Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was the
seventh President of the United States (1829–37). He was born near the end of the
colonial era, somewhere near the then-unmarked border between
North and
South Carolina, into a recently immigrated
Scots-Irish farming family of relatively modest means. During the
American Revolutionary War Jackson, whose family supported the revolutionary cause, acted as a courier. He was captured, at age 13, and mistreated by his British captors. He later became a lawyer. He was elected to the
U.S. House of Representatives, and then to the
U.S. Senate. In 1801, Jackson was appointed colonel in the Tennessee militia, which became his political as well as military base. Jackson owned hundreds of slaves who worked on the
Hermitage plantation which he acquired in 1804. He killed a man in a duel in 1806, over a matter of honor regarding his wife
Rachel. Jackson gained national fame through his role in the
War of 1812, most famously where he won a decisive victory over the main British invasion army at the
Battle of New Orleans. In response to conflict with the
Seminole in Spanish Florida, Jackson invaded the territory in 1818. This led directly to the
Adams–Onís Treaty, which formally transferred Florida from Spain to the United States.