Talk:Andrew Jackson

Photo of Andrew Jackson

In the later life and death section, it would be cool to add the photograph of Andrew Jackson taken 2 months before he died.

NicoConservative (talk) 01:55, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

There's an image from that time in that section. The mezzotint is from a daguerreotype taken about 2 months before Jackson died. There are details with a link to a digitized copy of the daguerreotype on the image's Wikimedia Common's page. Wtfiv (talk) 02:09, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

I was talking abut a different. Just google "photograph of Andrew Jackson". I can't show it here because I don't "own" the image. It might be a fake because I've only seen it on a few sites, but it looks like Andrew Jackson, but very old looking.

NicoConservative (talk) 02:15, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

When I google "photograph of Andrew Jackson", I get a dozen images, not all of which are photographs. Is it one where he is wearing glasses?

The one where he is wearing glasses was interesting to me, because I've seen it in a print biography of Jackson. When I search Wikimedia Commons for "Andrew Jackson", I don't see it, but I'm sure that we can upload it to the Commons from wherever it is, because any photo that old must be in the public domain.

I'm a little leery of adding another photo of the old Andrew Jackson to the article, though, because he looked kind of bad by then. Unless there is some overriding historical interest, one photograph of him in that section of the article is enough. Bruce leverett (talk) 02:35, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it's the one with the glasses. His face is very wrinkled and he appears to be frowning. I don't know if it's a real photograph of him. I just thought it would be cool to add because there's something about that image that just feels very interesting, it's hard to explain.

NicoConservative (talk) 02:38, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

This one was chosen when the article was first put through the Featured Article process. There's two other daguerreotypes taken circa 1844-1845, where he is wearing glasses. Adding them has been discussed before. The daguerreotypes showing him wearing glasses makes his eyes difficult to see. This certainly creates a marked psychological effect on many viewers. One photograph in this section seems enough though, as the article is already crowded with images. As per Bruce leverett's comment, one seems enough as this wasn't a time of Jackson's major activity. The one chosen has the strength of allowing readers to compare what older Jackson looks like compared to younger Jackson. (Only one of the paintings show him with glasses (Whiteside Earl's 1830-1832 portrait), and that one shows his eyes too. Imagine the effect the painting would have it made his eyes difficult to see. It too would be interesting.) Wtfiv (talk) 17:07, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

I assume this is the daguerreotype you guys are talking about:

• 
  Andrew Jackson photographed at age 78.

It's an amazing image. Besides his incredibly aged face, I find the extra lens on each of the eyeglass stems or temples, presumably for peripheral vision correction, to be very unusual and interesting. Regarding his face, he appears to be careworn and world-weary, and seems to be suffering. I hope he suffered greatly, given the suffering and devastation he visited on Native peoples of this country, including some of my ancestors. Cursed be his name.

About his eyes, it's hard to be sure, but I think I can see enough of his right eye to believe that he looks haunted, as well he should have been. I hope the spirits of all those whose deaths he caused haunted him night and day, and that his body was racked with pain. Carlstak (talk) 04:16, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Jackson Sr.’s death

The page currently claims: “Jackson's father died at the age of 29 in a logging accident while clearing land in February 1767, three weeks before his son Andrew was born.” The claim that Jackson’s father died in a logging accident is not substantiated. The source provided is Robert Nowlan’s The American Presidents, Washington to Tyler: What They Did, What They Said, What Was Said About Them, with Full Source Notes. Nowlan’s source for this claim is something called “‘Jackson’s Military Career,’ oppapers.com/essays/Jacksons-Military-Career,” attributed to no one. oppapers.com is not operational, but the URL suggests that it was a database of papers for high school students to plagiarize. If you Google “‘jackson’s military career’ logging accident,” the first hit is along these lines: https://www.ipl.org/essay/Andrew-Jacksons-Military-Career-6BB488035A49D24E. There is an unattributed PDF on the NCPedia website that makes the claim: https://ncpedia.org/printpdf/55. But the actual NCPedia entry for Jackson, taken from the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, does not make it: https://ncpedia.org/jackson-andrew-unc-press-dncb.

I have looked at several biographies—by Robert V. Remini, John S. Bassett, James Partin, and William B. Sumner—for substantiation. I have found none. This looks to be a myth. Malachi Mulligan (talk) 17:33, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Cheathem (2014) does not attribute a cause of death, just "He died around the time a third son, his namesake, was born on 15 March 1767." citing Remini, AJ, 1:33; Law license, 26 September 1787, in PAJ, 1:10–11; Ely and Brown, Legal Papers of Andrew Jackson, xxxvi.

Curtis, Andrew Jackson and the search for vindication, (1976) says: "Having survived the arduous ocean crossing and the long trek to Carolina, Elizabeth's husband died suddenly while working on the new homestead. His son would later claim that he 'died like a hero in battle, fighting for his wife and babes; fighting an uphill battle against poverty and adversity as no one in our generation could comprehend.' Perhaps local custom embellished this accident. More likely, Jackson sorely missed a father and needed to construct and believe in such a heroic death." Mom was living with sister when President AJ was born. The Internet Archive version doesn't include any footnote that I can see just a three-page essay on sources.

jengod (talk) 19:06, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

I'd remove this claim. Nowland is published by McFarland & Company, who is usually considered to be pretty reliable. But - I've found similar instances in some of their books where some of the referencing is just odd, such as a Civil War book citing a web forum. If nothing else has this, this should be considered spurious. My opinion of McFarland is dropping. Hog Farm _Talk 19:44, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm not ready to throw McFarland in the bin entirely *but* I just looked at a book review (doi:10.1353/soh.2022.0120) of an Andrew Jackson book published by them and "Deppisch also frequently and inexplicably relies on Wikipedia and Geni.com, neither of which are reliable scholarly sources." Yikes! jengod (talk) 21:27, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

McFarland tried to act like a university press (& get library sales), but it lacks the academic advisors on campus who pay close attention to their university presses. Rjensen (talk) 22:14, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Andrew Jackson's Temperament section

I believe the sentence found in the article regarding Jackson's statement of wanting to hang Clay and shoot Calhoun should be reversed with the actual statement being that he wanted to shoot Clay and hang Calhoun PrisonersPrisoners (talk) 20:41, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

This looks right, with interesting subtext as explained here. jengod (talk) 02:06, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

My eyes are too tired to search Remini right now but Clay book (p 91) confirms it enough for me. I'm gonna swap the words in the text. jengod (talk) 02:19, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

The given ref in the article, Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America by Walter R. Borneman, a reliable source, supports this better: "... Old Hickory admitted on the last day of his presidency that he had but two regrets: he 'had been unable to shoot Henry Clay or to hang John C. Calhoun'. Carlstak (talk) 05:09, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

TY. Im tired and should go watch TV or do my dishes! I probably won't but I should. :) jengod (talk) 05:14, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

Criminal charges

So you hear a lot about 45-47 being the first president w a criminal record but I think "assault w intent to kill" is a felony? Does State of Tennessee v. Andrew Jackson (1807) warrant a mention? See papers of Andrew Jackson vol 2. pp 172–175. He was acquitted.

