Talk:Andrew Jackson

New RfC

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

This article's first paragraph currently says "Jackson's legacy is controversial. He has been praised as an advocate for working Americans and preserving the union of states, and criticized for his racist policies, particularly towards Native Americans." Should it say this? Should public opinion be on the first paragraph? DisneyGuy744 (talk) 03:07, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

• Yes. As I demonstrated in the earlier thread through citations of the respected synthesis of Antebellum history What Hath God Wrought, Andrew Jackson's racist policies toward American Indians, and the controversy these policies incurred, were a defining element of Jackson's life and legacy. Jackson's contemporaries criticized him for his anti-Indigenous policies and attitudes, and people in the present—laypeople and historians alike—do likewise. To remove this from the first paragraph would be whitewashing and disinformative. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 06:45, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

  By way of aside, while this RfC isn't as overtly partisan, I'm not sure it's well-formed either. Are we just giving our opinions? What will happen if there seems to be a consensus one way or the other? The RfC doesn't make this clear. We'll just know what we each think? Why RfC at all then instead of discussing? And shouldn't the other RfC be closed first? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 06:47, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

  I think the RfC's inquiry is clear and narrow enough to be helpful. Comments should just directly engage with the two explicit questions there and I think a workable consensus will probably emerge. As to the original RfC thread being closed, I think it would suffice for DisneyGuy to remove the tags and close the discussion with a "voluntarily withdrawn for re-drafting" style of note; alternatively, we can all just agree to treat it as procedurally closed, considering 1) no feedback was given other than to note that it is too flawed to work with, and 2) DG was specifically told to relaunch it more consistently with regard to normal RfC best practice, particularly RFCNEUTRAL--which I would say they have now adequately complied with.

  Then again, I wouldn't argue with anyone closing the original discussion on the basis that it will at least minimize potential for confusion or mistakenly placed feedback from other FRS respondents. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 08:09, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

• Yes.(Summoned by bot) Absolutely appropriate, considering the subject of this biographical entry. There is some validity to the "almost any president of this era and before would come off as racist, were their complete views and behaviour judged by the current day's standards", but the verity of the observation doesn't make it particularly relevant to the editorial determination here. First off, the man's views were observed to be controversially strong and a political liability even at the time. But even more to the point for our purposes here, this is simply a statement which is has long been supported by a great WP:weight of reliable sources. And I don't think that the first paragraph is necessarily too early for it. I can imagine other versions of the lead that place it a little later, that would also be appropriate, but I think the current wording is fine and within the range of a reasonable interpretation of WP:DUE in this instance. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 08:00, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

  @Hydrangeans we can still add he was racist, I just want to remove "His legacy is controversial for being racist" and "he was praised" because public opinion is more about people's views on the president than the president himself. And both separate additions of this article probably count as biased editing. since the additions of these two things were made by a separate editor. that's what i said in the other Rfc but i guess you weren't paying attention because you guys were getting upset over the first message for some reason. DisneyGuy744 (talk) 08:54, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

  btw Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, committed genocidal acts against the Palestinian people during his ongoing invasion and Bombing of the Gaza Strip. Saddam Hussein's regime was responsible for the mass killings of the Kurdish people during the late 1980s. Joseph Stalin's policies and purges led to the deaths of millions of people, including ethnic Ukrainians during the Holodomor. Wikipedia never has public opinion of them being racist on the first paragraphs of their articles. I bet if Andrew Jackson was brown, public opinion of him wouldn't be on the first paragraph. another good reason why public opinion on the first paragraph should be removed is inconsistencies. DisneyGuy744 (talk) 09:12, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

  To your first contention, other articles will always exist on Wikipedia, and while they can be relevant, it isn't necessarily the case that they are. I'm inclined to agree that in secondary sources, genocidal leaders generally end up strongly defined by having perpetrated those genocides. However, if you think there's a problem in a Wikipedia article other than Andrew Jackson, the place to resolve that isn't this talk page, but the talk pages for those other articles.

  Your second contention amounts to claiming that Jackson is somehow a victim of reverse racism, and that's unconvincing on its face. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 09:58, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

  I don't think there's a problem with a Wikipedia article about another genocidal leader other than Andrew Jackson, I'm simply pointing out what other articles don't have but what this one has. Your last message doesn't make any sense. I have a problem with "his legacy is controversial because of his racist policies", so why would I have a problem with other world leaders not having that on their article when i literally have a problem with what it says on his article. Also yes I believe this article is a victim of reverse racism, if not why isn't Stalin's crimes against humanity mentioned in the first paragraph of his article? He killed millions, more than Hitler. Or Saddam Hussein. Why doesn't his article say he was racist against kurdish people? Not convincing? Explain then. Something I can't wrap my head around. DisneyGuy744 (talk) 10:13, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

• Yes, this is an accurate summary of the Legacy section. For an important historical figure it is reasonable for the lead to summarize later judgements on him. The relative weight given to each aspect could be tweaked, but overall the structure is appropriate. --Aquillion (talk) 16:15, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

  yeah but notice how the legacy section on all the other presidents and other world leaders isn't in the first paragraph. Why doesn't it say on Netanyahou's article "He's controversial, he killed Palestinians"? Because everyone knows it's biased. We can still have he was racist, just not "his legacy is controversial because he's racist" and "he was praised". Also saying "he was praised" when his nickname is the Indian killer is crazy. Yeah let me just add Hitler was praised too by Neo-Nazis as a good leader. Lol you know how bad that looks? DisneyGuy744 (talk) 20:06, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

  This should be the first paragraph "Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was an American politician and lawyer who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Before his presidency, he rose to fame as a general in the U.S. Army and served in both houses of the U.S. Congress. He is known as an advocate for working Americans and preserving the union of states, and for his racist policies, particularly towards Native Americans. His political philosophy became the basis for the Democratic Party." I just wanna remove "his legacy is controversial" "he was criticized" "he was praised" DisneyGuy744 (talk) 20:19, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

• No I think this goes beyond a yes-or-no !vote, but I needed something to start with.

