Talk:Andrew Jackson

Minority report

Since the status quo/detente is being destabilized anyway, here are my criticisms of this biography of Jackson, which I think are broadly supported by current post-Remini academic scholarship, as well as a long line of Jackson haters going back to the 18th century. My basic concern is that this article is currently so paranoid about "neutrality" that it fails to actually explain Jackson. I fear we have fallen into a "false balance" trap that ultimately becomes its own form of misinformation akin to "some people say the earth is flat, while others believe it is more spherical, or perhaps a bit ovoid."

• Sanewashing - AJ was not a normal person or a normal president. He was a gangster. He was the neighborhood bully. He was *fucking crazy*. We simply cannot write about him using the same template that would be applied to James Monroe or Benjamin Harrison or Gerald Ford.
• Racism - Yes he was racist. So were many. But the difference is that Andrew Jackson is arguably the Founding Father of American White Supremacy, if not the godfather of the Confederacy (they put him on their money in case there was any doubt), and there is even an extremist argument to be made that his actions and his presidency resulted in the Civil War and made the successive 100 years of violence-enforced oppression an inevitability. To be clear, I don't think his actions in the nullification crisis give him any credibility in the issues of secession, disunion, or national identity. He was a treasonous racist who *loved* slavery and if the choices were slavery in Tennessee or abolition anywhere else there is no question he would have chosen Slavery every time. The Jacksonians believed and argued loudly that "white men surrendered their sovereignty in proportion to its exercise by people of color" - a man with those beliefs would die a thousand times before he would accept anything resembling liberty and justice for all.
• Anti-Americanism: What? Yes. He was treason-curious from the get-go. *Of course* he and his little henchmen were in cahoots with Burr and they would have gotten away with it too if it hadn't been for that meddling Jefferson! The "Blount conspiracy" and the "Burr conspiracy" and the "West Florida crisis" and the Seminole Wars and the Republic of Texas are all part of a long series of freelance wars run by white southerners (often including Jackson himself, or otherwise people very closely associated with Jackson) who wanted more land, more slaves, and fewer Indians, so they could be richer and more powerful, without the interference of the feds, the British, the Spanish, the Mexicans, or those infernal abolitionists. "We want to rape and beat the shit out of people in peace. It's called liberty!!" I really don't think he should ever get the slightest credit for his allegiance to the United States when his allegiance was to the enrichment of himself and his clansmen (klansmen?) and that is it.
• Propagandistic claptrap: Our inclusion of maudlin deathbed utterances or his sense that political persecution killed Rachel or that he had any serious devotion to any religion other than the Almighty Dollar or that the American Revolution was a formative experience that shaped his politics or personality is all but printing the pamphlets of his campaign committee and we should be ashamed of ourselves. He was a chaotic little 14yo and he cared about horses and cockfighting and establishing dominance in the local hierarchy of other teenagers, not the principles nor the military strategy of the revolution. Rachel died of a heart attack. Why are we quoting man's dying declaration about "maybe black people go to heaven too" instead of telling people that by his own handwritten account he personally marched a dozen chained black men and boys naked through cypress swamps in January 1812, or that he bought and sold 12-year-old black children the way the way that you would buy gum, or that the burned bodies of the dead Muscogee at the battle of Tallusahatchee were being eaten by dogs while Jackson's starving militiamen scavenged for potatoes that had been cooked in the inferno along with the bodies?
• Historical context, lack of: This article fails to characterize or contextualize his relationships with Calhoun, Clay, Adams, Crawford, Marshall, Taney, Gaines, Benton, Scott, Claiborne, etc etc. We fail to teach the reader that his administration was a nest of unctuous cronies and only a scanting handful of his cabinet members were competent. We fail to examine what *really* made him such an electoral smash hit. What was it about the American people of that era that made them so horny for Jackson? I think we all know it wasn't "tariffs."

