecting slavery

in a nation where slaveholders
were becoming a minority.

How could slavery be perpetuated

in the face of an indifferent
or even hostile North?

- [Martin] The crisis was
triggered, not by slavery,

but taxes.

Congress, eager to protect
Northern factories,

had passed a law which imposed a high tax

on the cheap imported cloth

used by Southern plantation
owners to clothe their slaves.

Determined to eliminate the
tax and protect slavery,

Calhoun began promoting nullification,

under which every state
had the right to disregard,

within its borders, any law it
considered unconstitutional.

- Nullification appealed to Calhoun

and other South Carolinians

because it was a way of
asserting states' rights.

And, clearly, that was
a fundamental threat

to the entire idea of a federal system.

And it went straight to the heart of

the fundamental American
question of who was sovereign.

Was the federal government sovereign?

Were the states sovereign?

Were the people sovereign?

These were all incredibly
complicated questions

that consumed the Jackson White House

and Jackson's Washington.

- [Martin] Nullification's
fiercest supporters

were congressmen from South Carolina.

It's bitterest opponents
were Northern congressmen

who were convinced it would lead

to the breakup of the Union.

And then there were those
who's positions were unknown,

including President Andrew Jackson.

On April 13th, 1830, all three factions

were represented at a
dinner in Washinton DC

in honor of Thomas Jefferson's birthday.

John C. Calhoun and the nullifiers

had been plotting for
months to use the event

to convert those sitting on
the fence to their cause,

and, in their eyes, Jackson,
a fellow slave owner,

was a natural ally.

But, Andrew Jackson had his
own plans for the dinner,

and, as he arrived, he
felt the same thrill

he had always felt before a battle.

As the evening began,

the nullifiers endeavored to build support

by making toast after toast

to the importance of states' rights.

Then, suddenly, President
Jackson raised his glass.

Looking John C. Calhoun
straight in the eye,

he made his toast.

- [Jackson] Our federal
union, it must be preserved.

- [Martin] Those seven words

sent shock waves through Washington,

for all now knew where
Andrew Jackson stood.

He would not tear apart the
nation he had helped build.

For Vice President Calhoun,

Jackson's opposition to
nullification was intolerable.

The two men soon stopped speaking.

Then, in November of 1832,

the state of South Carolina
formally nullified the tax,

and added, that if the federal government

challenged its right to do so,

South Carolina would
withdraw from the Union.

- It's hard for us to understand

how serious nullification was.

It nearly led to civil war.

Troops in South Carolina were marching.

Jackson himself

wanted to lead the federal
army into South Carolina.

They were fortifying forts
in Charleston Harbor.

This was very close to
an all out civil war,

and it was Andrew Jackson's
duty to stop that.

- [Martin] Instead of reacting in anger,

as he had so often before,

Jackson issued a presidential proclamation

in which he appealed to the
people of South Carolina.

- [Jackson] Seduced, as you
have been, my fellow countrymen,

by ambitious, deluded, and designing men,

I call upon you in the language of truth,

and with the feelings of a father,

to retrace your steps.

Say, we, too, are citizens of America.

Carolina is one of these proud states.

Her best blood has
cemented this happy union.

And then add, if you can,
without horror and remorse,

this happy union we will dissolve.

This picture of peace and
prosperity, we will deface.

These fertile fields, we
will deluge with blood.

Disunion by armed force is treason.

Are you ready to incur its guilt?

- And that's when he said
the Union is perpetual,

it's not a union of states,
it is a union of people,

and, once you're in that
union, you can't get out,

and, I ask the chief executive,

have sworn to enforce the laws.

Both those ideas

are adopted by Abraham
Lincoln in his inaugural.

The whole thing is set up by Jackson.

- [Martin] With both sides
preparing for civil war,

the most skilled negotiator
in Congress, Henry Clay,

succeeded in winning
passage of a compromise bill

that dramatically lowered the tariff.

Jackson signed it, South
Carolina agreed to abide by it,

and war was averted.

For Andrew Jackson,

the story of nullification
contained a dire warning.

If Americans kept arguing about slavery,

a civil war was inevitable.

And, so, the president began
appealing to Northerners

to stop agitating against slavery.

But that was not what the
abolition movement had in mind.

