Andrew Jackson was born into a quickly changing
world. He was born on the frontier, when America was still only
thirteen British colonies and the frontier was defined as the Carolinas.
By his teenage years, however, his homeland had declared its independence and
was in the midst of a developing war with the most powerful nation
on Earth. After years of harassment and exploitation at the hands
of the British, colonists across America had had enough. Tensions
first came to a boil in Boston, Massachusetts, where riots, the Boston
Tea Party, and the Boston Massacre all set in motion a series of
events that would begin the American Revolution.
In 1776, the Second Continental Congress ratified the
Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia and the war was on.
The Americans fought valiantly under General George Washington
but lost many of the early battles of the war. Victories such as
the one at Saratoga, however, inspired the French government to
intervene on the American side. The tide of the war turned, and
in 1781 British General Charles Cornwallis surrendered the British
forces at Yorktown to Washington. By 1784, a peace treaty was ratified
and the government set about establishing a new nation. The original
Articles of Confederation turned out to be too weak, so a new Constitution
was written and adopted–along with the first ten Amendments, termed
the Bill of Rights.
The new United States grew rapidly, expanding ever westward. President
Thomas Jefferson bought the Louisiana Purchase from France, more
than doubling the size of the country overnight. The frontier moved
from the Carolinas westward to Georgia, Kentucky and Jackson's
new home, Tennessee.
As the United States grew, though, it struggled to assert
itself on the world stage. Pirates from the Barbary States–Algiers,
Morocco, Tripoli and Tunis–declared war on American shipping in
1801. Jefferson sent naval and marine forces to Tripoli in defense,
and Tripoli finally asked for peace in 1805. Tensions remained
high with Britain as well, and it was not long before Americans
again found themselves defending their homes from the Redcoats.
In 1812, American forces invaded Canada, then a British
colony, and British forces invaded the United States. In 1814,
the British forced President James Madison to flee Washington and
British troops burned the capital city. American naval forces fared
well, however, and Andrew Jackson's victory over the British forces
at New Orleans provided a major morale boost to Americans–albeit
a victory that came after the war was technically over. The Treaty
of Ghent, signed December 24, 1815, ended the War of 1812 and returned
both countries to the status quo ante bellum–the
way things were before the war began.
With peace at hand again, the U.S. continued to expand.
More states joined the Union, settlers moved further West–coping
along the way with Indians, bandits and more hardships. Jackson
led the way into Florida after President James Monroe purchased
it from Spain, and "manifest destiny" became the rule of the land.
Also around this time, slavery became an increasingly
divisive issue between the North and the South. States in the South
were weary of admitting any more "free" states to the union because
of the chance it would upset the slave-free balance–allowing anti-slavery
supporters to push through anti-slavery legislation that Southerners
felt would threaten their economy and lifestyle.
An underlying issue, though, revolved around states' rights.
Who had what power? What did states control? What did the federal government
control? Many parts of the Constitution remained largely untested,
and the Founders had crafted language that allowed for interpretation
rather than set policy. On issues ranging from internal improvements
to slavery to Indian removal, Jackson and his fellow presidents
found themselves setting precedent after precedent. In this regard,
the beginning of the nineteenth century in the United States was
a brave new world looking for strong leaders to guide the new nation.
