Old Hickory

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Old Hickory

Andrew Jackson was a populist president serving from 1829 to 1837. His election reflected the new phenomenon of universal white male suffrage. The common man could now vote and Jackson felt he spoke for ordinary people against special privilege. This perspective manifested itself with his administration’s policies - in some ways that proved tragic.


Jackson was suspicious of the power of a strong Federal government. It is cruelly ironic that his Indian policy proved this point. Even though evidence showed that natives were assimilating into Anglo-centric American culture, Jackson, with the support of white settlers, implemented a Federal policy of ethnic cleansing the native people of the southeast United States. These people were relocated, at great cost of life, to areas west of the Mississippi.

Jackson opposed paper money and fought against the Second Bank of the United States. This institution provided stability to the mostly wide-open economics of the era. The Bank was where the Federal Government kept its money. Jackson opposed this concentration of power by those who he considered elites. He didn’t trust the bankers in charge of this enterprise – a suspicion that was widely shared by ordinary people. Jackson vetoed the extension of the Bank’s charter and this action established a more laissez-faire American economy. A subsequent cycle of speculative boom and bust periods culminated in the Panic of 1837; which was the start of a six-year recession.

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Pre-1928 $20.00 Note

Jackson's image was added to the twenty dollar bill in 1928. The $20 featured the image of Grover Cleveland prior to that time.

(Work Cited: Out of Many Vol. I A History of the American People Faragher, Buhle, Czitrom, Armitage 6th edition 2009)