Jackson for The People?

Is Andrew Jackson's long- standing reputations as "the people's president" deserved? That was the essential question of the day. To answer this question the class split up into 3 groups and assigned a topic to research. Each topic dealt with Andrew Jackson and the things that he did. The topics were the Indian Removal Act, the Spoils System, and the Bank War. By researching what each topic was, what Jackson did, and how it affected the people we could find out if Jackson really was "the people's president" or not. Each group created a Google slide show and presented their findings to the class. The answer to the essential question depends on which one of the three topics you are referri8ng to. For the Indian Removal Act, Andrew Jackson was "the people's president" for Americans, but was not considerate for other people, such as the Indians. Jackson wanted to move the Indians west so that there was more land for the white people and ensured the Indians that moving west was a good idea for them because other Indian tribes have died out living near white people. The Indians however did not want to leave their native land but Jackson eventually forced them out and law and many died on the march to their new land. For the topic of Spoils Andrew Jackson was certainly not "the people’s president". When he was elected president he instated the spoils system in which he removed people from their current government jobs and instead gave them to people who have helped him get elected. This was disastrous because it took 919 people out of their jobs and replaced them with unqualified people. This did not only affect the 919 people that lost their jobs but the rest of society who had to suffer as well. Jackson's main goal was to protect the people during the Bank War but in the end it only created problems. Jackson wanted to protect the average business man by not letting rich people get too ahead in their businesses, but that only created a divided between the rich and poor. My groups topic was The Indian Removal Act and our project is shown below. 

Rise of Democracy

Today in class we did something different and made a poster to display the unit and the essential questions. The essential questions were; How should we define democracy? How democratic was the United States in the early 1800s? To show the answers to these questions we used various documents and wrote summaries. In the early 1800's democracy was just beginning to become popular. Democracy is a form of government where the people can vote for the elected representative of their choice. Although, during the 1800's the "people" who could vote only included white male land owners. Below is attachments of my groups final poster.