This was overshadowed by the killing of Charles Dickinson (attorney and duelist) in 1806 but for that matter, is it encyclopedia-biography notable that Jackson is probably the only president who personally unalived someone in a non-combat situation? jengod (talk) 01:52, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

I started Draft:Legal affairs of Andrew Jackson in case anyone comes across anything else relevant! jengod (talk) 04:59, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

I pushed this live bc I'm seeing assault w attempt to kill, contempt of court, and obstruction of justice, and I know there's umpteen civil lawsuits between him and the local gentry. I think it's notable and in line with existing content but we will see! jengod (talk) 05:17, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

when you get acquitted by a jury (as was Jackson in 1807), you are officially innocent, then and now. As for contempt of court, it was not a big deal then or now. What has changed are duels--illegal then but prestigious. Illegal now and very bad for a reputation. The current debate is about "lawfare" to punish people by forcing them to months in court & huge lawyer bills. Rjensen (talk) 22:09, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Indeed! I created list of violent incidents involving Andrew Jackson to sort out all of his duels and feuds and mostly bc I didn't want to see any more videos claiming he'd been in a 100 duels. I suspect I need to read Bertram Wyatt-Brown to contextualize it all in the time period. It's currently barely a list but gotta start somewhere. jengod (talk) 23:40, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 13 December 2024

Hello I just wanted to ask if I may edit pages like this. DharMannMan (talk) 00:39, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

 Not done: this is not the right page to request additional user rights. You may reopen this request with the specific changes to be made and someone may add them for you, or if you have an account, you can wait until you are autoconfirmed and edit the page yourself. Cannolis (talk) 01:13, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

"The Brave Boy of the Waxhaws"

How should this lithograph be described? It lacks authenticity. (For one, if it occurred as shown, Jackson would likely be missing a hand.) So is it a "patriotic print", "propaganda", or "history according to Andrew Jackson"? Who is the artist? Humpster (talk) 04:55, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Presumably, since this lithograph was published in 1876 (and no artist is listed), it is not a primary or even a secondary source for the incident. From the text, I see that we are citing biographies by Meacham and Remini as our actual sources, and this lithograph is only for, shall I say, amusement. Illustrations of historical events often have that "inauthentic" flavor. There are several others in this article alone, as well as in some of our other articles about U.S. presidents. Bruce leverett (talk) 16:56, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

The question is when does amusement become propaganda? To me this image is clearly designed to invest Jackson with the mantle "Revolutionary warrior" and "anti-British martyr" when in fact I imagine he was more like an impoverished, sickly, and vulnerable kid who got mistreated by events far beyond his control.

This is part of the latter-day "political fashioning" of Jackson that benefitted the Democratic Party he is credited with founding. The manipulation of images to convey certain nuances is simply the nature of political messaging (up to the present time); our responsibility is to provide context regarding the production of the image: who, when, why was this image produced? How was it disseminated? To whose benefit?

We accept some images we know to be constructed, such as Trumbull's Declaration of Independence, without too much fuss because internally (to the U.S. at least) there's no advantage or disadvantage to be gained by disputing its mild historical inaccuracy.

On the other hand, I would argue that almost every 19th-century image of Jackson fits into a binary distinction: great American hero, or great American villain. If we are not annotating these images as such, I personally think we are failing the reader. I also think that intentionally illustrating with pro- or anti- propaganda images is absolutely appropriate and necessary. We timidly avoid this because we fear violating NPOV but in doing so we absolutely neglect to serve our higher mission of making knowledge free, in this case the knowledge being that Jackson the person and Jackson the political symbol (not the same thing) had many vociferous fans and righteous opponents whose fierce conflict defined the 1820s to the 1850s in the United States.

Therefore, I think illustrating him becomes less a question of finding images that show particular places, events, or time periods (which is a luxury we can enjoy with the Millard Fillmore and Calvin Coolidge class of presidents) than a question of finding and using images that serve as a mirror of the *exterior* history that was happening **around him the person** and **around and through his image**, which, in my non-neutral, non-encyclopedic, non-reliably sourced opinion, is amongst the most manipulated and problematic in the presidential pantheon. jengod (talk) 17:36, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Your assessment seems spot-on to me. I've been reading about the remaking of Jackson's image when he ran for president. In particular, his "irregular" marriage was surpressed. (I will write about it sometime.) The Battle of New Orleans was credited to Jackson, with little mention of how the British attack was botched, largely by one person.

The question remains how to inform the reader that an illustration is biased. American history is rife with slanted descriptions but they can sometimes be balanced by other scholars. Humpster (talk) 05:41, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

I started an article about his marriage here: Robards–Donelson–Jackson relationship controversy. It's amazing how durable the Overton narrative, with an assist from Lowry & McCardle, has been over the now nearly two centuries. jengod (talk) 21:17, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

The role of these images is to illustrate the story, as illustrations before the age of photography did. Just as Napoleon Crossing the Alps is highly unlikely to reflect Napoleon's attitude, leading an army on a long march and handling. All such works are imaginative. As Jengod points out, much of the work they are doing are the product of the image creation of their time. But they do reflect the current secondary literature. For example, it is in both Meacham's narrative (p. 12) and Remini's in Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire (p. 21). In my opinion, there are issues of sourcing and reliability in what are considered the primary sources, but a version of this tale is ubiquitous in the secondary literature, which this article summarizes. Wtfiv (talk) 07:52, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps the key word, then, is 'tale'. Humpster (talk) 14:50, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Recent edits

I changed back some recent edits, each for a slightly different reason. I outline them below

• Caption for Illustration of Waxhaws. The current title reflects the story as told in Meacham and Remini. The illustration may be dramatic, and the story is problematic, but the current title reflects the story as it is presented in the secondary literature.
• Recombined Early career and Marriage. The timeline of his early career and his relationship with Rachel is intertwined. Not breaking them up avoids having a one-paragraph section.
• Removed the role of slave-trading in 1824 election, that is not part of the main article. The lead should reflect the main article. Returned...its in the article. Wtfiv (talk) 16:54, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm posting this under your new topic since the discussion has moved there.

