Customer Reviews

Jackson : Character in Time : The US Presidents

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For one whose hazy memory of Jackson from a mandatory American history college course is limited to the wild party that followed his inauguration, Lorraine Ash's one-act play serves to introduce me to the frontiersman who would be inaugurated as the seventh president 23 years later. The setting and the time frame is one day at the Jacksons' log home, The Hermitage, that culminates in his victory of a duel precipitated by his opponent's spreading of gossip related to Jackson's marriage to his beloved wife Rachel.

Through dialogue and physical description, Ash paints a word picture of the man as an opportunist, as a man proud of his ability to speak with his fists and his gun rather than with words, as a man who stoically endured and recovered from a series of illnesses and injuries, as the first man of the common people and the Democratic party to be elected president. Jackson's voluble denunciation of American Indians and the British gives present day readers a vivid impression of popular sentiments common among the "new" Americans of the early 1800s.

Ash follows the script with a section that summarizes headlines for the period of Jackson's two terms of office and another section that summarizes his personal history. These two sections greatly enhance the value of the script for the student and for the casual reader; they pack a wealth of history in a few pages.

Pauline Ellen Lee, EdD