Andrew Jackson
Dwight Eisenhower
George W. Bush, Jr.
Abraham Lincoln
Ulysses Grant
A list like this is designed to be debated, and I could make a case here or there. But quibbles aside, there’s no debating the man at the top of the list: Andrew Jackson. Frankly
, I would have been shocked if they had picked anyone other than Old Hickory. And indeed, few historians would disagree that he was the worst president for American Indians, and maybe by a long shot.
However, for a number of years now, I’ve been cantankerously telling anyone who will listen that Jackson wasn’t just the worst president vis a vis Indians; I think he’s actually the worst U.S. president of all time, period. And now seems like as good a time as any to make my case, which boils down to three major factors: his aforementioned Indian policy; his economic policies; and his political legacy.
Indian Policy- When it comes to Indian affairs, there has been no shortage of presidential scoundrels. From George Washington to Zachary Taylor, several men (including Jackson) literally killed Indians on their way to the White House. During the nation’s first century, a parade of presidents presided over a shockingly violent colonial conquest of the continent. So what sets Andrew Jackson apart?
Ethnic cleansing.
Although the term “ethnic cleansing” wasn’t coined until the Yugoslav civil war of the 1990s, the practice is of course an old one: the forced depopulation of a region, which is then recolonized by the conquerors.
Jackson’s so-called Removal policy of the 1830s was a textbook example of ethnic cleansing 150 years before the term was invented. Indigenous nations were expelled from the American South, and the region was subsequently repopulated by EuroAmericans.
And while other presidents, such as Thomas Jefferson, preceded Jackson in designing and advocating ethnic cleansing polices, and even implementing them on a smaller scale, it was Jackson who pushed hardest and wrought the most damage.
Indeed, Andrew Jackson is nothing more than our very own Slobodan Milosevic. He actively and vigorously pursued ethnic cleansing policies that swept perhaps as many as a hundred thousand Indians from the American South, with tens of thousands dying in the process. His policies are such a horrific stain on our history that popular assessments of him often minimize or overlook the Indian “removals” altogether. For example, Jackson’s official White House website biography doesn’t even mention his Removal policies! It’s as if the mere mention would be too much for us to bear.
The legacy of every U.S. president trhough the 19th century is stained with Indigenous blood. Jackson’s legacy is probably bloodiest of all.
Economic Policies- For anyone with a conscience, Jackson’s ethnic cleansings might be enough to mark him as the worst president ever. But nearly every president through the nineteenth 
century supported such approaches. Jackson simply had the political currency and dedication to carry them with thoroughness and ferocity. However, there are other serious critiques of his presidency to consider.
Jackson’s so-called Bank War helped wreck the American economy. Old Hickory’s personal distrust of banks and paper currency shaped his hostility towards the Second Bank of the United States. Originally chartered in 1816, the Second Bank’s purpose had been to do much of what the Federal Reserve does today: regulate other banks, and set monetary policy by influencing the flow of money. Although not an official arm of the United States, the Second Bank had tremendous leverage because the federal government deposited its revenues there.
In September of 1833, Jackson signed an executive order that ended federal deposits to the Second Bank. Without federal funds, the bank dried up and soon died.
And where did all that federal money go? To smaller state banks around the country, particularly ones run by supporters of Jackson and his political allies.
Those banks then flushed all that money into the economy, contributing to runaway inflation and rampant speculation, particularly in real estate. The bubble eventually burst, resulting in the Panic of 1837, a five-year depression that was arguably the nation’s worst until the Great Depression.
To be sure, Jackson’s misguided economic policies weren’t the only cause of the 1837 Panic, but they were the driving force. Lucky til the end, however, Jackson left office five weeks before the economy melted down, and most irate and suffering Americans ended up blaming his hand-picked successor, Martin Van Buren.
Political Legacy- The final piece of Andrew Jackson’s fetid presidency is his political legacy. In particular, he helped introduce rank populism to American politics.
Jackson’s presidential campaigns (1824, 1828, 1832) came just as individual states began doing away with property requirements for voting. That change effectively awarded the franchise to nearly all white men. Jackson crassly capitalized on this and set a dubious precedent by disingenuously playing the class card.
All of the previous presidents had been proud of their education, which they believed helped qualify them for public service. But when Jackson ran for president unsuccessfully in 1824, and then victoriously in 1828, he scorched a fiery political path by courting a new wave of voters who had little money or education, but plenty of resentment towards the elite. And Jackson pretended to be one of them.
The reality is that Jackson was one of the elites, forging successful careers in politics and commerce. He was a U.S. general and at one point the military governor of Florida. He was also Tennessee’s first elected congressman, a U.S. senator, and then a Tennessee Supreme Court Judge. He began building his vast fortune as a store-owner and then as a cotton planter. His plantation was nearly two square miles in size, and over the course of his career, Jackson owned upwards of three-hundred slaves.
Despite this, Jackson fashioned himself a man of the people while running for office. His campaign downplayed his wealth, cast him as an everyman, emphasized his rough and tumble rural roots, and smeared his opponent John Quincy Adams as a silk panty-wearing dandy.
In reality, Jackson was a member of the elite that many of his supporters despised. He was one of the richest men in Tennessee. But his disingenuousness worked well enough for him to twice win the presidency.
Of course American politics is still dominated by the filthy rich, as it always has been. But every time you see one of them testing your patience and insulting your intelligence by pretending to be a regular Joe, you can thank Andrew Jackson for showing them the way.
President Andrew Jackson: Ethnic cleanser, economy wrecker, and everyman pretender. Think about that the next time an ATM spits a twenty dollar bill at you.
Updated April 20, 2016. A longer version of this article originally appeared in 3 Quarks Daily. Click here if you’d like to read the sordid details of Jackson’s ethnic cleansings.