The present first pargraph is the result of a compromise that has turned out to be unworkable. I found what I assume to be the origins of the compromise at the beginning of Talk:Andrew Jackson/Archive 10#Possible solution, where an editor says, I propose adding ethnic cleansing to the third or fourth paragraph of the lead as well as to the body and keeping it out of the opening paragraph. Correct me if I am wrong in supposing that something like this proposal was adopted.

As a result of the compromise, neither "ethnic cleansing" nor "forced removal" was mentioned in the first paragraph, but that paragraph instead refers to "racist policies". While adopting this wording may have kept the barbarians out of the gate, readers are left out in the cold. The word "racist" does not appear anywhere else in the article, so readers can only guess what policies are referred to and why they are racist. (The word "racist" does not have just one accepted meaning, so in order to use it, we really are obliged to cite a reliable source that uses it.) Using this tired euphemism instead of "forced removal" or "ethnic cleansing" removes any useful meaning from that clause of that sentence. We are supposed to be telling the reader what is notable about Jackson. But the reader can't figure that out from this sentence nor from anything that it links to.

The previous clause, about "advocate for working Americans" has a comparable weakness, although I do not know why it was written this way. "Advocate for working Americans" is as vague a cliché as "racist policies". Where is it supported in the rest of the article? I may have an answer for this last question. I searched for "working" and I found it in the Legacy section, in the description of Schlesinger's book. Was it the intent that this sentence in the first paragraph be supported by that text in the Legacy section? Or was it actually intended to be supported by something in one of the earlier sections, such as Presidency?

The first paragraph also mentions the nullification crisis, by means of a Wikilink. This is OK. Using just a wikilink, rather than saying the word "Nullification" out loud, seems kind of obscure, but that's not my main problem right now.

Here is a concern that is, strictly speaking, not included among those described in the statement of the RfC, but is comparable in a way. The first paragraph says that Jackson "rose to fame as a general in the U.S. Army". But this doesn't tell the reader what's notable. Jackson was not notable for being a general. He was notable for winning various battles, such as the Battle of New Orleans (that's the one I read about as a kid, one or more of the other ones might be sufficiently notable too.) Why are we again leaving the reader with nothing but an empty cliché?

OK, enough about my assessment of the present version of the first paragraph. How is that related to the question posed by the RfC? The RfC proposes that we shouldn't have anything in the first paragraph that is directly supported by "public opinion". "Public opinion" is not a term I am accustomed to using in talk page discussions, but I myself have suggested that summaries of the assessment of Jackson by historians and by the public should be postponed to the end of the lead. My thinking on this has evolved, so let me instead step back for a moment.

If one of the most notable things about Jackson is forced removal/ethnic cleansing, but we aren't allowed to say those words in the first paragraph, we are utterly compromised. The only way out that I can think of is to remove everything from the first paragraph except the first sentence. I have not found any other presidential articles that do this, but I think I've seen it done elsewhere.

We are already summarizing Jackson's "legacy" and assessments of him by historians in the last paragraph of the lead. This paragraph may not be perfect, but it probably can be improved incrementally; it wouldn't make things better to move the legacy summary material from the first paragraph down to the last paragraph.

If we changed the legacy summary material in the first paragraph to just a summary, for instance by changing "He has been criticized ... for his racist policies ..." to "He advocated and organized ... forced removal ...", could we get away with it? As a non-specialist, I cannot answer this one. If we could carry out that program of editing, it would be the best thing to do, but if Jackson is still so controversial that we cannot say the plain truth about him as we do in articles about other controversial political figures, then we have come up against a limitation of the Wikipedia model of encyclopedia building, and the solution is beyond me. Bruce leverett (talk) 21:16, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

Bruce leverett, I think you are right that this archive page in 2022 is the urtext of how the current first paragraph got to where it is. That proposal was made by the editor who had gotten the article its original featured status in 2018. But the proposal was not accepted, and it eventually moved to a notice board. At some point, things got so heated that the editor who made the proposal was removed from the page, and others involved promised not to return to the topic. The current lead was then completed during the FAR, and was worked out by consensus.

The difficulty with the proposal you share is it limits description of Jackson's actions towards Native Americans the euphemistically named "Indian Removal Act". This would effectively revert the article to when he controversy started, which was not found to be adequate. It became clear in the discussions that one of the key things about Jackson is his controversy. That's why it is in the first page. And it's not just public opinion, but argued points from scholarly sources. But if you read the article and look at the relevant map, you will see that Jackson's impact is much larger than that. Jengod's description of it being "ethnic cleansing of the southeast United States". And, as the elements of Jengod's bolded post makes clear, the controversy goes deeper. The current wording keeps it simple, and readers can dig into the article for the complex details.

Ironically, The current lead is not very far from where it wound up after the discussion in the archive page you cited. The editor that made the proposal and had originally gotten the article to featured status states on his talk page that he thinks this version is the best. Wtfiv (talk) 17:48, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

When I suggested "He advocated and organized ... forced removal ...", I wasn't intentionally limiting it to the Indian Removal Act. Is there some reason why that wording would limit it? I am aware, from the previous discussions that I have seen, that he practically made a career of ethnic cleansing, or forced removal, or whatever it should be called.

