Andrew Jackson [Hardcover]

Sean Wilentz (Author), Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (Editor)

Book Description

Release date: December 27, 2005

The towering figure who remade American politics--the champion of the ordinary citizen and the scourge of entrenched privilege

The Founding Fathers espoused a republican government, but they were distrustful of the common people, having designed a constitutional system that would temper popular passions. But as the revolutionary generation passed from the scene in the 1820s, a new movement, based on the principle of broader democracy, gathered force and united behind Andrew Jackson, the charismatic general who had defeated the British at New Orleans and who embodied the hopes of ordinary Americans. Raising his voice against the artificial inequalities fostered by birth, station, monied power, and political privilege, Jackson brought American politics into a new age.
Sean Wilentz, one of America's leading historians of the nineteenth century, recounts the fiery career of this larger-than-life figure, a man whose high ideals were matched in equal measure by his failures and moral blind spots, a man who is remembered for the accomplishments of his eight years in office and for the bitter enemies he made. It was in Jackson's time that the great conflicts of American politics--urban versus rural, federal versus state, free versus slave--crystallized, and Jackson was not shy about taking a vigorous stand. It was under Jackson that modern American politics began, and his legacy continues to inform our debates to the present day.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In the latest installment of the American Presidents series edited by Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Princeton historian Wilentz shows that our complicated seventh president was a central figure in the development of American democracy. Wilentz gives Jackson's early years their due, discussing his storied military accomplishments, especially in routing the British in the War of 1812, and rehearsing the central crises of Jackson's presidential administration—South Carolina's nullification of the protective tariff and his own battle against the Bank of the United States. But Wilentz's most significant interpretations concern Indian policy and slavery. With constitutional and security concerns, Jackson's support for removal of Indians from their lands, says Wilentz, was not "overtly malevolent," but was nonetheless "ruinous" for Indians. Even more strongly, Wilentz condemns the "self-regarding sanctimony of posterity" in judging Jackson insufficiently antislavery; Jackson's main aim, he says, was not to promote slavery, but to keep the divisive issue out of national politics. Wilentz (The Rise of American Democracy) also astutely reads the Eaton affair—a scandal that erupted early in Jackson's presidency, over the wife of one of his cabinet members—as evidence that, then as now, parlor politics and partisan politics often intersected. It is rare that historians manage both Wilentz's deep interpretation and lively narrative.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Best known now for beating the British in the 1815 Battle of New Orleans, Jackson is truly, monumentally important, Wilentz argues, as the first great presidential champion of the common man and indivisible union. He fought the plutocratic Bank of the United States' stranglehold on credit for the sake of farmers and small businessmen. His militant expansionism--the rationale for his Indian removal policies, which he felt were better than white settlers exterminating Native Americans, as had happened in New England--aimed to facilitate American settlement and prevent foreign, especially British, encroachment. He became founder-leader of the first modern political party, the Democracy (later called the Democratic Party), to prosecute the interests of ordinary citizens, too, going so far as to advocate direct senatorial and presidential election. Even his anti-states rights and anti-secession positions reflected his social sympathies, for he considered his southern opponents on those issues would-be aristocrats. Factor in his heroic courage, iron will, and remarkable pragmatism, and Jackson's presidential stature, especially as carefully expounded here, seems towering, indeed. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 195 pages
• Publisher: Times Books - Henry Holt and Company; BCE edition (December 27, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805069259
• ISBN-13: 978-0805069259
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #53,476 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #6 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( J ) > Jackson, Andrew

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 30 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A new notch in Old Hickory January 6, 2006

By Buck Leonard

Format:Hardcover

I was fully prepared to dislike this book, but I bought it because of my continued enjoyment of the American Presidents series. My dislike would have been inspired by some of Professor Wilentz's comments regarding contemporary public policy. But once again, he fooled me. His comments on Jackson are insightful, he puts him in the right historical context, does not shy away from the unflattering, and is not given to making moral judgments based on modern attitudes regarding Jackson's sometimes appalling stances and statements.
I still think Professor Wilentz makes a few assumptions about Jackson's views re: the Constitution and what the government owes the individual, but he is not nearly as dogmatic as I would have guessed. Overall, a worthy introduction to the president and a handsome addition to the series.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Summary of a Complex Person and Time April 20, 2006

By Loves the View VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

He's on most lists of our best presidents as well as our $20 bill. Democrats hail him as a founder. After reading this book, and attempting a few others, it's still hard to understand why Jackson has been accorded such respect.

