129 Fun Facts About Andrew Jackson

Before Jackson, every U.S. president had come from Massachusetts or which other state?

Virginia. Four of the first five presidents were Virginia planters, a run nicknamed the Virginia dynasty; Jackson, the seventh, was a self-made Tennessee frontier lawyer and general.

Which nickname did Jackson earn for marching his volunteers home from Natchez in 1813?

Old Hickory. Told to disband his volunteers far from home without pay or supplies, Jackson refused and led them back to Tennessee himself; the men said he was as tough as hickory.

The Battle of New Orleans was fought fifteen days after a peace treaty was signed in which European city?

Ghent. The treaty was signed there on Christmas Eve 1814, but word took weeks to cross the Atlantic, so the armies at New Orleans fought on with the peace already agreed.

What was the name of Jackson's plantation home near Nashville, where he is buried?

The Hermitage. Jackson bought the 425-acre farm in 1804 after failed land deals nearly bankrupted him and forced the sale of a larger estate, then grew it into a 1,000-acre cotton plantation.

The Waxhaws region, Jackson's 1767 birthplace, straddles the border of which two states?

North and South Carolina. Nobody is sure which side of the line he was born on: Jackson himself said South Carolina, at an uncle's plantation, so both states still claim him.

Jackson's Scots-Irish parents emigrated to America in 1765 from which province of Ireland?

Ulster. The family left Carrickfergus with two small sons, and Jackson's mother passed on a hatred of the British that the Revolution, which cost him her and both brothers, made lifelong.

Jackson was named after which relative, who died shortly before his birth?

His father. Andrew Jackson Sr. died shortly before the birth, so his widow and her three boys moved in with her relatives, the Crawfords.

As a British prisoner in 1781, Jackson was slashed with a sword after refusing to do what for an officer?

Polish his boots. The slash scarred Jackson for life, and the scene became patriotic legend: a popular print later sold it as 'The Brave Boy of the Waxhaws'.

Which disease did Jackson and his brother Robert contract in the British prisoner-of-war camp at Camden?

Smallpox. Their mother arranged the boys' release in a prisoner exchange, but Robert died within days of leaving the camp and Andrew, gravely ill, barely survived.

Jackson's mother died in 1781 after going to nurse American prisoners of war in which port city?

Charleston. Elizabeth Jackson went to nurse prisoners held on British ships in the harbor, two nephews among them, caught cholera and died, leaving Andrew an orphan at 14.

How did Jackson's first duel, against lawyer Waightstill Avery in 1788, end without anyone being hurt?

Both men fired into the air. Jackson had accused Avery of insulting his character, but with honor satisfied the two shook hands and walked away unhurt.

What was the name of Jackson's wife, whose earlier divorce became a scandal in the 1828 campaign?

Rachel Donelson. The pair lived as man and wife before her first husband's divorce was final; she died weeks after the 1828 election, and Jackson blamed the campaign's slanders for it.

After the House denied him the presidency in 1825, Jackson called for abolishing which institution?

The Electoral College. Jackson had won the most popular votes in 1824 and still lost, so in his first annual message as president he urged Congress to let voters choose the president directly.

Jackson's 1806 duel with Charles Dickinson began as a quarrel over the forfeit owed on what contest?

A horse race. Dickinson, a crack shot, fired first and hit Jackson in the chest; Jackson stood his ground, took careful aim and killed him, a death that shadowed his reputation for years.

Which former vice president's western scheme did Jackson briefly back in 1806 before breaking with him?

Aaron Burr. He stayed with the Jacksons in 1805 while recruiting for a shadowy plan of conquest in the West; Jackson befriended him, then cut loose in time to avoid any charge of treason.

Jackson was shot in an 1813 Nashville brawl with which man, later his leading ally in the Senate?

Thomas Hart Benton. A bullet from the brawl stayed in Jackson's arm for years, yet Benton, by then a Missouri senator, became his staunchest ally; a surgeon removed it during Jackson's presidency.

Which March 1814 battle on the Tallapoosa River broke the power of the Red Stick Creeks?

Horseshoe Bend. Jackson's army, with Cherokee and allied Creek warriors, stormed the Red Sticks' fortified loop of the river and killed most of its defenders, which effectively ended the Creek War.