Thanks for the historical description of how this article got where it is. I am, of course, only starting to get up to speed. Bruce leverett (talk) 21:40, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

• TL;DR All this verbiage is mind-numbing. I see two editors who don't like the lede as presently constituted. Everyone else who's responded doesn't seem to have a problem with it. I don't either, so long as it includes the essential information that Jackson policies were racist.

• Yes. Note: If reliable sources say he personally was racist, we should too, but I think consensus precluded that a while ago. Even Remini, Jackson's hagiographer (in three volumes), calls Jackson a racist:

  ... and because he was racist like most Americans of his age, Jackson did not really believe that either black or red men could ever receive equality with whites".

  Carlstak (talk) 22:42, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

  @Carlstak I'm just proposing to remove "his legacy is controversial" "he was praised" and "he was criticized". Even tho I do agree with @Bruce leverett. adding he was "racist" is ridiculous since many other early presidents were also and didn't have that on their page, and many world leaders who committed war crimes like Saddam Hussein aren't called racist because he's brown, still I'm not saying we should remove "racist", even though in my personal opinion it's ridiculous and biased. In case you missed it. Here's my proposal for the first paragraph Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was an American politician and lawyer who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Before his presidency, he rose to fame as a general in the U.S. Army and served in both houses of the U.S. Congress. He is known as an advocate for working Americans and preserving the union of states, and for his racist policies, particularly towards Native Americans. His political philosophy became the basis for the Democratic Party. @Bruce leverett if you have another proposal since adding "racist" is ridiculous, let me know and type it up. DisneyGuy744 (talk) 22:52, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

  @HumansRightsIsCool give me your thoughts, haven't spoken to you in a while DisneyGuy744 (talk) 22:56, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

  I swear bro you're obsessed with me. You @ me all the time, following me on talk pages all the time, and try to get me involved in your stuff. I don't know anything about Andrew Jackson. I'm not a major historian or anything. My topics are religion, World War II, The American civil war, Fascism and communism, and that's really about it. HumansRightsIsCool (talk) 23:08, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

  Haha, this is funny. Carlstak (talk) 23:20, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

  Well ok, if I was talking about George Washington, he's a slave owner and a racist just like all the Democrat presidents from over 200 years ago. If I added "he controversial because he was racist" in the first paragraph like he was a modern figure, would that make any sense. Isn't that the clearest case of bias? I mean we can add he was racist, and what he did, like how Hitler's first paragraph says he killed six million Jews, but adding "his legacy is controversial" is bias right? And he's like the only political and historical figure with public opinion of them on the first paragraph of their article DisneyGuy744 (talk) 23:14, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

  Yes, I know you're just proposing to remove "his legacy is controversial" "he was praised" and "he was criticized", DisneyGuy744. I read that much. That's why I appended the bit about saying he was racist plainly as a note, in case someone comes along who wants to remove the rather weak "racist policies". As I said, plainly calling him "racist" (which he plainly was) never found consensus, as far as I know. Carlstak (talk) 23:20, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

  George Washington supported the Federalist Party, but never officially joined it. Thomas Jefferson belonged to the Jeffersonian Republican Party, also known as the Democratic–Republican Party. James Madison was first a Federalist, and then a Democratic–Republican. James Monroe was a Democratic-Republican. You should know these things. HumansRightsIsCool says he's seventeen years old. Must say I'm left wondering how old you are. Carlstak (talk) 02:42, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

  well they were all racist. And "their legacy is controversial" isn't on their first paragraph. Also I'm 23 years old. I turned 23 in October. Also can we like, start a vote about the paragraph I proposed. We're not making progress at all. DisneyGuy744 (talk) 03:20, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

  I'm sorry but John Quincy Adams is standing right there. He's representing the human cargo of the Amistad in court and donating money so they can buy Dorcas Allen's freedom. They may have all been racist but there was absolutely a continuum of "racism" ranging from social justice warrior Quakers on one end to, uh, Andrew Jackson on the other. Benjamin F. Lundy and Jesse Torrey (among others) are writing against slavery before Jackson is elected; The Liberator is founded during Jackson's second term. The claim that "everyone was racist back then" is an old canard long used to defend the indefensible. There was not a slavery miasma. To enslave people was a choice that was made again and again by specific people at specific times and places. Those people had agency. They even claimed to be a free people at liberty to choose their fates for themselves. jengod (talk) 07:13, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

I agree the lede is imperfect. I propose the following change to the lede:

Jackson's legacy is controversial. He has been praised as an advocate for working Americans and preserving the union of states, and he has been criticized for his coercive negotiation tactics, imperialistic military actions, disregard for the rule of law, personal involvement in human trafficking, and his leadership role in the ethnic cleansing of what is now the southeastern United States. jengod (talk) 01:03, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

DisneyGuy744, now that you've opened an RfC, it should stay open for a while. If this RfC was intended in good faith, I'd suggest letting run at least a week or two to see if others will weigh in. If it becomes a dead letter, an uninvolved editor may close it. If attitudes toward the topic is genuinely split, the RfC can go on for about a month. The proposing editor should only close it by withdrawing it, seeing that the community's response is obvious. Wtfiv (talk) 06:06, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

Tomorrow, January 28th, We're going to do a vote, I'm going to propose the paragraph I did, or maybe add a few new ones people have never seen before, and we'll see what people think DisneyGuy744 (talk) 06:11, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

