Old Hickory – “By the Eternal! I'll smash them!"
Andrew Jackson was a wealthy landowner, slaveholder, attorney, businessman and general. Jackson had humble origins, and was thought by some to have been a crude individual. He certainly had a volatile personality (in a famous incident in the White House, he apparently lost his temper and fumed at some unwelcome guests, who fled in horror. When they had gone, he turned to an assistant, grinned and said, "They thought I was mad, didn't they?"). Jackson saw himself as “President of All the People”, defender of the "Common Man", and willingly used his authority on their behalf. He vetoed more bills than all his predecessors combined; challenging the view that the only grounds for a presidential veto were a bill's constitutionality.
The “Jacksonian era” saw the emergence of a solid two-party system. The modern Democratic Party was founded under Jackson, and an opposition party - the Whigs - soon evolved. When the Whigs......
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