Why the Ghost of Andrew Jackson Haunts the Modern U.S. Presidency

Andrew Jackson was born in 1767, just a few years before the Revolutionary War. He signed up to fight at the tender age of 13. Early hardships were tangible — two of his brothers and his mother died during the war, and Jackson placed their deaths squarely on the British.

As an impoverished orphan, he grew up in various foster homes and had little formal education. However, he worked for several attorneys and — vitally — managed to learn enough of the legal system to become a lawyer himself. These skills would serve him well for the rest of his life.

Upon moving to Tennessee, which was then considered part of the untamed West, Jackson slowly climbed in power and wealth, through land dealings and shrewd politicking. In 1796, he was elected as the new state's only U.S. representative. The next year, he was elected as a U.S. senator, where his hatred for political niceties became abundantly clear.

Miserable, he returned to Tennessee and was elected as a judge of the state's Supreme Court. In 1804, he resigned, citing poor health.

Amid these accomplishments, Jackson was also a cotton plantation owner and merchant, who owned perhaps 150 men, women and children as slaves. That's one reason for a recent campaign to have former slave and abolitionist Harriet Tubman replace him on the U.S. $20 bill, a change that the Trump administration put on hold.

In May 1806, a man named Charles Dickinson accused Jackson of cheating him out of a horse race bet; he also insulted Jackson's wife, Rachel. Jackson challenged Dickinson to a pistol duel. Dickinson shot first and struck Jackson near his heart, but Jackson stood and returned fire, killing his opponent. Contrary to legend, which contends that Jackson engaged in anywhere from five to 100 duels during his lifetime, it was the first and only formal pistol duel that he ever fought.

It was a bigger fight — the War of 1812 — where Jackson became famous. At the Battle of New Orleans, he led a ragtag mishmash of men in opposing nearly 10,000 of Britain's best-trained soldiers. When the dust settled, Britain had lost 2,057 men. The U.S.? Just 71. Jackson's leadership there made him a bona fide war hero.

Jackson's military fame helped him win the 1828 presidential election. From there, he began exerting his power in ways that he felt would benefit the common man. The kind of person, he reminded voters, whom he had once been.

One of his most notable moves was to kill the Second Bank of the United States, which he felt was corrupt and existed to prop up the interests of the wealthy. In his pronouncement to Congress he said, "It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their own selfish purposes."

Congress strongly opposed Jackson's handling of the situation and later censured him for his part in what they deemed the "Bank War." But Jackson ultimately prevailed.

In 1832, South Carolina presented another crisis — one of secession. In an event that became known as the Nullification Crisis, the state threatened to leave the Union over disputed tariffs. South Carolina prepared its militia in case of federal military action, and suddenly the stage was set for potential war.

Jackson did in fact threaten violence if the South Carolinians refused to stand down. "Disunion by armed force is treason," proclaimed Jackson in a statement to the would-be rebels. But he also allowed room for new tariff negotiations. An agreement was forged, violence was avoided and both sides saved face. It's no wonder that a generation later, in more perilous times, that Abraham Lincoln and others would invoke Jackson as a preserver of the Union.

These days, however, Jackson's legacy has a darker tinge, due to the president's harsh treatment of indigenous Americans.

"I would say that the thing he's now best known for is his Indian removal policy," says Daniel Feller in a phone interview.

For years prior to Jackson's presidency, America's political inertia carried out various actions meant to displace Native Americans. But it was Jackson who signed the 1830 Indian Removal Act. This act forced Native Americans to abandon their lands and led to the infamous Trail of Tears of the late 1830s, in which thousands died as they were forced by U.S. soldiers to move to reservations in the West.

It was a presidential decision that Feller says falls, "somewhere between regrettable and genocidal."

These days, Jackson pops up regularly in media reports and social media, in part because of Trump's embrace of the man nicknamed "Old Hickory" by his troops because his toughness reminded them of a well-planted hickory tree. As for Jackson's current reputation, it depends who you ask.

"He's become a kind of surrogate for what you think about American history," says Feller. "Is American history a triumphalist story? I think the Trump-[Steve] Bannon camp would say 'yes....' Trump's line essentially is 'I'm just like Andrew Jackson, I too am a man of the people, beloved by ordinary Americans, despised and hated by the Washington insiders.'"

Some liberals though, have taken the opposite view of the Jackson/Trump associations. "It's gotten to the point that Jackson's reputation among the anti-Trump people has gotten to be so bad that basically you can accuse him of anything," and no one can convince them otherwise, he notes.

"It's a good example of how everybody's talking about Andrew Jackson, but the Andrew Jackson they're talking about is a kind of free-floating modern construct," says Feller. He agonizes that few reporters do the research to find out what Jackson really did during his lifetime.

"Those of us who respect accuracy and sometimes the complexity of the historical record are just appalled," at the way Jackson's name is wielded as a weapon by both liberals and conservatives, he says.

And yet that is the shifting nature of legacies. One generation's hero is another's villain.

Whether a leader's name is Washington, Lincoln or Kennedy, history's judgment will be long, unforgiving and ever-changing. That goes for Jackson — Old Hickory, judge, warrior, racist, slave owner, self-made man — and Trump, too.