Top-Rated Free Essay
Preview

Should Andrew Jackson be on the 20 dollar bill?

Good Essays
530 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Should Andrew Jackson be on the 20 dollar bill?
There are obvious reasons why Andrew Jackson shouldn’t be on the twenty dollar bill. There was the Indian Removal Act, the Trail of Tears, and he closed the National Bank. But, who should replace him? One western leader, President Ronald Reagan, above all others, demanded the Soviets to give up the Brezhney Doctrine and abandon the arms race, brought down the Berlin Wall, and ended the Cold War at the bargaining table and not on battlefield (2013, Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism). The Brezhney Doctrine was a Soviet Union foreign policy.
In the first inaugural address of Andrew Jackson, he said he would observe the Indian’s rights which is a consistent habit of our government but, President Jackson turned his back and forced the Cherokee to move west because he found gold in their territory which at the time was in Georgia. Over 70,000 Cherokee had to move west. Many of which died due to diseases transferred by Americans and natural everyday colds. The term “Trail of Tears” was given to the period of ten years in which over 70,000 Indians had to give up their homes and move to areas assigned to tribes in Oklahoma (Indian Removal Act of 1830, November 3, 2013). The government promised this land to them “as long as grass grows and rivers run" (Indian Removal Act of 1830, 2013). Unfortunately, the land that they were given only lasted till 1906 and then they were forced to move to other reservations. Andrew Jackson also closed the National Banks. Due to this, inflation rose and the economy collapsed. Inflation is the result of higher prices and a decrease in the purchasing power of money. With the economy collapsing came the Panic of 1837.
“Tear down this wall" (Tear Down This Wall, November 7, 2013). That is what President Reagan said when tearing down the Berlin Wall. Based on intelligence reports and his own analysis, the President concluded that communism was cracking and ready to tumble. Reagan took personal control of the new strategy. When President Reagan took down the Berlin wall, it had made communicating and traveling easier. It had also stopped communism in east Germany and started to crumble communism in Russia. Ronald Reagan forced the Soviet Union to abandon its goal of the world socialization. He did this by challenging Soviet’s legitimacy, by regaining superiority in the arms race, and by using human rights as a weapon as powerful as any in the U.S. or Soviet arsenal. A severe recession set in with an inflation decreasing from 13.5% in 1980 to 5.1% in 1982 and unemployment exceeding 10% in October, 1982 for the first time in forty years. After the 1982 downturn, the decreased inflation rate, under 5%, sparked economic growth. It also produced one of the lowest unemployment rates in modern U.S. history. Andrew Jackson was not the best president we have had. Jackson created the Trail of Tears, the Indian Removal Act, and the closing of the National Banks. On the other hand, President Reagan made a turn for the better. He tore down the Berlin Wall stopping communism in eastern Germany and started crumbling communism in Russia, forced the Soviet Union to abandon its goal of world socialization, and decreased inflation and decreased unemployment.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Jackson’s presidency also focused on issues of westward expansion. Pursuing paths of “civilization,” Native Americans of the Southeast engaged in extensive agricultural and educational development. But pressure from white settlers and from the state governments proved overwhelming, and Jackson finally supported the forced removal of all southeastern Indians to Oklahoma along the “Trail of Tears.”…

    • 544 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, deserves to have his picture engraved on the twenty-dollar bill. Jackson's perilous military achievement and leadership as well as democratic principles demonstrated during his presidency have made a significant contribution to American history and political life.…

    • 662 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Indian Removal Act Dbq

    • 303 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Andrew Jackson passed the Indian Removal Act in 1830. This act called for the government to make treaties that required Native Americans to relocate west. Jackson thought that this policy was “just and liberal.” He thought the Native Americans would be able to keep their way of life. He was wrong. The Indian Removal Act brought a lot of hardship to the Native Americans. It also forever changed the relationship between whites and Native Americans. Before Jackson passed this act, he gave the Native Americans two choices. The two choices were that they could take on white culture and become citizens of the United States, or they could move to the Western territories and keep their…

    • 303 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Every country knows that currency is a big deal. Outside of the monetary value, every country with its own currency knows that important historical figures should be portrayed on the money we handle every day. I’m sure whatever initial reason they had is valid, but Andrew Jackson does not belong on the $20 bill. There are more deserving American figures that can be represented on something that we see so often! George Washington (Mr. $1), Thomas Jefferson (Mr. $2), Abraham Lincoln (Mr. $5), Alexander Hamilton (Mr. $10), Ulysses S. Grant (Mr. $50), and Benjamin Franklin (Mr. $100) have all done something to better America and its future. All Andrew Jackson did was distance himself from the diversity that would flourish in the future of the United States.…

    • 433 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In 1814 he commanded the U.S. military forces that defeated a faction of the Creek nation. In their defeat, the Creeks lost 22 million acres of land in southern Georgia and central Alabama. As president, he continued to try and acquire more Indian land for white settlers who wanted to grow cotton, much like him. In 1830 Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act which allowed the government to move the Indians out of cotton rich land, and into Indian reservations out west. This travel took a toll on many of the tribes, and the journey the Indians took came to be known as the “Trail of Tears”. In addition, there was the Supreme Court case of Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, where the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Cherokee Nation. This ruling of the Supreme Court did not stop Jackson and his followers from driving the Cherokees off of their land, which people viewed unconstitional from Jackson’s part.…

