Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times
by H.W. Brands
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Book Reviews of Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times
Book Review: Brand's Jackson as towering as Donald's Lincoln
Summary: 5 Stars
H. W. Brands has written the definative biography of Andrew Jackson. His military life, life in the growing west, growing Union and family life are all well researched and written. Brands is clearly at his best in defining the changing political and foreign policy landscape at this crossroad in American democracy. Our nation was young and quite unsure of both our Constitution and our reason for being a republic. Brands has been critisized for overly covering Jackson before he became President and then not dedicating the time and pages to the Jackson Administration. I think that disengenuous.
Understanding his various policies while in office can only be seen though the lens of his life. Why was he for expansion of our "borders" at the time? Why was he often for military action? Why was he against the Bank of the United States? All of these and many others certainly could not be understood without a well researched and documented earlier life of Jackson.
Brands really drives home the "newness" of the nation and the transition from a group of colonies to a unified country. He also covers and explains in terrific detail the politics and political parties of the time and the early stages of the Democratic and Whig parties where the Republicans had previously had a monopoly after the Federalists self-destructed. Finally, Professor Brands shows how slavery made a "comeback" in the south with expansion and cotton becoming a huge cash crop. He leaves little doubt that the march toward Civil War was steadily gaining steam.
Jackson really came to life in this biography. With all the relatively new historical works coming out it is terrific that Andrew Jackson and his period of our history is getting its due. Brands is apparently writing a book on the Gilded Age for the Oxford History of the U. S. series that has been nothing short of groundbreaking. I suspect he will be even better with that work as his ability to put people and events into a historical context is clearly a strongpoint of his. Interestingly Daniel Howe of UCLA will be writing on the Jackson Era for the same series with both books due out some time early in 2007.
Lastly, the University of Texas won the national championship but really scored big by getting Brands back to their history department from their Aggie rivals at Texas A&M.
Book Review: Above all, a Unionist
Summary: 5 Stars
"I could not be present to see my darling Harvard disgrace herself by conferring a Doctor's degree upon a barbarian and savage who could scarcely spell his own name." - Former U.S. president John Quincy Adams on the prospect of his successor, President Andrew Jackson, receiving the honorary degree.
ANDREW JACKSON, by historian H.W. Brands, is a most excellent biography of the man. With a conciseness that never allows the narrative to bog down, the author recounts Jackson's varied career as land speculator, lawyer, judge, state militia commander, victorious U.S. Army general, Senator, plantation owner, and President.
For the casual student of early U.S. history, the best elements of this book perhaps come during Old Hickory's two terms as Chief Executive: Jackson's bitter struggle with the Bank of the United States, the transition from the Federalist's elitist concept of democracy to Jackson's populism, Jackson's handling of the tricky situation in Mexican Texas where former American citizens were in revolt, and Jackson's response to the challenge to Union cohesion in 1833. Indeed, one may forget that state secession movement that ultimately culminated in the Civil War began not over slavery but the protective tariff, and it was quarrelsome South Carolina's threat to secede over this issue in 1833 that caused President Jackson, otherwise a strong states' rights advocate, to demonstrate how far he was willing to go to preserve the Union. Old Hickory was prepared to send in 200,000 troops and said:
"... if a single drop of blood shall be shed there (in South Carolina) in opposition to the laws of the United States, I will hang the first man I can lay my hand on engaged in such treasonable conduct, upon the first tree I can reach."
ANDREW JACKSON includes a small but serviceable photo section and two marginally useful maps.
There's no good reason that I can perceive why ANDREW JACKSON shouldn't be awarded five stars. And to those PC readers that, after finishing this volume, may be tempted to riot in the streets because Jackson was also a slave holder and trader, a gun owner who killed two men in personal duels, and an advocate of relocating Native Americans away from their tribal lands, I say "Get over it!" This biography is a fascinating portrait of a man of his times.
Book Review: Accepting the same old story
Summary: 3 Stars
In another in a series of revisionist biographies of early American leaders, H.W. Brands' Andrew Jackson is short on revision but long on sycophantic acceptance of the theory that Jackson single-handedly reshaped the republic into a democracy by being a man of the people.
Brands's research and writing are superb. He tells Jackson's story in the third person but from Jackson's own point of view, which leads the reader to empathize with the orphaned teen-ager who reads law and makes his way west to find his fortune.