In 1835, the New York abolitionist,
Lewis and Arthur Tappan,

realized that the steam
powered printing press

made something brand new in
American politics possible,

a mass mailing.

And so they sent pamphlets

to thousands of influential
people in the South,

such as ministers,

to try and convince them to
speak out against slavery.

The first batch of pamphlets arrived

in Charleston, South Carolina.

But the postmaster never
delivered them to the addressees.

Instead, they were taken to
the town square and burned.

- Jackson and the Jacksonians'
paranoia about slavery,

as is seen in this whole incident about

abolitionist literature
being sent into the South,

like all paranoia, has
some foundation in reality.

Their fear is that the word would get out

to the slave population,

and would incite slaves to revolt.

And this is a concern that
they all have in this period,

particularly as you get
into the early 1830s,

in the wake of the Nat Turner Rebellion.

Anytime rebellions have taken place,

slave holders have become
increasingly paranoid,

and their instinct is to squash

the articulation of these
sorts of expressions

as quickly as is possible.

- [Martin] Tampering with the mail

was a serious federal crime.

But, President Jackson
tacitly encouraged postmasters

to destroy the pamphlets.

And he demanded that
Congress outlaw mailing them,

saying they were incendiary.

- The Tappan Fliers provide
an interesting insight

into what we could say

is the Jacksonians' view of democracy,

because, of all things,
the ability to petition,

the ability to get word
out about your position,

is a fundamental tenant of
all democratic societies.

So, in that sense, then,
Jackson and his people

are attempting to squash
a clear democratic voice

in this period.

- [Elias] Elias Boudinot,
the Cherokee Nation.

What sort of hope have we,

from a president who has an inclination

to disregard laws and treaties?

We have nothing to expect
from such a president.

(folk music)

- [Martin] Like Thomas Jefferson,

Andrew Jackson fervently believed

that it was small, self employed farmers

who had made America great.

And, he believed that the
key to keeping it great

was to continue expanding West,

so that each new generation
could have farms of their own.

- In Jefferson's vision,

the frontier was the
place that each generation

would replicate the ideal
republican community.

The problem, of course,

is that the native people
are already living out there,

and, with one eye, Americans
managed to not notice them,

but, with the other eye, they
couldn't fail to notice them.

Because, as soon as you got there

you were in conflict with them.

And that creates the fundamental tension

that becomes the story of Indian removal.

- [Martin] In 1830, Jackson
won approval from Congress

of an Indian Removal Act

that appropriated half a million dollars,

so that Native Americans
living east of the Mississippi

could be removed to land
west of the Mississippi.

In support of the act, Jackson said...

- [Jackson] What good man

would prefer a country
covered with forests

and ranged by a few thousand savages

to our extensive republic,

studded with cities, towns,
and prosperous farms,

occupied by more than
12 million happy people,

and filled with all the
blessings of liberty,

civilization, and religion?

- [Martin] But Native American
tribes, such as the Cherokee,

had an entirely different
view than white men

of how to relate to the land.

- The Cherokee way is to share.

It is to be harmonious.

They really were a spiritual people.

They had a way of life

that would perhaps put
most Christians to shame.

They exercised that way of life daily.

Every morning, the whole
village would go to the water

for a blessing.

And, at this going to water ritual,

this old man sung this song.

(sings in Cherokee)

So, when I sang that song, it
would have been the same sound

that you would have heard in the 1700s.

So, that was all disturbed

because of the contact with the whites.

- [Martin] Soon after the
creation of the United States,

many in the Cherokee tribe

decided that their one
hope of saving their land

was to take Thomas Jefferson's advice

and embrace the white man's way of life.

- The Cherokees, in fact,

took exactly the advice
that Jefferson offered.

They settled down, they
put on European clothing,

they developed an alphabet,
they learned to read and write,

they set up town meetings, and a mayor,

and a city council and all those things,

and they still had to go.

Because the problem was they
were sitting in Georgia,

and Georgia was to be ours, not theirs.

They could not coexist.

- [Martin] With Georgia
preparing to expel the Cherokee,

two Christian missionaries

brought a case to the Supreme Court

that challenged Georgia's jurisdiction

over the Cherokee Nation.

The Supreme Court ruled
in the Cherokee's favor.

But Andrew Jackson declared...

- [Jackson] The decision
of the Supreme Court

has fell, stillborn.

