Customer Reviews

Andrew Jackson and His Indian Wars

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Although Americans are prone to refer to Jackson as "Old Hickory" or, in his day, as "the Hero", the Indian tribes of his day gave him the nickname of "Sharp Knife". This nickname was based upon Jackson's unrelenting warfare against the Creek Indians, particularly at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814. Professor Remini shows in his careful and thorough study of Jackson and the Indians that the sobriquet was indeed well deserved. The book is a thorough and careful exposition of the cruelties practiced on the Indians during the Jacksonian Era culminating in their removal from their homes and their relocation west of the Mississippi River during and subsequent to Jackson's Presidency.

Remini is a master of his materials. He has written a National Book Award winning biography of Jackson together with many other works on the Jacksonian Era of our history.

After a brief introductory chapter summarizing Jackson's early years, Remini plunges into the story of Jackson's Indian wars. Prior to his Presidency, Jackson conquered the Creeks, Cherokees, Chickasaws and Seminoles in fierce no-quarter fighting. Jackson was resolute in his wish to remove the Indians from the Southeastern United States.

In addition to his leadership on the battlefield, Jackson was a participant in many treaties with the Indians in which the ceded large portions of their ancestral domain in return for small tracts of land and small sums of money. Here too, Jackson was a domineering, seemingly irresistible figure intent on opening the Southeast to the onrush of white settlement, with little regard for the effect of his actions on the Indians.

As a national hero based upon his victory at the Battle of New Orleans and his conquests of the tribes, Jackson narrowly missed the Presidency in 1824 but was elected in 1828 and 1832. He was able to implement the policy of Indian removal he had conceived in his years as a general and a treaty negotiator. He secured legislation from Congress authorizing the removal of the "Five Civilized Tribes" -- the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Creeks, Choctaws, and Seminoles -- and implemented this policy at great cost and suffering to the Tribes. It is a story all too little known today.

Jackson was a man of determination, strength, and will. He was also, in Remini's account, an American patriot. Shocking as was his treatment of the Indians, Jackson was moved by considerations of American Nationalism. In particular, he wished to protect the coastal areas of the United States from intrigue and invasion by England and France. The European powers tended to use the Indians as a means to threaten the United States.

Although he is properly critical of Jackson's cruelty, arrogance, and deceit towards the tribes, and of the horrors they underwent during the removal, Remini argues that there was no good alternative to the removal policy. If the tribes had not been removed they would have been overwhelmed by onrushing white settlement and lost entirely their tribal identity, as was the case with many northeastern tribes. Paradoxically, Jackson proved right in that the removal policy saved the southeast tribes from extinction. Of course, none of this excuses the cruelty with which the process was implemented; and Remini is far from trying to excuse it.

I came to Remini's book after reading an earlier study of Jackson and the Indians: Michael Paul Rogin's book " Fathers and Children: Andrew Jackson and the Subjugation of the American Indian." I wasn't entirely happy with the Rogin because of its hypercritical tone and because of its psychologizing. Remini's book constitutes a more thorough,thoughtful, and balanced consideration of this sad period in our history. This is a good book for those who wish to try to understand Indian policy and its role in our country's development.

This is a magnificent look at Andrew Jackson's war with the Native Americans. So many biographers bury their subject and forget that most readers what to know who their subject *was*, not merely what they *did.* Remini doesn't fall into this trap. He gives the reader a well-grounded and detailed look at Andrew Jackson as a man: his foibles, passions and prejudices, as well as his extreme ambition and vacillating brilliance.

Remini strikes a beautiful balance when examining Jackson's private life and military/political life. His examination of the Trail of Tears is absolutely riveting, and he weaves Jackson in and out of the narrative with rare poise and skill. The reader can actually picture Jackson in the midst of this conflict, feel his emotions and understand the decisions he made. When a biographer can paint such a vivid picture, the reader will always be rewarded.

This is an excellent book for the entire spectrum of people interested in Jackson. Whether you are a neophyte or an established Jacksonian historian, there is much to enjoy, as well as new material. The footnotes and bibliography are excellent resources and lead to additional sources for the reader. The minute I finished this, I bought the second volume, "Andrew Jackson: The Course of American Freedom, 1822-1832," also available here. This volume is truly an outstanding book

This concise and highly interesting book covers a period of history that was important to the development of the American continent. Unfortunately, the United States' gain was achieved at the great expense of the Indians who inhabited the southeast. Although I thought I knew something about American history, this book showed me how little I knew about this important (and heartbreaking) era when a clash of cultures resulted in Indians being removed from their homes in the woods primarly to the State where I live, Oklahoma, which was created by Congress in 1834, and designated as Indian territory.

Remini gives a direct and fascinating look at Jackson and his relentless attacks upon the southeast and southern Indians. Yet Remini shows that Jackson understood the only way that the tribes of southeastern America could survive the interactions with whites (who murdered the Indians and took their land and property) was by removal to Indian territory west of the Mississippi. This policy was made possible, of course, by the Louisiana Purchase. Thomas Jefferson also advocated the removal of Indians to the land that he had acquired by this Purchase.