Jackson is an epochal, impossibly complex figure who did a dozen lives worth of historically important stuff. It's hard to summarize it briefly, it needs dozens of feature-quality articles to come close to explaining him and his era, but in the interim between here and there, showcasing propagandistic Currier & Ives lithographs, including pablum like "He also had a strong sense of loyalty. He considered threats to his friends as threats to himself, but he demanded unquestioning loyalty in return." and transcribing disingenuous bullshit like "Jackson stated that he had postponed officially entering the church until after his retirement to avoid accusations that he had done so for political reasons" is not it. jengod (talk) 05:20, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Suggestions for specific actions:

• Remove Revolutionary War subhed and just let that text be part of one "early life" section
• Replace Currier & Ives with this map of the Waxhaws which, per Remini, was created with input from Jackson in his lifetime
• Move painting of Rachel at age 56 from section about her marriage in her 20s down to either "personal life" or "Election of 1828 and death of Rachel Jackson" section
• Put this historical marker or this less-neutral image from the Coffin Handbills in the duel section.
• Remove "romantic image" of Jackson from Creek War and replace with this image of Weatherford's surrender, which was created in Jackson's lifetime with his input and remarkably actually includes an African-American slave in the bottom left corner, or any map depicting the military engagements
• Supplement Seminole War section with either this image of the arrest of Hillis Hadjo and Homathlemico or the self portrait of Hadjo
• Remove quotes about they killed Rachel, deathbed heaven stuff, anything more than a single sentence about him joining the Presbyterian church, and cut "During Jackson's presidency, slavery remained a minor political issue," which tells the reader outright that we are determined the miss the forest for the trees.

jengod (talk) 06:56, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

I appreciate these concrete suggestions about images; editing the whole prose of the article is a big project, but at least doing more to illustrate more of Jackson's life and world, including more of the people he encountered, is a simple and I would hope uncontroversial change.

• let that text be part of one "early life" section: "Revolutionary War" as a subsection of "Early life" would probably work, as it was also part of his early life
• map of the Waxhaws: I'm inclined to also prefer the map; we can even include in the caption that Jackson helped make it!
• Move painting of Rachel: Sensible.
• duel section: Ooh, I quite like that handbill!
• Jackson from Creek War: I wonder about using this image instead. One of them would be useful somewhere in that section.
• Supplement Seminole War section: I'm less familiar with Jackson as a general and the Seminole Wars. I presume Hadjo was involved in that? Would you be able to add a cited sentence about that so it's crystal clear to readers and editors why the image is there when we add it (since, I think once a sentence is there, adding the image would be quite reasonable).
• cut "During Jackson's presidency, slavery remained a minor political issue,": Jackson, and even his old foe Henry Clay, may have longed for it to be a minor issue, but as books like The Republic of Violence: The Tormented Rise of Abolition in Andrew Jackson's America go to show, quite right that it wasn't really minor at all.

Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 07:21, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

I will start with where I agree:

• this article is currently so paranoid about "neutrality" that it fails to actually explain Jackson. I fear we have fallen into a "false balance" trap that ultimately becomes its own form of misinformation akin: Yes; there's a strong overcorrection toward blandly narrating Jackson that underplays the severity of his behavior.
• treason-curious: Though born in the British Carolinas and a participant in the American Revolution, thirty years before Jackson was elected president he swore allegiance to the Spanish crown (Susan Gaunt Stearns, Empire of Commerce: The Closing of the Mississippi and the Opening of Atlantic Trade (University of Virginia Press, 2024). He was a grown man but was flexible about his political citizenship.
• inclusion of maudlin deathbed utterances: The deathbed utterance is unnecessarily flowery, and it's contextless presentation suggests a notion of genuine affection rather than the possessive racist paternalism it was. I doubt the men and women Jackson enslaved appreciated the sentiment, even if they dared not express their discontent to the people who were legally allowed to beat them.
• Historical context, lack of: The article mentions that Jackson's "rotation in office" ultimately functioned as political patronage and became known as the spoils system but gives the matter curiously little attention on the page. Why not let the reader know who some of those loyal Democrats were and how they managed (or didn't manage) their new postings?

