Andrew Jackson

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Andrew Jackson

No one can argue that as a president, Jackson made no mistakes; however, they in no way disqualify him from having a place on the U.S. twenty dollar bill. Jackson made every decision according to the will of the American people, even the more unsavory ones. He was a war hero that exemplified the strength and tenacity by which America has defined itself over the generations. He acted in all ways with concern for the growth of the American nation, both at home and overseas. Even his now unquestionably negative actions, such as the Indian Removal Act, were done at the time not only in the interest of the citizens of the united states , but in regard (however misguided) to the survival of the Indian nations. It is this distinction between intents that make the comparison of Andrew Jackson to Adolf Hitler unfounded and even laughable.

The duty of a president, or any elected official for that matter, is to enact policies concurrent with the views of the voting population that elected him or her to office. In the case of Andrew Jackson, through no fault of his own, the voting population was white males. In fact, Andrew Jackson's voting base was closer to the occupational background of today's voters than to the land-owning aristocratic supporters of his predecessor's and opponents. Supporters of Jackson included "urban workers, western frontiersmen, southern planters, small farmers, bankers and would-be entrepreneurs" (Tregle). It is this unusually diverse voting basis, as well as his own humble beginnings, that sometimes earned Jackson the label of "the People's President". Jackson 's support among voters of disparate backgrounds, as well as a decisive win both in the electoral and popular vote twice, put a lie to ...

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... great country, his character and actions are not without stain. To deny Jackson his place on the twenty dollar bill would call into question the right of all other figures on our currency: Washington, who not only owned slaves but actively and openly participated in violence upon the Native Americans with the intent of eliminating them (a real policy of genocide), Lincoln, whose Emancipation Proclamation only included slaves in the territory of the Confederacy as an attempt to use the slave populace, Franklin, a womanizer and a man who abandoned his wife and children for the pleasures of Paris, and Grant, responsible for one of the most corrupt eras of American politics. Although Jackson's policies concerning Native Americans were questionable at best, and should in no way be exalted, he remains and important, and in many ways, a positive figure in American history.

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