Our President, Donald Trump, makes many outlandish statements. One of his latest was to praise President Andrew Jackson and suggest that if Jackson had been around a few decades later, there would not have been a Civil War because Jackson “had a big heart.”
There is a reason there was a campaign to replace Andrew Jackson’s picture on the $20 bill with Harriet Tubman’s picture. Yes, Harriet Tubman was famous and is loved historically. Andrew Jackson, not so much.
Let’s take a quick look at Andrew Jackson. In the 1830’s, President Andrew Jackson’s government took 25 million acres of land from Native Americans in the South.
As federal treaty commissioner before he became president, Jackson started the Native American removal “by fair means or foul” that resulted in taking major parts of several states—e.g., a fifth of Georgia, half of Mississippi, and a considerable part of Alabama.
After becoming President, Jackson forced Native American tribes to leave their territories in the South and move west, mostly to Oklahoma. Tens of thousands of Native Americans had to make this cruel and grueling movement west, mostly on foot. In one of these treks, known as the Trail of Tears, 4,000 Native Americans died of cold, hunger, and disease.
Jackson and his fellow Southern plantation owners and other businessmen benefited financially from the taking of this Indian land. Since Jackson owned over a hundred slaves on his 1,000-acre farm in Tennessee, he was definitely pro-slavery. He took measures to protect the institution of slavery in the South. For example, President Andrew Jackson fought openly against abolitionists, referring to them as “monsters.” He banned the post office from delivering abolitionist literature in the south.
Even though it is way off the mark, the praise heaped upon Andrew Jackson by Trump is strange. But, of course, this says more about the current president than that evil president of nearly 200 years ago.