Andrew Jackson rose from rural poverty in the Carolinas to become the dominant figure in American politics between Jefferson and Lincoln. Some regard him as the symbol of a powerful democratic movement that saw early 19th-century voting rights expanded for propertyless white men. Others stress Jackson’s prominent role in removing Native American peoples from their ancestral lands, which then became the center of a thriving southern cotton kingdom worked by more than a million enslaved people. Drawing on a wide range of sources, David Brown takes a fresh look at Jackson’s public career.

Image courtesy of interviewee