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Title: Andrew Jackson: The Course of American Empire, 1767-1821 by Robert Vincent Remini ISBN: 0-8018-5911-5 Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr Pub. Date: April, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $20.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.71 (14 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Top-notch biography
Comment: 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).
Rating: 5
Summary: not only most detailed
Comment: This first instalment in Remini's biography is not only the most detailed accout I have read, it is also the most human. Most biographers of Jackson paint him as simply the first super-patriot in american history. After reading this and it's companion volumes one sees just how much Jackson changed this contry that we all love so. Remini shows how J set us on the course of first continental, then international conqest. Without his seizure of the floridas there would have been no precedent for the future "annexation" of the remainder of the land we now call the United States. Anyone interested in american history would do well to study Jackson's life as well as his carrer in public life. Remini's biography is definetly the place to start.
Rating: 3
Summary: The Roots of Jacksonian Democracy
Comment: 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.
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Title: Andrew Jackson: The Course of American Freedom, 1822-1832 by Robert Vincent Remini ISBN: 0801859123 Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr Pub. Date: April, 1998 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: Andrew Jackson: The Course of American Democracy, 1833-1845 by Robert Vincent Remini ISBN: 0801859131 Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr Pub. Date: April, 1998 List Price(USD): $20.95 |
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Title: Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union by Robert Vincent Remini ISBN: 0393310884 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: November, 1993 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union: A Biography (Southern Biography) by John Niven ISBN: 0807118583 Publisher: Louisiana State University Press Pub. Date: July, 1993 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Life of Andrew Jackson by Robert V. Remini ISBN: 0060937351 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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