Remini points out that Jackson's fame and ultimate rise to the Presidency resulted from public recognition of his military success and genius, first with regard to the Creeks, then the British, and then the Seminoles and Cherokees. For better or worse, Jackson was the most important figure responsible for the Southeast America that we know today.

In this book, when Remini finishes his story, he stops, making this book a treasure. Not a word is wasted, and every page is appreciated. I gained much from reading it.

David W. Lee leelawok@mmcable.com

The list of Remini's work at the beginning of the book shows that he has devoted the better part of his career to studying and writing about Andrew Jackson. For me, that makes this work infinitely more valuable than a "popular history" written by someone who has dealt with everyone from Crazy Horse to General Patton. It enables the author, in dealing with this one aspect of Jackson's career--his wars and treaties with American Indians--to show how it all meshes with his personal and political outlook. He also adds ample insight into the American culture of the time.

I was very impressed that a person who had spent so much time with his subject was able to treat him so even handedly. He did not, in any way, make Jackson into the hero he was believed to be in his own lifetime. The author shows that, at times, Jackson could be a dictatorial maniac. He is also not depicted as being highly intellectual. However,Remini makes it clear that Jackson was just the kind of person America needed at the time, to accomplish its goals (no matter how inhumane they might have been).

In fairness to potential readers, I must admit that this was not the kind of book that "I could not put down." Even though I read quite a bit of history, especially dealing with the many Indian Wars, I didn't really get drawn into this until the point where Jackson got more involved in his political career and closer to the presidency. Though I don't know if this is due to the writing, or simply my personal interests. Even so, this did spark an interest, for me, in the life and career of Andrew Jackson, and I now look forward to reading some of Remini's other works on the man.

Let me start with a disclaimer: Prof. Remini was both my instructor in a history course and my Master's seminar advisor when he was a visiting professor at Columbia in 1959-'60. He approved my Master's Essay; I received my M.A. that year.
While his book is, as one would expect from Prof. Remini, clearly written and well-documened, it has a fundamental flaw which leads to my low rating. Not only is Remini unpersuasive in justifying Jackson's relentless efforts to remove the Indians, but he is also internally inconsistent. He argues: "There was no way the American people would continue to allow the presence of the tribes..." yet immediately before this assertion Remini had acknowledged that removal had barely passed Congress. Why was Congress so divided? Because - according to Remini himself - the American people had pressured Congress to protect the Indians' rights.
Not only does Remini have nothing to say to shoot down his own evidence showing wide popular support for the Indians, but he also fails to even discuss why the President who was ready, even eager, to use military force to compel obedience from a rebellious South Carolina at the time of the tariff/nullification controversy would be cowed by supposed popular opposition to the Indians removal.
I've long felt that Jackson had a generally very impressive administration but that his brutality towards the Indians was his greatest flaw as President. (His support for slavery was very wrong, of course, but it was not an issue in which he played a decisive role - as he did regarding the Southeastern tribes.) I wanted to read Remini's book because I thought that he, as the pre-eminent Jacksonian scholar, might at least provide a reasoned explanation for Jackson's actions. As I've made clear, he completely failed to do so.

This is one of the best studies of any of the American Indian wars in itself but also provides a unique glimpse at the complex character of Andrew Jackson. His faults and failures are not ignored but placed in the proper context of time and circumstances. Included is a fascinating study of his relationship with and great admiration for several Indian leaders. Biographies can become one-sided at times and tend to avoid contradictory behaviour in the individual. Not so in this book where Jackson is one moment compassionate and forgiving and the next cruel and vengeful. All the while, the author is careful to manage the apparent inconsistencies as different aspects of the same inner firey character.

It is, at the same time, a bit of obscure American history - perhaps because we would prefer to forget our own inconsistent behaviour as a people with respect to the Native Americans. This book provides a balanced view of two peoples locked in what seems an inevitable cultural war and ignoring the avenues of escape that seem now, in hindsight, all to open to them. It is a sobering story of some great American heroes, Andrew Jackson in particular but others as well from both sides of those wars. Very well done, easy to read, thorough in coverage, addictive in reading.

