Andrew Jackson was born in 1767 in the Waxhaws on the border of North and South Carolina, weeks after his father died. During the Revolution his brother Hugh died after a battle, and at 14 Jackson was captured with his brother Robert. When he refused to shine a British officer’s boots, the officer slashed him across the head and hand. Robert died of smallpox after their release, and their mother Elizabeth died of cholera while nursing American prisoners in Charleston. Jackson read law, was admitted to the bar in 1787, moved to Nashville and built the Hermitage, where he held roughly 300 enslaved people over his lifetime.

His fame came from war: the Creek War campaign ending at Horseshoe Bend, the Treaty of Fort Jackson that took 23 million acres from the whole Creek Nation, and victory at New Orleans in 1815. After losing the 1824 election in the House, which he called the corrupt bargain, he won in 1828, days before his wife Rachel died. As president he signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which led to the Trail of Tears, threatened force during the Nullification Crisis, and dismantled the Second Bank of the United States. The episode closes on how his standing in historical rankings has fallen in the 21st century.

• In the 1806 duel with Charles Dickinson, Jackson let Dickinson fire first, took a bullet near his heart, then killed him and carried the bullet for life.
• A runaway advertisement he placed offered an extra ten dollars for every hundred lashes, up to 300.
• He hosted Aaron Burr at the Hermitage and readied boats and militia before backing away when Jefferson ordered Burr’s arrest.
• After the Creek War he adopted an orphaned Native boy named Lyncoya and raised him at the Hermitage.
• He fired two Treasury secretaries before moving federal deposits into state pet banks, and became the only president to pay off the national debt.