We're going to do a vote. This RFC is already doing a yes/no survey. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:01, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae yes but some people only read the first message and get confused on what I'm fully proposing. That's why I tried to add lots of detail last RfC to the first message but everyone got upset over one message and wanted to restart the whole thing lmao. And also I'm proposing new paragraphs I haven't proposed yet tomorrow DisneyGuy744 (talk) 15:44, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

So it sounds like RfC was not posted in good faith to get the consensus of the community, but an attempt to post changes you personally want: Even though the RfC just started, it looks like you are proposing to discard it because it is not headed in the desired direction? Despite the lack of consensus for the change you propose, you now want to propose a new paragraph anyway and add more material? If this RfC is intended to get the temperature of people's attitude toward changing the article as you propose, I recommend you let the RfC run its course, respecting the editors who took their time to post and allowing others to weigh in. In the meantime, its reasonable to continue the conversation by commenting on other's vote. Otherwise, this risks looking like WP:GAME. Wtfiv (talk) 16:46, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

I changed my mind I'm extremely busy today. I'll do it tomorrow night, January 29th. Sorry DisneyGuy744 (talk) 00:34, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

@Jengod suggests the first paragraph should be Jackson's legacy is controversial. He has been praised as an advocate for working Americans and preserving the union of states, and he has been criticized for his coercive negotiation tactics, imperialistic military actions, disregard for the rule of law, personal involvement in human trafficking, and his leadership role in the ethnic cleansing of what is now the southeastern United States. I was going to suggest some new first paragraph ideas, but everyone vote on this first DisneyGuy744 (talk) 16:47, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

I'm not very eager to make nesting dolls of RfCs. I mean, personally, I think it's an accurate summation of Jackson as understood by current historical scholarship (though I would rephrase "human trafficking" as "chattel slavery" because the former implies to readers contemporaneous forms of unfree labor that don't necessarily resemble the system of Antebellum chattel slavery), but I think if you're already shifting the purpose of this thread that maybe it'd help if you poke around Wikipedia and watch a few different RfCs play out to get a better sense for how they usually go. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 16:52, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

I'm not shifting the purpose of this thread. My intentional goal from the start was to remove "his legacy is controversial for being racist" and "he was praised". Someone suggested a different paragraph so I'm letting people vote on it. Don't blame me, I didn't suggest that paragraph. Instead of everyone criticizing this RfC every 2 seconds and being negative, can we actually look to make progress, otherwise this would be a huge waste of time. I'm about to suggest a few paragraphs of my own in a few hours that sticks to the original reason of why this RfC exists, but right now everyone vote. If you vote yes for the paragraph Jengod suggested, and wanna remove "human trafficking", let all of us know like Hydrangeans did. DisneyGuy744 (talk) 17:39, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

ok this is option A: Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was an American politician and lawyer who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Before his presidency, he rose to fame as a general in the U.S. Army and served in both houses of the U.S. Congress. He was known as an advocate for working Americans and preserving the union of states, but also for his racist policies, particularly towards Native Americans. His political philosophy became the basis for the Democratic Party. Option B: Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was an American politician and lawyer who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Option C: Jackson's legacy is controversial. He has been praised as an advocate for working Americans and preserving the union of states, and he has been criticized for his coercive negotiation tactics, imperialistic military actions, disregard for the rule of law, personal involvement in cattel slavery, and his leadership role in the ethnic cleansing of what is now the southeastern United States. Say A, B, or C. If you want something else, type up your own paragraph, if you want to keep the article the same, just say "same" or something like that. DisneyGuy744 (talk) 18:01, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

I vote for C jengod (talk) 23:52, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

First let me clarify: I assume that Option C includes the same first sentence as Options A and B. MOS:FIRSTBIO says we have to start with a sentence that gives his name, birth and death dates, notable item, context, etc. So when you left that out of Option C, I assume it was not intentional.

In my comments above, I mentioned various incremental improvements that I would recommend, such as replacing "racist policies" with wording that more specifically describes forced removal. However, I don't want to hijack this RfC, so I will make a choice between A, B, C, and "same", as to which I would prefer to work from as a starting point.

I prefer A. I like that it does not say "he has been praised for ..." or "he has been criticized for ...". In the last paragraph of the lead, we are already doing some summarizing of historians' assessments of Jackson's legacy. That's where that summarizing is most effective, and that's where it belongs.

Reading through the narrative of how the article got to where it is, posted above by Wtfiv, I was deeply impressed by how difficult this has been. It's devastating that the guy who brought this article to FA, as well as several other highly experienced and responsible editors, are staying away from this article, in the wake of spending hundreds of hours on discussing the issue of neutrality. I do not have high hopes for a resolution of even one of the questions of how best to deal with Jackson's military and political career. Bruce leverett (talk) 03:23, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Bruce leverett, "[T]he guy who brought this article to FA" was banned from the article for attacking other editors. He has written on talk pages about his belief that "the globalists" have been conspiring to rule the world. Carlstak (talk) 12:03, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

ok one vote for A and one for C. Anyone else? DisneyGuy744 (talk) 03:55, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Calm down, dude. RfC's can take a long time. It could be weeks before you hear from the person you really needed to hear from, and it might be someone you didn't even think of. Bruce leverett (talk) 04:35, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

I can't see how option A addresses in any real sense the purported issue that the section is about his perception rather than the things he actually did, it just removes some of the words that highlight that that's what's being described. Option B is a non-starter imo, it would obviously be preferable to keep the section as is than remove it entirely. So of the three options C is what I'd favour, but I also think it inserts more that doesn't need to be there. In my view replace the term 'working Americans' with 'common man' (the term actually used in the legacy section and its source texts), and use the suggestions of jengod in place of the ambiguous "racist policies" section and the introduction is significantly improved. You can still ditch the terms 'praised'/'criticised' though I would still favour retaining the line about his legacy being controversial, since it kind of is the most significant thing about him today. In other words I'd suggest something like the following:

Jackson's legacy is controversial. He has become known as a defender of the common man and fought to preserve the union of states, while being personally involved in chattel slavery and having a leadership role in the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans from what is now the southeastern United States.

