“Fearless, principled, and damaged, Andrew Jackson was one of the fiercest and most controversial men ever to serve as president of the United States” (Wilentz 2). According to Sean Wilentz, he actually “came to be regarded, for better or worse, as the embodiment of the democratic idea” (8). This is inherently true as Jackson himself personified the American Paradox, wherein the country openly participated in the enslaving of millions while touting their democracy and the inalienable human rights. Andrew Jackson stood as one of the better examples of this positive and negative type of democracy, with every aspect of his person showing off the products of said paradox: A humble upbringing, strong military career, successful plantation, and his
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Believing he was taking the democratic approach by placing the indigenous peoples under federal care on designated land, Jackson was under the assumption that he was doing them a favor. That they would have been driven out by the violent white men of the south, providing another example in which Jackson displayed a contradiction between his thoughts and actions that aligned with both people of the northern and southern United …show more content…
This could be seen as a negative Jackson 's part as Wilentz explains that Jackson believed Nullification and the idea that of individual state sovereignty were inherently flawed as, in Jackson 's own words “the majority is to govern” and that it was the job of a secure federal government to protect from the overbearing nature of an upper class minority controlling the american people (97). This lead to Jackson threatening to uphold the law and collecting South Carolina’s tariff through means of federally approved violence (98). Eventually, the actions taken by Jackson in 1833 would spark the American Civil
Believing he was taking the democratic approach by placing the indigenous peoples under federal care on designated land, Jackson was under the assumption that he was doing them a favor. That they would have been driven out by the violent white men of the south, providing another example in which Jackson displayed a contradiction between his thoughts and actions that aligned with both people of the northern and southern United …show more content…
This could be seen as a negative Jackson 's part as Wilentz explains that Jackson believed Nullification and the idea that of individual state sovereignty were inherently flawed as, in Jackson 's own words “the majority is to govern” and that it was the job of a secure federal government to protect from the overbearing nature of an upper class minority controlling the american people (97). This lead to Jackson threatening to uphold the law and collecting South Carolina’s tariff through means of federally approved violence (98). Eventually, the actions taken by Jackson in 1833 would spark the American Civil