Andrew Jackson A Good President

A good president has a strong vision for the country’s future. Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, certainly did. He identified with the common people in which he was raised as a poor boy from the Carolinas. Jackson was the first American president not born to an elite family. A major general in the War of 1812, Jackson became a national hero when he defeated the British at New Orleans. Americans should celebrate the Presidency of Andrew Jackson because he had a vision for power of the common man, western expansion, and economic growth.

Andrew Jackson represented the common people: essentially meaning that he supported the power of the people. Jackson destroyed the Second Bank of the United States, which, in his view, was to limit the power of

This gives him the natural tendency to want to expand the lands. In 1830, Jackson won approval from Congress of an Indian Removal Act. The idea was that Native Americans living east of the Mississippi could be removed to land west of the Mississippi (PBS: Jackson). In support of this act, Jackson despised that there were savages running around in forests when it could be 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” (PBS: Jackson). His idea was deeply opposed by Indian Cherokees who didn’t believe in the white man’s way of life. Numbers of Cherokee families were evicted from their homes by American soldiers and forced to the Trail of Tears. The Trail of Tears became a disease infested place full of smallpox and cholera. More than 2,000 Cherokees died. However, this tragedy can be positive. Jackson wanted western expansion because it would allow America to become powerful and safe from enemy invaders. It would also make the nation’s wealth grow helping the economy become more