Customer Reviews

Jackson's Way: Andrew Jackson and the People of the Western Waters

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Jack Buchanan is a great writer! I was enthralled by this book from the moment 15 year-old Andrew Jackson swept onto the page. Buchanan brings to life the saga of the Old Southwest and the American pioneers. The most interesting element of the book is the portrait you get of Andrew Jackson, who was so loved men voted for him fifty years after his death. Anyone interested in the Presidents or the history of the Old Southwest will want to read this book.

John Buchanan has written a most interesting book. Spanning the thirty year period 1780-1810 he covers a time of great uncertainty about just what to do with the existing and projected geographical definition of the fledgling United States. Aaron Burr was not the only person to think in terms of separation. Today, driving on Interstate Highways at 70 MPH through the Appalachian Mountains, it is difficult for us to understand just what an impenetrable barrier these mountains really were. No less a figure than Thomas Jefferson thought "whether we remain one confederacy or form into Atlantic and Mississippi confederacies I believe not very important to the happiness of either part."

No wonder then that the people of the west, as the west was then defined, drew so closely together and became such an interdependent, insular block. Surrounded by enemies (Great Britain on the North, Spain to the South and West and indifference from their own countrymen to the East), land locked with no natural outlet for their goods and agricultural products and at constant war with Native Americans, this, the fastest growing segment of the US population, was threatened with extinction. Thus, the setting was a tinder box with a truly separate people ready for that particular leader whose interests were not just aligned with but also coincident with their own.

Andrew Jackson was such a man. This is a story of survival, a story of great personal courage, of a very independent people who hacked their homes and way of life out of a true wilderness. It is a story of how the foundations of the Jacksonian Era were so firmly laid that the 34 year history of the Virginia Dynasty was so completely crushed in American politics that it never resurrected. An oft overlooked, misunderstood or just plain ignored segment of American history, these thirty years in the west were pivotal to the development of early America. Andrew Jackson was truly THE man, a most amazing force to be reckoned with, and an American to the very core of his soul.

For someone so supportive of Jackson, his policies and actions (even when Buchanan himself deems them "going too far"), Buchanan fails to support his arguments. Clearly the author is enamored with the former President. Even during his military career when Jackson frequently disobeyed orders or followed his own code of conduct, Buchanan argues that he has sufficient reason for doing so and his actions were justified. But where is the evidence? By arguing that the Monroe administration was acting covertly to takeover the Floridas, he fails to cite from where he gets such information. There are no references to Monroe's history.
Buchanan has done his homework when discussing Jackson. He cites Jackson's papers and other credible biographies. He gives a well-rounded picture of the life and hardships Jackson endured and how electrifying his personality must have been. However, Buchanan goes a tad too far in arguing that Jackson, even when he broke the law, seized sovereign territory, killed two foreign residents, etc. was acting justly or on behalf of the administration where there is only evidence that he acted on his own accord. If those arguments are to be deemed credible in their own right, Buchanan needs to provide ample evidence that supports Jackson's seemingly arrogant decision-making process. He may have done his homework for Jackson, but the basis of his arguments seem based solely on his admiration for the man and not on historical facts or opinions of those present in that time. In other words, he acknowledges that there are those who call Jackson an Indian-hater or say he wanted to govern as a military dictator (ex. Napoleon), but fails to discredit those notions.