Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson was an American soldier and statesman who served as the seventh President of the United States from 1829 to 1837 and was the founder of the Democratic Party.

The United States of America, commonly referred to as the United States or America, is a federal republic composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions.

The President of the United States is the elected head of state and head of government of the United States.

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He was born somewhere near the then-unmarked border between North and South Carolina, into a recently immigrated Scots-Irish farming family of relatively modest means.

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During the American Revolutionary War, Jackson, whose family supported the revolutionary cause, acted as a courier.

The American Revolutionary War, also known as the American War of Independence and the Revolutionary War in the United States, was the armed conflict between Great Britain and thirteen of its North American colonies, which had declared themselves the independent United States of America.

The American Revolution was a political upheaval that took place between 1765 and 1783 during which colonists in the Thirteen American Colonies rejected the British monarchy and aristocracy, overthrew the authority of Great Britain, and founded the United States of America.

At age 13, he was captured and mistreated by the British army.

He moved to new lands in Tennessee becoming a lawyer, planter and militia commander.

He served in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate but was not prominent there.

The United States Senate is a legislative chamber in the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the House of Representatives makes up the U.S. Congress.

The United States House of Representatives is one of the two houses of the United States Congress, alongside the Senate.

In 1801, Jackson was appointed colonel in the Tennessee militia, which became his political as well as military base.

He owned hundreds of slaves who worked on the Hermitage plantation.

In 1806, he killed a man in a duel over a matter of honor regarding his wife, Rachel.

A duel is an arranged engagement in combat between two individuals with matched weapons in accordance with agreed-upon rules.

He gained national fame in the War of 1812, where he won a decisive victory over the main British invasion army at the Battle of New Orleans in the final days of the war.

The War of 1812 was a military conflict that lasted from June 18, 1812 to February 18, 1815, fought between the United States of America and the United Kingdom, its North American colonies, and its Native American allies.

The Battle of New Orleans was an engagement fought between January 8 and January 18, 1815, constituting the final major battle of the War of 1812, and the most one-sided battle of that war.

New Orleans is a major United States port and the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana.

In response to conflict with the Seminole Indians in Spanish Florida, he invaded the territory in 1818.

The Seminole are a Native American tribe that emerged in a process of ethnogenesis from various Native American groups who settled in Florida in the 18th century, most significantly Creeks from what is now Georgia and Alabama.

Spanish Florida refers to the Spanish territory of La Florida, which was the first major European land claim and attempted settlement in North America during the European Age of Discovery.

This led directly to the First Seminole War and the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, which formally transferred Florida from Spain to the United States.

The Seminole Wars, also known as the Florida Wars, were three conflicts in Florida between the Seminole—the collective name given to the amalgamation of various groups of Native Americans and African Americans who settled in Florida in the early 18th century—and the United States Army.

The Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, also known as the Transcontinental Treaty, the Florida Purchase Treaty, or the Florida Treaty, was a treaty between the United States and Spain in 1819 that ceded Florida to the U.S. and defined the boundary between the U.S. and New Spain.

Spain, officially the Kingdom of Spain, is a sovereign state largely located on the Iberian Peninsula in southwestern Europe, with archipelagos in the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea, and several small territories on and near the North African coast.

Jackson ran for president in 1824.

Although he got a plurality in both electoral and popular vote against three major candidates, Jackson failed to get a majority and lost in the House of Representatives to John Quincy Adams.

Jackson claimed that he lost by a "corrupt bargain" between Adams and Speaker of the House Henry Clay, who was also a candidate, to give Clay the office of Secretary of State in exchange for Adams winning the presidency.

The term Corrupt Bargain refers to three historic incidents in American history in which political agreement was determined by congressional or presidential actions that many viewed to be corrupt from different standpoints.

Henry Clay, Sr. was an American lawyer and planter, statesman, and skilled orator who represented Kentucky in both the United States Senate and House of Representatives.

Jackson's supporters then founded what became the Democratic Party.

He ran again for president in 1828 against Adams.

Building on his base in the West and with new support from Virginia and New York, he won by a landslide.

He blamed the death of his wife, Rachel, which occurred just after the election, on the Adams campaigners, who called her a "bigamist".

As president, Jackson faced a threat of secession by South Carolina over the "Tariff of Abominations", which Congress had enacted under Adams.

The "Tariff of Abominations" was a protective tariff passed by the Congress of the United States on May 19, 1828, designed to protect industry in the northern United States.