Andrew Jackson: [White] People's President

This lesson about Andrew Jackson had a seemingly simple essential question: "Is Andrew Jackson's long-standing reputation as "the people's president" deserved? Why? Why not?" This question is hard to answer because Jackson's decisions as president greatly benefited some members of the United States, and decimated others. To begin our study of this topic we divided into six small groups that would each make a presentation of some sort. Each topic would be handled by two groups, but first we watched two videos to give us some background of Andrew Jackson. The first video was a of John Green crash course video about the Age of Jackson. The second one was TED-Ed video depicting a courtroom style argument for and against Andrew Jackson. Then, with our groups we began our study of different aspects of Andrew Jackson's presidency. 

My group chose to examine Indian Removal. The Indian Removal act forced tens of thousands of Natives out of their homeland. Jackson claimed that it was for the best that they leave, that the new land was a better place for them, and that nobody would forced to leave, merely suggested. All of these statements proved to be false. We created a short skit about this issue. The other groups taught us about the bank war, in which Jackson destroyed the Second National Bank, which he believed had too much power over the poor, and the Spoils System, in which political supporters were given government positions regardless of their skill. 

My group's script for our Indian Removal Skit: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15L6PofOb0uuPVxtYrng70rdIzu9gN55AccqZ-rO1dNA/edit