    • 783 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    (“Ronald Reagan”) Just 69 days into his presidency, Reagan became the first president to survive an assassination attempt. After the event, Reagan’s popularity rose to a high of 73 percent. Perhaps Reagan’s greatest act as president came in his second term, when he helped end the Cold War. Reagan gave a speech at the Berlin Wall in 1987, in which he challenged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, saying, “"General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" In November 1989, the Berlin Wall was torn down, and the Cold War was officially declared over at the Malta Summit on December 3,…

    • 1340 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Andrew Jackson a man who forever changed the presidency. Andrew Jackson did many terrible things in his presidency. He is a stain on American history, cause great strife for the Cherokees and many other Native Americans. He was unpresidential by firing his entire cabinet, he ignored an order from the supreme court, and murdered a man. How could a man like this ever become the president of the United States? Andrew Jackson should be removed from the twenty, and not held on a high pedestal.…

    • 359 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    andrew jackson best president eveAndrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was the seventh President of the United States (1829–1837). Based in frontier Tennessee, Jackson was a politician and army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend (1814), and the British at the Battle of New Orleans (1815). A polarizing figure who dominated the Second Party System in the 1820s and 1830s, as president he dismantled the Second Bank of the United States and initiated forced relocation and resettlement of Native American tribes from the Southeast to west of the Mississippi River. His enthusiastic followers created the modern Democratic Party. The 1830–1850 period later became known as the era of Jacksonian democracy.[1]…

    • 314 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    As more and more people migrated to the United States, the government felt that settlers needed more space in the US Territory. They had already forced several Native American tribes off of “US land” by the time Andrew Jackson was President. In the Southwestern United States, the Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw tribes excelled in interacting with new settlers. Jackson had been able to maintain a peaceful relationship with these tribes and had even raised a Creek orphan alongside his own son. Although he did not treat them as if they were strangers, he still saw them as inferior. He forced the tribes to split and absorb into the American way of life. At the beginning of his presidency, the Cherokee’s tribal and state governments began…

    • 290 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Andrew Jackson was a very well-known president. Some know him for the good he's done, some for the bad, and some because he is on the twenty dollar bill. Many of us do not know that Jackson lived a very eventful life. During Jackson's run for president a very personal subject came up about his past that impacted his life immensely.…

    • 447 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Andrew Jackson Dbq

    • 701 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The era of Jackson’s presidency ran from 1829 throughout 1837. Jackson used any political and economic means necessary in order to see American frontier regions expand across the nation. In the beginning of the Jacksonian era, colonial Americans’ settlements had not yet extended far beyond the Atlantic seaboard, partly because bad roads and primitive technology limited their ability to expand, and because both hostile Indians and British imperial policy discouraged migration beyond Appalachian Mountains. However, all of this changed after Jackson was in office and American expansion was well underway. Jackson strived for social economic, and political growth. Throughout his terms he brought about social, economical, and political revolutions that sparked a new and improved America.…

    • 701 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Andrew Jackson was a popular president for the time he was alive. He had done some very good things but he also had done some very bad things as well. He was just doing what he thought was best for the country. Despite the bad things he had done he was a good president that did what he thought was best.…

    • 573 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Andrew Jackson Thesis

    • 332 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Yes, I do believe that Andrew Jackson should be on the 20 dollar bill for many reasons. As quoted by Andrew Jackson “Americans are not a perfect people, but we are called to a perfect mission”. Andrew Jackson started out from very humble beginnings, being orphaned from when he was a child. His father died before he was born, and during the Revolutionary War, his mother and both of his brothers were killed. From coming from very humble beginnings, he showed every american that a “common man” could become president. Jackson also deserves to be on the 20 dollar bill because when became president, he reformed Thomas Jefferson’s idea of “democratic republican” into the cohesive political…

    • 332 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Dbq on Andrew Jackson

    • 809 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Jacksonian Democrats believed that they were protecting individual liberty, political democracy, the equality of economic opportunity, and upholding the rights of the Constitution of the United States. In my opinion, the Jacksonians were, to some extent, guardians of the United States. However, the Jacksonians did have their flaws.…

    • 809 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Even after the Supreme Court ruled it unlawful for the government to remove the Native Americans from their lands, President Andrew Jackson refused to enforce the law resulting from the ruling. From this action, the US government forcibly removed around 16,000 Cherokees from their land and forced them to walk the Trail of Tears. Around 4,000 of them perished on the 2,200-mile journey; starting at the southwest to Indian Territory, now called Oklahoma. However, the terror didn’t end once they had been relocated against their will. Cultural Genocide was committed against them next, the government forced the married couples to remarry in western attire, cut their hair, and forced the children to attend a boarding school away from their families to learn how to speak and write in English. The government’s excuse for these violations was they were trying to “Kill the Indian, Save the Man,”. Due to the government’s cruel action towards the Native Americans; for kicking them off their land for selfish reasons, such as land for new settlers and the discovery or iron ores, and the cultural genocide they were the root cause of, this action in history can be identified as…

    • 1116 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays