Old Hickory “Be grateful for the things and people you have in your life. Things you take for granted someone else is praying for” ― Marlan Rico Lee. Andrew Jackson was born into poverty in either North or South Carolina. His father had brought himself and his family into the Carolinas as Irish Immigrants, however he died shortly before Andrew was born. Because of his family’s poverty, they were unable to support him with a formal schooling until he went to study law in his late teens. In 1780, the British invaded the Carolinas during the revolutionary war, and Jackson and his brother Robert, who were under fifteen years old, serving as soldiers, were taken captive. Their oldest brother Hugh died of heatstroke soon after an earlier battle …show more content…
He lived the rest of his life with a bullet lodged in his chest after an 1806 shooting duel that started as a misunderstanding between Jackson and Charles Dickinson about a horse race. The argument left one man dead and the other with permanent damage. Jackson was known for his quick temper, prickly sense of pride and his sensitivity to insults, which resulted in him getting into multiple fights in his days and gaining the nickname of “Old Hickory”. Although Jackson lacked military experience, he was promoted to be a major general of the Tennessee militia in 1802. Jackson managed to lead U.S. troops against the Creek Indians who were allied with Britain, on a 5 month campaign during the war of 1812. These Indians had massacred hundreds of innocent settlers, and Jackson claimed victory of the campaign at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in March 1814, which gained the U.S. 20 Million acres of land. This military success resulted in Jackson being promoted to Major General, and an unexpected victory over the British at the Battle of New …show more content…
Jackson also ran for election to the U.S. Senate and won the following year. In1824, a Pennsylvania convention also nominated him for presidency, and although he won the popular vote, there was no majority, and the voting went to the House of Representatives, who voted for John Quincey Adams. Three years before the next election, Jackson was re-nominated for presidency and it was his re-nomination that split the Republic-Democratic party in two. His opponents nicknamed him “jackass”, a nickname that Jackson liked, and later adopted as the symbol of the Democratic Party. Jackson won the election of 1828 by a landslide over Adams, and was the first president to invite the public to attend the inauguration ball at the White House, which quickly gained him the people’s