It is an illustration of a story, not a drawing of an event. The topic is Jackson demanding to be treated as a POW. Brown (quoting Reid and Eaton), Wilentz, and Meacham all describe the incident as Jackson demanding to be treated as a prisoner of war.

The tale isn't about about muddy boots or scars, it's about stubbornness. "Resistance to authority" or "strong will" if you prefer. It's also apocryphal: "Of questionable authorship or authenticity." Humpster (talk) 23:27, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

It's an almost certainly an aggrandizing lie. He had a scar because someone beat the shit out of him. "I stood up to the British army" is a wonderfully romantic explanation.

Just for fun I'll see if I can find where it first entered the legend. I'm curious. Yeah you can read the "original story" or close to it in the Eaton bio. This is a terrible story of teenagers who were captured and probably abused in dark ways. Why did the brother "at the same time for a similar offense" also receive a deep cut on the head? Did the British really need shiny shoes or is that just a polite metaphor for submission? The key words here are "separated and confined they were treated with marked severity" -- the whole "young Andrew Jackson had a sassy mouth on him and isn't that what we love about him" is a writer's device tying the most problematic aspects of Jackson's executive leadership to the abuse of a child to imperial oppression as well as aligning responsibility for Jackson's scarring with the nationalist rationale for American Revolution and the War of 1812.

I will look at how others present this story.

jengod (talk) 21:59, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Parton:

"...what paroxysms of contemptuous rage shook his slender frame when he saw his cousin's wife insulted, her house profaned, his brother gashed; himself as powerless to avenge as to protect. 'I'll warrant Andy thought of it at New Orleans, said an aged relative of all the parties to me in an old farm-house not far from the scene of this morning's dastardly work. To horse. Andrew was ordered to mount, and to guide some of the party to the house of a noted whig of the vicinity, named Thompson. Threatened with instant death if he failed to guide them aright, the youth submitted, and led the party in the right direction. [and then were POWs and were starving and most of them had smallpox] For some time Andrew escaped the contagion. He was reclining one day in the sun near the entrance of the prison, when the officer of the guard, attracted, as it seemed, by the youthfulness of his appearance, entered into conversation with him entered into conversation with him. The lad soon began to speak of that of which his heart was full-the condition of the prisoners and the bad quality of their food. He remonstrated against their treat- ment with such energy and feeling that the officer seemed to be moved and shocked, and, what was far more important, he was induced to ferret out the villainy of the contractors who had been robbing the prisoners of their rations. From the day of Andrew's remonstrance the condition of the prisoners was ameliorated; they were supplied with meat and better bread, and were otherwise better cared for."

Did Andrew Jackson persuade the British to treat him better as 14yo prisoner by appealing to the better angels of their nature, or...?

The whole thing honestly sounds pretty rapey. But the legend goes that Andrew Jackson's brutality and penchant for bullying and humiliation and sending children on death marches was sui generis so... jengod (talk) 22:38, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Yeah I'm looking at Remini and he's adjudicating earlier statements as a historian does. If we follow him on this we might consider taking his cue and copying this map of the war in the Carolinas that was prepared by Amos Kendall with input from Jackson.

Remini wrote "Andrew struggled to control himself. In a calm voice he replied, "Sir, I am a prisoner of war, and claim to be treated as such."40 Incensed by this retort, the officer lifted his sword and aimed it straight at Andrew's head." And commenting about it in the notes: "40. These are not, of course, Jackson's actual words but an approximation devised by Parton, Jackson, I, 89. The same sense is found in Reid and Eaton, Jackson, p. 16"

I'll leave the haunted past where it lies now but from what I can tell the original source of this "image" is mostly Jackson himself to his post-presidential biographers (Kendall) topped off some new material and commentary supplied by Parton investigating in the 1850s. By the time we get to Currier & Ives in the 1880s we are three times removed from the original statement. Meh.

OK well good luck historians and biographers. I'll be keep you in my thoughts. jengod (talk) 23:43, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Excerpts from Kendall, 1843, based on correspondence with Jackson. I uploaded an illustration that goes with this section.

The subtext in the first section is...something. Emphasis added elsewhere just because the language is incredible in light of Jackson's actions through the rest of his life.

"CAPTORS' BRUTAL CONDUCT"

(2.) Boys big enough to carry muskets incurred the dangers of men...Men could not, unguarded, sleep in their own houses without danger of sur- prise and murder...The beds were ripped open, and the feathers scattered to the winds. The clothing of the whole family, men, women, and children, was cut and torn into fragments. Even the baby clothes shared the fate of the rest...and nothing was left to the terrified and wretched family but the clothes they had on and a desolate habitation. No attempt was made by the British officer commanding, to arrest this destruction. While it was in progress, he ordered Andrew Jackson to clean his muddy boots. The young soldier refused, claiming to be treated with the respect due to a prisoner of war. Instead of admiring this manly spirit in one so young, the cowardly ruffian struck at his head with his sword; but, throwing up his left hand, the intended victim received a gash upon it, the scar of which he will carry to the grave. Turning to Robert Jackson, the officer ordered him to perform the menial task, and, receiving a like refusal, aimed a furious blow at his head also, and inflicted a wound from which he never recovered...Andrew Jackson and his brother, with about twenty other prisoners, were then mounted on captured horses, and started for Camden, over 40 miles distant. Not a mouthful of food or drop of drink was given them on the way. Fording streams deep from recent rains, when they stooped to take up a little water in the palms of their hands to assuage their burning thirst, they were ordered to desist by their brutal guard...No attention was paid to their wounds or their wants. They had no beds, nor any substitute; and their only food was a scanty supply of bad bread. They were robbed of a portion of their clothing, taunted by Tories with being rebels, and assured they would be hanged. Andrew Jackson himself was stripped of his jacket and shoes. With a refinement of cruelty, the Jacksons and their cousin, Thomas Crawford, two of them severely wounded, were separated as soon as their relationship was known, and kept in perfect ignorance of each other's condition or fate...The Provost was a Tory from New-York; and it was afterward alleged that he withheld the meat he had contracted to supply for the support of the prisoners, to feed a gang of negroes, which he had collected from the plantations of the Whigs, with intent to convert them to his own use.

