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The Pros And Cons Of Andrew Jackson

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Throughout Andrew Jackson’s presidency, he sought to represent the common man, but in doing so has negatively affected the American people. Many of the decisions that Jackson made were thoughtful resolutions to complex conflicts that threatened to dismantle the Union. Though he resolved conflicts, the effects of his decisions were felt beyond their benefits. Decisions made by Andrew Jackson such as the veto of the Second National Bank, which was positive in theory but ultimately led to severe shortcomings economically, questioned the ideas of the Jacksonian Democrats. These Jacksonian Democrats were guardians of the United States Constitution, political democracy, individual liberty, and equality of economic opportunity for the most part; however, there were pitfalls with their ideas. There are many pieces of evidence that show Jacksonian Democrats as having increased political democracy, individual liberty, and equality of economic opportunity. One of these pieces of evidence was in Harriet Martineau’s book Society in America where she stated that there was an, “absence of poverty, of gross ignorance, of all servility, of all insolence of manner,” when describing the U.S. (I). Martineau then went on to state that she had seen every man an independent citizen, landowner, and that common men were judges for controversies between candidates. Martineau’s audience for this was people outside of the U.S. That was her audience because in that time period, when communication between continents took a very long time, many people outside of the U.S. did not know a lot about life in the country. The purpose of this was to inform people outside of the U.S. about how democracy has affected the country along with posing the question of whether or not, “people should be encouraged to govern themselves, or whether the wise should save them from themselves.” This document is from the point of view of a British author. That gives them an unbiased opinion on U.S. politics because they are not heavily affected by U.S. politics. It could also be argued that because they are not American they do not know much about how democracy has affected the U.S. However, in this case that does not matter much because the author of this

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