General Discussion

He was really the first "common man" President, as he rose from basically nothing and made himself though his force of will. The public loved him for that for years afterward. Even many figures in the Whig Party, which formed basically solely as a response to him kind of admired him (even as they feared the man). I remember reading a bio of Abraham Lincoln, and even as devout a supporter of Henry Clay as he was, he invoked Jackson positively in speeches as a younger politician. I want to say that even presidents as late as Harry Truman counted him among their heroes (okay, so does Trump, but that's only because Steve Bannon made the connection...Trump probably didn't know a thing about him prior)..

Jackson didn't back down during the Nullification Crisis, which later Lincoln partially used as justification for going after the secessionists. Jackson also hated the idea of a permanent political class. Mostly why he was beloved IMHO was his symbolism. The years immediately preceding his presidential terms saw a massive increase in voting rights expanded beyond the wealthy gentry and Old Hickory personified that to the public (even though by that time he was wealthy himself) proving that those other than aristocrats with family connections like John Q. Adams could achieve high office.

He was an early believer that the president should have term limits, and that the Electoral College abolished (partially since he lost in 1824 despite having the most popular votes).

That said, obviously he has horrific things on his ledger, even not counting the Trail of Tears (which given treatment of Natives before and after isn't even be the worst thing we did to them). The Bank Wars crippled our economy. His institution of the spoils system, which became more and more corrupt in the decades after he left. His tendency to make the political personal and vice versa presaged figures (and his extraordinarily thin skin) like Donald Trump.

James Parton, an early biographer of Jackson still has the best description ever for that man of contradictions.

"Andrew Jackson, I am given to understand, was a patriot and a traitor. He was one of the greatest generals, and wholly ignorant of the art of war. A brilliant writer, elegant, eloquent, without being able to compose a correct sentence or spell words of four syllables. The first of statesmen, he never devised, he never framed, a measure. He was the most candid of men, and was capable of the most profound dissimulation. A most law-defying law-obeying citizen. A stickler for discipline, he never hesitated to disobey his superior. A democratic autocrat. An urbane savage. An atrocious saint."

Pretty much.