Born into poverty, Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) rose to become the nation's seventh president and the founder of the Democratic Party. When the War of 1812 broke out, Jackson's leadership earned him national fame as a military hero, and during the 1820s and 1830s he became an influential, and polarizing, political figure.

Jackson is best known for making America more democratic. The problem was that, for Jackson, "the people" were white and male, so while he moved the United States toward a true democracy, he also trampled on the rights of minorities, appointing proslavery Supreme Court...