Chaste Krassley (talk) 05:35, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Sorry I should say as well I do think the line about his political philosophy being the foundation of the democratic party should be retained. Chaste Krassley (talk) 05:37, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

That does work pretty well. Though I might go with "He became known as", since I think "has become" implies it was a postmortem development, but he had that reputation in life as well (at least, he had that reputation among Jacksonian partisans of the day; Whigs thought otherwise, hence "King Andrew"). Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:06, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Yes that's a good point, I agree. Chaste Krassley (talk) 09:14, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

I'm enjoying the more in-depth sharing of what makes Jackson so controversial. As a reminder, the RfC is about seeing if there is a consensus to change the article lead's first paragraph, particularly mention of how he is viewed. Interestingly, although people are discussing the wording, all but one of the editors responding to the RfC seem to favor keeping mention of his controversial legacy in the first paragraph. Wtfiv (talk) 16:53, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Minority report

Since the status quo/detente is being destabilized anyway, here are my criticisms of this biography of Jackson, which I think are broadly supported by current post-Remini academic scholarship, as well as a long line of Jackson haters going back to the 18th century. My basic concern is that this article is currently so paranoid about "neutrality" that it fails to actually explain Jackson. I fear we have fallen into a "false balance" trap that ultimately becomes its own form of misinformation akin to "some people say the earth is flat, while others believe it is more spherical, or perhaps a bit ovoid."

• Sanewashing - AJ was not a normal person or a normal president. He was a gangster. He was the neighborhood bully. He was *fucking crazy*. We simply cannot write about him using the same template that would be applied to James Monroe or Benjamin Harrison or Gerald Ford.
• Racism - Yes he was racist. So were many. But the difference is that Andrew Jackson is arguably the Founding Father of American White Supremacy, if not the godfather of the Confederacy (they put him on their money in case there was any doubt), and there is even an extremist argument to be made that his actions and his presidency resulted in the Civil War and made the successive 100 years of violence-enforced oppression an inevitability. To be clear, I don't think his actions in the nullification crisis give him any credibility in the issues of secession, disunion, or national identity. He was a treasonous racist who *loved* slavery and if the choices were slavery in Tennessee or abolition anywhere else there is no question he would have chosen Slavery every time. The Jacksonians believed and argued loudly that "white men surrendered their sovereignty in proportion to its exercise by people of color" - a man with those beliefs would die a thousand times before he would accept anything resembling liberty and justice for all.
• Anti-Americanism: What? Yes. He was treason-curious from the get-go. *Of course* he and his little henchmen were in cahoots with Burr and they would have gotten away with it too if it hadn't been for that meddling Jefferson! The "Blount conspiracy" and the "Burr conspiracy" and the "West Florida crisis" and the Seminole Wars and the Republic of Texas are all part of a long series of freelance wars run by white southerners (often including Jackson himself, or otherwise people very closely associated with Jackson) who wanted more land, more slaves, and fewer Indians, so they could be richer and more powerful, without the interference of the feds, the British, the Spanish, the Mexicans, or those infernal abolitionists. "We want to rape and beat the shit out of people in peace. It's called liberty!!" I really don't think he should ever get the slightest credit for his allegiance to the United States when his allegiance was to the enrichment of himself and his clansmen (klansmen?) and that is it.
• Propagandistic claptrap: Our inclusion of maudlin deathbed utterances or his sense that political persecution killed Rachel or that he had any serious devotion to any religion other than the Almighty Dollar or that the American Revolution was a formative experience that shaped his politics or personality is all but printing the pamphlets of his campaign committee and we should be ashamed of ourselves. He was a chaotic little 14yo and he cared about horses and cockfighting and establishing dominance in the local hierarchy of other teenagers, not the principles nor the military strategy of the revolution. Rachel died of a heart attack. Why are we quoting man's dying declaration about "maybe black people go to heaven too" instead of telling people that by his own handwritten account he personally marched a dozen chained black men and boys naked through cypress swamps in January 1812, or that he bought and sold 12-year-old black children the way the way that you would buy gum, or that the burned bodies of the dead Muscogee at the battle of Tallusahatchee were being eaten by dogs while Jackson's starving militiamen scavenged for potatoes that had been cooked in the inferno along with the bodies?
• Historical context, lack of: This article fails to characterize or contextualize his relationships with Calhoun, Clay, Adams, Crawford, Marshall, Taney, Gaines, Benton, Scott, Claiborne, etc etc. We fail to teach the reader that his administration was a nest of unctuous cronies and only a scanting handful of his cabinet members were competent. We fail to examine what *really* made him such an electoral smash hit. What was it about the American people of that era that made them so horny for Jackson? I think we all know it wasn't "tariffs."

