Stolengood

Banned
Since we already have a Wilson thread in After 1900, figured there ought to be one here for our other resident bugbear, Mr. President General Andrew Jackson.

I sort of have my reasons, I suppose, already, but I'm not sure how entirely well-founded they are, so I'll keep mine mum for the moment and listen to yours. I'd like to hear yours; everybody's, in fact. If even one person likes him, I'd like to hear that, and why, too.

Well... go ahead. Get to it. :)
 
I think in Jackson's case it is overwhelmingly Indian removal. People don't get *that* excited about the Bank of the United States nowadays, and there aren't too many advocates of the Nullifiers here. (Yes, he was a slaveholder but so were several other presidents who are a lot less hated.)
 
It's the Indian Removal, not only the blatant ethnic cleansing that lead to numerous deaths but how he simply gave no fuck to the SCOTUS decision and went with it anyway.

There was the panic too, but people could argue that it would happen even without him, so let's "ignore" it for now.
 
The way I see it, he's a scapegoat. Blaming Indian Removal on that EEEEEEVIL Andrew Jackson allows us to conveniently forget that most of America wanted it. It's a milder form of apologism, blaming the genocide on one person while ignoring the societal factors. It's similar to the "Hitler didn't have the support of the people" school in that sense.
 
I don't hate him, but that may be because he is the most recognizable of my statesmen. All things aside, he was a very effective president. Yeah he may have not been a great guy, but most weren't, and everything he did was pretty normal in the context of the era.
 
The way I see it, he's a scapegoat. Blaming Indian Removal on that EEEEEEVIL Andrew Jackson allows us to conveniently forget that most of America wanted it. It's a milder form of apologism, blaming the genocide on one person while ignoring the societal factors. It's similar to the "Hitler didn't have the support of the people" school in that sense.
Indeed, some scholars says that the Virginia militia would move in anyway and that Jackson decided to prevent the Civil War a few decades earlier, but I'm not a specialist in the period so I'll abstain from further claims.
 

GeographyDude

Gone Fishin'
Basically, that we're taught to worship* the guy in school, and then find out that he's a bum.

(I'm 53 and went to elementary school mainly in suburban Houston)

*And not so much specifics. More just generalities that he's a President, one of the more famous, better known ones, one of the 'Greater' Presidents, etc. This kind of thing.
 
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Because he was a whinger about losing the 1824 election aka "corrupt bargain", and because he introduced the spoils system which turned political appointments into patronage rather than merit. I don't particularly blame him for the Indian Removal/Trail of Tears, because while he was a despicable man for permitting it, blaming him overlooks the fact that he was representing the will of the majority of the American people on that one. It's easier to say "bad president" than "bad people".
 
He is straight up a scapegoat.

Andrew Jackson is accused for the Trail of Tears as if it were all him.

The Trail of Tears happened from 1838 to 1839.

Jackson left office on 1837.

Not supporting him, but anybody who says or acts like that was all him is ignorant or lying.

Despite that happening under Van Buren's presidency, the only thing I ever learned about him in school was his family wad the only presidential one where English was not their first language (old New York Dutch).
 
Because he was a whinger about losing the 1824 election aka "corrupt bargain", and because he introduced the spoils system which turned political appointments into patronage rather than merit. I don't particularly blame him for the Indian Removal/Trail of Tears, because while he was a despicable man for permitting it, blaming him overlooks the fact that he was representing the will of the majority of the American people on that one. It's easier to say "bad president" than "bad people".
Again, very much like a Latin American caudillo.
 
I don't hate him. For all the bad, he also helped democratize the government, at least as far as anyone conceivably could at the time, and was a strong opponent of sectionalism. He made mistakes such as getting rid of the Bank of United States and the spoils system was certainly corrupt (though how much more corrupt was it than what was in place before, I wonder?). He is of course also responsible for Indian Removal, but with such widespread popular support for it at the time, I don't imagine Jackson being able to stop it even if he wanted to.
 
There's also Jackson's slave hunting raids into Spanish Florida, which was the gun held to Spain's head while the US Government officially negotiated a purchase. In my patriotic history lessons we did not talk about that!
 
As for hating him or not--I don't think his opponents at the time were preferable. He pretty much established the modern American political system, with parties as a proper part of the operating system rather than some extraneous factor. He certainly broadened the concept of which classes of people should properly be involved in government; after him the conservatives also had to pretend to be homespun sons of the frontier even if they were actually born in a mansion.

He pretty well represented what the USA would become, in its best and its worst features.
 
I don't hate him personal and even use to like him at one point, but my god, my middle school history teacher was a BIG Andrew Jackson, and Stonewall Jackson fanboy. He could never stop talking about all the 'great' things about each one any day of the week.
 
He beat JQA. No one does that and escapes my harsh judgement :)

Also, many of the governmental policies that others have mentioned in greater detail.
 
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