- [Martin] Jackson encouraged
Georgia to ignore the verdict

on the grounds that the Cherokee
were not really a nation.

A writer to the Cherokee
newspaper, the Phoenix,

remembering that warriors
from the Cherokee Nation

had played a key role in
the Battle of Horseshoe Bend

that had launched Jackson
on his road to fame,

had this request.

- [Cherokee Writer]
Ask of General Jackson,

when the thunders of his cannon

were heard in the Southern Forest,

and he will say, "They are a nation."

These unfortunate people,

who flocked to the standard

of the brave commander at
Horseshoe, and nobly fought,

are now repaid with
ingratitude and oppression.

- [Martin] Solely on the basis
of the color of their skin,

thousands of Cherokee families

were evicted from their
homes by American soldiers

and forced onto what became
known as The Trail of Tears.

One of the Christian missionaries

who traveled with them, wrote...

- [Missionary] I have no
language to express the emotions

which rend our hearts to witness

this season of cruel oppression.

In Georgia, multitudes were not allowed

to take anything with them
but the clothes they had on.

Well-furnished houses were
left to prey to plunderers,

who, like hungry wolves, follow
the progress of the captors

and rifle the houses,
and strip the helpless.

For what crime, then, was
this whole nation doomed

to this almost unheard of suffering?

- The period of Indian removal

really is a black mark
on American history.

America, which started out
as a shining city on a hill,

sinks to the bottom of the
darkest depths in Indian removal.

Andrew Jackson, and other Americans,

were willing to do what it took

to separate Indians from their land.

If it meant ignoring treaties,

if it meant ignoring principles
of international law,

if it meant ignoring common
decency and a sense of justice,

then it was done.

- [Martin] With smallpox
and cholera rampant

on the Trail of Tears, more
than 2,000 Cherokees died.

Andrew Jackson had tried to
convince Native Americans

that he was their great white father.

But the Cherokee now had
a different name for him.

- They called him Jacksena,

and, other Cherokee people
hearing me say that would laugh.

Jackson the Devil.

Jacksena. He's devilized.

(dramatic music)

- [Jackson] Andrew Jackson.

Unless you become more watchful,

you will find that the most
important powers of government

have passed into the
hands of the corporations.

(folk music)

- [Martin] When it came to
Indian removal and slavery,

President Jackson's views

mirrored those of many other Americans.

But there was one issue where
he was truly a visionary

in his concern for how
average Americans would fare

as the economy became
ever more industrialized.

- The world we know was
taking shape in those years.

And the questions that were so urgent then

continue to be urgent.

It was the nature of capitalism.

It was how people were
gonna make their livings.

And there's nothing scarier,

nothing more fundamental to people,

then how they're going to feed themselves

and clothe their families and
make their way in the world.

- [Martin] For centuries,

learning a craft, such a shoe making,

had enabled workers to
make a decent living.

But, across the country,
artisans like shoe makers

were suddenly losing
their jobs to factories.

- All of a sudden,

it's a job that can be done
by a child, by a woman,

by an unskilled man for pennies.

But, think what happens to the shoe maker,

the shoe maker who has
spent all of his life

learning the skills of
making a whole shoe,

his skills have become worthless.

And, as a result, he feels worthless.

And, if you look at how much
money he's got in his pocket,

he may be worthless that way also.

He's broke.

(fiddle music)

- [Martin] In the early years

of Andrew Jackson's presidency,

these working class
Americans created a new way

of giving voice to their concerns.

The minstrel show.

On the surface, it was simply
an expression of racism

and proof of how little white Americans

really knew about black Americans.

But the hidden secret of the minstrel show

was that it was not just
about how whites saw blacks,

but also about how they saw themselves.

- Of course you're putting on that mask

to make fun of African Americans,

but, by virtue of putting on that mask,

you also enable yourself
to speak of yourself.

The songs of the theater
at the time reveal that

the audience is feeling
squeezed by a new America.

It's being squeezed by an America

that seems to be coming
more and more for the rich

instead of the common people.

So, we can look to the stage

and we can find a place
in American society

where that working class could express,

in a powerful and gripping way,

what it felt about what this world

was doing to them our there.

- [Martin] For a working
class white American,

putting on the mask of a
slave was a way of saying

I feel like a slave.

The minstrels also talked about the man

they hoped would free them.