The 1814 Treaty of Fort Jackson stripped the Creek of over 20 million acres, mostly in which present-day state?

Alabama. Jackson dictated the terms to the whole Creek nation, so the allies who had fought beside him against the Red Sticks lost millions of acres too.

To defend New Orleans in 1814, Jackson allied with which Barataria smuggler?

Jean Lafitte. The pirate chief offered to fight in exchange for a pardon; Jackson accepted, the Baratarians fought with distinction, and President Madison pardoned them all.

Roughly how many casualties did Jackson's army suffer at New Orleans in 1815, against over 2,000 British?

71. The British made a frontal assault on Jackson's fortified line and were cut down by cannon and rifle fire in about half an hour; only 13 Americans were killed.

Edward Pakenham, the British general killed attacking Jackson's line at New Orleans, was brother-in-law to which commander?

Wellington. Pakenham had fought under him in Spain, and many of his men were veterans of the wars against Napoleon, which made their rout by Jackson's patchwork army a sensation.

Under martial law in New Orleans in 1815, Jackson arrested which official for ordering a jailed critic released?

A U.S. district judge. Jackson had jailed a legislator for attacking his martial law in a newspaper; when the judge ordered the man freed, Jackson arrested the judge too, pleading military necessity.

What honor was voted to Jackson in February 1815 for his victory at New Orleans?

Congressional Gold Medal. The peace treaty signed weeks earlier required the Creek territory Jackson had seized to be handed back, but the United States ignored that article.

Which Spanish colonial town did Jackson seize twice, in 1814 and again in 1818?

Pensacola. Both raids went beyond his orders; the second outraged Madrid, yet it helped persuade Spain that it could no longer hold the colony, which it ceded the next year.

Jackson's 1818 execution of two British subjects set off an international incident during which conflict?

The First Seminole War. Jackson had the two men tried and executed for aiding the Seminoles; Britain protested and Congress investigated, but he was cleared.

In 1821 Jackson briefly served as the first territorial governor of which future state?

Florida. Jackson accepted the handover from Spain that July, soon tired of the climate and the swarm of office-seekers, and resigned within months to go home to Tennessee.

Jackson, John Overton and James Winchester founded which Tennessee city as a land venture in 1819?

Memphis. Jackson had just negotiated the Chickasaw treaty that opened West Tennessee, and within months he and his partners laid out a town on the river bluffs, named for ancient Egypt's capital.

Whom did the House choose over Jackson for the presidency in 1824?

John Quincy Adams. Jackson had led the field in votes but lacked a majority, so the House chose among the top three, and Adams carried 13 of the 24 state delegations on the first ballot.

What name did Jackson's camp give the alleged 1825 deal that made Speaker Henry Clay secretary of state?

The corrupt bargain. Clay, shut out of the House runoff, backed Jackson's rival and was named secretary of state days after the vote; the charge dogged him for life and powered Jackson's 1828 campaign.

As of 2025, Jackson's portrait appears on the front of which U.S. banknote?

$20. Nobody knows why he is there: Treasury records give no reason for the portraits it chose, an odd honor for a president who made war on the national bank.

In 1828 Jackson became the first president elected from west of which mountains?

The Appalachians. Jackson took 56 percent of the popular vote after a savage campaign in which opponents painted the Tennessee general as a would-be military tyrant.

The six coffins on the 1828 'Coffin Handbills' accused Jackson chiefly of what?

Executing militiamen for desertion. Jackson had approved the six death sentences as a general; his own side answered the handbills in kind, smearing his opponent as an aristocrat and a libertine.

Many of the new voters who elected Jackson in 1828 had recently been freed from which voting requirement?

Owning property. Western states had led the way in dropping the rule and the older eastern states followed, so by 1828 most white men could vote, and Jackson was the candidate they rallied to.

After crowds overran the White House at Jackson's 1829 inaugural reception, critics said it began 'the reign of' what?

King Mob. Jackson had opened the house to all comers and had to be steered out of the crush; the rooms emptied only when the punch was carried out onto the lawn.

Jackson was the first president-elect to take the oath of office where?

On the Capitol's East Portico. Thousands packed the grounds to watch the general sworn in outdoors, but his embittered predecessor, beaten after a vicious campaign, refused to attend.

Jackson's 'rotation in office', replacing federal employees with loyal Democrats, became known as what?

