Andrew Jackson: Good, Evil and the Presidency
Documentary & History
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A biography of America's seventh president, "Andrew Jackson: Good, Evil and the Presidency" explores whether Americans should celebrate Jackson or apologize for him. Viewers discover that Jackson fought in the Revolutionary War when he was 13 years old and that he used the skills learned in battle to kill a man over a gambling debt; that Jackson led the American army to the most surprising victory in its history in the Battle of New Orleans, but that he also launched an unauthorized invasion of Florida; that Jackson was the first great champion of the common white man and owned more than a hundred black Americans; that Jackson dramatically expanded the United States and did so by brutally wresting vast regions of the south from Native Americans; that Jackson, in one of the boldest political strokes in history, founded the Democratic Party, yet was viewed by his enemies as an American Napoleon. The film concludes with the words of Jackson's first biographer, James Parton: "Andrew Jackson was a patriot, and a traitor. He was the greatest of generals, and wholly ignorant of the art of war. He was the most candid of men, and capable of the profoundest dissimulation. He was a democratic autocrat, an urbane savage, an atrocious saint." Martin Sheen narrates.