The premise that Jackson's election in 1828 led to the transformation of the US from an aristocratic republic to a democracy of the people. As often as Brands beat the drum of Jacksonian democracy, he never makes a convincing argument that Jackson actively initiated the conversion. Instead one is left with the impression Jackson was the focal point of more direct democratic participation by a larger percentage of white men, driven namely by the nastiness of Jackson's 1824 defeat by John Quincy Adams and Old Hickory's popularity as a war hero, but Jackson did little to affect the change.
Brands gives short shrift to either contemporary or modern criticism of Andrew Jackson. As President, Jackson signed the Indian removal Act and refused to enforce the Supreme Court's decision in Worcester v. Georgia, which led to the removal of the Native American Indians west beyond the Mississippi ending in the Trail of Tears. Brands dedicates precious few pages to Jackson's treatment of the Indians, acknowledging the disaster but exonerating Jackson of all culpability with arguments about national security and Jackson's paternalism toward the Indians.
Ultimately, one must ask: What is Jackson's legacy? At best, it's a mixed bag. He deserves shared credit for the acquisition of both Florida and Texas. His handling of the Nullification Crisis held the Union together for another twenty-eight years. At the same time, Jackson legacy includes the spoils system, economic recession after his battle with the Bank of the United States, and the Trail of Tears. H. W. Brands missed an opportunity to set the Jackson record straight, instead opting to accept the same old historiography encouraged by Jackson himself.
Book Review: great in some parts, lacking in others, still learned a lot
Summary: 3 Stars
It's a good read but I agree with other reviewers that parts of Jackson's life feels rushed. The author does a good job showing readers who may not be too familiar with Jackson how his early life on the frontier shaped his views toward the British and indians.
Personally, I learned a lot from the book about how Jackson got in to politics in the first place first as a frontier lawyer and then the maneuverings and personal battles, several of which led to duels, of how Jackson became the military leader he would eventually become.
His account of Horseshoe Bend and Jackson's incursion in to Florida are well done for the casual reader as is his account of the Battle of New Orleans.
I also learned a lot about how Jackson crossed paths with Aaron Burr and his scheme to establish himself as head of a western empire.
It takes the author three quarters of the book before we get to Jackson as president, but I think Brands does a good job capturing the times and the players of the day. The reader will really come away with nice portraits of such giants in American history as Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, and especially Martin Van Buren and John Quincy Adams. However, that said, Brands doesn't spend much time discussing the Peggy Eaton affair which engulfed Jackson's early administration.
Brands also does a good job covering the controversy over rechartering the Bank of America and explaining why Jackson and his allies went all out to defeat it, and for that matter, what Jacksonian Democracy was.
I also found the chapter on the question of annexing Texas to be well written and the relationship between Jackson and Sam Houston.
My only real criticism of the book is that Rachel Jackson is almost entirely left out. Jackson was so devoted to his beloved Rachel but their story doesn't appear in as much depth as it deserves, especialy the effect the campaign had on her health. It is hardly mentioned.
Brands nicely wraps up Jackson's post presidency life spent at the Hermitage and his correspondence with Van Buren and the continued emnity with Adams.
Overall, a good introduction to Old Hickory.
Book Review: A True Gem
Summary: 5 Stars
As the author has stated in interviews, Jackson and his actions represent America's political development and philosophy. Jackson is part of our proud history, and was the first folksy, ungentlemanly president. He establish the brand, which most presidents try to maintain in their efforts to sell an all-American persona. A true Southerner, descendant of white slaves (or Scotch-Irish indentured servants), Andrew Jackson spearheaded the South's philosophy of expansionism. When people have nothing, they strive to acquire whatever they can at any cost. This fervor to expand allowed us to take Mexico's northern half (from Texas to California), and to establish our superiority above the true (yet less developed) Native Americans.
Florida was filled with vagrants and run-away slaves that needed to be rounded up and shipped back to their rightful owners and reservations. Jackson cunningly profited from the South American wars of independence when he invaded Florida. Under the Spanish, run-away slaves found safe haven here. The Seminole and slaves were inter-marrying and living a (very liberal) social anarchist existence. They cooperated with one-another, hunted and grew their own food, and lived peacefully off the land. Furthermore, the British dodged Spanish authorities and attacked the U.S. from Florida. Although the Brits (as enemies of Spain) were aiding the South American revolutionaries, Jackson made it look as if Spain was aiding Britain. Native Floridians were replaced by new natives: white settlers from the South.
Manifest Destiny is our right for our living-space, or Lebensraum. In Mein Kampf, Hitler shows admiration toward our displacement of the American Indians. It is the RESPONSIBILITY of the civilized nations to care for the less civilized ones even if it means we must annihilate them for their own sake. In the name of our American spirit, I give this book five stars-shoot first, cowboy!