[DRAMATIC MUSIC] President Andrew Jackson
has a complicated legacy. On the one hand, he
was a populist hero and a venerated war general. On the other hand, he was
a slaving, genocidal maniac who drove the economy into the
ground like a meteor shard. Today, we're talking about
"Old Hickory," President Andrew Jackson. Before we get started,
make sure you subscribe to Weird History,
and let us know about which American
historical figure you'd like us to explore. Now, let's go back in time. Before he was a
politician, Andrew Jackson was a military officer. And during the War of 1812,
Jackson was shot in the arm. The cure for bullet
arm in those days was to chop off the
whole thing and throw it in the nearest trash can. But Jackson wasn't having that. Jackson sought out a
more holistic solution among the Cherokee. And it worked. And with that, Andrew
Jackson went on to protect the
people who generously saved his arm beneath
the presidential mantle, providing them with civil
rights under the law, and ushering in an age of
peace, harmony, and culture. Just kidding. Instead, one year into
his presidency, Jackson authored one of the most twisted
moments in American history. He signed the 1830
Indian Removal Act, which made it OK, legally,
for the government to snatch native territories
and herd residents westward into a new Indian Colonization
Zone, which is government speak for internment camp. The ICZ was distinct
from the US, so its people enjoyed no
protection under the law. That zone is now called
Oklahoma, home of Garth Brooks. Now, under this act,
the US army supposedly couldn't force
indigenous peoples to hand their lands over. But the US army has
never been good at not stealing from Native Americans,
much like Andrew Jackson. The first tribe to
follow the trail, some double marched
in literal chains as if armed escort
wasn't enough, were the Choctaw, one of the
five civilized tribes who adopted European customs to
make their twitchy American neighbors less uncomfortable
and still lost their homes. The Supreme Court actually found
that the state had no authority to pull this nonsense. But Jackson didn't
let that bother him. The forced march, made
without food or supplies, claimed 4,000 lives. All told, over 70,000
Native Americans would be uprooted
from their homes and driven westward to
diminish, dwindle, and die. Jackson was a man
of many monikers. Political opponents
called him King Mob for his ability to rile the
electorate into a frothing ball of violence. And his election campaign
was based largely in his being an experienced
Indian fighter, a career that earned him the name Sharp
Knife among the Cherokee he routinely slaughtered. Yeah, it wasn't a
positive nickname. After bitter fighting
during the Creek War, Jackson oversaw the Creek
tribe's terms of surrender. The terms were brutal. The Creek people
had to surrender about 23 million acres of
their land, which encompassed more than half of present day
Alabama and part of Georgia, to the federal government. And then we had the
Seminole War, the left sock of America's dirty laundry. Before Jackson got involved,
Florida belonged to Spain and was home to a coalition
of former slaves and Seminole Indians, an alliance
that freaked Southerners out so much
that they routinely sent armed posses of
kidnappers over the border. Under secret orders,
Jackson sent the US army into the Sunshine State, aiming
to take it by right of conquest and crush the Indians
and former slaves there. He ordered his men to
raise crops, abduct women and children, and
deploy attack dogs. After the war, he proudly
wrote to his wife, "I think I may say
that the Indian War is an end for the present. The enemy is scattered over
the whole face of the earth. And at least one half must
starve and die with disease." Good job? The official website
for the Hermitage, a museum based at Jackson's
Tennessee plantation estate, states, "in all reality,
slavery was the source of Andrew Jackson's wealth." And that's in his museum. Jackson owned 161 slaves
at the time of his death. While all previous
presidents have slaves, Jackson had a few fingers in
the human trafficking pie. He made his living
in the domestic slave trade, which for him spanned
from Virginia to New Orleans. When one of Jackson's
slaves succeeded in a brave bid for
freedom, Jackson offered a $50
reward and $10 extra for every 100
lashes a person will give to the amount of $300. In 1821, he instructed
his nephew to lash a woman called Betty should she
continue "putting on some airs." The fatal stabbing
of a runaway slave named Gilbert supposedly
humanized his approach. But he would continue to peddle
flesh until his death in 1845. In 1806, attorney and famed
duelist Charles Dickinson called the future president
a coward, an equivocator, and his wife a bigamist over
a horse racing argument. Jackson and his wife were
technically bigamists, by the way. When he married her, she was
already someone else's wife. A butt hurt Jackson, never
one to take a high road when his manhood was threatened,
challenged Dickinson to a duel. Dickinson, an expert
marksman, shot first and hit Jackson in the chest,
shattering two of his ribs. And then, for his next
act of manly chutzpah, remained where honor
required him to stand, 24 feet from the wounded
Jackson, who still had to take his shot if he could. Ironically, this took so
long that Jackson's honor was impugned anyway. But he eventually
managed to pull himself together enough to get off
a fatal shot at his defamer. Jackson would go on to engage in
over 100 duels over the course of his life, nearly dying
of a ruptured artery after he tried to horsewhip a
man who would one day become one of his top
allies in the Senate because that's how he rolled. Andrew Jackson loathed the
Bank of the United States. His actions against the bank
would plunge the country into a nationwide
economic depression. In 1832, Jackson shut down
the Bank of the United States, opting instead to keep
the nation's money in an underregulated pet bank,
which loaned money to just about anyone who came asking. As any competent economist
