If you asked someone on the street which president of these United States left the most important and lasting legacy on the way they are run today you will probably hear the same few names. Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson. Reading the list of men we have carved from a mountain in South Dakota. But few understand the enduring traditions established by a slightly more obscure president. Not the one who helped write the Declaration of Independence, but the one who fought the British as a teenager in the Carolinas. Although he was not at the court of King Louis to secure aid from France nor a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, Andrew Jackson managed to change the nation so dramatically during his eight-year tenure as as president that it is a shame that most people remember him. as these are only the short-term effects of his greatest offense. The lasting effects and traditions of the Jackson administration exceed many of those established by more prestigious presidents and are still felt in our modern nation today, making him one of the most influential presidents on our nation. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayThe United States of the early 19th century was very different from today. The country was much more of a republic than a democracy, and that was intentional. Candidates were chosen "from the party elite" which was "largely composed of propertied and educated nobles", rather than by the people. The popular vote had little weight in the election of the president, because the number of people allowed to vote was small and the turnout rate even lower. Unlike the six presidents who preceded him, Jackson gained his notoriety through the recent War of 1812, not the Revolution. General Jackson was popular among the people and he strongly believed in the will of the people. He launched his bet during the elections of 1824, hoping to win power thanks to his fame acquired during the war. America had entered a one-party system after the demise of the Federalist Party, and the Democratic-Republicans ran the country unopposed as a single party nationally. There were four candidates for president: Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William Crawford and Henry Clay. Jackson led in the popular vote, but no candidate won the Electoral College. The vote was therefore taken to the House of Representatives, as decided in the Twelfth Amendment. Clay, knowing he was a lesser candidate and had little chance of winning the election, asked his supporters to vote for Adams, who then quickly won. Just days into Adams' presidency, Clay was controversially appointed Secretary of State, Adams' former position under the previous president. This infuriated Jackson, who saw it as the political elite rewarding Clay for his support of consolidating power and vowed revenge on Adams. The Adams faction appealed to the industrial North, who wanted government interventionism in the economy and foreign tariffs to promote their products. Jackson's support came primarily from the agricultural South. So the Jacksonian clique hatched a plan to make Adams' presidency look bad and bolster its own support. The Jacksonians in Congress would pass a tariff so high that Adams would be forced to veto it. The North would see this as Adams backtracking on his tariff promisesprotectors, and Jackson could thus obtain the support of the northerners in conflict. This plot was not the first political project, but it was the most important of its time and would set a precedent for political maneuvers to come. Then the unthinkable happened, one that would precipitate the rest of Jackson's political career: Adams simply signed the tax deal. place. Although this gave Adams a better image among some of his Northern supporters, it angered the rest of the country and particularly the South. He used his new popularity to attack the political establishment, which he saw as too entrenched and undemocratic, having allowed the unpopular Adams to take power. This political strategy, now known as populism, would become very influential and the traditions of American populism would begin with Jackson's struggle against Adams. Jackson's populist appeal and "anti-establishment" doctrine are exploited even to this day, by politicians such as Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders running personality, popularity and anti-elitism campaigns. Another precedent set by Jackson was the recreation of the two party systems. In the elections of 1824, there was only one party: the Republican-Democrats. This was the result of the collapse of the Federalist Party ten years earlier, after the disastrous Hartford Convention. Under President James Madison, president before Adams, the nation entered the Era of Good Feelings, under which there was only one party nationally. It was the only time in the country's history where a two-party system did not actually exist. And party unity will not last long. Due to the controversy between Jackson and Adams after the election, Jackson's supporters left and formed the Democratic Party, while Adams' supporters reorganized into the Whig Party. After two tumultuous decades of power transfers between these two parties, the Whig Party would dissolve, making way for the Republican Party to establish itself as an adversary of the Democratic Party. Thus, the dispute between Jackson and John Quincy Adams led directly to the creation of the two-party system we have today. Jackson would win the 1828 election in a landslide. He proved his popularity by defeating Adams 178-83, more than twice as many electoral votes as his rival. And then, being the ambitious anti-elitist that he was, he did something no president had done before: he removed many members of the former administration from office, replacing them with Jackson supporters. Previously, presidents had often kept in office those who had previously held that position. But Jackson was determined to oust the political elite and, as he saw it, return power to the people. After all, the people wanted him and his policies to be in power, so by ushering in allies he saw himself as supporting their will and bringing democracy to more government positions. This brought, among other things, partisanship throughout Washington, as many of those he replaced were highly respected and dedicated and their sudden removal incited opposition, even when it appeared that some employees of Adams was siphoning money from the government. Nowadays, this so-called "spoiler system" is an almost universal practice for American presidents to bring in their own cabinet members to replace those of the previous administration, but Jackson was the first to introduce this practice in the federal executive. of Abominations was extremely upsetting to southern farmers, as the immense import tax helped the north at the expenseSouth. The South was looking for solutions, and one man claimed to have them: John C. Calhoun. A burner from South Carolina, he had previously served as a congressman and secretary of war. Now he was Jackson's vice president. And although they ran in the same party, their opinions differed on one key area: state's rights. Calhoun strongly believed in state sovereignty, while Jackson believed the federal government was a necessary check on their power. So when their differences in beliefs became unbearable, Calhoun resigned his vice presidency, became a senator from his home state the next day, and set to work on nullification laws. This inevitably led to the nullification crisis, when South Carolina courts declared the tariff to be unconstitutional and therefore could not be enforced in the state. Jackson, although opposed to his old tariff and promising a new, less severe one, was furious at the actions of his former vice president, predicting that "nullification... leads directly to civil war and bloodshed." . » Indeed, Calhoun would threaten secession against the Jacksonian government, and Jackson would respond that he had the firm intention of militarily crushing the independence of the state, if things came to pass. This was a very important precedent because although he did not follow through on his threats, as the situation was resolved peacefully, the same could not be said of a subsequent president. Twenty-eight years after South Carolina threatened to press the nuclear button, it would finally decide to press that button. When Abraham Lincoln was elected president, several states seceded before he even took office, South Carolina being the first. Lincoln knew that his presidency would be a defining moment in the nation's history, because never before had secession been confronted so openly. So he looked for a precedent, someone he could draw on from his first presidency and who would give him guidance in times of turmoil. And he used Jackson's policies against South Carolina's secession as his guide. Instead of letting their secession go, he resolved to fight because, as he put it, secession "was fully discussed in Jackson's time and denied..." So although Lincoln is most famous for fighting the Civil War, he was only following the precedent set by Jackson. Jackson also had an effect on American democracy by changing the electoral college. Nowadays, each state has one vote, and the winning candidate wins the statewide votes in the Electoral College. But the Electoral College has not always functioned as such. It was originally intended to allow states to vote as they wished; however, some states chose to allow their citizens to vote to determine where their votes went. But, during the period of Jacksonian democracy, a number of states amended their constitutions to allow the people to vote for president, thus leading to the electoral college system we have today due to popularity and Jackson's policy. One of the political controversies in the country's history was that of the national bank. Its constitutionality was hotly debated during the first presidencies. Washington established it; Jefferson abolished it; Madison restored it. It was one of the most important questions of the early days of the republic: Should the country have a state-run banking monopoly? Hamilton, Washington's advisor, was its champion, asserting its necessity for the functioning of a state. However, Jefferson considered it.