They sang, there's some
who at our party rail,

call us the ragtag and bobtail,

but we have sung within our pale,

who we are will never fail
to vote for General Jackson.

For Andrew Jackson, the central
question of his presidency

was what he could do to
prevent these average Americans

from being exploited by
the rich and powerful.

The answer Jackson hit upon

was to destroy an
institution that he thought

was giving the wealthy
an unfair advantage.

It's real title was the Second
Bank of the United States.

But, Jackson supporters
called it the Monster Bank.

- Andrew Jackson dislikes all
banks, he said at one point,

but he particularly disliked
the Bank of the United States

as established by Congress
after the War of 1812.

The reason was simple,
it had too much power

outside of any kind of
public accountability.

The bank was an enormous
economic institution.

It could really control credit,

and therefore control the
American economy itself.

For Jackson, that meant
that the American economy

was being run by people
who were not elected.

That these unelected bankers

had their hands on the levers of power,

and could control people's
lives, their destinies,

and indeed could control
the political system itself.

- [Martin] To Jackson, one of
the Monster Bank's worst sins

was that it was funding
new style businesses

that were beginning to
wrap their tentacles

around both the economy
and the government.

These new businesses
were called corporations.

- The problem with corporations

as far as Jackson was concerned

was they had no body to be
kicked or soul to be damned.

They were faceless, anonymous machines

that were motivated only by

making profit for their shareholders,

and, as a result, they
could grow much, much larger

than the average consumer,
the average worker,

the average citizen.

- [Martin] But Jackson's
opponents thought corporations

would help America become more prosperous.

And they thought his
plan to blow up the bank

verged on insanity,

for it was the bank that guaranteed

that the paper dollars
in Americans' wallets

were worth something.

- Jackson took a kind
of fundamentalist view

of money and credit.

Gold and silver dollars were real money.

Paper was, in some sense, fake.

Those who were perhaps more
astute economists than Jackson

thought that this position
was just short of neanderthal.

The United States had
been built on credit,

as Henry Clay said in the Senate,

"We have always been a paper money people.

"We won the revolution on paper money."

- [Martin] Clay and his allies in Congress

decided to put some heat on Old Hickory.

Near the end of Jackson's first term,

they passed a bill extending
the bank's charter.

Clay calculated that the
president would have no choice

but to sign the bill,

because a veto would be
seen by the American public

as so irresponsible, it would
cost Jackson reelection.

But Clay had made a
fundamental miscalculation

about the character of Andrew Jackson.

A character that was
exemplified by an event

that took place in the midst
of the battle over the bank.

At the president's request,

a navy surgeon was
brought to the White House

to operate on a painful shoulder.

The problem was a simple one.

There was a bullet in it.

20 years before, during the War of 1812,

Major General Jackson
became embroiled in a feud

between one of his officers

and a prominent Nashville family.

Instead of mediating the dispute,

as might have been expected
of a man of his stature,

General Jackson took part
in a full scale gun battle.

During it, he was shot at point
blank range and almost died.

This saga defined the
character of Andrew Jackson.

He could not pass up a fight.

And, when he fought, he was
willing to risk everything.

Of the bank, he declared...

- [Jackson] The bank is trying to kill me,

but I will kill it.

- [Martin] On July 10th, 1832,

Jackson vetoed the bill
reauthorizing the bank.

The president's address
in defense of the veto

was perhaps the most
important of his life,

for he had to explain
to the American people,

not with bombast, but
with words from his heart,

why he so fervently opposed the bank.

- Jackson] It is to be regretted
that the rich and powerful

too often bend the acts of government

to their selfish purposes.

When the laws on the take
to make the rich richer

and the potent more powerful,

the humble members of society,

the farmers, the mechanics, and laborers,

who have neither the time nor the means

of securing like favors to themselves,

have a right to complain

of the injustice of their government.

We can at least take a stand

against any prostitution of our government

to the advancement of the few
at the expense of the many.

(parade music)

- [Martin] To help rally support

for Jackson's reelection campaign in 1832,

the president and his closest
advisor, Martin Van Buren,

came up with one of the boldest strokes

in American political history.

They founded the Democratic Party.

- Jackson thought of The
Democracy, as it was called,

it wasn't called the Democratic Party,

it was called The Democracy,

thought of it as the association of

the vast majority of Americans,

the majority that should govern,

to make sure that they would govern.

