Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 - June 8, 1845) rose to national prominence as a military commander before serving as the seventh President of the United States from 1829 to 1837. He led American troops in the Creek War of 1813 to 1814, winning the Battle of Horseshoe Bend and negotiating a treaty that forced the Creek to cede a large territory, then became a war hero for defeating a British invasion force at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815 and commanded United States forces during the First Seminole War, a campaign that helped bring about Spain's cession of Florida. As president he signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which displaced tens of thousands of Native Americans from their homelands east of the Mississippi River in a forced relocation remembered as the Trail of Tears; he also faced down South Carolina's attempt to nullify federal tariffs and vetoed the reauthorization of the Second Bank of the United States as a tool of entrenched elite interests. In 1835 his administration became the only one in United States history to pay off the entire national debt. His presidency gave its name to Jacksonian democracy, an expansion of suffrage and popular political participation for white men that came alongside the era's racist policy of Native American removal.