Young Jackson's presence of mind - Amos Kendall - 1843

TEXT RELATING TO ILLUSTRATION

Our young hero ran out, and, putting his gun through the fork of the apple-tree, hailed the approaching band. Having repeated his hail without an answer, and perceiving the party rapidly advancing and but a few rods distant, he fired. A volley was returned, which killed the soldier, who, having aroused the inmates of the house, had followed young Jackson, and was standing near him...General Jackson was then scarcely fourteen years old. In the boy of 1781, who does not recognise the man of 1814? By his fire from the apple-tree, he brought the enemy to a stand, and saved his little party from capture and massacre; by rushing down upon the enemy in the night of December 23d, 1814, he saved an army from capture, and a city from plunder. A minute more, and the Tories would have been at both doors of Lands's house, and escape impossible; a few hours more, and the British might have marched into New-Orleans. In both cases there were the same quickness in the choice of means, the same energy and fearlessness in execution. This is the perfection of the warrior. It is the lightning of the mind, and the act its bolt.

So anyway...to be stripped as a 14yo and to get hit for refusing to do a menial task for an authoritarian stranger you just met who holds you in the power of life and death and have no one care if you are sick or hungry or thirsty and be taken prisoner and marched away from your home and deliberately separated from your family with no hope of learning their fate and left half-naked and starving in a filthy open camp on the side of the road? (And then maybe someone fed a black person instead of you because they were more worth more than you?!) Wow that's crazy, Andrew Jackson! No one should have to experience that.

There is literally nothing credible to repeat here except "Andrew Jackson, his brother and his cousins were victims of Banestre Tarleton's bloody campaign in the Carolinas, part of the larger British strategy to do X which resulted in Y." Andrew Jackson is not a reliable secondary source on Andrew Jackson and neither are any of his little crony friends (Overton, I'm looking at you).

I really don't think anyone knows how to write about this man. Even in an imperfect time, he was patently disordered, and we keep trying to tell his story like he's a character in a Little Golden Book or as if he were an epic hero like Odysseus and it is completely insane. It's a combination of "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!", and the emperor has no clothes, and blind men with their hands on an elephant telling us it's a horse and a snake.

It's just 200 years of lies and bullshit and basically everyone knows this and yet we keep repeating the same lies to each other like we're all stupid.

Where is the escape hatch from the incessant and pernicious whitewashing?

jengod (talk) 02:32, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

Um ... calm down, try to get a night's sleep. Or maybe, find boring files to edit until you can get a better grip. Or organize your sock drawer. Whatever.

There is a lot of myth out there, trying to get into Wikipedia, and sometimes it gets in. Do the best you can, but don't expect it will always be sufficient. Bruce leverett (talk) 03:09, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

— Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

I'm going to take @Bruce leverett's advice and stop monitoring this article for the time being. Thanks to everyone who has the forbearance to continue grappling with this. I envy your patience and fortitude. Have a good evening. jengod (talk) 04:46, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

Napoleon supposedly said "what is history but a set of lies agreed upon". The statement appears in numerous variations, possibly because Napoleon didn't speak English.

Much American history began with propaganda, of necessity. (That includes "Banastre Tarleton's bloody campaign".) People believe what they want to believe. Some realize that the emperor has no clothes but convincing the rest is difficult.

Try these contrasting views of Jackson:

Memoirs of Andrew Jackson, major-general in the army of the United States;

by Waldo, Samuel Putnam, 1780-1826. [from old catalog]

Publication date 1819

Publisher Hartford, J. & W. Russell

https://archive.org/details/memoirsofandrewj00wald_1/page/26/mode/1up

https://www.learnliberty.org/videos/andrew-jackson-first-imperial-president/

Professor Amy H. Sturgis

Congress has the Jackson papers:

https://findingaids.loc.gov/db/search/xq/searchMferDsc04.xq?_id=loc.mss.eadmss.ms009180&_start=1&_lines=125 Humpster (talk) 04:30, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

Lead paragraph

The final sentence of the lead paragraph, which currently reads

Sometimes praised as an advocate for working Americans and for preserving the union of states, Jackson is also criticized for his racist policies, particularly regarding Native Americans

is not in line with Wikipedia standards, in my view. The final sentence should place the president in as broad a context as possible within American history. Acknowledgements of a complicated legacy are reserved for the final paragraph of the lead section. See, the Thomas Jefferson article, where the final sentence of the lead paragraph reads

Jefferson was a leading proponent of democracy, republicanism, and natural rights, and he produced formative documents and decisions at the state, national, and international levels.

and in the final paragraph we get an acknowledgement of a complicated legacy

[Historians] acknowledge the fact of his lifelong ownership of large numbers of slaves and give differing interpretations of his views on and relationship with slavery.

I'm suggesting the following as an update

Jackson's election to the presidency in 1828 ushered in the Second Party System in American politics, and his namesake ideology, Jacksonian Democracy, became the nation's dominant political philosophy.

and add the historian and/or popular critiques of him to the final paragraph. I'd like to discuss this with @Wtfiv and others. Ryanjackson10 (talk) 04:07, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Even for a more policy-based critique (which Jackson's would be), FDR's article can be a precedent, where the final sentence of the opening paragraph is the high level overview

His initial two terms were centered on combating the Great Depression, while his third and fourth saw him shift his focus to America's involvement in World War II.

and the particular controversial policy is held for the last paragraph of the section

Since then, several of his actions have come under criticism, such as his ordering of the internment of Japanese Americans

Ryanjackson10 (talk) 07:23, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Hi RyanJackson10,

Jackson's legacy is complex and difficult. If you look at the most recent talk above, you can see that his legacy continues to stir controversy. When the article was submitted to Featured Article Review, it was the lead that triggered the issues. But his defining roles tod Much of this is about Jackson's legacy, the complexity is the high level overview that addresses his perceived impact on forming the Democratic political party may be significant. And, creating a balanced first paragraph was took a bit of significant work.

I'm also not sure that Jackson's contribution to the two-party system is his major contribution. It can certainly be argued that Jackson formalized the two-party system, it had been operative informally during the Adams-Jefferson debate. And though Jackson did create the democratic party to be a machine that worked for him and his supporters, this party has long transmuted.

Jackson's long-term legacy and significance today is complicated. But the issue of "union of the states", his populist symbolism, and the ongoing legacy of his policies, particularly in terms of the race are what makes his impact today so central. There's lots of other folk with strong opinions on this, let's see if they want to weigh in. Wtfiv (talk) 17:13, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Just as a point of clarification, I meant the Second Party System, distinct from the Two Party System 2603:7000:46F0:1AB0:CCE8:1486:460E:23D (talk) 18:15, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Wasn't signed in for the above comment, but noted. Purely in terms of style, I believe it should be as matter-of-fact as possible, saving popular interpretations of his legacy for later in the section. Ryanjackson10 (talk) 18:30, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

The sentence you don't like at the end of the first paragraph was there at the end of the FAR in April of this year. So the claim that it "is not in line with Wikipedia standards" is off-base. FAR is a tough test of Wikipedia standards.

