I am a Jackson hater: he did more to create "big government" than Lincoln ever did---because he did it earlier, and first. Indeed, one can trace the South's rabid fear of Lincoln to the fact that AJ vastly expanded the size of the Fed government and, more important, its powers, especially the executive powers. He issued more vetoes than all other previous presidents put together, and this is touted as "small government" actions, but in fact this INCREASED the power of the presidency much more than in the past, and it was the Jacksonian power that Lincoln inherited.
And, like you TonyRo, I do not support many of Abe's big government programs. But they beat the Dems' state institutionalization of slavery.