The War of the Banks (Directed by Andrew Jackson)

Andrew Jackson, the 7th
president of the U.S. Image
from wikipedia.org.

This lesson centered on the presidency of Andrew Jackson. Jackson has a reputation as “the people’s president,” but a look at some of his actions reveals that there might be more to the story. The essential question was: Is Andrew Jackson's long-standing reputation as "the people's president" deserved? We split into six groups, two for each topic. Each created a presentation to show the class about the three issues of the time, and used the evidence to indicate whether or not Jackson was the people’s president or not. Our group used Chatterpix in conjunction with Videolicious to describe the Bank Wars (part 1 and part 2).

The first issue, about the Trail of Tears, concerned the removal of Native Americans off of their land and their migration west. Jackson said that they would be safer out west rather than clash with Americans in the east, but he moved them by force, and many of them died even before they left, in concentration camps. The second issue, concerning the second national bank, became known as the bank wars. Jackson thought that the bank had too much control over the economy and only supported the rich, but vetoing its charter eventually caused an economic collapse known as the Panic of 1848. The final issue concerned what became known as the spoils system, in which people are encouraged to lean towards a political party by giving them positions of power. This eventually resulted in a million dollars being stolen by one of Jackson’s supporters.