Comparison with the Jefferson and FD Roosevelt articles is fair, but one could also compare with, for example, the Warren Harding article. In any case, "I have found an article that does it like this" is an argument that, although I have used it myself many times, is not usually conclusive.

The reference to the Trail of Tears is not out of place in the first paragraph; just in my (non-Wiki) outside reading, I'm seeing a lot of it, perhaps more than I used to see ten years ago. Even the discussion of who gets their face on the $20 bill brought up Native Americans. But if you also want to introduce the Second Party System and Jacksonian democracy in that paragraph, I would go along. Bruce leverett (talk) 20:41, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Points taken. Agreed that the Trail of Tears of noteworthy enough for the first paragraph. IMO it's still vague as is. The Harding article you referenced mentions the particular names of the scandals.

The Second Party System and Jacksonian Democracy are often how Jackson is introduced in the broad context of American history, particularly in textbooks, and also warrant a first paragraph mention. Sounds like we agree on this.

My updated suggestion would be something like

The first nationally elected Democrat, Jackson’s victory in the 1828 Presidential Election ushered in the Second Party System in American politics, following the fall of the Era of Good Feelings three years prior. As president, Jackson oversaw an expansion of the franchise and preserved the union of states, while his policies towards westward expansion and the forced removal of Native Americans became known as The Trail of Tears.

Ryanjackson10 (talk) 22:21, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

This looks reasonably neutral. I am not a Jackson expert, though, so I'd be happy if other editors weighed in. Bruce leverett (talk) 00:09, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

One complaint re: " Sometimes praised as an advocate for working Americans and for preserving the union of states, Jackson is also criticized for his racist policies, particularly regarding Native Americans." try: "Jackson has been praised for leading the fight against monopoly, and for promoting nationalism, and criticized for his treatment of Native Americans." As for "racism" he shared that with 99% of the population so leave it out. Rjensen (talk) 02:00, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

This is still subjective. The spirit of my suggested change is to state the major actions of Jackson’s presidency in a neutral, matter-of-fact manner. If you think the veto of bank recharter deserves mention (which I believe you’re referring to), that’s another matter. But I believe it’s already baked in to the Jacksonian Democracy mention. Ryanjackson10 (talk) 02:22, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

In the FAR review, the issue was that Jackson's legacy was cleaned up too much. The negative impact of his legacy being hidden. The final first paragraph was the result of balancing those positive views and negative views. These latest suggestions are returning to the positive, it seems to me. I'll ping a few editors who have kept on eye on this page and have impacted the editing. Carlstak, ARoseWolf, Jengod, Hydrangeans what do you think about the first paragraph changes suggested above? Wtfiv (talk) 16:50, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

The changes suggested are well meaning but misguided. They swing too far toward a positive portrayal of Jackson to the point of hagiography. The paragraphs as they existed prior to such suggestions are closer to an appropriate balance. The statement his namesake ideology, Jacksonian Democracy, became the nation's dominant political philosophy is especially a problem because it takes on too much of the perspective of outdated sources. As pointed out in Daniel Walker Howe's What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848—part of the renowned Oxford History of the United States series that synthesizes the best of current academic scholarship—"Jacksonian Democracy" was in practice not so much a coherent philosophy as a shorthand for the Democratic Party as led by Jackson and their ambition to exten[d] white supremacy across the North American continent through Indian expulsion and Black chattel slavery (357). Also, oversaw an expansion of the franchise is a misrepresentation: white manhood suffrage was quite widespread before Jackson got into office, and it's part of how he got into office—he did not oversee or instigate a spread of popular democracy. As Howe puts it, if anything, in opposing Black suffrage and Indigenous sovereignty, Jackson wanted to restrict suffrage and stop it from spreading any further than it already had.

What political philosophy Jackson did have did not unite the nation in a dominant stream of thought. True, Jackson's supporters loved him, but Jackson's foes and those he suppressed viscerally opposed him, excoriated as "King Andrew" for his autocratic suppression of abolitionist tracts, paternalistic dismissal of Indigenous sovereignty (and court rulings in favor of the Cherokee), and violent temper against perceived enemies.

All this to say that the suggestions won't get us closer to a balanced portrayal. They veer too far toward hagiography. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 21:06, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I hope this comment's not out of place in the thread. Thanks for the ping, Wtfiv. I'm exhausted and all I can handle now is bruschetta and a bottle of wine. If things have cooled down a bit tomorrow, I might be able to wade into this. Not really sure I want to. I've read all this thread so far and it's a bit much. Carlstak (talk) 01:26, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

The updated suggestion, after a critique from @Bruce leverett removed the

his namesake ideology, Jacksonian Democracy, became the nation's dominant political philosophy

The reason I added "expansion of the franchise" was to get a roundabout mention of Jacksonian Democracy/Jacksonian Era. To have an era named after you warrants mention, in my view. I'm all ears for a way to get a mention of it that's more grounded in the facts. Ryanjackson10 (talk) 21:15, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

@Rjensen He shared "racism with 99 percent of the population" is a canard.

• First of all you're talking about the population that had voting rights (white males) not the population
• Second, there are countless examples of garden-variety white male American racists who didn't agree with Jacksonian removal or the suppression of abolitionist materials. A handful of weirdos were even anti-racist!
• Third, Jackson's racism is only part of the story in regards to his land dispossession policies; there's also the massive corruption, abuse of power, and inefficiency. Jackson, who had been doing business with Indians since the 1790s, was perfectly willing to selectively empower Native allies, from Pushmataha to Greenwood LeFlore, who supported his military or imperialist ambitions. Yes, he was possessed of a nearly robotic unquestioning racism, but conquest, control and profit for him and his allied cronies was his paramount obsession. Every Indian treaty was followed up with a U.S. govt land office that surveyed and resold said parcels. The beneficiaries of these were overwhelmingly Jackson's allies. Despite what Remini insists, there is no consensus that Indian removal was inevitable or necessary but it is clear who benefitted and who suffered. The cause was $$$, the effect was perpetuation of systemic racism.

@Ryanjackson10 I would also disagree with the use of "westward" in any description of Jacksonian expansionism. The Louisiana territory was Jefferson and Texas happened mostly without his help (although with plenty of his assistance from his militia and War of 1812 buddies!), whereas Jackson was consumed with moving the border south via conflict with the European empires and indigenous peoples, forcing the cessions of land in present-day Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. I will concede that the ceded Chickasaw lands where Jackson, Overton, and Winchester founded Memphis are indeed west.

