Neptune's Needle

Soldier and seventh president of the United States.

When former vice president of the United States Aaron Burr arrived in Nashville in May 1805, he elected to reside in Jackson's home for his five-day visit. He discussed with Jackson his plans for an "adventure" down the Mississippi River, presumably to assault the Spanish in Florida and the Southwest, and Jackson agreed to build boats for the expedition. When President Thomas Jefferson denounced the expedition as a conspiracy against the United States, Jackson refused to believe it and steadfastly insisted on Burr's innocence. His involvement was subsequently used as a political issue in the presidential election of 1828.

With the outbreak of war against Great Britain in 1812, Governor Blount of Tennessee dispatched Jackson with his militia against the Creek Indians, who used the war as an opportunity to attack the southern frontier.

Jackson then hurried to New Orleans to check a British invasion. Gathering a force of regular soldiers, militiamen from Louisiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky, Mississippi dragoons, Indians, pirates, and a battalion of free blacks, he strung them out behind a rampart he built on the edge of an old millrace, a ditch four feet deep and ten feet wide that ran from the eastern bank of the Mississippi River to a cypress swamp about three-quarters of a mile inland. Jackson placed 4,000 men along this line and held 1,000 more in reserve behind them. For the British to seize New Orleans as planned, they had to smash through this line. They were squeezed into a narrow plain between a broad river and a dense swamp. Some 2,000 British soldiers were killed, wounded, and captured or declared missing during the assault; Jackson suffered hardly more than a dozen casualties. It was a tremendous victory and instantly made Jackson a national celebrity.

Jackson served two terms as president (1829-1837) during a period of enormous economic, political, social, and cultural change. In foreign affairs Jackson pursued a vigorous, sometimes aggressive, policy, as might be expected. He demanded respect by other nations for the sovereignty of this democracy, insisting that they act honestly and honorably toward the United States. In Jackson's mind that translated into foreign nations paying the United States what they owed on account of spoliation claims by American citizens for seizure of ships and cargoes during the Napoleonic Wars.

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Peter Richards