Jackson is an epochal, impossibly complex figure who did a dozen lives worth of historically important stuff. It's hard to summarize it briefly, it needs dozens of feature-quality articles to come close to explaining him and his era, but in the interim between here and there, showcasing propagandistic Currier & Ives lithographs, including pablum like "He also had a strong sense of loyalty. He considered threats to his friends as threats to himself, but he demanded unquestioning loyalty in return." and transcribing disingenuous bullshit like "Jackson stated that he had postponed officially entering the church until after his retirement to avoid accusations that he had done so for political reasons" is not it. jengod (talk) 05:20, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Suggestions for specific actions:

• Remove Revolutionary War subhed and just let that text be part of one "early life" section
• Replace Currier & Ives with this map of the Waxhaws which, per Remini, was created with input from Jackson in his lifetime
• Move painting of Rachel at age 56 from section about her marriage in her 20s down to either "personal life" or "Election of 1828 and death of Rachel Jackson" section
• Put this historical marker or this less-neutral image from the Coffin Handbills in the duel section.
• Remove "romantic image" of Jackson from Creek War and replace with this image of Weatherford's surrender, which was created in Jackson's lifetime with his input and remarkably actually includes an African-American slave in the bottom left corner, or any map depicting the military engagements
• Supplement Seminole War section with either this image of the arrest of Hillis Hadjo and Homathlemico or the self portrait of Hadjo
• Remove quotes about they killed Rachel, deathbed heaven stuff, anything more than a single sentence about him joining the Presbyterian church, and cut "During Jackson's presidency, slavery remained a minor political issue," which tells the reader outright that we are determined the miss the forest for the trees.

jengod (talk) 06:56, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

I appreciate these concrete suggestions about images; editing the whole prose of the article is a big project, but at least doing more to illustrate more of Jackson's life and world, including more of the people he encountered, is a simple and I would hope uncontroversial change.

• let that text be part of one "early life" section: "Revolutionary War" as a subsection of "Early life" would probably work, as it was also part of his early life
• map of the Waxhaws: I'm inclined to also prefer the map; we can even include in the caption that Jackson helped make it!
• Move painting of Rachel: Sensible.
• duel section: Ooh, I quite like that handbill!
• Jackson from Creek War: I wonder about using this image instead. One of them would be useful somewhere in that section.
• Supplement Seminole War section: I'm less familiar with Jackson as a general and the Seminole Wars. I presume Hadjo was involved in that? Would you be able to add a cited sentence about that so it's crystal clear to readers and editors why the image is there when we add it (since, I think once a sentence is there, adding the image would be quite reasonable).
• cut "During Jackson's presidency, slavery remained a minor political issue,": Jackson, and even his old foe Henry Clay, may have longed for it to be a minor issue, but as books like The Republic of Violence: The Tormented Rise of Abolition in Andrew Jackson's America go to show, quite right that it wasn't really minor at all.

Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 07:21, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

I will start with where I agree:

• this article is currently so paranoid about "neutrality" that it fails to actually explain Jackson. I fear we have fallen into a "false balance" trap that ultimately becomes its own form of misinformation akin: Yes; there's a strong overcorrection toward blandly narrating Jackson that underplays the severity of his behavior.
• treason-curious: Though born in the British Carolinas and a participant in the American Revolution, thirty years before Jackson was elected president he swore allegiance to the Spanish crown (Susan Gaunt Stearns, Empire of Commerce: The Closing of the Mississippi and the Opening of Atlantic Trade (University of Virginia Press, 2024). He was a grown man but was flexible about his political citizenship.
• inclusion of maudlin deathbed utterances: The deathbed utterance is unnecessarily flowery, and it's contextless presentation suggests a notion of genuine affection rather than the possessive racist paternalism it was. I doubt the men and women Jackson enslaved appreciated the sentiment, even if they dared not express their discontent to the people who were legally allowed to beat them.
• Historical context, lack of: The article mentions that Jackson's "rotation in office" ultimately functioned as political patronage and became known as the spoils system but gives the matter curiously little attention on the page. Why not let the reader know who some of those loyal Democrats were and how they managed (or didn't manage) their new postings?

That said, I think overcorrecting in the other direction isn't necessary.

• Andrew Jackson is arguably the Founding Father of American White Supremacy: You give Jackson too much credit and his predecessors too little. It's true he was committed to slavocracy and was so virulent in his racist animus that his own contemporaries considered him extreme, and that this doesn't come through in the article as much as it could and probably ought, but he didn't originate anti-Blackness in the country. States had been disfrachsing Black freemen for years before his presidency. Cold calculus about slavery like Jefferson's, while not as colorful as Jackson's bombast, was key to the formation of white supremacy in the States.
• I don't think his actions in the nullification crisis give him any credibility in the issues of secession, disunion, or national identity I don't think Jackson's words on the matter or his behavior bear that out. It can't be reduced to mere politics; he expressed opprobrium for the nullifiers in private letters too. Antislavery northerners regarded Jackson's response to the nullifiers positively, and I think it fair to defer to them as contemporaries (and often critics!) in interpreting him: Their cotton bags, may turn to rags, / If Eastern men don't buy them, / For all their gold, they may be sold, / Or their slaves may yet destroy them. [...] Sing Yankee doodle doodle doo, / Yankee doodle dandy, / For Jackson he is wide awake, / He says the Union is so handy. Or, more dryly, as James M. McPherson wrote, In the nullification crisis of 1832, Andrew Jackson had vowed to use force to collect duties on South Carolina and to hang the nullification leaders. "Oh, for one hour of Jackson!" exclaimed many Yankee Republicans who developed a sudden retrospective affection for this Tennessee Democrat (Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, 249). I'm no Jackson girl, but even the stopped clock is right once a day, and apparently this was when he was. Now, Jackson himself was still as pro-slavery as ever, obviously. But to say he would have ever favored disunion is saying more than the evidence does.
• the Seminole Wars and the Republic of Texas: While Jackson's declaration of loyalty to the King of Spain unsettles any claim of staunch, lifelong patriotism, you mischaracterize his raids on the Seminole and the subsequent establishment of the Republic of Texas by his peers. In these matters, U. S. Americans violated the sovereignty of other nations with the expectation that the United States would eventually bail them out and annex the territory. Texans considered themselves forerunners to American expansion; they weren't trying to escape America. Jackson's raids on the Seminole should be understood in that light. Of course, the America that Jackson in Florida and that Houston in Texas believed in was a white supremacist, slavocratic America—which was, indeed, exactly why they were so confident the United States would go for annexation and expand the available territory for slavery.
• transcribing disingenuous: I don't think scholarship considers Jackson's Christianity disingenuous. See, for instance, Jonathan A. Atkins, Andrew Jackson: Old Hickory in Christian America, Spiritual Lives (Oxford University Press, 2025). His belief that enslaving people was religiously compatible is morally abhorrent, certainly, but historians conclude he was, in his cantankerous, mercurial way, devout.

