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his support of Indian removal was extraordinary and his policies led to the infamous "Trail of Tears" event.

Explaining why Jackson's policy was not extraordinary will probably best help to understand why Jackson often gets a "pass". The introduction to Land Too Good for Indians: Northern Indian Removal by John P. Bowes gives a good summary of why it's problematic to singularly condemn Andrew Jackson for Indian removal, and to view his Presidency entirely through the prism of the Indian Removal Act. As Bowes writes (emphasis mine):

"...[F]ederal removal policy in the 1830 Indian Removal Act should be viewed as a continuation of, rather than a transition from, the civilization policy begun in the late eighteenth century..."

I'll only briefly recount the colonial American era in this answer, though I probably shouldn't: the first wholesale removal of Indians from their homeland dates to the end of the Pequot War in 1637 when the Pequot were forced to leave Massachusetts after only 200 of the community survived the war; the first Indian reservation dates to 1758, in New Jersey, where the Brotherton nation was forced to move to before their ultimate demise; other whole Indian communities had been exterminated before 1800, including the Wappinger, Appomattoc, and Susquehannock nations, to name a few, and war with European colonists played a key role in the demise of each--and a fairly central role in the case of the Wappingers. That community disbanded after being decimated during the American Revolution. The Cayuga were nearly wiped out during that war, too, after General George Washington ordered a surprise attack.

But since your question is about presidential legacies, I'll skip ahead to the post-Revolution era. There are few, if any, presidents who didn't play a role in the removal of the Indian nations from the eastern United States before 1900. As mentioned in the quote above, Indian removal didn't begin under Jackson, nor did mass extermination events. As Bowes points out, among other removals, Delaware and Shawnee nations had been removed west of the Mississippi from their East Coast and Great Lakes homelands before the 1800s even started. Many, many more had been removed from their homeland, but not quite so far West, including the Wyandots, the Miamis, and the Potawatomis, to name but three. The Indian Removal Act more or less made more obvious a U.S. federal policy which had been quite clear beforehand, even if it was more piecemeal before it. Starting with the Washington administration, some of the more significant events:

• The Northwest Indian War of 1785-1795. The British recognized the U.S. as a separate country with the Treaty of Paris in 1783, and ceded the Northwest Territory to the new United States. The U.S. began to encourage settlement on the new land, even granting land rights to Revolutionary War veterans as payment for their service. But this was illegal; after the French and Indian War ended in 1763, the war continued on the western frontier by the Indian confederacy led by Pontiac. Even then, the writing was on the wall for the Indian nations, seeing so many broken treaties, where the European colonists would sign a "treaty" only to provoke an attack later on when they wanted to take over the land. The Pontiac confederacy attempted to put an end to this by ceding all land east of the Appalachians. They signed a treaty with the British, which led to the Royal Proclamation of 1763, under which the British then agreed not to settle west of the Appalachians, which would be kept as "the Indian Reserve" in perpetuity. The U.S. did not honor this policy, but for the Indians' part, they had not been a party to the Treaty of Paris, so any "handover" by the British to the U.S. of the Northwest Territory was unauthorized, because it was never the British's to hand over. So, when U.S. citizens began moving into the area, it was illegal, and the Indians attacked the settlers as invaders, as was their right to do under the treaty with the British. President Washington was undeterred, took this as an "act of war", and appointed General "Mad" Anthony Wayne to lead U.S. troops into the area to take possession of the land. Over 1000 Indians were killed, and through a series of "treaties", virtually all the Indians were removed from Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, Illinois, and western Pennsylvania, forcing them all onto reservations into Wisconsin. Many of these nations had already been moved from their original East Coast homelands; despite considerable populations in all those states at the time Washington became President, there are no reservations today in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Indiana, or Illinois, removal of whom had occurred decades before the Jackson administration.

• The Georgia Compact of 1802. As Thomas Jefferson was negotiating the Louisiana Purchase with France, he began negotiations with the state of Georgia to cede their frontier land to the federal government; under their original colonial charter, Georgia controlled all British/U.S. landholdings south of Virginia and west all the way to the Mississippi River. As the U.S. had negotiated with Virginia to cede the Northwest Territory, so, too, did Jefferson want Georgia to cede their frontier land to be made into new states. But Georgia would not do so unless the federal government enabled Georgia to have local control over removal of Indians from Georgia's remaining lands. To this end, Jefferson signed a "compact" with Georgia, under which the federal government cancelled all recognition of Indian treaties and land rights within the remaining boundaries of the state of Georgia. This opened the door for Georgia to "legally" wage war against Indians that remained within the state's borders, without interference from the federal government. It's exactly this policy that led to Jackson's Indian Removal Act of 1830. Once the Georgia Compact was signed, Georgia would not cede their newfound power back to the federal government; both presidents James Monroe and John Quincy Adams advocated for a "voluntary" Indian Removal Act, but Georgia threatened filibuster of any such proposal in Congress; they would only allow a non-voluntary, compulsory law to come to a vote, to force the federal government to do the dirty work of moving the Indian nations within the boundaries of Georgia off their land. Short of that, Georgia was more than willing to do the dirty work themselves, and support their frontier squatters by killing Indians through the state and county militias. Hence, the quote at the beginning of this post comes back into play: Jackson didn't start anything, he just continued the groundwork Jefferson had laid. Georgia was going to force the Indians out of their state, whether the Indians would go willingly or not. If it meant dead Indians so be it; there was a lot of animosity toward Indians in those days. Jackson famously ignored a Supreme Court ruling that the federal government had no authority to force the Cherokee out of Georgia, but what hardly goes mentioned is that Jefferson had not authority to enter into the Georgia Compact of 1802 that had tacitly authorized the Georgia state militia to wage war that made the Indian Removal Act an issue in the first place.

• Tecumseh's War and the War of 1812. As late as the War of 1812, there were still some Indian nations living in Indiana, though by then, the U.S. frontier had come to their front door. James Madison authorized the attack on Tecumseh's confederacy under the command of Gen. William Henry Harrison, resulting in a decisive victory at Tippecanoe. But a treaty was not signed before the War of 1812 broke out, and the British allied with many Indian nations in the area for military assistance; the Indians saw this as their best hope to hold onto lands in Indiana and the Old Northwest. It didn't work, and the forced removal and decimation of the Indian nations of the area continued, as the U.S. fought the war to a stalemate with the British, with the losers essentially being the last of the Indian nations of the area being forced onto reservations in Wisconsin, or further west.

• Indian Removal Act of 1830. I'll mostly skip over Jackson's policy; needless to say, his administration was detrimental to many Indian nations, particularly in the Southeast. But it's important to understand his rationale: as he stated when issuing his orders for removal, he wouldn't force any nation to leave Georgia, but he also could not offer any protection from the federal government against Georgia forces. To remain in Georgia meant they would be subject to Georgia law. The alternative to Jackson's policy was never realistically a live-and-let-live U.S. federal policy. It was always going to mean violent decimation of the Indians in the area by local authorities. To that end, not every Indian community abided by the Act, and those that didn't were wiped out by local forces, long after Jackson left office.