That said, I think overcorrecting in the other direction isn't necessary.

• Andrew Jackson is arguably the Founding Father of American White Supremacy: You give Jackson too much credit and his predecessors too little. It's true he was committed to slavocracy and was so virulent in his racist animus that his own contemporaries considered him extreme, and that this doesn't come through in the article as much as it could and probably ought, but he didn't originate anti-Blackness in the country. States had been disfrachsing Black freemen for years before his presidency. Cold calculus about slavery like Jefferson's, while not as colorful as Jackson's bombast, was key to the formation of white supremacy in the States.
• I don't think his actions in the nullification crisis give him any credibility in the issues of secession, disunion, or national identity I don't think Jackson's words on the matter or his behavior bear that out. It can't be reduced to mere politics; he expressed opprobrium for the nullifiers in private letters too. Antislavery northerners regarded Jackson's response to the nullifiers positively, and I think it fair to defer to them as contemporaries (and often critics!) in interpreting him: Their cotton bags, may turn to rags, / If Eastern men don't buy them, / For all their gold, they may be sold, / Or their slaves may yet destroy them. [...] Sing Yankee doodle doodle doo, / Yankee doodle dandy, / For Jackson he is wide awake, / He says the Union is so handy. Or, more dryly, as James M. McPherson wrote, In the nullification crisis of 1832, Andrew Jackson had vowed to use force to collect duties on South Carolina and to hang the nullification leaders. "Oh, for one hour of Jackson!" exclaimed many Yankee Republicans who developed a sudden retrospective affection for this Tennessee Democrat (Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, 249). I'm no Jackson girl, but even the stopped clock is right once a day, and apparently this was when he was. Now, Jackson himself was still as pro-slavery as ever, obviously. But to say he would have ever favored disunion is saying more than the evidence does.
• the Seminole Wars and the Republic of Texas: While Jackson's declaration of loyalty to the King of Spain unsettles any claim of staunch, lifelong patriotism, you mischaracterize his raids on the Seminole and the subsequent establishment of the Republic of Texas by his peers. In these matters, U. S. Americans violated the sovereignty of other nations with the expectation that the United States would eventually bail them out and annex the territory. Texans considered themselves forerunners to American expansion; they weren't trying to escape America. Jackson's raids on the Seminole should be understood in that light. Of course, the America that Jackson in Florida and that Houston in Texas believed in was a white supremacist, slavocratic America—which was, indeed, exactly why they were so confident the United States would go for annexation and expand the available territory for slavery.
• transcribing disingenuous: I don't think scholarship considers Jackson's Christianity disingenuous. See, for instance, Jonathan A. Atkins, Andrew Jackson: Old Hickory in Christian America, Spiritual Lives (Oxford University Press, 2025). His belief that enslaving people was religiously compatible is morally abhorrent, certainly, but historians conclude he was, in his cantankerous, mercurial way, devout.

Even with these disagreements in mind, I do think it's the case that the article tries too hard to be 'neutral' and ends up creating a false balance that isn't actually neutral. This is, in a sense, an outdated article, one premised on the writings and sentiments of an earlier generation. The reliable sources guideline reminds us that some scholarly material may be outdated.

The writings that form the citational core of the current article have their strengths but also serious shortcomings, as I think Daniel Walker Howe's very piercing critical review of the older biographies goes to show. In that review, I think it's interesting—and perhaps telling—that when Howe asked the editors of The Papers of Andrew Jackson which Jackson biography they liked best, none picked the twentieth- or early-twenty-first-century ones that form this article's backbone: All picked the same one: Life of Andrew Jackson by James Parton, published in three volumes between 1859 and 1861, a book that was critical of Jackson’s presidency, especially the "spoils system", rather than glowing the way Remini, Wilentz, and Meacham tend to be about Jackson.

It's been more than a decade since Howe's critical review of the biographies, and since then scholarship that paints a fuller picture of Jackson has been published. I suggest the following as good places to start. (Howe is already cited in the article, but very lightly and infrequently compared to the older biographies).

• Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848, Oxford History of the United States (Oxford University Press, 2007) (of course)
• J. M. Opal, Avenging the People: Andrew Jackson, the Rule of Law, and the American Nation (Oxford University Press, 2017) (this one is especially illuminating about his character and personality)
• Joshua A. Lynn, Preserving the White Man's Republic: Jacksonian Democracy, Race, and the Transformation of American Conservatism, A Nation Divided: Studies in the Civil War Era (University of Virginia Press, 2019)
• J. D. Dickey, The Republic of Violence: The Tormented Rise of Abolition in Andrew Jackson's America (Pegasus Books, 2022)
• Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (Beacon Press, 2023) (see chapter six, "The Last of the Mohicans and Andrew Jackson's White Republic")

Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 07:07, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

In addition to discussing the first paragraph of the lead, there have been a slew of changes to the rest of the article. Most of them are minor additions with updated information or qualifying points made as per the conversations above. I did revert many, but not all of the image changes. I think that extreme of a change requires more discussion from the community. At this point, I removed the poem and the mansion, in part trying to keep to one image per section and to reduce image crowding. I also think some of the images would need more discussion to be changed. For example, I put the picture of Rachel back near the front. Yes, she is older, but it is next to her first mention. Other pictures created over time. I also replaced the Tennessee map because it clearly outlines the political state of Tennessee at the time Jackson moved to Nashville. The state was two enclaves surrounded by native American territory.

Because the article is currently a featured article, and I was got myself involved in the process of trying to steer the consensus, my role is more towards trying to keep ensure that changes are small and don't change the consensus built during the FAR process (and more importantly, the view of currently watching editors). But, if a major overhaul is wanted, I'd like to suggest the following. Please put in a request for a feature article review. If there is an agreement to delist the article, then it would be easier for those who want to rework the article to do so as they build it in the direction they think is best. Wtfiv (talk) 18:14, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

I think that extreme of a change requires more discussion from the community: I'm not sure I follow how the mere addition of an image in a quite long section constitutes an "extreme change". Can you be more specific about the issues with the reverted revisions beyond preservation of the status quo?

Please put in a request for a feature article review. If there is an agreement to delist the article, then it would be easier for those who want to rework the article to do so as they build it in the direction they think is best.: This seems to have the process backwards. The first goal of revising or reviewing a Feature Article isn't to delist. The first goal is to improve articles rather than to demote them, and an ideal review would address the issues raised through edits to the article and close with no change in status. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:22, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

It's less about the small changes, but addressing them in the context of the above conversation. Jengod states the article needs revision based on seven bullet points. And, it sounds like you may not agree with all the points, but are in general agreement: Even with these disagreements in mind, I do think it's the case that the article tries too hard to be 'neutral' and ends up creating a false balance that isn't actually neutral. This is, in a sense, an outdated article, one premised on the writings and sentiments of an earlier generation. If the article is outdated, overhauling it sounds like a reasonable solution if that is warranted. Wtfiv (talk) 20:46, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Looks like last year's FAR was about neutrality, so if you are overhauling to get a better kind of neutrality, most of the same people will be interested. But exactly when, and how, to invite them to the party is the question. Does WP:Peer review make sense? I am not too familiar with what WP mechanisms might be in place for this. If you don't use any mechanism at all, will you get the eyes on it that you are hoping for? Bruce leverett (talk) 21:24, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Neutrality triggered the FAR in 2022, but once it started the editors who oversaw approving and reviewing the FAR had other concerns. I think the amount of time it took to get through the FAR gives a sense of the issues. It took about 20 months (starting in August 2022 and being finalized in April 2024). Much of the nuts and bolts commentary went into the talk pages instead of the FAR page while issues of neutrality were being addressed on the notice board. But given the topic, can one be surprised? I think the lead first paragraph says it best: Jackson is controversial. Wtfiv (talk) 05:26, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

