Andrew Jackson was the first 'people's president,' a self-made frontier hero who transformed American democracy by extending political participation to common white men while brutally expelling Native Americans from their lands. Born in poverty in the Carolinas, Jackson rose through military exploits, defeating the British at New Orleans and fighting Indian wars across the South.
Jackson's presidency (1829-1837) mobilized mass democracy for the first time. He attacked the 'corrupt bargain' of elites, destroyed the Second Bank of the United States as a tool of privileged financiers, and championed the 'common man'—meaning white male farmers and workers. Jacksonian democracy was real expansion of political participation.
The moral catastrophe of Jackson's presidency was Indian Removal. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 forced the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, and Seminole nations from their ancestral lands, killing thousands on the Trail of Tears. Jackson defied a Supreme Court ruling protecting Cherokee rights. His legacy embodies American democracy's deepest contradiction—expansion of freedom for some built on dispossession of others.