Product Description

This text is the first in a three-volume biography of Andrew Jackson. It covers the role Jackson played in America's territorial expansion, bringing to life a complex character who has often been seen as a rough-hewn country general. Volume two traces Jackson's senatorial career, his presedential campaigns and his first administration as President. The third volume covers Jackson's re-election to the presidency and the weighty issues with which he was faced: the nullification crisis, the removal of the Indians beyond the Mississipi River, the mounting violence throughout the country over slavery, and the tortuous efforts to win the annexation of Texas.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1297643 in Books
• Published on: 1998-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 pages

Customer Reviews

Excellent biography of a remarkable man
In the first of three volumes, Remini carries Jackson from birth to the tragic loss of much of his family in the Revolution, through his early years in politics, his duels, and the Battle of New Orleans, up to his term as first American Governor of the territory of Florida, acquired by his own military victories.

Remini admires Jackson, and argues persuasively for his huge historic importance - not just President Jackson, but the younger Jackson of this book, responsible for acquiring a large chunk of what ultimately became the Southeast USA in several Indian wars and treaty negotiations, the campaigns of the War of 1812, and his subsequent attacks on the Spanish colony of Florida. Many historians have condemned Jackson for siezing Florida without the explicit approval of the Monroe administration; Remini is convincing in his argument that Monroe must have known and encouraged Jackson's actions, although he was careful not to say so directly, since Spain and the US were not at war.

Remini doesn't by any means try to whitewash Jackson. The man shown in these pages is impressive but often distinctly unpleasant. Remini quite directly calls him a 'bully', and the story of his feud and duels shows a man who is ruthless and foolishly ill-tempered. The ugliest part of the Jackson story is his treatment of the native tribes; Remini offers some half-hearted apologias for Jackson's ruthless treatment even of those natives who fought with him in his campaigns, but tells the facts frankly enough that most readers will come to a harsher conclusion.

Remini shows that Jackson's famous victory in the Battle of New Orleans was a closer thing than is generally supposed. Jackson carelessly left a crucial avenue open to the British, and a more determined general would have marched on the city and probably taken it before Jackson had his defenses properly prepared. As it was, the British foolishly gave Jackson sufficient time to settle in and fortify his line, only then attacking it with disastrous results. Although this battle is often viewed as an afterthought (the Treaty of Ghent, ending the war, was actually signed a few days bfore the battle was fought), Remini also shows that a British victory would have had real, and catastrophic, consequences for the US.

Along with the colorful and often complex story of Jackson's life and activities, Remini fills in the story with good explanations of the conditions of the period. In particular, he gives a good explanation of the values and traits of westerners, and East-West conflicts, at an early time in the country's history when the Pacific was barely dreamed of and the 'Far West' meant the Mississippi.

Remini's writing is excellent, and the biography is detailed and exhaustively researched without being pedantic or boring.

Top-notch biography
Andrew Jackson is one of the more complicated figures in American history. On the one hand, his significance to the development of the United States as a nation is large. On the other hand, he was often a very unpleasant person.

This first volume in Robert Remini's biography follows Jackson's life from his childhood through his governorship of Florida. Along the way, we learn of Jackson's brief roles in both houses of Congress and his period as a judge; it is later, however, when he joined the military (becoming a general through politics rather than merit), that Jackson rose to nationwide prominence, especially his overwhelming humiliation of the British in the Battle of New Orleans and his later dealings with Indians and the Spanish which led eventually to the U.S. acquiring Florida.

His military victories made him one of the most popular people in American history, but Remini pulls no punches with Jackson's flaws, including his often brutal and bullying nature and his tendency to violence. The ambiguous circumstances involving how he married his wife Rachel would lead to nasty talk during his presidential campaigns and his killing of a man in a duel (was it murder?) wouldn't help either.

Having been previously exposed to Remini's writing through his brilliant biographies of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, I knew this book would be a pleasure to read, and it was. Remini has written the definitive biography of Jackson, very detailed but always objective and always entertaining. If you want to learn of this era and of one its pivotal figures, this is the book to read (plus the other two in the series).

The Roots of Jacksonian Democracy
One might argue that the hallmark of great men is that they fundamentally and permanently alter the world they inherited - its beliefs, its practices, its conception of itself. Andrew Jackson is one of those extremely rare individuals.

In this first of three volumes, which he subtitles "The Course of American Empire," Remini highlights the central role that Jackson played in opening up the early American frontier in the first decades of the 19th century. Long before the expression "Manifest Destiny" ignited the expansionist and nationalist passions of Americans in the 1840s, Andrew Jackson fought single-handedly - and occasionally circumvented direct military orders, the Constitution, local judges, and officially recognized international treaties - to advance American territorial expansion along the southern border and promote the removal of the Spanish, British and myriad tribes of native Americans.

Other salient events that Remini chronicles in this volume include Jackson's humble roots and tragic childhood during the American Revolution in the Carolinas; his move westward to the Tennessee territory to start life anew as a lawyer; the "facts" behind Jackson's much-disputed relationship with his wife, Rachel; his entry into local politics and emergence as a militia leader; his military exploits against the Creeks, the British at the Battle of New Orleans and the Seminoles; and, of course, the many duels, fist-fights and other outlandish events of his early life that he somehow managed to survive.

Much of Volume I reads like a "wild west" novel, but Remini is careful to accentuate how Jackson's natural rough hewn character, along with his experience on the frontier, melded to shape a political philosophy that ultimately altered the course of American government. There is little direct reference to the principles that would become known as Jacksonian Democracy in this volume - an undying faith in the virtue and wisdom of the people, the inviolability of the Union, the pernicious effects of deficit spending and "soft" currency, etc. - but it is easy to understand how and why Jackson cherished those ideals after reading the story of his early life.

Finally, it must be noted that Remini assiduously avoids holding Jackson's conduct in relation to slavery and the Indians to modern standards. In all fairness, that is understandable and not especially offensive. However, Remini does neither himself nor Jackson any service by going out of his way to stress how relatively humane (in Remini's mind) the president was to his human chattel and explaining that he really had the Indians best interests at heart when he forced them from their land to the barren plains of modern day Oklahoma. In this volume and the others, Remini offers some strongly worded criticism of Jackson's political, military and social performance, but his many heinous crimes against humanity are treated with kid gloves throughout.