And as a further evidence of his near synonymity with controversy: Was it any coincidence that Jackson was the featured article on the day of this year's presidential inauguration? (I only found out about it two days after the fact...The admins usually send out a notice. I wonder who got it?) Wtfiv (talk) 06:03, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

Yes. I am against any wording or the removal of wording which takes us further way from the gains we made in the last RFC/FA Review. --ARoseWolf 19:32, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

Jackson and racism suggested edit

His views weren’t raciest, they were genocidal. Just because he was an important figure doesn’t give the right to erase native history. 98.212.145.195 (talk) 15:46, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

Don't just come here making statements, bring your evidence in citations to independent reliable sources. Making a statement emphatically without backing it up helps no one. --ARoseWolf 19:35, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

Another image source

I have uploaded some of the key images from an 1834 anti-Jackson book.

Commons:Category:Images from Seba Smith's 1834 parodic biography of Andrew Jackson

Some are neutral/anodyne, some are remarkably elegant woodcut caricatures, some are incomprehensible without referring to the surrounding text and even then are a bit obscure, but just in case you are digging deeper into the Bank War and need contemporary illustrations, I wanted to let you know they're there. jengod (talk) 21:07, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

I think Seba's image of the duel is better than the one we have (and yet, it seems clear it is probably derived from it, as the Handbill's one is earlier. Thoughts? Wtfiv (talk) 00:25, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

I think the image from Seba Smith's book is a very straightforward "this is a duel" image LOL although it does convey nicely that Dickinson *apparently* thought the duel was done and so did not anticipate Jackson shooting a second time and was not defending himself etc etc. I'm personally good with using the 1834 Seba Smith on this page. The Coffin Handbills duel image is currently on the Dickinson article, FWIW. jengod (talk) 00:40, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

Oh man, I just love these. Even if well executed, the woodcuts are naïve, which makes them all the better in my estimation. I particularly like number 18, wherein Jackson is dressed like a fop in uniform, gold epaulets and all, and holding his pistol ever so daintily while his companions savagely attack the Bentons with their rapier-like daggers. Oh lord—and the pièce de résistance, the poor woman in the doorway with both her arms raised like a football referee's "touchdown!" signal. It's beautiful. And number 16, where Jackson sits on his Satanic Majesty's throne and dismisses his cabinet, raising his arms in the same gesture and legs impossibly splayed while the cowards flee in terror. This is Trump in a couple of weeks or so.;-) Carlstak (talk) 01:52, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

I agree number 16 is graphically superior!

I don't even understand what number 11 exactly is about but it's another good visual of Jackson (with his ubiquitous cane for hitting people and things) and his cabinet working on affairs of state, such as they were.

here's the HathiTrust catalog page for this book just in case anyone needs.

jengod (talk) 04:38, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

I don't understand it either, but now I'm inspired to buy a cane even though I don't need one, just to make a fashion statement and to shake it vehemently for emphasis when I deliver my outraged rants. Carlstak (talk) 16:28, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

Illustration from Chapter XXXIV of Seba Smith's 1834 parodic biography of Andrew Jackson

Based on the chapter, I'd say the man on the left is Nicolas Biddle, who mockingly portrayed as the "Filadelfy [Philadelphia] Quaker" (In a pose reminiscent of William Penn but adding a sword) because of his family roots, who is about to get clobbered by Jackson and his kitchen cabinet. It may also allude to the Duane affair which is mentioned, where Duane, who was also from Philadelphia, resigned from the cabinet because he was against the destruction of the bank. The image would seem great for the Bank War article, but image seems more like a mashup summarizing the entire chapter it is embedded in, so captioning it would be challenging. Wtfiv (talk) 17:28, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

Thinking more about it, the facing page suggests it may be Major Downing reading his pro-bank proclamation to the cabinet in the guise of the above-mentioned characters. (I think Downing is usually portrayed thinner). Great caricature, but difficult to summarize! Wtfiv (talk) 23:55, 27 February 2025 (UTC)