could have told him, this led to inflation. Then Jackson had
another on-brand idea-- stop letting people buy
land with paper money. He just didn't trust it,
which no longer surprises us at this point. This specie circular, issued
by Jackson on July 11, 1836, decreed that land could only
be bought with gold or silver. Fairly naturally, this law
slowed land speculation to a crawl, which
led to decreased revenue for the
states, which led in turn to the panic of 1837. Near the end of the War
of 1812, General Jackson arrived in New Orleans to
find the city in disarray. Taking immediate command
of the situation, Jackson put the city
under martial law until the war was
over, or so he said. He wouldn't actually
lift the ban until months after the fighting had stopped. When a Louisiana state senator
wrote of his apprehension at the idea of an
open-ended martial law, Jackson had the
senator arrested. Then when one of those
pesky district court judges demanded that the senator
be charged or released in keeping with the Constitution
of the United States, Jackson not only
refused to do so, he ordered the judge jailed,
and then kicked him out of New Orleans forever. During his campaign, King Mob
promised political positions to his key supporters. Then on the night
of his inauguration, office seekers so
crowded the White House that it became less a
party and more a riot. Instead of ending corruption as
his populist message promised, Jackson's
administration had been credited with creating a
spoils systems in which Jackson purged federal
employees in favor of those who had supported him. At the start of his
presidency, Jackson removed 919
government officials, a full 10% of all
government employees, and dismissed 423 postmasters,
many with long and credible records of service, within
the first year of his tenure in office. When abolitionist
literature began to flood the American
South, Andrew Jackson did exactly what a man who
had recently established unlimited martial law would do. He banned it. In the mid-1830s,
abolitionists started what was probably the
first direct mail campaign by sending its
unsolicited materials to Southerners mailboxes. The Southerners did
not appreciate this, as their livelihoods depended on
them being able to pretend what they were doing was natural. "I have read with
great sorrow and regret that such men live in
our happy country-- I might have said monsters-- as to be guilty of the attempt
to stir up amongst the South the horrors of a servile war. They deserve to atone
for this wicked attempt with their lives." The Jackson
administration would seek to ban all inflammatory
abolitionist material from being delivered
by the postal service. It's worth noting that
it was about this time that Jackson supposedly
decided to see to it that his Hermitage slaves were
treated with more humanity. If he ever read it,
abolitionist literature would have informed
him of just how pathetically fantastical the
mask of the good master he crafted for himself really was. Andrew Jackson had many issues
with his first Vice President John Calhoun. And on one occasion,
he literally threatened to behead him. Jackson and Calhoun disagreed
on the Nullification Crisis, leading Jackson to remark,
"John Calhoun, if you secede from my nation, I
will secede your head from the rest of your body." When Jackson agreed
with the Supreme Court, like he did when the Court
sided with him against South Carolina's federal
nullification laws, for example, he said it was the
country's ultimate power and must be obeyed. Whenever Jackson disagreed
with the Supreme Court though, he got pissy and
outright ignored them. In Worcester versus
Georgia in 1832, the Supreme Court led by Chief
Justice John Marshall stated "Georgia laws that
purported to seize Cherokee lands on which
gold had been found violated federal treaties." Jackson, unapologetically set
on taking said land and gold, reportedly responded, "John
Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it." While historians are unsure
if Jackson actually ever said that, they know that both
he and the state of Georgia completely ignored the ruling
and just stole everything. Obviously, you're
just as shocked as we are that the man who
closed the national bank could do something so
fiscally irresponsible. When he was 16,
Jackson inherited 300 to 400 pounds sterling
from his late grandfather. It would be gone
within the year, mainly because "Old Hickory"
was as good at gambling as he was at finance. Just ask Charles Dickinson. When King Mob was
inaugurated in 1829, massive crowds came to see him. At the time, the White House
was open on inauguration day. And the first to arrive were
Jackson's favorite toadies, most of whom were seeking an
audience with the president to discuss the government
positions he promised them for making it rain
votes all over him, then came the actual mob. Thousands of supporters
guzzled booze, smashed furniture
and china, and even mashed cheese into the
White House carpets under their boots. We think the cheese was
probably already on the floor. But it's not really safe
to assume with this man. One fancy society woman
wrote, "But what a scene did we witness! The majesty of the
people had disappeared, and a rabble, a mob of boys,
negros, women, children scrambling, fighting, romping. What a pity. What a pity." Jackson seemed to agree. He escaped out the back
window, leaving the White House to the raucous
crowd, while he went on to whatever
lunatics do when they get elected to high office. He eventually used the
event as an opportunity to get $50,000 from Congress
to redecorate the White House though. One thing we can definitively
say about Andrew Jackson the president-- he really knew
how to take a bad situation and exploit the shit out of it. What do you think
of Andrew Jackson? Love him or hate him? Let us know in the comments. And while you're
at it, check out some of these other videos
of our Weird History. [DRAMATIC MUSIC]
I’m not relaxing until Biden is officially in power. Trump can do a lot of damage with the time remaining.
That could be a very interesting episode for DFF, isn’t?