The spoils system. The name comes from a New York senator's remark, in defending Jackson's removals, that the spoils of the enemy belong to the victor; Jackson himself called it reform.

The 'Petticoat affair' that broke up Jackson's first cabinet was a feud over the reputation of which woman?

Peggy Eaton. Cabinet wives shunned the war secretary's new bride over gossip about her past; Jackson, sure such talk had killed his own wife, took her side and in 1831 replaced nearly the whole cabinet.

What did opponents call the circle of unofficial advisers Jackson relied on as president?

Kitchen Cabinet. The sneer was that Jackson took his real advice below stairs, from old friends and newspaper editors such as Amos Kendall, and not from the official cabinet in the parlor.

Jackson's 1830 Indian Removal Act pushed the southeastern tribes to which present-day state?

Oklahoma. The act was framed as a voluntary exchange of lands, but Jackson's agents won their treaties by bribes and threats, and by the time he left office tens of thousands of people had been moved west.

Which chief justice ruled for the Cherokee against Georgia in 1832, in a decision Jackson declined to enforce?

John Marshall. Jackson probably never said 'John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it'; what he did write to a friend was that the ruling had 'fell still born', and Georgia ignored it.

The forced removal of the Cherokee under the Treaty of New Echota became known as what?

Trail of Tears. The treaty was signed by a small faction the tribe's majority rejected; in 1838, under Jackson's successor, soldiers rounded up those who refused to go and drove them west.

Which state passed an Ordinance of Nullification in November 1832, declaring federal laws void within its borders?

South Carolina. Jackson answered with a proclamation calling disunion by armed force treason, and after Congress passed a compromise the next year the state withdrew its ordinance.

Jackson's toast "Our federal Union: It must be preserved!" was delivered at a dinner celebrating whose birthday?

Thomas Jefferson. The nullifiers had filled the evening with toasts to states' rights, and many expected the Southern planter to join in; his toast told them he would not let the Union be broken.

Which vice president resigned in December 1832 to fight Jackson over nullification from the Senate?

John C. Calhoun. Jackson's own vice president had become the chief theorist of nullification; already dropped from the 1832 ticket, he quit to defend his state's cause on the Senate floor.

The 1833 Force Bill that Jackson demanded let him use the military to enforce what?

The tariff. Jackson signed it the same day as a compromise lowering the duties; the defiant state then withdrew its ordinance against the tariff but, in a last gesture, declared the Force Bill itself void.

Who was president of the Second Bank of the United States during Jackson's 'Bank War'?

Nicholas Biddle. He hit back by calling in loans to squeeze the economy until Congress renewed the charter; the hardship he caused only seemed to prove Jackson's warnings about the Bank's power.

What did critics call the state banks that received the federal deposits Jackson pulled from the national bank in 1833?

Pet banks. Flush with federal money and free of the national bank's restraint, they lent freely and fed a land boom that collapsed in the Panic of 1837, just as Jackson left office.

In March 1834 the Senate took what unprecedented step against Jackson over the removal of the deposits?

Formally censured him. Jackson protested that the Senate had convicted him without a trial; his allies fought for three years to undo it and in 1837 had the resolution struck from the journal.

In January 1835 Jackson became the only U.S. president ever to do what?

Pay off the entire national debt. For the first and only time the government owed nothing, and Congress handed the surplus to the states; within a few years the debt was back in the millions.

What happened when Richard Lawrence tried to shoot Jackson outside the Capitol on January 30, 1835?

Both his pistols misfired. Jackson, then 67, went for the man with his cane until bystanders dragged them apart; it was the first attempt on a sitting president's life, and Lawrence was found insane.

Which lawyer-poet, then Washington's district attorney, prosecuted the man who tried to shoot Jackson in 1835?

Francis Scott Key. The author of 'The Star-Spangled Banner' was a Jackson adviser whom the president had made district attorney two years earlier; the gunman was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

To curb land speculation in 1836, Jackson ordered that western public land be paid for only in what?

Gold or silver coin. The order, the Specie Circular, was aimed at a land boom bought on paper credit; coming months before the Panic of 1837, it is often blamed for helping to set off the crash.

On his last full day as president, Jackson recognized the Republic of Texas, newly broken away from which country?

