Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), 7th President of the United States, was born in Waxhaw, South Carolina, of a backcountry family. Wounded and imprisoned in the Revolutionary War before his 14th birthday, he later studied law and moved to Tennessee around 1796. During the War of 1812, he transformed the Tennessee militia into one of the best disciplined fighting forces in the Southwest, and won a stunning victory over the British in New Orleans in January 1815 (after the Treaty of Ghent had been signed, but before news of it had reached America). Appointed military governor of Florida when it became a territory of the United States in 1821, Jackson entered presidential politics in 1824, in a three-way election that was thrown into the House of Representatives. John Quincy Adams won in a decision that Jackson supporters charged was a "corrupt bargain" when Adams appointed the third candidate, Henry Clary, as Secretary of State. Jackson immediately began organizing for the 1828 election. He soon broke with his Vice President John C. Calhoun over a number of issues that the South Carolinian opposed, most important of which was Jackson's determined stand against South Carolina's threat to nullify the Tariff of 1832 (see The Webster-Hayne Debate, "Union And States' Rights Gazette", and John C. Calhoun ). This portrait of Jackson was painted in 1836 at the end of his second presidential term by John Wesley Jarvis (1781-1840).
Courtesy of the Collection Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, South Carolina. Attributed to John Wesley Jarvis, American, 1780-1840. "President Andrew Jackson," ca. 1830-1835, oil on canvas. Gift of Dr. Charles R. Holmes, CMA 1967.29.