Indian Removal during the Jackson administration was just the federalized culmination of a long long push by Jackson to ethnically cleanse the "Old Southwest". jengod (talk) 18:08, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Would replacing

..., while his policies towards westward expansion...

with

..., while his policies towards southwestern expansion...

do it? Ryanjackson10 (talk) 18:41, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Does that work for me? No. Absolutely not. With respect and honor to the thousands of Wikipedians working in good faith on this article for over 20 years, I personally think this biography is a whitewashed and decontextualized recitation of hagiographic, nonsensical, and dishonest propaganda passed down from ancestors who benefitted financially from "Jacksonian democracy".

"Jacksonian democracy," as far as I can tell, should be treated as a grotesque dogwhistle signaling a belief in the "Racial creed of the Southern people," not as some kind of philosophical movement for which Jackson was responsible nor even as any kind of definable, specific, and meritorious advancement toward a more perfect Union.

He obviously couldn't hold a job and was an empty-headed bundle of grievances and sneering spite operating most days at the lizard-brain level but we can't say that.

so we say something like

"He was a guy who lived in Tennessee. He had some slaves. He was an unhinged psycho who did a long series of extralegal filibuster imperialist wars on his own gang-leader thug authority and killed all the right people to benefit all the right people so the Establishment law-and-order club shrugged. The voters bayed for blood and for land, and Jackson was their man. Maysville Road veto. Spoils system. Indian Removal. Inept administration. Retirement. Abducted-twin adopted son squandered all the hard-earned blood money. Enablers all dead or departed. Lonely. Sick. And then he died. The end."

That said, I acknowledge that we here at Wikipedia are but humble encyclopedists seeking to enshrine verifiability, not the ineffable thing called Truth. So everybody will continue to fuss around sentence by sentence trying to send a message through this disordered man's disordered life story.

I mean, I really cannot engage reasonably with this biography because it normalizes that which was never and should not now be deemed normal. So...good luck everyone and I'm sorry I'm not good at leading groups to consensus. Others here can do so admirably and I leave you in their good hands. jengod (talk) 19:39, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I really cannot engage reasonably with this biography

Agreed! Ryanjackson10 (talk) 19:47, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

folks who love extremely nasty conspiracy interpretations of American politics have no need for Wikipedia--they can turn on the network bews any evening to get more than enough (Today there is a conspiracy at work to have two or maybe three presidents at once....) But for the benefit of Wikipedia standards I think a basic reliance on reliable published sources will do the job. Let me ask Jengold what are the main reliable souces on Jackson he is basing his argument upon? Rjensen (talk) 20:08, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

It's not so much the sources which concern me but the value judgements. More importantly, on a practical level, it's the subjective language, which led to my suggested change in the first place. Ryanjackson10 (talk) 20:18, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

• Cheathem's Andrew Jackson, Southerner + papers
• Burstein's Passions of Andrew Jackson
• Whitney Snow's paper "Slave Owner, Slave Trader, Gentleman: Slavery and the Rise of Andrew Jackson"
• Michael A. Blaakman's Speculation Nation: Land Mania in the Revolutionary American Republic
• Walter Johnson's River of Dark Dreams
• Shire & Knetsch "Ambivalence in the Settler Colonial Present: The Legacies of Jacksonian Expansion"
• Clark & Guice, The Old Southwest, 1795–1830: Frontiers in Conflict.
• Belko, William S., ed. (2010). America's Hundred Years' War: U.S. Expansion to the Gulf Coast and the Fate of the Seminole, 1763–1858
• Tohopeka: Rethinking the Creek War and the War of 1812.
• Nooe, F. Evan (2024). Aggression and Sufferings: Settler Violence, Native Resistance, and the Coalescence of the Old South
• Ostler, Jeffrey (2019). Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas
• Dupre, Daniel S. (1997). Transforming the Cotton Frontier: Madison County, Alabama, 1800–1840
• Unser, Daniel H. (September 1985). "American Indians on the Cotton Frontier: Changing Economic Relations with Citizens and Slaves in the Mississippi Territory". The Journal of American History

all make an ultimately coherent argument that Jackson's Indian wars and presidential removal policy were part of a for-profit imperialist project benefiting slave-owning white land speculators, many of whom were Jackson's long-time allies. jengod (talk) 20:26, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

review of Remini (1979): "Interest in land speculation was a second factor that Remini says influenced Jackson's thoughts about the Indians. Jackson viewed speculation as the quickest path to financial success and social advancement. As the author indicates, land fever shaped negative American attitudes toward Indians, and 'Jackson contracted the fever.' By blocking the establishment of new white communities, the southern tribes impeded the security of the frontier as well as the acquisition of wealth and status by speculators."

Plus paternalism (we're here to help) and security concerns (risk of scalping is admittedly scary).

Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/42625961 jengod (talk) 20:52, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

+1 While it's easy to take issue with some of jengod's tone, and I would personally say much of this otherwise, I think getting caught up in that is a distraction (and Jackson is too dead to be hurt by it) and that the frustration is understandable. The basic conclusion that Jackson's Indian wars and presidential removal policy were part of a for-profit imperialist project benefiting slave-owning white land speculators, many of whom were Jackson's long-time allies is sound. As said in Daniel Walker Howe's What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848—part of the renowned Oxford History of the United States series that synthesizes the best of current academic scholarship (and What Hath God Wrought is often considered one of the series' best books)—"Jacksonian Democracy" was less about the lofty ideals that men like Schlesinger projected onto it and much more about the extension of white supremacy across the North American continent through colonialism and chattel slavery (357). Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 20:53, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I think @Rjensen is wrong to object on substance here. This is about the structure of the last sentence of the first paragraph. I believe the suggested change (linked here because it's so far up in comment chain) more appropriately contextualizes Jackson in American History as neutrally as possible, and specifies the big-picture policies previously hinted at (e.g.