Mexico. Jackson wanted to annex Texas outright but feared a war and a fight over admitting a new slave state, so he waited until the eve of leaving office merely to recognize it.

Michigan won statehood under Jackson only after ending a border 'war' with Ohio over which city?

Toledo. Jackson lost patience with Michigan's 'Boy Governor' and removed him; Michigan then gave up the strip for statehood and the Upper Peninsula, which many there thought a poor trade.

America's first treaty with an Asian nation, signed under Jackson in 1833, was with which kingdom?

Siam, now Thailand. Jackson's envoy Edmund Roberts signed the treaty of amity and commerce in Bangkok, then sailed on and signed another with the sultan of Muscat later that year.

Jackson's threat of reprisals over old unpaid shipping claims nearly led to war in 1835 with which country?

France. Paris demanded an apology for the threat before it would pay; Jackson refused to give one but told Congress he had meant no insult, and with Britain urging peace the French paid up.

Whom did Jackson appoint chief justice in 1836, later remembered for the Dred Scott decision?

Roger B. Taney. He was the loyalist who pulled the government's deposits from the Bank after another Treasury secretary refused and was fired; the Senate then refused to confirm him in that post.

Jackson became a national hero by winning the Battle of New Orleans in which war?

The War of 1812. The battle changed nothing on paper, since peace had already been signed, but it made Jackson the most celebrated American general since Washington and set him on the road to the White House.

Which of Jackson's political allies succeeded him as president in 1837?

Martin Van Buren. Jackson had made him secretary of state, then vice president and chosen heir, but the Panic of 1837 broke within weeks of his inauguration and he was beaten after one term.

In 1844 Jackson persuaded which fellow Tennessean to seek the Democratic nomination over his own former VP?

James K. Polk. Jackson dropped his former vice president for opposing the annexation of Texas; Polk won the nomination and the election, and the dying general lived just long enough to see him inaugurated.

Jackson was buried beside his wife in which part of his plantation?

The garden. Jackson buried his wife in her garden in 1828 and had a temple-style tomb built over the grave; when he died in 1845, aged 78, he was laid beside her.

An unverified anecdote says Jackson's parrot Poll was removed from his funeral for doing what?

Swearing loudly. The only account comes from a minister who attended as a student and told the story decades later, so historians call it unproven; the parrot was real, bought for Jackson's wife in 1827.

Andrew Jackson Jr., raised by the Jacksons as their own child, was biologically whose son?

His wife's brother. The Jacksons had no children of their own, so her brother Severn and his wife let them take the newborn home to raise as their son and heir; he stayed close to his birth family.

What disaster struck Jackson's Tennessee mansion in 1834, while he was away serving as president?

A fire. It badly damaged the house, and Jackson had it rebuilt on a grander scale in the fashionable Greek Revival style, adding tall colonnades to the front and back.

Jackson and his 1832 rival Henry Clay both belonged to which fraternal order?

The Freemasons. A new party hostile to the lodge hoped to join forces with Clay against Jackson that year, but Clay refused to denounce his own brotherhood and the alliance collapsed.

Andrew Jackson formally joined which denomination in 1838, having waited so no one could call it political?

Presbyterian. His mother had hoped he would become a minister of that church, but the boy proved far too hot-tempered for the pulpit, and he joined it only at 71.

The carriage drive leading to Jackson's Nashville mansion is laid out in what unusual shape?

A guitar. Archaeologists found the cedar-lined drive had much the same outline in Jackson's day, almost a century before the Grand Ole Opry first went on the air in Nashville.

How is the horse posed in Clark Mills's celebrated Jackson statue outside the White House?

Rearing on two legs. Mills had never even seen an equestrian statue, so he taught his own horse, Olympus, to rear in the studio and modelled the pose from life.

Which state named its new capital city after Andrew Jackson in 1821, years before he became president?

Mississippi. Thomas Hinds, who had led cavalry under Jackson at New Orleans, helped choose the site on the Pearl River, and lawmakers named the new town for his old commander.

Which abolitionist did the Treasury announce in 2016 would replace Jackson on the front of a U.S. banknote?

Harriet Tubman. Jackson, a slaveholder, was not to vanish: the 2016 plan moved his portrait to the back of the note, behind a woman who had escaped slavery.

What enormous gift from admirers did Jackson open to the public at the White House in 1837?

A giant cheese wheel. Admirers made it so that Jackson would match the mammoth cheese sent to an earlier president in 1802, and in his final weeks in office he let the public in to eat it.

Which party did Jackson's opponents form in the 1830s, naming it after British foes of royal power?

The Whigs. They accused Jackson of ruling like a monarch; their new party won the White House twice in the 1840s before breaking apart over slavery.

When Jackson won the presidency in 1828, roughly how many enslaved people worked his Tennessee plantation?

About 100. An inventory in January 1829 counted 95 people enslaved on the plantation, and the number reached about 150 by his death; their forced labour was the foundation of his wealth.

Which animal became the symbol of Jackson's party after his opponents used it to insult him in 1828?

A donkey. Opponents called him a jackass, and instead of taking offence his side adopted the animal; the cartoonist Thomas Nast made it famous in the 1870s.

Jackson's Maysville Road veto blocked federal money for a turnpike from the Ohio River to Lexington in which state?

Kentucky. Because the road lay wholly inside one state, Jackson called it a purely local project, the kind he said the federal government had no power to pay for.

In 1833 Jackson became the first sitting president to travel by which means of transport?

A railroad train. He rode from Ellicott's Mills into Baltimore on the Baltimore and Ohio, a line whose first cars, three years earlier, had been pulled by horses.

Which historian's 1945 book The Age of Jackson recast his legacy through the lens of the New Deal?

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. The book won the 1946 Pulitzer Prize for History, yet critics such as Howard Zinn later pointed out that it never mentions Jackson's Indian policy.

Which French observer depicted Jackson as the spokesman of the majority and their passions?

Alexis de Tocqueville. He was no admirer: Democracy in America calls Jackson a man of violent temper and mediocre talents who owed the presidency to one victory at New Orleans.

Which Tennessee congressman and frontier folk hero broke with Jackson by voting against the Indian Removal Act?

Davy Crockett. He was the only member of Tennessee's delegation to vote no, lost his seat the next year, and later left for Texas, where he died at the Alamo.

Which country singer took a song about Jackson's victory at New Orleans to number one in 1959?

Johnny Horton topped the Billboard Hot 100 with The Battle of New Orleans, and Billboard ranked it the number-one song of 1959. It also won him a Grammy.

Which actor played Jackson twice, in The President's Lady and again in The Buccaneer?

Charlton Heston first played the general opposite Susan Hayward in 1953, then again five years later in a Cecil B. DeMille production starring Yul Brynner.

The Broadway musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson reimagined the president as which kind of musician?

An emo rock star is how the satirical show plays him, with music and lyrics by Michael Friedman and a book by its director, Alex Timbers.

Which Jackson protégé, wounded under his command in 1814, later became president of the Republic of Texas?

Sam Houston fought in Jackson's army as a young officer, entered Congress with his backing and was governor of Tennessee before he ever led Texas.

Richard Lawrence, Jackson's would-be assassin in 1835, believed he was the rightful king of which country?

England owed him a fortune, he insisted, because he was Richard III. A jury took five minutes to find him not guilty by reason of insanity.

Which famous warship bore a Jackson figurehead until a Boston sea captain sawed its head off?

USS Constitution got the carving from a Jackson loyalist running the Boston navy yard, to the city's fury. Samuel Dewey rowed over under cover of a thunderstorm, on a small wager.

Jackson was born in 1767 on the anniversary of which ruler's assassination?

Julius Caesar fell on the Ides of March, 44 BC, and Jackson was born on March 15 in the Waxhaws backcountry, 1,810 years later.

Jackson was the first of several U.S. presidents to be born in which kind of home?

A log cabin birth has been claimed for at least six more presidents, and by 1840 candidates were campaigning on the image even when it wasn't true of them.

Whose portrait did Jackson's replace on the front of a U.S. banknote in 1928?

Grover Cleveland had fronted the note since 1914. The Treasury says its own records do not reveal why Jackson was chosen instead.

Which Jon Meacham biography of Jackson's White House years won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize?

American Lion drew on letters and diaries from Jackson's inner circle that had sat in private hands for 175 years.

Jackson Square in New Orleans, renamed for the general in 1851, was previously known by which name?

Place d'Armes was the colonial military parade ground, and a site of public executions, before the city renamed it for the victor of 1815.

