Andrew Jackson and His Leadership in Military Conflict

Andrew Jackson was born on March 15, 1767, in the Waxhaws region on the border of North and South Carolina. By 1812 when war broke out between the United States and Britain. His leadership in that conflict earned Jackson national fame as a military hero. Became the nation’s seventh president (1829-1837). During their invasion of the western Carolinas in 1780-1781, British soldiers took the young Andrew Jackson prisoner. When Jackson refused to shine one officer’s boots, the officer struck him across the face with a saber, leaving lasting scars. Jackson read law in his late teens and earned admission to the North Carolina bar in 1787. In 1796, Jackson joined a convention charged with drafting the new Tennessee state constitution and became the first man to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Tennessee. Though he declined to seek reelection and returned home in March 1797, he was almost immediately elected to the U.S. Senate. Jackson resigned a year later and was elected judge of Tennessee’s superior court.

He was later chosen to head the state militia, a position he held when war broke out with Great Britain in 1812.Andrew Jackson, who served as a major general in the War of 1812, commanded U.S. forces in a five-month campaign against the Creek Indians, allies of the British. In Alabama in mid-1814, Jackson led American forces to victory over the British in the Battle of New Orleans (January 1815). he wins, which occurred after the War of 1812 officially ended but before news of the Treaty of Ghent had reached Washington, elevated Jackson to the status of national war hero. In 1817, acting as commander of the army’s southern district, Jackson ordered an invasion of Florida. After his forces captured Spanish posts at St. Mark’s and Pensacola, he claimed the surrounding land for the United States. By 1824 his boosters had rallied enough support to get him a nomination as well as a seat in the U.S. Senate. In a five-way race, Jackson won the popular vote, but for the first time in history no candidate received a majority of electoral votes. Jackson and his wife were accused of adultery on the basis that Rachel had not been legally divorced from her first husband when she married Jackson. Though in principle Jackson supported states’ rights, he confronted the issue head-on in his battle against the South Carolina legislature, led by the formidable Senator John C. Calhoun. In 1832, South Carolina adopted a resolution declaring federal tariffs passed in 1828 and 1832 null and void and prohibiting their enforcement within state boundaries. Violence seemed imminent, but South Carolina backed down, and Jackson earned credit for preserving the Union in its greatest moment of crisis to that date. In 1835, the Cherokees signed a treaty giving up their land in exchange for territory west of Arkansas, where in 1838 some 15,000 would head on foot along the so-called Trail of Tears. In the 1836 election, Jackson’s chosen successor Martin Van Buren defeated Whig candidate William Henry Harrison, and Old Hickory left the White House even more popular than when he had entered.

In conclusion, Andrew Jackson had served in the war of 1812 and he had also run for president. He had also fought in New Orleans with Great Britain, he was the commander of the army’s southern district, Jackson ordered an invasion of Florida. When he was a president but the people consider him as hero.