Did anyone watch the History Channel's "Andrew Jackson" last night?

[CatWoman]

what a colorful character he was.

I got really pissed with the exuse makers when they talked about Jackson's foul and inhumane treatment of the Native Americans.

Jackson all but declared war on the Native Americans. Kind of cancelled out all the good he did.

One professor said that to this day, most natives won't handle $20 bills -- they prefer and ask for two tens.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

1. yes, I saw most of it.

a real dichotomy of a character.

[Virginia Dare]

2. He's definitely a fascinating character...

I tend to think he suffered his whole life from PTSD. His family was terrorized by British soldiers when he was a child, and that never left him. I think that is why he was so capable of callous cruelty. There was something odd about his relationship with his wife too. He seemed to be excessively protective and jealous, almost kept her cloistered.

I'll have to look for the repeat, I would like to see it, thanks for the heads up CatWoman!

[piedmont]

3. You mean two tens, right? nt

[CatWoman]

7. yes, thanks for the correction

hands faster than brains :)

:hi:

[SharkSquid]

4. Total nutjob

Adams would have been a better president I think if he won with some sort of mandate.

But I am a hughe geek for the period everone forgets about in US History (1812-1845)

[Bandit]

18. Adams did win

It wasn't til after Adam's term that Jackson became President.

[independentpiney]

5. He was also instrumental in instituting cronyism

dirty campaigning and demagoguery into the American political system, iirc. But his racism and genocide is more than enough for me to despise him. I've never liked that so many consider him a great President.

[hlthe2b]

6. Do they get it?

Two "twenties" for one $20 bill....I want in on that...!:evilgrin:


Seriously, though I know the history of Jackson's campaigns against N. Americans. I would hope that truth would have been portrayed. We, Americans, really can be moral relativists...:eyes:

[CatWoman]

8. stop picking!! I fixed it

:)

:hi:

[mrfixit]

9. Indian Removal Act of 1830

What a friggin' hero. A bigamist, to boot. Makes me wish that Richard Lawrence was successful.

[wuushew]

10. He was also an economic idiot

His crusade to destroy the Bank of the United States should be condemned in the harshest terms.

[CatWoman]

11. he kinda reminded me of Bush............

[independentpiney]

12. I've always felt there were similarities

He didn't have much respect for congress or the judiciary.

[CountAllVotes]

13. yeah like ignoring Worcester v. Georgia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_Nation_v._Georgia

[jacksonian]

20. I take exception here

the Bank of the US was a hugely corrupt institution run almost exclusivley for the private benefit of Nicholas Biddle and friends, with an absolute stranglehold on the nation's tax money and economic health with little/no public oversight.

You can argue that Jackson's decentalization was flawed and it was, but the notion of a national banking system in a society not run by a monarchy was a very new thing in the history of the world. Jackson's system worked a lot better than anything Biddle and the speculators were doing - it spread risk instead of the whole nation depending on Biddle's loan portfolio. It lasted until Woodrow Wilson's time and the Federal Reserve.

But note the resulting Federal Reserve system was more a pooling of resources that were still spread among many banks, not a revivial of the one supreme central bank idea.

[wuushew]

21. Jackson was in impatient ass

If the bank had no economic merit then Congress should have taken action to not to renew its charter when it expired, as opposed to the premature destruction that Jackson sought.

The 19th century was an economic rollercoster thanks to the mess which the financial sector was in. How were things prior to the bank war? Are you going to blame Biddle solely for the panic of 1837?

[iamthebandfanman]

22. heres info about the banks for anybody who wants to learn

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Bank_of_the_United_States



there are also clickable links in the text where it says the second bank ...

u can pretty much find out the history of all the national banks by following links within it...

tis a good read.

[tammywammy]

14. I'm going to have to catch that the next time it's on

I saw it on the guide, but I was already half way to sleeping and figured that it would either keep me up too late or put me right to sleep. :)

Sounds like my kind of program though.

[CatWoman]

15. here's some video clips

on the far right hand side: http://www.history.com/search.do?searchText=ANDREW+JACKSON

[tammywammy]

17. Thanks!

[DFW]

16. Old Hickory

He did pretty much what he wanted. It was a different standard back then,
and if judged by today's standards, Jackson was a "major league asshole."

But things were SO different then. In Jackson's day, you could walk up to
the White House and talk with the president if you wanted to. These days,
they make you wait at least an hour, if not longer...........

[jacksonian]

19. one of America's greatest tragedies, the Trail of Tears

notice I use the name jacksonian, small "j", for precisely this reason - it's not the man but the movement I refer to. Jackson's Indian policies were dispicable. The only defense is not really a defense - that it wasn't really him acting as leader-pusher, the whole notion of moving Indians west of the Missisippi had extremely large popular support and his was actually a sort of moderate position in it's day. Many just wanted genocide. Any Indian sympathy was an extreme non-factor in political survival.

Jacksonian democracy in its better clothes was also about common people having power and de-centralizing the banking system. Laudible ends, and noteworthy that they came from a charismatic backwoodsman with little education, and involved taking on powerful financial interests like the banking head Nelson Biddle. The Indian question was backdoored to mantain support for this - of course the price paid by the Cherokee and others was monstrous and does indeed compromise any good that came from it, but blaming this on one man is disingenous. Whites were going to move the Indians out of the east one way or another because that's what white men wanted. They desperately wanted to steal Indian land.

Jackson had no power to stop this, not that he made any real effort to. In his personal letters at the time you get the sense he was more tolerant than the average person - he did regard the Indians as human and comes off as a more "separate but equal" type of racist, that is, Indians were worthy as long as they stayed in their place. Today this is rightly known as BS, but at the time it bordered on enlightenment and he was constantly under political attack from the likes of Henry Clay for being "soft on the Indian question".

But for all it's faults, without jacksonian democracy jeffersonian democracy never would have survived.