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Jackson, Andrew A military hero and the seventh president of the United States, Jackson was the first man to win the presidency primarily through his appeal to the mass of the voters and by means of a skillfully planned national campaign rather than through the support of the political leaders of the seaboard states. As president, he initiated little significant legislation, but he was a forceful president who exercised vigorously the power and authority of his otfice; and, with the collaboration of a coterie of astute advisers, he transformed a political faction into a truly national political organization, the Democratic Party, which may be described as the first modern political party in the history of the United States. Andrew Jackson, oil painting by John Wesley Jarvis, c. 1819. In the Metropolitan Museum ot Art, New York. He was bom on March 15, 1767, at the Waxhaw settlement of the western frontier of the Carolinas. The area was in dispute between North Carolina and South Carolina, and both states have claimed him as a native son. Jackson maintained that he was bom in South Carolina, and the weight of evidence supports his assertion. The Waxhaw area offered little opportunity for formai education, and what little schooling Jackson received was interrupted by the British invasion of the western Carolinas in 1780-81. In 1781 he was captured and imprisoned for a time by the British. Shortly after he was captured, he refused to shine the boots of a British officer and was struck across the face with a sabre. His mother and two brothers, Hugh and Róbert, died during the closing years of the war, direct or indirect casualties of the invasion of the Carolinas. This sequence of tragic experiences fixed in Jackson's mind a lifelong hostility to Great Britain. After the end of the U.S. war of independence, Jackson studied law in an office in Salisbury, North Carolina, and was admitted to the bar of that state in 1787. In 1788 he went to the Cumberland region as prosecuting attorney of the western district of North Carolina-the region west of the Appalachians, which was soon to become the state of Tennessee. When Jackson arrived in Nashville, the judicial seat of the district, the community was still a frontier settlement exposed to the danger of Indián raids, with a fluid social structure, no well-established political institutions, and a volatile economy in which virtually every investment had the character of a speculation. As prosecuting attomey, Jackson was principally occupied with suits for the collection of debts. He was so successful in these litigations that he soon had a thriving priváté practice and had gained the friendship of landowners and creditors. For almost 30 years Jackson was allied with this group in Tennessee politics. Jackson boarded in the home of Col. John Donelson, where he met and quickly became attracted to the Colonel's daughter, Mrs. Rachel Robards. Her marriage with Robards was a stormy one, which seemed destined to end in separation or divorce even before she met Jackson. In 1790 Robards sought a divorce by legislative enactment in Virginia, but the legislature merely empowered Robards to sue for divorce. Jackson and Mrs. Robards believed the legislature had granted the divorce and in ) 1791 they were married. Robards, however, did not sue for divorce until 1793 and then obtained it on the grounds of desertion and adultery. When Jackson and his wife learned the true state of aífairs, they were remarried quietly in Nashville. Until the death of Mrs. Jackson, nearly 40 years later, political opponents did not hesitate to make unflattering insinuations about events leading to his marriage. Although it appears to have been a happy unión, gossip concerning it kept Jackson perpetually on the defensive. Jackson was a successful lawyer, but he was too restless and his interests too varied to be confined to a career as an attorney. The expanding economy of frontier Tennessee encouraged adventures in trade and in land speculation, and Jackson became involved in both. He invested heavily in land and horses and alsó raised cotton. The course of his investments was an unsteady one. At times he appeared to be financially secure; on other occasions, he was hard pressed by debt. Tennessee politics. His interest in public affairs and in politics had always been keen. He had gone to Nashville as a political appointee, and in 1796 he became a member of the convention that drafted a constitution for the new state of Tennessee. In the same year he was elected as the first representative from Tennessee to the national House of Representatives. He refused to seek re-election and served only until March 4, 1797. These were the closing months of President George Washington's administration, and the chief event of Jackson's brief service in the House was the debate over the response to Washington's farewell address. In a speech in the House, Jackson criticized Washington because of the latter's support of Jay's Treaty, which Jackson believed did not contain adequate guarantees that Great Britain would not violate the rights of American ships on the high seas during the wars of the French Revolution. He was one of 12 representatives who voted against sending a cordial reply, thanking Washington for the address. Jackson returned to Tennessee, vowing never to enter public life again, but before the end of the year he was elected to the United States Senate. His willingness to accept the office reflects his emergence as an acknowledged leader of one of the two political factions contending for control of the state. Jackson resigned from the Senate in 1798 after an uneventful year. Personal financial pressures were the immeBy courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Harrls Brisbane Dick Fund, 1964