There were all sorts of ways

in which ordinary people can participate.

Jackson thinks that's important,

because the ordinary people
have to associate more

because they don't have the resources

that the rich and the well born do.

- [Martin] For years,

Jackson's opponents had
lampooned his frontier roots

by portraying him as a jackass.

To their shock, the Jacksonians
began embracing the symbol.

- Well, the donkey as the
symbol of the Democratic Party

started out as a satire,

as an attack on the rubish,

sort of Beverly Hillbillies nature of

Jackson's Democratic Party.

But, interesting that people
like Henry Clay and others

didn't quite understand that

in urban settings, the donkey
may have been a figure of fun,

but for people in rural America,

which was most of America at the time,

the donkey was essential to daily life,

and it was someone you could rely on.

And Jackson and the Democrats
were presenting themselves

as people you could rely on.

- [Martin] A second party

quickly arose to oppose the Democrats.

Called The National Republicans,

they chose Jackson's
fiercest rival, Henry Clay,

to run against him for president.

- Henry Clay and Andrew
Jackson hated each other.

Clay saw himself as a
great American statesman,

and couldn't quite understand

how this rube from the
Carolina back country

who had never gone to school,

who'd never read a book, in Clay's view,

could possibly be so powerful

and have such a hold over the people.

Thereby ensuring that Clay
himself would never do that.

Because he didn't appreciate, I think,

Jackson's gifts of both charisma

and the power of his personality.

- [Martin] During the election campaign,

Jackson and his advisors again
demonstrated complete mastery

of the media tools available to them.

- This man was sitting for his portrait

again and again and again.

Jackson had a sense

that I want the American
people to know me,

and to know what I look like.

And, I think that says something
about his political sense.

He's a first in many ways,

and he's the first president that I know

who had a desire to use the media

to communicate with the American people.

- [Martin] On election day,

voters flocked to the
polls in record numbers.

And, thanks to Jackson's
reputation as a military hero,

and his continuing expansion of America,

they gave Old Hickory a landslide victory.

But what Andrew Jackson
read into the victory

was that he now had a mandate

to destroy The Bank of the United States.

And so the president ordered
the government's money

removed from the bank.

But even some in his own cabinet

thought such a step was illegal.

And Jackson had to replace
two treasury secretaries

before finding a third who would obey him.

- Nothing like this would happen again

until Richard Nixon, during
the Watergate Crisis,

had to go through three attorneys' general

to find one who would fire Archibald Cox

as special prosecutor.

- [Martin] On the floor of the US Senate,

Henry Clay asserted that nothing less

than the future of American
Democracy was at stake.

- [Clay] We are in the
midst of a revolution,

hitherto bloodless,

but rapidly tending toward
the concentration of all power

in the hands of one man.

- [Martin] For the only
time in American history,

the Senate censured the president.

People throughout the nation
began calling it The Bank War.

It was a war

in which reason and economics
were the casualties,

and the chief combatants

were Jackson and the president
of the bank, Nicholas Biddle.

- The confrontation between Andrew Jackson

and The Bank of the United States

escalated, you might almost say,

beyond the bounds of sanity.

From the point of view of Nicholas Biddle,

president of The Bank
of the United States,

this maniac president

was going to destroy the American economy.

And both sides got so wrapped up in it

that they did reckless things.

Nicholas Biddle,

in an effort to procure a recharter,

actually triggered what was
called a panic in those days,

of a stock market crash
and a brief depression,

not realizing that, in doing this,

he was proving every point Jackson made

about the reckless power that
The Bank of the United States

held over ordinary Americans' lives.

- [Martin] Finally, in 1836,
the bank's charter expired

and its doors were closed.

And Andrew Jackson, once again,

emerged from a battle victorious.

- An historian has written

that every once in a
while in American history

it becomes necessary to
save American capitalism

from the capitalists.

That, left to their own devices,

they will so accrete power

that they will end up ruining the economy.

Well, Jackson in some ways saw that

was the beginning of that process,

as American capitalism was
just beginning to develop.

He saw that, to keep the system going

in a democratic fashion, as he saw it,

it was necessary that accountability

had to be there in the system

in a way that it did not
seem to be as of 1832.

(tense music)

- [Martin] Jackson's battles

during his second term in
office were not just political.

