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A review by librarianonparade
Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times by H.W. Brands
5.0
For me Andrew Jackson has always been one of those 'interim' Presidents, who held office between my two main eras of interest: George Washington and the Revolution and Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. I knew of him but only in the course of retrospective analysis: the similarities between the South Carolina nullification crisis and the onset of the Civil War; his tussles with the greats of the age who lingered on in subsequent years to play a part again in the run-up to the Civil War, men like Clay and Calhoun and Webster.
And I find it's a shame I never paid more attention to him, because this biography was a fascinating revelation. Andrew Jackson perhaps played more of a role than anyone else in the shifting of America from a republic to a democracy; he was the first President to break the Eastern, and most particularly Virginian, stranglehold on the Presidency; the first true Washington outsider, the first to appeal as a 'man of the people', the first who parleyed a military reputation into political power, George Washington notwithstanding. Ironically I found that his career prior to the Presidency was of far more interest than his years at the helm, and Brands spend more times on these years than Jackson's eight in what was then known as the Presidential Palace.
Jackson really seem to bridge a lot of eras; as a young teenager he participated in the Revolutionary War, as a grown man and general he was the hero of the War of 1812, as a President he oversaw the beginnings of the Texan independence and the emergence of many of the issues that would subsequently erupt into the Civil War. In many ways Andrew Jackson was almost the quintessential America, embodying within himself so much of his country's history, patriotism and political beliefs, for good and bad. A truly fascinating character, and a biography that lives up to its subject.
And I find it's a shame I never paid more attention to him, because this biography was a fascinating revelation. Andrew Jackson perhaps played more of a role than anyone else in the shifting of America from a republic to a democracy; he was the first President to break the Eastern, and most particularly Virginian, stranglehold on the Presidency; the first true Washington outsider, the first to appeal as a 'man of the people', the first who parleyed a military reputation into political power, George Washington notwithstanding. Ironically I found that his career prior to the Presidency was of far more interest than his years at the helm, and Brands spend more times on these years than Jackson's eight in what was then known as the Presidential Palace.
Jackson really seem to bridge a lot of eras; as a young teenager he participated in the Revolutionary War, as a grown man and general he was the hero of the War of 1812, as a President he oversaw the beginnings of the Texan independence and the emergence of many of the issues that would subsequently erupt into the Civil War. In many ways Andrew Jackson was almost the quintessential America, embodying within himself so much of his country's history, patriotism and political beliefs, for good and bad. A truly fascinating character, and a biography that lives up to its subject.