I started both the Brand and Remini bios. Through them I came to understand his childhood and how the American Revolution shaped his character and views. The psychological toll of losing his nuclear family at a young age had to be enormous. His mother's heroic search and rescue of him in a very abusive British POW camp illustrates the love and family loyalty he lost.

Wilentz quickly outlines the child/youth/military and plunges into the presidency, which was what I was seeking when I started reading the others.

Wilentz cleary states the complicated facts of Jackson's war on the bank. To Jackson it was a war on the aristrocracy. It is not within the scope of Wilentz's book to editorialize, but were Biddle and his cronies really controling the US economy? Could the land issues have been settled with (Lincolnesque) homestead acts, which undoubtedly would have been very popular? Could he have fought for legislative mini-changes (Clintonesque) to curb certain powers, such as bidding out government banking needs. Jackson and Biddle were clearly obstinate equals, but as Pres, it would seem that there were other paths to take leadership on this since he deemed it important. How necessary and/or effective was this bank war? Did it really save the "little guy" in the short or long run?

In his tooth and nail fight on nullification, Jackson may have been as instrumental as Lincoln in holding the union together. Jackson's stand against nullification not only solidified the sentiment for his day, but also built precedent for future times.... This and stopping the British in New Orleans, may be worthy of his stature among historians, Democrats and currency commemoration but, they don't explain the genesis of the phrase "Jacksonian Democracy".

From admitedly limited knowledge, I still don't see enough to assign this man's name as an adjective to democracy. The author alludes to the changing of executive staff and to a future unfolding of more direct elections of public officials. I assume, in the nature of things, appointment prerogative would have evolved, but where is the chapter on how AJ worked on behalf of more direct election? Are not the Trail of Tears and his actions on behalf of those supporting slavery anti-democratic endeavors? I still don't see how the war on the bank, which admittedly has "little guy" overtones, balances all this out. Read more ›

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Andrew Jackson and American Democracy February 7, 2008

By Robin Friedman HALL OF FAMETOP 50 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

The 2008 Presidential race is in full swing, and interest in the contest runs high. In order to keep my own bearings, I wanted to try to take a short but broader view of our Presidents and our nation's history. One way to do this is by reading some of the volumes in the recent "American Presidents" series edited by the late Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Each volume in this series offers, in short compass, the life and accomplishments of an American president together with an evaluation of his achievement.

I chose Sean Wilentz' biography of Andrew Jackson (1767 -- 1845) because of our seventh President's role in broadening the basis of American democracy and because of the controversy he inspired and continues to inspire. Jackson was a flamboyant, larger-than-life figure with great virtues and as many faults. He was orphaned at an early age and bore for life the physical and emotional scars inflicted upon him by a sword gash to the head by a British officer during the Revolutionary War. Jackson fought off poverty and his own impulsive nature to serve an early term in Congress and in the Senate before the 19th century. He became a lawyer, a judge and a large plantation owner of the Hermitage in Tennessee. He became famous as an Indian fighter in wars against the Southeast Tribes such as the Creeks and Cherokees and against the Florida Seminoles. Jackson won a great victory against the British at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, (the War of 1812 was officially over at the time) which secured his fame.

Jackson ran for President in 1824 but, following a close election, he was denied the presidency in the House of Representatives as a result of what he claimed was a "corrupt bargain" between John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay.... In 1828, Jackson defeated Adams, inauguarating what he and many American people believed was a new age for American democracy. Wilentz describes the themes of Jackson's presidency as including:

"robust nationalism on constitutional issues tempered by a restraint on federal support for economic development and a strict construction; a distrust of what Jackson called the corrputed power of 'associated wealth'; and a celebration of what one pro-Jackson newspaper called 'the democratic theory that the people's voice is the supreme law." (p. 112)

In his biography, Wllentz reminds the reader that Jackson's age was not our own. Thus, the issues Jackson faced cannot be transferred directly to our current situation with the label of "liberal" or "conservative". Jackson was an enemy of big government. But in Jackson's time, this position made him a foe to the power of wealthy and powerful people and businesses who had a close relationship to the government and who, Jackson, believed, were gaining too much privilege at the expense of the people. Thus, a major activity of Jackson's presidency was his destruction of the Second Bank of the United States, a private bank which had been chartered by Congress and which exercised strong power over the American economy.

