Jacksonian Democracy

In US history, a period in which belief in equal political, economic, social, and civil rights for all people became more popular, characterized by the presidencies of Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren 1829-1841. The new way of thinking encouraged Americans in general to play a greater role in the democratic process, and this grassroots movement opened the political process open to far more people.

Jackson symbolized the new attitudes of equality in a number of ways; he was the first president who was not a Virginian or an Adams, and he was a pioneer, an American Indian fighter, and a war hero.