A national hero out of the West, a natural leader, and a nationalistic symbol, Andrew Jackson had most certainly proved himself to be the first "people's president." Andrew Jackson was the seventh president of the United States, and was the first to gain office by a direct appeal to the mass of voters. Focusing on both the highs and the lows of his two terms in office, from 1829-1837, the issues that are of main concern are states' rights, nullification, the tariff, and Indian removal and banking policies; these all are controversies that brought forth strong rivalry over his years of presidency. He was known for his iron will and fiery personality, and his strong use of the powers of his office that made his years of presidency to be known as the Jacksonian Democracy. Andrew Jackson grew up on the frontier. All the presidents who preceded him had come from the Eastern seaboard. The country was now expanding westward, and Jackson represented this movement. He was born in a log cabin on March 15, 1767, joined the army at age 13, and was orphaned at the age of 14. Young Jackson had an intense hatred for the English and a great loyalty to America. He fought in the American Revolution and was taken prisoner. He was still a boy of 16 when he was finally liberated from the British pen at Charleston. This sequence of tragic experiences fixed in Jackson's mind a lifelong hostility to Great Britain. After the end of the U.S. War of Independence, he studied law in an office in Salisbury, N.C., and was admitted to the bar of that state in 1787. There he became a member of a powerful political faction led by William Blount. He was married in 1791 to Rachel Donelson Robards.
             Jackson served as delegate to Tennessee in the 1796 Constitutional convention and a congressman for a year (from 1796-97). He was elected senator in 1797, but financial problems forced him to resign and return to Tennessee in less than a ...