Which post did Jackson hold from 1798 to 1804, after resigning his U.S. Senate seat within months?

State court judge suited him better: he sat on the Tennessee Superior Court for six years, having lasted only six months as a senator.

Which rival, Tennessee's first governor, nearly fought Jackson in an 1803 duel after insulting his wife?

John Sevier had lost a tied militia election to Jackson and been accused by him of bribery. They met to duel but parted without firing a shot at each other.

The Red Stick attack on which frontier stockade in August 1813 sent Jackson's militia to war?

Fort Mims fell with about 250 soldiers and settlers killed. Tennessee's governor called out the militia the next month, while Jackson was still recovering from wounds.

Which Treasury secretary, weakened by a stroke, finished third behind Jackson in the 1824 electoral vote?

William Crawford had been struck down in 1823 after a doctor prescribed him lobelia, yet he stayed in the race and still outpolled one of his three rivals.

The aged Jackson sat in the 1840s for portraits made by which early photographic process?

Daguerreotype plates show him in old age, constantly ill and toothless, a world away from the uniformed hero of his early painted portraits.

Which trade did the teenage Jackson work at after the Revolutionary War, before he studied law?

Saddle-making occupied him for a spell after the fighting ended; he also went back to school and taught children to read and write.

The Red Sticks whom Jackson fought in 1813 had allied themselves with which Shawnee chief?

Tecumseh was fighting the United States alongside the British at the time. He was killed in Canada weeks before Jackson's first battle of the campaign.

In the cartoon King Andrew the First, a crowned Jackson holds a veto in one hand and what in the other?

A scepter completes the royal costume; the unknown artist drew him like a playing-card king after he blocked the national bank's recharter.

Which state, admitted in June 1836, was the first of two to join the Union during Jackson's presidency?

Arkansas joined on June 15, 1836; the second new state arrived the following January, five weeks before Jackson left office.

A law enacted on Jackson's last full day in office enlarged which body from seven members to nine?

The Supreme Court gained two seats under an act that also redrew the federal circuit courts. By then Jackson had already appointed most of the sitting justices.

Which Sauk leader gave his name to the 1832 war fought in Illinois during Jackson's first term?

Black Hawk led about 500 warriors and 600 others back across the river to their old Illinois homeland. The army and state militia had driven them out again within months.

Which tree, said to have been planted by Jackson in his late wife's memory, stood beside the White House until 2025?

A magnolia, by tradition, though photographs suggest it sprouted in the 1860s. It appeared on the back of a banknote from 1928 to 1998 and was removed as unsafe.

Henry Clay, whom Jackson beat easily for re-election in 1832, ran as the candidate of which party?

National Republican was the label taken by followers of the previous president; within a few years most of them had regrouped under a new name to oppose Jackson.

Which future president did Jackson send to St. Petersburg in 1832 as U.S. minister to Russia?

James Buchanan took the post although he had denounced the tsar as a despot in Congress a year earlier, and spent his time there negotiating a trade and shipping treaty.

An 1836 law that Jackson disliked but let pass distributed the Treasury's surplus revenue to whom?

The state governments shared the windfall. Jackson opposed handing out federal money but let the bill become law; it also carried the bank regulations he had asked for.

Which office did Jackson raise to cabinet rank in 1829, naming William T. Barry to fill it?

Postmaster General joined the cabinet because the mail service had grown so important. Barry was also the only member to keep his seat when all the others left in 1831.

Which Washington newspaper, edited by Francis Preston Blair, spoke for the Jackson administration through the 1830s?

The Globe took Blair as its editor in 1830 and remained the administration's voice, then the Democrats' chief organ, until he gave it up in 1845.

Which Unionist leader, Jackson's contact during the nullification crisis, gave his name to a red Christmas plant?

Joel Poinsett, an avid amateur botanist, sent the plant home while serving abroad as a diplomat; by 1836 Americans were calling it the poinsettia.

Which later president reread Jackson's nullification proclamation while drafting his own first inaugural address?

Abraham Lincoln read it at least twice after his election, once only a week after the vote, and borrowed both its arguments and its style.

The ordinance that provoked Jackson's nullification proclamation said the state would do what if coerced?

Leave the Union: any attempt to collect the disputed duties by force, the convention declared, would end the state's membership. Jackson's reply denied that any such right existed.

