President:Andrew Jackson
www.americancorner.org.tw | 2012-10-17 16:07

 
Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States (1829-1837), was the first to come from poverty. The youngest of three sons of Scotch-Irish immigrants, he grew up in rural South Carolina and attended local schools before leaving school to join the Army at age 13 during the American Revolution. He was in a battle and was later captured by the British, making him the only president to have been a prisoner of war. Jackson was magnetic and charming but with a quick temper that got him into many duels, two of which left bullets in him. He was the first person to represent Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives, and he also served in the U.S. Senate and on the Tennessee Superior Court (the state's highest court). He was a heroic Army general before eventually becoming president.
 
From Horseshoe Bend to the Trail of Tears
 
Andrew Jackson and his wife, Rachel, adopted and raised a Creek Indian boy orphaned from one of Jackson's own military campaigns against the Creeks. They treated him kindly. Yet in other ways, Jackson's relations with Native Americans were violent and destructive. This history started in 1813, when Jackson was given command of a group of militia in the field to fight the Creek Indians. The British had gotten the Creeks and other Native Americans to help them threaten the Southern frontier during the War of 1812. Why was Jackson suddenly called into action against the Creeks? 
 
On August 30, 1813, Creek Indians had killed hundreds of frontier settlers at Fort Mims on the shore of Lake Tensaw, Alabama (then Mississippi Territory). They were trying to get back land taken from them by white settlers. Jackson prevailed against the Creeks, despite less than perfect conditions for his Tennessee and Kentucky militia.
 
On March 27, 1814, Jackson and his men killed 800 Creeks and captured 500 women and children in the battle at Tohopeka (also known as Horseshoe Bend), Alabama. This decisive victory made Jackson very popular. The Creeks never threatened the frontier again. On August 9, 1814, the Treaty of Fort Jackson was signed, ending the Creek War of 1814 and requiring the Creeks to surrender 23 million acres of their land. What other land battle did Jackson have with Native Americans?
 
Many whites wanted Native Americans removed from their tribal lands in the East. They had a friend in President Andrew Jackson. Jackson pushed the Indian Removal Act of 1830 through Congress. This law required that many Native Americans give up their lands in the East and relocate west of the Mississippi River. A number of tribes did so, but others refused.
 
The Cherokee Indians, in particular, fought in court against the state of Georgia's attempts to take away their lands, and in 1832 the Supreme Court finally ruled in their favor. Georgia did not have authority over the Cherokee lands, the court said. Do you know what happened to the Cherokees?
 
Georgia ignored the Supreme Court ruling and continued taking land. President Jackson did nothing to enforce the ruling. His refusal to stand up for the legal rights of these Native Americans during his presidency cost them a great deal. After he left office, but as a result of his policies, the Army rounded up the 16,000 Cherokees who refused to leave their homes and forced them to march hundreds of miles to a new home far to the west, in Oklahoma. Four thousand of them died along this "Trail of Tears" in 1838-39.
 
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