Customer Reviews

The Era of Good Feelings

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Well deserving his Pulitzer, Dangerfield opens this fascinating study with the negotiations at Ghent and closes with the advent of the Jackson presidency. His erudite treatment of the complex political realities of the period reaveal that the prevailing feelings were anything but good. All this aside, _The Era of Good Feelings_ is probably not a choice fire-side text for the casual reader.

George Dangerfield's "The Era of Good Feelings" is a wonderful book covering the often forgotten politics and events between the Jeffersonian era and the Jacksonian period. Dangerfield's vivid writing style and his gift at presenting the biographical sketch guides the reader along. From the heated discussions of the Monroe Cabinet to the skirmishing between churches in the field and their congregational headquarters to Andrew Jackson leading the invasion of Spanish Florida, Dangerfield captures a time of great growth and transition. Dangerfield is also excellent in showing how English politics and economics shaped the fledgling republic during these years. Dangerfield's takes on the leading political actors form a wonderful portrait gallery: the elusive James Monroe, the puritanical John Quincy Adams, the merry Henry Clay and raging John Randolph, the logical John Calhoun and the emotional Andrew Jackson. Dangerfield offers an excellent bridge between more established periods of American history and shows the importance of this neglected period.

While there's a lot of good details in The Era of Good Feelings, it is probably best left for the scholars and researchers. There are great details about the Treaty of Ghent, the Second Bank of the U.S., the Seminole War, Monroe's diplomacy, the Missouri Compromise, and the Presidency of J.Q. Adams. There's also a nice chapter on the first wave of the Industrial Revolution. While the Era of Good Feelings is generally associated with Monroe, this book also includes the Presidency of Adams to round out the bridge between the Treaty of Ghent and the Jacksonian Era. When Dangerfield puts the story together, however, it is not as approachable as other tales of American History. There are too many references to unexplained names and events that leave the novice historian with too much work to piece the whole story together.