Analyzing the "People's President"

The essential question for this unit was "was Andrew Jackson's long-standing reputation as "the people's president deserved?  Why or why not?"  This question is an important one because it requires us to go against popular belief and truly analyze the events that occurred, and take a look at them from a present-day standpoint to be able to truly tell if what he did was positive or negative in today's world.  Our group believed that Jackson did not deserve the reputation as the "people's president" for a two reasons- one the Indian Removal Act, and one involving the Spoils System.  But, regarding The Bank War, he did deserve the reputation as the people's president.

The Bank War started when Jackson began to believe that the Second Bank in the U.S. held too much power, and wanted to take down the Second Bank and replace that large bank with many smaller privately-owned banks around the country because the rich were getting all of the benefits of the Second Bank.  His veto of the movement to extend the charter for the bank showed that he did truly have the best interest of the whole country in mind regarding this topic, and that he wanted everyone to be able to control their own money, and remove some of the excess benefits and power only the rich received.  However, Jackson did not deserve his title as the "people's president" regarding the Indian Removal Act.  This act removed about 100,000 people of the Native American tribes Chocktaw, Creek, Cherokee, Chicksaw, and Seminole in the 1830's.  Although Jackson said that his removing them from the land was for their best interest because otherwise, the white settlers would have sent them off or killed them, the Native Americans did not want to leave their homeland on which their forefathers had grown up, and where their heritage was tied to, to go on a march through the cold winter later to be named "The Trail of Tears".  Jackson did not take the needs of all of his people into account, and if he was truly a president for the people, he would have respected the wishes and feelings of all of his people.  Jackson also did not deserve the reputation of the "people's president" in regards to the Spoil System.  The Spoil System is defined as, "when a political party gives government jobs to voters/supporters after an election victory", and is also known as "rotation in office".  Jackson used this system to his advantage, and gave people jobs who supported him, even though he claimed that it was to shake things up and be different.  Jackson was not the "people's president" because he only paid attention to the people's opinions who supported him, not everyone's opinions regardless of their support of him or not.  

Our group's presentation of the Indian Removal Act: 

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ydnSUSbjJiIVPG1wlvO96OpIu0InDkpV1TpZsMkMudA/edit?usp=sharing

The Rise of Democracy in America

In our small groups, we were able to analyze the documents that we were given, and use that information to show the rise of democracy as America developed.  It was very interesting because no matter in what way the information was relayed in the sources (graphic, image, quote, etc.), they all portrayed clearly in what way democracy was built upon or supported in the early U.S.

In our poster, we started off with the essential question, "How do we define democracy?  How democratic was the U.S. in the early 1800's?" to outline what the whole poster was going to be about, and what information was going to be included to prove that point and answer that question.  We also included the definition of democracy, because we wanted to make sure that the viewer of the poster would understand fully what we were referring to.  We then used many different sources in order to show what democracy looked like in the 1800's in the U.S.  We used a painting, "The County Election, 1852", to show that democracy in the U.S. was not a completely smooth system, and was slightly corrupted as they first began to want to use it in government.  In the painting, there are voters that are drunk, which would corrupt the votes because their votes that they cast may not have been what they truly wanted.  There's also an issue highlighted in the painting where the voter's vote may have not been cast the way they wanted it to be.  We also included two graphs/graphics which show the progression of men's voting gradually increasing over time.  Finally, we included a document about Dorr's War, in which an attorney named Thomas Dorr tried to change the unfair system in Rhode Island where not everyone had the chance to vote.  We felt it was important to include this detail to show that the idea of democracy was not just planted overnight in the U.S., but took time to really become the key part and ideal of our government.