Andrew Jackson Quotes (1767-1845)

“Peace, above all things, is to be desired, but blood must sometimes be spilled to obtain it on equable and lasting terms.”

“The duty of government is to leave commerce to its own capital and credit as well as all other branches of business, protecting all in their legal pursuits, granting exclusive privileges to none.”

“I am one of those who do not believe the national debt is a national blessing... it is calculated to raise around the administration a moneyed aristocracy dangerous to the liberties of the country.”

“The great constitutional corrective in the hands of the people against usurpation of power, or corruption by their agents is the right of suffrage; and this when used with calmness and deliberation will prove strong enough.”

“They must be either for or against us. Distrust them and you make them your enemies, place confidence in them, and you engage them by every dear and honorable tie to the interest of the country, who extends to them equal rights and privileges.”

“To say that any State may at pleasure secede from the Union, is to say that the United States are not a nation because it would be a solecism to contend that any part of a nation might dissolve its connection with the other parts, to their injury or ruin, without committing any offense.”

“I have no hesitation to say if they can re-charter the bank (2nd Bank of the US – a privately-owned central bank) with this hydra of corruption they will rule the nation and its charter will be perpetual and its corrupting influence destroy the liberty of our country. When I came into this administration…I had a majority of 75. since then it is now believed it (the bank) has bought over by loans, discounts, etc until…there were 2/3 for re-chartering it.””

“The emigration should be voluntary, for it would be as cruel as unjust to compel the aborigines to abandon the graves of their fathers and seek a home in a distant land. But they should be distinctly informed that if they remain within the limits of the States they must be subject to their laws. In return for their obedience as individuals they will without doubt be protected in the enjoyment of those possessions which they have improved by their industry. But it seems to me visionary to suppose that in this state of things claims can be allowed on tracts of country on which they have neither dwelt nor made improvements, merely because they have seen them from the mountain or passed them in the chase.”

“It is maintained by some that the bank is a means of executing the constitutional power "to coin money and regulate the value thereof." Congress have established a mint to coin money and passed laws to regulate the value thereof. The money so coined, with its value so regulated, and such foreign coins as Congress may adopt are the only currency known to the Constitution. But if they have other power to regulate the currency, it was conferred to be exercised by themselves, and not to be transferred to a corporation. If the bank be established for that purpose, with a charter unalterable without its consent, Congress have parted with their power for a term of years, during which the Constitution is a dead letter. It is neither necessary nor proper to transfer its legislative power to such a bank, and therefore unconstitutional.”

“[W]ith sound-money and gold-standard morality transcendent, Jackson's destruction of the Bank was all but universally regarded as a villainous action. ...In more recent times, as the conventional wisdom of bankers has come... modestly into question and a heightened democratic ethos has ascribed both perception and virtue to the common man, Jackson's action has been viewed with contrasting warmth. He was... speaking for the small, energetic and aspiring folks of the new states, the new farms and the frontier. He was, in an important respect, their accidental ally. He opposed the bank as a monopoly—a monster which, as Biddle held, had power to rival that of the state. ...[I]t was also the power of his political enemies. But he favored hard money—he was for currency consisting of gold and silver and for eschewing all paper as the instrument of the devil. In getting rid of the bank, he got... the softest [money] of all—an explosion of new banks, and avalanche of bank notes. But this, and the loans so allowed, were what his constituents most wanted. Had Andrew Jackson succeeded in establishing... hard money... his name would have been reviled by the... small, energetic and aspiring folk of the frontier. Historians, in pondering whether Jackson was right or wrong on financial matters, must allow... a third possibility... that he was confused.”

“The Jacksonian movement in politics, although it took the name of the Democratic Party, fought so hard in favor of slavery and white supremacy, and opposed the inclusion of non-whites and women within the American civil polity so resolutely, that it makes the term 'Jacksonian Democracy' all the more inappropriate as a characterization of the years between 1815 and 1848.”

“The Cherokees, Creeks, and some Choctaws supported the fledgling US and Andrew Jackson’s forces in warfare against the British in 1812-1815. It didn’t keep our tribes from being removed by Andrew Jackson’s government from our homelands.”

“Under the command of General Andrew Jackson, a year later they attacked a Seminole village in northwest Florida. So began the Seminole Wars, which lasted from 1817 to 1855. The First Seminole War technically began in 1817 and came to a close two years later when the Spanish ceded Florida to the United States.”

“The fledgling United States government's method of dealing with native people-a process which then included system genocide, property theft, and total subjugation-reached a nadir in 1830 under the federal policy of President Andrew Jackson. More than any other president, he used forcible removal to expel the eastern tribes from their land. From the very birth of the nation, the United States government truly had carried out a vigorous operation of extermination and removal. Decades before Jackson took office, during the administration of Thomas Jefferson, it was already cruelly apparent to many Native American leaders that any hopes for tribal autonomy was cursed. So were any thoughts of peaceful coexistence with white citizens.”

“Andrew Jackson then is a sturdy obstacle to the Democrats' ongoing and increasingly frenzied campaign to erase from America's history all the unsavory things their party has championed for most of its existence, namely, slavery, secession, civil war, segregation, socialism, and, most recently the slaughter of infants. And so their longtime hero Andrew Jackson has been, as Sam Spade once said, chosen to take the fall alongside the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia to help erase the Democrats' consistently reprehensible behavior and policies from the history books.”

“A colored battalion was organized for the defense of New Orleans, and General Jackson publicly thanked them for their courage and conduct.”

“In 1836, Americans living in Texas- then a province of Mexico- declared an independent republic and almost immediately sought to join the Union. Andrew Jackson had championed the acquisition of Texas, but Van Buren was far less enthusiastic, knowing that the arrival of this much potential slave territory would inflame the North. After becoming president, he delayed full recognition for months, and then delayed Texan demands for annexation as well. Both sides were angry- John Quincy Adams saw in Van Buren little more than Jackson's expansionism "covered with a new coat of varnish," while Southerners denounced Van Buren for his timidity. Jackson wrote edgy letters to his successor, demanding stronger action and crossing well beyond the bounds of postpresidential propriety.”

“[Jacksonian Democracy] stretches the concept of democracy about as far as it can go and still remain workable. ... As such it has inspired much of the dynamic and dramatic events of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in American history—Populism, Progressivism, the New and Fair Deals, and the programs of the New Frontier and Great Society.”

“In the 1830s, under Andrew Jackson and then his successor Martin Van Buren, the military moved against the Indians in the southeastern United States in what was officially called, in the title of the law authorizing it, Indian Removal. Today we'd call it ethnic cleansing.”