January 8

"One man with courage makes a majority."

Andrew Jackson, 7th President, 1829-1837-Attributed to Jackson, although a definitive source has not been found.This quote is something to which Jackson certainly would have subscribed. Irascible and confrontational, easily provoked to anger, Jackson was one of our most controversial Presidents. Jackson's father died weeks before he was born and his mother died when Jackson was fourteen. At the age of thirteen, Jackson aided in the Revolutionary War as a courier. He and his brother were captured by the British and almost starved to death in captivity. When Jackson refused to clean a British officer's boots, he was struck with the officer's sword, leaving scars on his hand and face. Jackson intensely hated the British from that point on. In adulthood, he led the Battle of New Orleans, decisively defeating the British Army at the end of the War of 1812 with an assembled group of militia fighters. Subsequently, He fought the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, and Seminole tribes in the southeast and Florida. As President, he passed and enforced the Indian Removal Act, forcing the removal of the Cherokee and other tribes to Oklahoma. He gained popularity among the common people by opposing the National Bank as oppressive and slashed many bureaucratic governmental positions. On a personal level, he fought many duels and lived many years with a musket ball lodged in a lung. Jackson also was a slave owner, growing cotton on his plantation, called The Hermitage, in Tennessee.