forced removal of Native Americans became know as the Trail of Tears

instead of

his racist policies, particularly regarding Native Americans

). Three of the sources @Jengod cited are already in the article, and can be expounded upon and/or the other sources can be added there. Ryanjackson10 (talk) 21:07, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Is your argument that Jackson's policies do not qualify as racist under the definition of racism or that his racism was unexceptional relative to ______ and therefore the article gives it undue weight in the lede? jengod (talk) 21:32, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

well let's start with jengod's first source: Chethem. To quote Mark Cheathem in Journal of American Ethnic History January, 2021 p 121 : [Jacksonian Democrats] "considered their party the only one representing diversity. In their view, the Democratic Party was a 'big-umbrella' institution, bringing in devotees of different ethnicities, religions, and sectional identities—as long as they were white men." Racism is there in support of democracy, diversity and national unity (not so much big business profits). Rjensen (talk) 21:43, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I think the term "forced removal of Native Americans" does the same legwork as the term "racist" while remaining as matter-of-fact as possible and specifying where needed. My critique is a structural (possibly tonal?) one, not a definitional or historiographical one. Ryanjackson10 (talk) 21:44, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

on jengod cite #2 Burstein emphasizes Jackson's wild and rowdy youth, which is true enough, but the scholarly consensus is that by the late 1820s he had a much more mature personality and collaborated and made compromises. Reviewer Donald B. Cole says Burstein, "exaggerates the violent frontier characteristics in Jackson's personality and overlooks certain, more stable traits--firmness, courage, idealism, shrewdness, even occasional indecision and willingness to compromise--that came to the fore during his presidency.... On the two major issues of the day--nullification and the Bank of the United States--politics as well as political and economic ideas trumped passion." [H-Net Reviews June 2003]. Rjensen (talk) 22:29, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Fair enough @Rjensen--criminal menopause comes for us all I suppose.

@Ryanjackson10 what are the chances we'd all agree that racist has the savor of eugenicist physiognomy schemes, which did not particularly compel Jackson, whereas white supremacist acknowledges Jackson's role in the perpetuation of the racialized national caste system established in the antebellum 19th century? I'm just hopefully spitballing I suppose. jengod (talk) 22:39, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Jengod #3 Whitney Snow's paper outline's Jackson;s early years in the slave trade; does not discuss his politics; Jengod #4 Blaakman's Speculation Nation has only a few sentences on Jackson [eg "Jackson and his successors created a modern bureaucracy devoted to displacing Native nations from their homelands."] the book emphasizes the major historic decision for Indian removal took place many decades before then during the Revolution era. What I'm finding is that the sources are not supporting his rhetoric. Rjensen (talk) 22:51, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Jefferson to Jackson, 1803: "will also open an asylum for these unhappy people, in a country which may suit their habits of life better than what they now occupy, which perhaps they will be willing to exchange with us: and to our posterity it opens a noble prospect of provision for ages."

yes removal was the plan in from beginning but in addition to Jackson running wars and bullying tribes into treaties throughout the 1810s and 1820s, he's literally stocking the land offices with his pals:

• John Brahan serves in Jackson's 1812 militia and then after the "Chickasaw Purchase" gets appointed to the Huntsville land office and embezzles $89,000 from the feds while trying to beat the Georgia syndicate buying up all the land. All of Jackson's friends, including John Hutchings (slave trader) and John Coffee move to northern Alabama because that's where they got plantations CHEAP!
• The Chickasaw Cessions of 1816 and 1818 immediately benefit Jackson and John Overton (judge) who lay out Memphis. You can argue that the Chickasaw were treated fairly (meh) but the beneficiaries are clear, white land speculators turn a profit and resell to other white men to grow cotton with black slaves
• Archibald Yell is with Jackson at the First Seminole War, is accused of being one of 4 men clubbing a doctor in 1828 for electioneering against Jackson, and then is appointed to the federal land office in Arkansas in 1831 under Pres. Jackson.

The whole thing is a textbook cabal. Jackson's fights in his youthful frontier days are with other land speculators and slave traders--they're gangs of speculators beefing over turf! Joseph Erwin, the McNairys, Sevier, Blount, Wilkinson, Burr, they're all land speculators! They're mildly treason-curious if they think they can get away with it. Mostly they need more more more because it's a speculative bubble.

“For Jackson, the problem of asserting United States sovereignty in the Mississippi Valley and that of subjugating the population contained within the nation’s supposed borders were indissoluble aspects of each other. Not for the last time in the history of the United States, national security and white supremacy were synthesized into state policy and military violence...By the time he was done, Andrew Jackson had added over 100 million acres to the public domain of the United States. The Native civilizations of the Southeast had been destroyed, resettled in “Indian Territory,” the very name of which bespoke the forcible transformation of sovereign nations into racial subjects. All but a handful of tribal “leaders” who cooperated with the government (or, to put it more charitably, saw the writing on the wall and cut the best deal they could) experienced the cognitive dislocation and physical suffering generally associated with the term “ethnic cleansing”; tens of thousands died in the process. By 1840, the homelands of the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, the Creek, the Seminole, and the Cherokee had, through the military power and legal authority of the United States of America, been converted into a vast reserve for the cultivation of whiteness.”

— River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom by Walter Johnson jengod (talk) 23:18, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm not so much concerned with the connotation of the adjectives as I am the adjectives themselves. "The forced removal of Native Americans" is the actual thing Jackson did. "His racist policies towards Native Americans" is an abstracted version.

In abstracting it you're naturally forced to "up the temperature" of the adjective to get the same point across, e.g. forced removal to racist policy Ryanjackson10 (talk) 22:55, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

"Forced removal of a [specific race or ethnicity]" sounds text racist to me.

"Forced migration of a [different specific race or ethnicity] to do forced labor" also seems racist.

jengod (talk) 23:21, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Exactly. Describing the actual policy does the legwork without abstraction. Show, don't tell. Ryanjackson10 (talk) 23:26, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Ok well we can show that he regularly bought 12 year old black children to resell for exploitation by strangers. Is it an "abstraction" to call him a pimp? Or is it just a kind of vulgar way to say the same thing as "slave trader"?

Who are we trying to protect from the information that Jackson was an absolute towering inferno of fear and hate by removing the word racist? He was frantic his entire life to show us and assure of this fact!

We can both show and tell, and I would argue that it is our testamentary duty according to the principles of this encyclopedia that we do so. jengod (talk) 23:45, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

If we were including that in the opening paragraph, it would more appropriate to say

A slave trader, Jackson regularly purchased adolescent black children for resale into exploitation on the slave market

rather than something like

A slave trader, Jackson was criticized as a pimp for his practices regarding adolescent black children

I use slave trader in both because that's a title or designation, and is appropriately in the article already.

We should be specific where necessary and be as about the facts as we can. When a reader sees the forced removal of an ethnic group, or the selling of children into slavery, they can see that it's racist, or pimpish. We shouldn't simply tell them that it is because we're abstracting. Ryanjackson10 (talk) 00:09, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

RyanJackson10 I saw you mentioned, then struck out a reference implying the lead was referencing A People's History of the United States. Though you struck it out, I want to make it clear that the language in this section was not chosen by such a decision. (Though it may have been playing in the back of some of the editors' mind.) It is the summary of a number of debates running through the old Jackson archives. A compromise between different views and yet creating that balance of Jackson's positive and negative legacy. I think it is important to remember that the lead reflects the article and its focus. that final sentence is a summary of Jackson's legacy as discussed in the article.

To get a sense of the different voices involved crafting the lead, please take a look at the following.

• This example comes before the FAR review: the discussion of the lead
• This section was also before the FAR review: Request for Comments on the lead
• Here's a concern raised during the FAR review about concerns of coverage regarding Native Americans. Scroll to the section that says "The shocking truth about Wikipedia’s Holocaust disinformation". This also references a discussion about a Slate article on this article's biases. The discussion is archived here.

If you take a look at the discussions above, you will see his impact on Native Americans. As jengod (who was not involved in the early discussions linked above or the FAR) points out, Jackson's legacy on Native American in the Southeastern United States is a large part of his legacy. It far exceeds his role as president. This includes and precedes his acts as president, both as military leader, state representative and private speculator. Take a look at the article to get a sense of the size of his impact. And Jackson's Native American legacy is not limited just to the Cherokee trail of tears, but involves treaties starting from The treaty of Fort Jackson that wound up displacing Native Americans from over 3/5ths of Alabama, 2/3 of Mississippi, more than 1/4 of Tennessee, and significant parts of Georgia and Florida. The specific treaties are all referenced in the main article. Wtfiv (talk) 02:53, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

It was in response to a user requesting jengod for her sources, not the article writ large. I struck it out because it was a sideways shot meant to minimize her depth of research, and was therefore uncalled for.

I’ll take a look at these. Thanks. Ryanjackson10 (talk) 03:19, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Further up this thread, jengod and Ryanjackson10 talk about listing specific policies versus referring to them more abstractly through a characterization. Wtfiv gets at why only referring to Indian Removal isn't sufficient (having been a general and politician before the presidency, Jackson's policies toward Native Americans included more than his presidential actions). As for the place of 'abstracting', I'm inclined to agree with jengod that this is a case where it's possible and appropriate to both show and tell. Earlier this year I created the Des Moines speech article, about an antisemitic speech Charles Lindbergh delivered in 1941. The article could hypothetically have stuck to being 'about the facts' and just described the things Lindbergh accused Jews of and let the readers draw their own conclusion that the speech was antisemitic—but that would kind of be leaving an obvious question unanswered, wouldn't it? When Lindbergh's contemporaries and historians after him have called the Des Moines speech antisemitic, it would be weird for the article to not include that kind of 'abstract' description. Likewise, both contemporaries and later historians of Jackson have characterized his policies as racist and/or white supremacist. Plus, while it's true we can't over-explain every potentially unfamiliar detail, Wikipedia's wide readership means some of our readers are learning things for the first time. A reader of the Des Moines speech might not already know which of Lindbergh's remarks were antisemitic dog whistles; a reader of Andrew Jackson might not yet know that the power dynamic between the United States and certain Indigenous nations created a context in which particular policies and rhetorics of his were, in the assessment of contemporaries and reliable retrospective scholars, racially charged/racially prejudiced/unjustly racially differential etc. There are times, then, when telling has a place. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 22:19, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Genocide perpetrator category

Would a genocide perpetrator category be appropriate here? 2600:100C:A218:9A7B:8887:68D9:BE63:51FD (talk) 23:28, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

If you review the links in my reply to the latest section about where the first paragraph of the lead came from, you'll find that this issue, and whether his Native American displacement policies were ethnic cleansing, was very seriously discussed, and is part of the current academic literature. The current wording of the article-- including the lead- attempts to strike a balance on these issues that the editors at the time of the FAR could agree on. Wtfiv (talk) 02:49, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Circa 1989 Remini addressed this, and his opinion is by no means conclusive but can probably be considered the opening salvo for the "modern" debate:

Fortunately, no one these days seriously indicts Jackson as a mad racist intent upon genocide. That he spoke publicly as a racist cannot be doubted, but it was the language current at the time, language that remained prevalent for more than 120 years. For the most part, Americans of the Jacksonian era tended to look upon Indians as uncivilized and their life-styles as inimical to the pursuit of intellectual, mechanical, and domestic arts. Although Jackson could be difficult and ruthless he frequently showed great regard and respect for Indians —especially those he called “full-blooded” Indians. He was less respectful to those now referred to as mixed-bloods, whom he himself called “half-breeds.” His treatment of Indians has been described as paternalistic. But then he treated his soldiers in the same way--and the members of his family--to say nothing of associates and political allies. In a sense, therefore, Jackson’s behavior toward Indians varied hardly at all from his behavior toward anyone else. If the tribes obeyed him and followed his instructions and commands, he acted as a kind and loving 'Great Father.' But if they challenged him in any way, if they dared to disobey, contradict, or argue with him, he could be savage and vindictive.

So Remini seems to conclude Jackson was "authoritarian" and "pretty racist" but thinks that the standard of "genocide" is not met.

The legacy of Andrew Jackson: essays on democracy, Indian removal, and slavery (1990) pp 45–46

It's an interesting read. There's much discourse and scholarship after this. Remini is very good at understanding the American political discourse of the 19th century but that may be a limited or limiting viewpoint on this question. jengod (talk) 05:23, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Jumping ahead 40 years in the historiography we have this:

No one can complain about a shortage of books on the Founding Fathers, but it is possible to read stacks of them without learning a thing about the Gnadenhütten massacre, let alone being asked to consider it as an event revealing basic tendencies in early American history. Of course, not all historians ignore Gnadenhütten. Nor do all ignore Horseshoe Bend, Bad Axe, the Cherokee Trail of Tears, or other destructive events discussed in this book. Nonetheless, many historians continue to see destructive acts and episodes as outliers rather than as manifestations of basic tendencies. There remains a disposition to soften recognition of consistent patterns of destructive action by insisting on the ultimate goodness of America, or at least the humanitarian intentions of many of its leaders and citizens. Even critically minded scholars are apt to inadvertently deflect attention from general metropolitan responsibility for violence by focusing on a singularly pernicious Andrew Jackson or the frontiersmen he embodied.

Here Jackson is both "singularly pernicious" and the archetypical imperialist frontiersman AND just one figure in much longer genocidal program.

Surviving genocide : Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to bleeding Kansas - Ostler, Jeffrey, Yale U Press, 2019, pp 380–381.

jengod (talk) 05:50, 21 December 2024 (UTC)