This is a well-written narrative of Andrew Jackson's dealings with the Indians from his youth as a late 18th c. pioneeer on the Tennessee frontier to his seminal role in the Cheerokee Removal. Jackson is still, 160 years after his death, a controversial figure for historians. His popularity with them peaked during the 1940s and 1950s after Arthur Schlesinger's "The Age of Jackson" (1945) portrayed the nation's seventh president as the Ur-FDR. Jacksonian democracy was lauded as a great people's movement against the heartless (and capitalist)National Republicans and Whigs. Since Jackson was a Democrat and nearly all academics share the same party affiliation, Old Hickory was generally well-regarded by professional historians. Jackson's battle with the Second Bank of the U.S. made him especially popular with liberals such as Rimini (who identifed himself as a "New Dealer" in his three-volume biography of the president.) Given the New Deal's vilification of big business, Jackson's attack on the Bank fit right in with the liberal bent of most academic historians in the post-FDR era and merged nicely with the reflexive leftism of the neo-Marxists who largely took over political and economic discourse from the late 1960s. Now, the wheel has turned again and Jackson no longer fits the liberal mold. Old Hickory was as big a slave-owner as Jefferson (now in hot water with historians for that and the Sally Hemmings business.) Just as bad, from the standpoint of political correctness, Jackson was -- by modern standards -- a racist bully, who despoiled Native Americans of their land in a systematic and highly effective manner. In addition, he generalled some especially egregious massacres of various Indian nations. That's the problem with historical fads. It's like a line from the old Sinatra song: "Riding high in April/Shot down in May." An older generation of historians loved Jackson the liberal. The current generation despises Jackson the racist. Rimini has written numerous well-received volumes on antebellum politics. He is familiar with both primary sources and the modern literature in a manner that must be the envy of other historians. And, unusual for a historian, he writes a clear, straight-forward, vigorous prose that calls to mind Stephen Ambrose. Now, he has turned his hand to the Old Hero and the Indians. The book offers nothing that is really new. Nor, is there much that is anlaytically startling. It is simply a very well-informed and clearly laid-out account of Jackson vs. the Indians. Thus, it is here given only three stars. The author is somewhat sterner toward Jackson than in his earlier writing. Still, he refuses to capitulate to the fashionable PC ethos that smothers so much historical writing. Yes, Jackson was a racist by our standards (but in the early 19th c., who was not?) And, he was clearly a bully and, at times, even a little bit of a psychopath. On the positive side, he honored his agreements with the Indians and was genuinely concerned that they be protected from rapcious whites. Rimini's thesis is that Jackson's Indian policy was dominated almost entirely by legitimate concerns for national defense. England and Spain had sound reasons for wanting to limit the growth and influence of the young Republic and habitually intrigued with the Indian tribes to discourage American expansion. The tribes were, virtually all of them, actual or potential Fifth Columns. During the War of 1812, for instance, several of the tribes allied themselves with the British and wreaked havoc on the American frontier. Rimini is certainly correct in his assessment. Although today popular opinion is sentimentally with the Indians, Americans of that time could not afford sentiment. The Indians were indeed so many cat-paws that foreign powers could manipulate. Only their removal from the the border regions could negate their propensity to collaborate with hostile European nations. And, of course, the settlers coveted the Indians' land and Jackson felt they were right to do so. In earlier writings, Rimini has said plainly that what the Indians wanted -- real soverignty within the United States -- was impossible. The country simply could not allow a Gulag-like archipeligo of assorted "nations" within its boundaries and still claim, itself, to be a sovereign state. Much as we might sympathize with the sufferings of the Indians, their insistence on the maintainance of essentially hunter-gatherer societies in the midst of a ballooning (and industrializing!) modern nation-state was absurd. Rimini's book is a fair-minded and well-balanced account of a contentious episode in American history. He does not condone the rapaciousness of Jackson and his sort but neither does he mindlessly apply 21st. c. sensibilities to 19th c. people. By the lights of some today, Jackson was a bloody-minded bigot. By the standards of his own time, he was a fair-minded man trying to solve a knotty problem of national security, made even more complex by a monumental collision of cultures. All in all, this book serves to remind us of why Robert Rimini remains the dean of historians of the Jacksonian Era.

Remini is a terrific writer and scholar. This is an intriguing account of a now-obscure epoch in American history. The author brings to life the discomfort and apprehension suffered by the settlers with hostile and violent tribes as their neighbors and the sometimes tragic way the conflict was resolved. Sometimes the parleys Jackson held with the Indians blur together into one big similar meeting, but this is a minor fault. Just as good as Remini's study of the Battle of New Orleans.

Robert Remini has written an interesting historical account of Andrew Jackson's attitude towards the Indian tribes. Remini brings out the point that one has to place Jackson's attitude, in the historical context of those times, where the white man was considered superior to his Indian counterparts. This is a controversial issue that Remini presents whether one can be accountable for the racial biases that occur between people during certain historical times.

This book is written very well. The author seems to have a bias towards Andrew Jackson but he tells a good tale. He gives a thorough account of Jackson's history of the indians from the early years to adulthood. Though Jackson was a racist, it is easy for us today to judge with the perspective of today's views verses what people felt like back in Jackson's period when people were living on the border region and were constantly at war with the indians. The reason why I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 is because the author stated that General Jackson saved the indians with their removal. I would like to have had the author back up that statement more in the book. Plus the trail of tears was a horrible event; so I have to retract one star.