Jackson's nullification proclamation warned that disunion by armed force amounted to which crime?

Treason, he wrote in capital letters, before asking the nullifiers' followers whether they were really ready to incur its guilt.

Which senator's 1830 speech against nullification later supplied the state motto of North Dakota?

Daniel Webster ended his reply to a nullifier by declaring liberty and union inseparable; the speech was long regarded as the most eloquent ever delivered in Congress.

Which Founding Father, claimed by nullifiers as their authority, denied his 1798 resolutions allowed nullification?

James Madison wrote a letter, meant for publication, rejecting the nullifiers' claims; he had always held that Congress's power over commerce covered protecting industry.

Jackson-era nullifiers leaned on 1798 state resolutions first written to protest which federal legislation?

Alien and Sedition Acts drove two state legislatures to declare them unconstitutional in 1798, handing later nullifiers a precedent to cite.

Which general, nicknamed Old Fuss and Feathers, readied the army for Jackson during the nullification crisis?

Winfield Scott earned the nickname for his insistence on proper military bearing and dress. In 1832 he quietly strengthened the federal forts in the harbor.

Which secretary of state drafted the nullification proclamation that Jackson issued in December 1832?

Edward Livingston was an old friend: a New Orleans lawyer, he had served as one of the general's aides-de-camp during the 1814-15 defense of the city.

Which senator gave up his seat to become the governor who defied Jackson's nullification proclamation?

Robert Y. Hayne left the Senate in December 1832 to take the governor's chair. He called for thousands of volunteers, while the outgoing vice president took over his Senate seat.

Which Texas mission fell to Santa Anna's army in March 1836, during Jackson's last full year as president?

The Alamo fell on March 6 after a 13-day siege; Jackson recognized the breakaway republic the following year, on his last full day in office.

Which candidate, the hero of Tippecanoe, ended the Jacksonian Democrats' hold on the White House in 1840?

William H. Harrison was comfortably wealthy and well educated, but his campaign sold him as a plain frontiersman and swept every section of the country.

Which enslaved preacher led an 1831 uprising in Southampton County during Jackson's first term?

Nat Turner took an eclipse that February as a sign to prepare. Afterward Southern legislatures passed laws against teaching enslaved people to read.

Which religious movement did Joseph Smith formally organize in upstate New York in 1830, early in Jackson's term?

The Latter Day Saints date their formal start to April 6, 1830, when a small community with converts in three New York towns organized around the newly published Book of Mormon.

Jackson sent diplomat Richard Rush abroad to collect a British scientist's bequest that founded which institution?

The Smithsonian was paid for by James Smithson's estate, which passed to the United States in 1835 when his nephew died childless. Congress then haggled for eight years over how to use it.

Which abolitionist weekly did William Lloyd Garrison launch in Boston in 1831, during Jackson's first term?

The Liberator came out every week for 35 years, from New Year's Day 1831 to a final issue on December 29, 1865.

Which city hosted all three parties' national nominating conventions before the 1832 election that Jackson won?

Baltimore staged the first national convention ever held, in September 1831, and the two larger parties followed it there; the city stayed a favored venue for decades.

Before the Jackson era brought in party conventions, presidential candidates were nominated by a caucus of whom?

Members of Congress were the only national party officials who met regularly, so they picked the nominees. Jackson condemned the system after 1824, and no caucus met in 1828.

Which New York paper, launched in 1833 at one cent a copy, began the penny press of the Jackson era?

The Sun, edited by Benjamin Day, offered crime reporting and illustrations to working-class readers for a fraction of what the established papers charged.

The radical New York Jacksonians nicknamed Locofocos took their name from a brand of what?

Matches saved their meeting: when Tammany regulars shut off the gaslights to break it up, the rebels struck locofocos, lit candles and carried on.

Which future president, then a senator, voted against the Force Bill that Jackson sought in the nullification crisis?

John Tyler sympathized with the nullifiers and rejected using military force against a state, knowing the vote would cost him Jackson's supporters back home.

Which farm machine did Cyrus McCormick patent in June 1834, midway through Jackson's presidency?

The reaper had defeated his father, who spent 28 years failing to build a reliable horse-drawn one; Cyrus claimed to have finished the design in 18 months.