Even with these disagreements in mind, I do think it's the case that the article tries too hard to be 'neutral' and ends up creating a false balance that isn't actually neutral. This is, in a sense, an outdated article, one premised on the writings and sentiments of an earlier generation. The reliable sources guideline reminds us that some scholarly material may be outdated.

The writings that form the citational core of the current article have their strengths but also serious shortcomings, as I think Daniel Walker Howe's very piercing critical review of the older biographies goes to show. In that review, I think it's interesting—and perhaps telling—that when Howe asked the editors of The Papers of Andrew Jackson which Jackson biography they liked best, none picked the twentieth- or early-twenty-first-century ones that form this article's backbone: All picked the same one: Life of Andrew Jackson by James Parton, published in three volumes between 1859 and 1861, a book that was critical of Jackson’s presidency, especially the "spoils system", rather than glowing the way Remini, Wilentz, and Meacham tend to be about Jackson.

It's been more than a decade since Howe's critical review of the biographies, and since then scholarship that paints a fuller picture of Jackson has been published. I suggest the following as good places to start. (Howe is already cited in the article, but very lightly and infrequently compared to the older biographies).

• Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848, Oxford History of the United States (Oxford University Press, 2007) (of course)
• J. M. Opal, Avenging the People: Andrew Jackson, the Rule of Law, and the American Nation (Oxford University Press, 2017) (this one is especially illuminating about his character and personality)
• Joshua A. Lynn, Preserving the White Man's Republic: Jacksonian Democracy, Race, and the Transformation of American Conservatism, A Nation Divided: Studies in the Civil War Era (University of Virginia Press, 2019)
• J. D. Dickey, The Republic of Violence: The Tormented Rise of Abolition in Andrew Jackson's America (Pegasus Books, 2022)
• Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (Beacon Press, 2023) (see chapter six, "The Last of the Mohicans and Andrew Jackson's White Republic")

Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 07:07, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

In addition to discussing the first paragraph of the lead, there have been a slew of changes to the rest of the article. Most of them are minor additions with updated information or qualifying points made as per the conversations above. I did revert many, but not all of the image changes. I think that extreme of a change requires more discussion from the community. At this point, I removed the poem and the mansion, in part trying to keep to one image per section and to reduce image crowding. I also think some of the images would need more discussion to be changed. For example, I put the picture of Rachel back near the front. Yes, she is older, but it is next to her first mention. Other pictures created over time. I also replaced the Tennessee map because it clearly outlines the political state of Tennessee at the time Jackson moved to Nashville. The state was two enclaves surrounded by native American territory.

Because the article is currently a featured article, and I was got myself involved in the process of trying to steer the consensus, my role is more towards trying to keep ensure that changes are small and don't change the consensus built during the FAR process (and more importantly, the view of currently watching editors). But, if a major overhaul is wanted, I'd like to suggest the following. Please put in a request for a feature article review. If there is an agreement to delist the article, then it would be easier for those who want to rework the article to do so as they build it in the direction they think is best. Wtfiv (talk) 18:14, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

I think that extreme of a change requires more discussion from the community: I'm not sure I follow how the mere addition of an image in a quite long section constitutes an "extreme change". Can you be more specific about the issues with the reverted revisions beyond preservation of the status quo?

Please put in a request for a feature article review. If there is an agreement to delist the article, then it would be easier for those who want to rework the article to do so as they build it in the direction they think is best.: This seems to have the process backwards. The first goal of revising or reviewing a Feature Article isn't to delist. The first goal is to improve articles rather than to demote them, and an ideal review would address the issues raised through edits to the article and close with no change in status. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:22, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

It's less about the small changes, but addressing them in the context of the above conversation. Jengod states the article needs revision based on seven bullet points. And, it sounds like you may not agree with all the points, but are in general agreement: Even with these disagreements in mind, I do think it's the case that the article tries too hard to be 'neutral' and ends up creating a false balance that isn't actually neutral. This is, in a sense, an outdated article, one premised on the writings and sentiments of an earlier generation. If the article is outdated, overhauling it sounds like a reasonable solution if that is warranted. Wtfiv (talk) 20:46, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Looks like last year's FAR was about neutrality, so if you are overhauling to get a better kind of neutrality, most of the same people will be interested. But exactly when, and how, to invite them to the party is the question. Does WP:Peer review make sense? I am not too familiar with what WP mechanisms might be in place for this. If you don't use any mechanism at all, will you get the eyes on it that you are hoping for? Bruce leverett (talk) 21:24, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Neutrality triggered the FAR in 2022, but once it started the editors who oversaw approving and reviewing the FAR had other concerns. I think the amount of time it took to get through the FAR gives a sense of the issues. It took about 20 months (starting in August 2022 and being finalized in April 2024). Much of the nuts and bolts commentary went into the talk pages instead of the FAR page while issues of neutrality were being addressed on the notice board. But given the topic, can one be surprised? I think the lead first paragraph says it best: Jackson is controversial. Wtfiv (talk) 05:26, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

And as a further evidence of his near synonymity with controversy: Was it any coincidence that Jackson was the featured article on the day of this year's presidential inauguration? (I only found out about it two days after the fact...The admins usually send out a notice. I wonder who got it?) Wtfiv (talk) 06:03, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

Yes. I am against any wording or the removal of wording which takes us further way from the gains we made in the last RFC/FA Review. --ARoseWolf 19:32, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

Infobox

I wonder if at some point we should consider removing Lyncoya from the infobox as one of Jackson's children.

In addition to Meredith's statement that Junior was the only child that Andrew and Rachel considered their own (unusable bc master's thesis), I realized that Junior is the only child listed in the family trees included in Remini and The Papers, Vol. I. There's also this passage from an 1878 news feature that is powerful if not authoritative: "The father of Mr. Lawrence was the adopted son of Gen. Jackson, and the only one, to whom he gave his name and fortune...In after years Gen. Jackson had other nephews, to whom he gave a hearty welcome into his home, but to none other did he ever give his name or make heir to his fortune. One of these nephews was the distinguished Andrew Jackson Donelson, who ran for Vice President on the Fillmore ticket, and who was always associated with the General, but who was not the bona fide adopted son, as many suppose." This passage made me question if any of the other descendants of Jackson ever claimed Lyncoya and I can't say that I readily recall such an instance, but I also haven't searched systematically.

More on Lyncoya's role in the Jackson family and current scholarship on cross-cultural adoption in his time can be found at Lyncoya Jackson#Historiography and Indigenous members of the Andrew Jackson household jengod (talk) 17:40, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

I see no problem with removing it from the infobox. Lyncoya is mentioned in the main text of the article and the link to the article does a good job of fleshing out the details of the relationship. Wtfiv (talk) 18:54, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

Jackson and racism suggested edit

His views weren’t raciest, they were genocidal. Just because he was an important figure doesn’t give the right to erase native history. 98.212.145.195 (talk) 15:46, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

Don't just come here making statements, bring your evidence in citations to independent reliable sources. Making a statement emphatically without backing it up helps no one. --ARoseWolf 19:35, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

Another image source

I have uploaded some of the key images from an 1834 anti-Jackson book.

Commons:Category:Images from Seba Smith's 1834 parodic biography of Andrew Jackson

Some are neutral/anodyne, some are remarkably elegant woodcut caricatures, some are incomprehensible without referring to the surrounding text and even then are a bit obscure, but just in case you are digging deeper into the Bank War and need contemporary illustrations, I wanted to let you know they're there. jengod (talk) 21:07, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

I think Seba's image of the duel is better than the one we have (and yet, it seems clear it is probably derived from it, as the Handbill's one is earlier. Thoughts? Wtfiv (talk) 00:25, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

I think the image from Seba Smith's book is a very straightforward "this is a duel" image LOL although it does convey nicely that Dickinson *apparently* thought the duel was done and so did not anticipate Jackson shooting a second time and was not defending himself etc etc. I'm personally good with using the 1834 Seba Smith on this page. The Coffin Handbills duel image is currently on the Dickinson article, FWIW. jengod (talk) 00:40, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

Oh man, I just love these. Even if well executed, the woodcuts are naïve, which makes them all the better in my estimation. I particularly like number 18, wherein Jackson is dressed like a fop in uniform, gold epaulets and all, and holding his pistol ever so daintily while his companions savagely attack the Bentons with their rapier-like daggers. Oh lord—and the pièce de résistance, the poor woman in the doorway with both her arms raised like a football referee's "touchdown!" signal. It's beautiful. And number 16, where Jackson sits on his Satanic Majesty's throne and dismisses his cabinet, raising his arms in the same gesture and legs impossibly splayed while the cowards flee in terror. This is Trump in a couple of weeks or so.;-) Carlstak (talk) 01:52, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

I agree number 16 is graphically superior!

I don't even understand what number 11 exactly is about but it's another good visual of Jackson (with his ubiquitous cane for hitting people and things) and his cabinet working on affairs of state, such as they were.

here's the HathiTrust catalog page for this book just in case anyone needs.

jengod (talk) 04:38, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

I don't understand it either, but now I'm inspired to buy a cane even though I don't need one, just to make a fashion statement and to shake it vehemently for emphasis when I deliver my outraged rants. Carlstak (talk) 16:28, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

Illustration from Chapter XXXIV of Seba Smith's 1834 parodic biography of Andrew Jackson

Based on the chapter, I'd say the man on the left is Nicolas Biddle, who mockingly portrayed as the "Filadelfy [Philadelphia] Quaker" (In a pose reminiscent of William Penn but adding a sword) because of his family roots, who is about to get clobbered by Jackson and his kitchen cabinet. It may also allude to the Duane affair which is mentioned, where Duane, who was also from Philadelphia, resigned from the cabinet because he was against the destruction of the bank. The image would seem great for the Bank War article, but image seems more like a mashup summarizing the entire chapter it is embedded in, so captioning it would be challenging. Wtfiv (talk) 17:28, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

Thinking more about it, the facing page suggests it may be Major Downing reading his pro-bank proclamation to the cabinet in the guise of the above-mentioned characters. (I think Downing is usually portrayed thinner). Great caricature, but difficult to summarize! Wtfiv (talk) 23:55, 27 February 2025 (UTC)