Jackson thought that American government up to his time had been the province of the leisured and elite. His avowed goal was to make the government responsive to the will of the majority and to expand the basis of democracy. He did so, in part, and at a terrible cost. Jackson's democracy was formed by a coalition between Southern planters and northerners. This coalition inevitably led to compromises with slavery and to sectional tension. Jackson censored the mails to prevent anti-slavery tracts from flooding the South and opposed attempts to curtail slavery.

In his younger days, Jackson had been a cruel Indian fighter, and in his Presidency he set in motion the removal of the Southeastern Tribes across the Mississippi over what became known as the "Trail of Tears." Wilentz, together with many other scholars, has some sympathy for the goals of the removal policy, but he emphasizes the cruelty and carelessness with which it was carried out, resulting in the death of thousands of Indian people.

Jackson was a strong, even autocratic, excecutive. Perhaps his finest hour was in defusing, with a mixture of strength, compromise, and cunning, the "nullification controversy" resulting from South Carolina's attempt to set aside a Federal tariff with which it disagreed. Jackson was also an expansionist president who foresaw the acquition of Texas and the West even though no new territory was added to the United States during his two terms.

Wilentz praises Jackson for his democratic vision and for his early version of egalitarianism even while he recognizes that, in its treatment of Indians, African Americans, and women it was quite different from our own ideals. Wilentz is favorably disposed towards Jackson's economic policies, including his war on the Bank. Many historians have different, less favorable views of Jackson. Those readers wanting an in-depth view of the period might want to compare two lengthy studies: Wilentz' own "The Rise of American Democracy" (2005) with the more recent study by Daniel Walker Howe "What hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848", which takes a less favorable view of Jackson and a more positive view of his predecessor in the presidency, John Quincy Adams, and of Jackson's opponents, the Whigs.

Those readers wanting to reflect upon the history of our country and on where it may be going during this election year will enjoy reading this short study of Andrew Jackson and its companions in the American Presidents series.

Robin Friedman Read more ›

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars WAS ANDREW JACKSON AMERICA'S LAST POPULIST PRESIDENT? February 25, 2007

By Terry Heath

Format:Hardcover

Today's historians are still in a quandary on why Andrew Jackson, the Seventh President of the United States and one of this nation's greatest leaders, was a man of complete contradictions in his public life.

Was he the populist politician who championed the rights of all citizens in the growing republic, yet owned slaves to do the hard work on his own property?

Was he the grandiose dictator who tried to crush his political enemies whom he viewed as elitist or just a man from the working class battling those seeking to dominate the masses?

Was he the brilliant military genius who defeated the British in the War of 1812 for America's only major victory in that ill-conceived conflict against England? Or was he the racist extremist who conquered the Indian Tribes and removed them from their homelands in the south because it was good for his own political career?

Was he all of that and more?

Sean Wilentz is a Professor of History at Princeton University and has written a new examination of Jackson in `The American Presidents' series that are published by Times Books which are edited by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Schlesinger had previously written about the famed chief executive sixty years ago in the Pulitzer Prize winning biography `The Age of Jackson.'

Wilentz tries to explain in the brief 195 page tome those many contradictions of the Tennessee military commander nicknamed `Old Hickory' for his toughness who is generally accepted as one of our nation's top half-dozen greatest presidents....

Jackson served as chief executive from 1829 to 1837, when America was transitioning from having leaders who had participated in the Revolutionary War and the immediate years after to those politicians who would serve in the two decades leading up to our nation's civil war. Jackson was a soldier in America's struggle for independence against the British in his early teens, earning a scar on his head when he was struck by a sword belonging to a British officer and is the only American president to ever have been a prisoner of war.

