Andrew Jackson

To further our studies about Democracy in America, we learned about Andrew Jackson, one of the first presidents to lead the new Democratic nation. There are many conflicting views on whether or not he was a good president, and our essential question is "Is Andrew Jackson's long-standing reputation as "the people's president" deserved?" Personally, I do not think Andrew Jackson should be remembered as the people's president because he made some really bad decisions. The worst decision he made was to force the Native Americans to abide by the United States laws and not even giving the basic rights as U.S. citizens causing them to lose their land and go on a forced march to relocate called "the Trail of Tears". By doing this, Jackson violated the definition of democracy,  a form of government in which eligible citizens may participate equally – either directly by voting for the passing/ rejecting of laws. To learn in-depth about Andrew Jackson, we looked at three of his defining points as a president, the Bank War, the Spoils System, and the Indian Removal. We split into groups to analyse the primary sources about each topic and then each group made a presentation about a particular aspect. My group performed a skit about the Indian Removal and unfortunately I don't have the script. Overall, it was fun to use the knowledge we learned from the documents and turn it into our own presentations and everyone learned a lot.

Andrew Jackson