For all his prominence among American presidents, Andrew Jackson has been the subject of fewer major biographies than one might assume. There is, of course, the masterful three-volume biography by Remini, which is and will remain for some time the major biography of Jackson, as well as the classic single volume by Arthur Schlesinger THE AGE OF JACKSON, a very great book even though Jackson emerges as more or less a proto 1930s New Dealer. This excellent new biography by H. W. Brands, who among his many interesting books wrote a stellar biography of Benjamin Franklin, does not supplant either of these books, but rather supplements them. While Remini's remains the for-now definitive biography of Jackson, those not willing or possessing the time to work through his three-volume work can feel easy about turning to this single-volume biography. I should note that Remini has produced a one-wolume condensation of his longer work, but I must confess an inherent bias against abridgements, even if performed by the author himself.
Of all the American presidents, Andrew Jackson lived the fullest, most colorful life. Only Teddy Roosevelt can come close for the variety of his life's experiences and even he falls far short of all that Jackson managed to do or be in his life. Jackson was a veteran of the Revolutionary War, briefly a school teacher, a lawyer, a judge, a U.S. Representative to Congress, a U.S. Senator, a circuit judge, a duelist, a gambler, a slave owner and trader, a dry goods salesman, a farmer, a landowner, a major general in the state militia, an Indian fighter, and a general in the U.S. Army, all before achieving national fame at the Battle of New Orleans. One could argue that Jackson is not as interesting as some more physically sedate but more psychologically complex presidents such as John Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, or the two Roosevelts, but none of these others can match Jackson for the sheer pace at which he got things done.
Brands does a great job at highlighting the more interesting aspects of Jackson's life. Given the amazing variety of his life's experiences, this is perhaps not that great of an achievement. He does in addition a fine job of bringing Jackson the person into focus, with his almost savage pride and propensity to take offense. "Thin-skinned" does not seem to describe Jackson as well as "no-skinned" might. Other political figures in American history fought duels, but none with such aggression. He was the only president to have killed a man in a duel. Jackson emerges as a vibrant, fascinating, and compelling character, if not someone you especially like. Brands is also good at placing Jackson in his time, which was the point in the nation's history when the Federalists and the Republicans (the Federalists later fragmented and the remnants became the Republican party while the Republicans later called themselves during the Jacksonian period Democrats) were contending over whether the new nation would be a representative republic in which the elite in the nation would provide the major voice in selecting the nation's leaders and determining its policies or whether a popular democracy rooted in the people would. The great advocate of popular democracy was, of course, Thomas Jefferson, but as Brands points out, he was himself very much an aristocrat. Jackson not only shared Jefferson's passion for a popular democracy but was also very much a man of the people and one of the most important aspects of his presidency was that he was the first president to derive from the people with the support of the people, instead of an aristocrat nominated through caucuses among political leaders. The placing of the presidency in the hands of the people was one of Jackson's greatest achievements.
Nearly as important as the promotion of what came to be known as Jacksonian Democracy was Jackson's expansion of the powers of the presidency. This is the weakest part of the book. Under Jackson the presidency acquired powers completely beyond anything seen before. Brands doesn't ignore this fact, but he doesn't stress it explicitly as much as he could or should have. Although he writes extensively on the banking issue, he doesn't draw out all of the implications that this would have for the presidency. Indeed, Jackson is unquestionably one of the two or three most important presidents in defining the powers of the executive branch.
One of the things that fascinates anyone who reads much about Jackson is his strong states' rights stance on nearly every issue on the one hand coupled with his his passionate embrace of the union. For instance, if Jackson had been president in late 1860 instead of James Buchanan, he would unquestionably have invaded South Carolina in the early days of their secession and crushed the rebellion despite the probability that he would have sided with the South on every issue except the right to secede. Brands makes no more sense of this than any other biographer, but he does a superb job of making the reader feel how passionately Jackson felt about national unity. In the Nullification Crisis he made it crystal clear that he regarded nullification or secession as an impossibility and would use the military against South Carolina if it attempted to undertake either. Brands does not explain why Jackson felt so passionately on this issue, but he makes clear his passion on the issue.
There are two other things I like about Brands's biography. One is that it is hard to detect any signs of partisanship. Sometimes--though not as often as the detectors of "bias" would have it--biographers write a biography with an axe to grind. If Brands has an axe, he has hidden it well. Also, while not ignoring Jackson's faults, he takes the justifiable stance that while many of his positions would be lamentable today, they were often standard at the time. For instance, Jackson's views on both Native Americans and slavery were not especially enlightened (though he armed freed blacks in the defense of New Orleans, a step that few Southerners in the Civil War were willing to undertake), and his role in the relocation of Native Americans is lamentable and not mitigated by the undeniable fact that their relocation was probably inevitable. At the same time, Brands does not try to excuse Jackson's many moral faults, his intense temper, his misplaced pride, his irascibility, his aggressiveness. He was under no circumstances a great moral exemplar.
In short, this is a very good single volume biography of one of our most important and interesting presidents. In presidential scholars' polls Jackson is frequently rated as a "Near Great" president and inhabits that rung of presidential greatness just below Washington, Lincoln, and FDR and beside other "Near Great" presidents such as Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt. By any standard Jackson remains one of the most important presidents for anyone interested in American history to know something about. Furthermore, since Jackson's military and public career extended from the American Revolution until just short of mid-19th century, to study Jackson is literally to study the history of the republic's first half decade.