His greatest military triumph came in January, 1815; albeit two months after the War of 1812 had officially ended with a peace treaty signing, when troops under his command defeated an invading force of British soldiers twice their size landing near the southern port city of New Orleans, Louisiana. He then spent a few years in battle with several of the Indian tribes in the southern states which culminated in those tribes' relocation to the Midwest part of the country that came to be known as `The Trail of Tears.'

Jackson first ran for president in 1824 and got the highest tally of popular votes in the election. But none of the multiple candidates running that year were able to get a majority of the Electoral College votes to claim victory. The contest was then decided in the House of Representatives where runner-up John Quincy Adams was selected as the new chief executive after he made a deal with third-place candidate Henry Clay to gain his votes in exchange for Clay being promised the job of Secretary of State.

Jackson was livid on what happened to him that year and vowed revenge against what he considered to be the thievery by those politicians belonging to the New England aristocracy he so hated.

He ran again in 1828 and soundly defeated Adams in a re-match. But that victory turned bitter sweet when his wife Rachel died a few weeks before the March, 1837 inauguration which the president-elect believed was caused by stress when his political enemies spoke ill of her and her marriage to Jackson before her divorce to another man became final.

Wilentz writes that once in office, Jackson was a champion of the concept of the republic, meaning the will of the majority ruled while he attempted to re-structure the functions of national government into how he believed it should operate.

Modern pundits complain that today's politicians can be nasty and uncivil towards each other in their rancorous discussions on the issues of the day. But today's media sound bite zingers are tepid and restrained compared to how those of the different political parties and viewpoints treated each other two centuries ago when many disagreements ended with the two participants settling their feud with a duel.

The political opponents of the president referred to Jackson as ruling like a king or dictator, since the new chief executive did his best to re-tool the government into a bureaucracy of his liking such as making multiple changes in his cabinet to get those advisors he desired and would do what he wanted. The colloquial phrase `to the victor goes the spoils,' refers to Jackson's selection of those political supporters of his choosing into specific national government posts to do his bidding.

Jackson considered himself to be a man of honor and believed his words and those spoken by others to be a reflection of their firm beliefs. That's why he terminated the relationship with John Calhoun, his own vice-president, in 1832 when he determined the South Carolina politician had crossed him when Calhoun supported that state's desire to secede from the union in seeking nullification of certain laws over keeping the union together.

Calhoun resigned as vice-president, the first national officer to do so, got himself appointed as a senator from South Carolina while that state made plans to secede from the union if the federal government continued to demand its share of taxes through tariffs. Jackson mobilized federal troops to send into that state and let it be known that he would publicly hang his former vice-president if cessation plans went forth.

They didn't.

Compare that to today's politicians who say or do anything to keep their particular electorate happy, even it will hurt the nation in the long-term as long as it keeps them being re-elected.

Jackson also hated bankers and the concept of paper money that's not based on gold or silver. He closed down the Second Bank of the United States, (today's version of the Federal Reserve) and paid off the national debt in 1835 which endeared him to the masses. So it is with much irony that his image ended up on our twenty dollar bill, the most popular American paper currency that is issued by today's Federal Reserve Bank which is privately owned and makes a profit from the public debt that increases every year and has no chance of ever being paid off.

Wilentz states that Jackson put the nation on the road to true democracy for all the people, although the democracy he believed in is not what we have today because that process evolved over time with the work of the many presidents who would follow.

By the end of Jackson's second term, his popularity and large group of supporters across the country helped to start the creation of the modern Democratic Party and he was able through his influence to get his second vice-president, Martin Van Buren, elected to the presidency in 1836. Jackson's own political beliefs also led to the formation of the political parties movement when the Whig Party, mainly composed of those politicians who opposed Jackson on just about everything during his time in office, was created in 1834. They lasted for twenty years until it was replaced by the Republican Party in 1856 for the continuation of the two major political party system this nation still has today.

Can it be considered unfair for those of us now alive two centuries later to judge Jackson and the other early 19th Century presidents on their stands regarding personal liberty when slavery was still prevalent to today's standards of freedom for all citizens? Yes. But that's not Jackson's fault. He made the decisions he believed on what was best for the country's long-term survival without compromise to any special interest group seeking favors for their particular cause to the detriment of the nation as a whole.

What politician of today can make that same claim? Read more ›