One afternoon, as the president
was leaving the capitol,

a mentally ill man,

who believed that Jackson
had killed his father

approached him.

(tense music)

(gun fires)

The explosion of the
pistol's percussion cap

convinced bystanders that
the president had been shot.

But the gunpowder inside
the pistol failed to ignite.

The assailant then drew a second pistol

and fired point blank into
the president's chest.

(gun fires)

Miraculously, the powder
inside the second gun

also failed to ignite.

As a result, Andrew Jackson survived

the first assassination attempt ever

against an American president.

Then, in the presidential
election of 1836,

Jackson's hand-picked
successor, Martin Van Buren,

rode Old Hickory's coat tails to victory.

(folk music)

On March 4th, 1837,

Andrew Jackson's tumultuous
presidency came to an end.

In a sign of the remarkable changes

that had taken place
during his years in office,

he left Washington, not in
a carriage pulled by horses,

as he had arrived eight years before,

but on a train car pulled by
a steam powered locomotive.

To a reporter, Jackson said...

- [Jackson] After eight
years as president,

I have only two regrets.

That I have not shot Henry
Clay or hanged John C. Calhoun.

- [Martin] The legacy Andrew
Jackson left behind him

was a complicated one.

But, if there was one key feature

that would allow future generations
to make sense of it all,

it was the way in which Jackson's fight

for the rights of the average white man

pointed the way for others
to seek rights of their own.

- Jacksonian democracy had no
room in it for black people,

it was not willing to free the slaves,

it had utter contempt

for the political aspirations of women,

and everybody knows it was

utterly violent and
merciless to the Indians.

But, look how the victims
of Jacksonian democracy

defended themselves.

They didn't go out and become monarchists.

Instead, what they did

was to take the principles
of Jacksonian democracy

and demand that they
be applied to them too.

When you look at the feminists,

they used the Declaration of Independence

to demand the right to vote.

When you look at the abolitionists,

they said the demand for human equality

is good for the slaves as well.

When the Indians wanted to

defend themselves against
white encroachment,

the Cherokees created
a written constitution

and a democratic government of their own.

So that the abolitionists,
the feminists, the Indians,

all responded to this
aggressive Jacksonian democracy,

not by becoming monarchists,

but by saying, "We have to have some too."

- [Martin] Jackson spent the
remaining years of his life

at his beloved Hermitage.

Though others would one
day see a connection

between his quest for
opportunity for white men

and the ideal of opportunity for all,

Andrew Jackson himself never did.

He continued to own dozens of slaves,

never worrying that they
toiled from sunrise to midnight

with no hope of a better life,

or giving any thought to what
their opinion was of him.

- Sometimes, when they had a
funeral for a fellow slave,

like at The Hermitage, they would say,

"One day, your head must
bow as low as ours."

As they sang this funeral
march to the grave.

One day, your head must
bow as low as ours.

When they sang that song, they're
looking at Andrew Jackson,

the master, as they march along.

The whites think that
they're just singin' a

great, melodious song.

But it had a deep meaning,

and, what it meant it,
one day you must die too.

One thing that makes
all men equal is death.

All men must die equally.

One day your head must bow as low as ours.

- [Martin] On June 8th,
1845, Andrew Jackson died.

America's seventh president

was laid to rest beside
his beloved wife, Rachel,

in the garden at The Hermitage.

14 years later, Jackson's
first biographer, James Parton,

visited the grave.

The historian had
already spent many months

reading what hundreds of
Jackson's contemporaries

had to say about him.

But the writer still
found it nearly impossible

to sum up Old Hickory.

- [Parton] If anyone, at
the end of a year even,

had asked what I discovered
respecting General Jackson,

I might have answered thus.

Andrew Jackson, I am given to understand,

was a patriot and a traitor.

He was one of the greatest generals,

and wholly ignorant of the art of war.

A stickler for discipline,

he never hesitated to
disobey his superior.

The first of statesmen,

he never devised or framed a measure.

He was the most candid of men,

and was capable of the
profoundest dissimulation.

He was a democratic autocrat,

an urbane savage,

an atrocious saint.

- [Announcer] Discover
more about Andrew Jackson,

explore the history of
the imperial presidency,

and watch debates about
Indian removal, slavery,

and other controversies from
the Jacksonian era at PBS.org.

(folk music)