by H. W. Brands
Kendall, Amos. Autobiography of Amos Kendall. Edited by William Stickney. Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1872. Not so much a traditional autobiography as a compilation of letters, journal entries, and other writings by Kendall.
Laffite, Jean. The Journal of Jean Laffite. New York: Vantage Press, 1958. Probably authentic, although the provenance is sketchy. Written from memory years after the fact.
Latour, Arsène Lacarrière. Historical Memoir of the War in West Florida and Louisiana in 1814–15. Edited by Gene A. Smith. 1816; Gainesville: Historic New Orleans Collection and University Press of Florida, 1999. The Battle of New Orleans as told by Jackson’s French engineer.
Madison, James. The Papers of James Madison. Edited by William T. Hutchinson and William M. E. Rachal. 17 volumes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, and Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1962–91.
———. Letters and Other Writings of James Madison. 4 volumes. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1865. An early edition, by order of Congress.
Mercer, William Newton. “From Louisville to New Orleans in 1816: Diary of William Newton Mercer.” Edited by Edwin Adams Davis and John C. L. Andreassen. Journal of Southern History 2 (1936): 390–402. A steamboat ride, with groundings, explosions, and other quotidian excitements.
Monroe, James. The Writings of James Monroe. Edited by Stanislaus Murray Hamilton. 7 volumes. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1898–1903. Hardly comprehensive but illuminating.
Nolte, Vincent. The Memoirs of Vincent Nolte: Reminiscences in the Period of Anthony Adverse, or Fifty Years in Both Hemispheres. 1854; New York: G. Howard Watt, 1934. The adventures of an adventurer.
The Papers of the Texas Revolution, 1835–1836. Edited by John H. Jenkins. 10 volumes. Austin: Presidial Press, 1973. Imperfect but invaluable for students of Texas history. Illuminating for others.
Quincy, Josiah. Figures of the Past from the Leaves of Old Journals. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1892. The title page identifies the author as “Class of 1821, Harvard College.” Enough said.
Santa Anna, Antonio López de. The Eagle: The Autobiography of Santa Anna. Edited by Ann Fears Crawford. Austin: Pemberton Press, 1967. Not very good but still irreplaceable.
Sargent, Nathan. Public Men and Events from the Commencement of Mr. Monroe’s Administration, in 1817, to the Close of Mr. Fillmore’s Administration, in 1853. 2 volumes. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1875. “Oliver Oldschool” drops the nom and writes under his own.
[Shepherd, William R.] “Papers Bearing on James Wilkinson’s Relations with Spain, 1787–1816. American Historical Review 9 (1904): 748–66. Helpful.
Smith, Margaret Bayard [Mrs. Samuel Harrison Smith]. The First Forty Years of Washington Society. Edited by Gaillard Hunt. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1906. Gossip, yes, but shrewd and often insightful.
Story, Joseph. Life and Letters of Joseph Story. Edited by W. W. Story. 2 volumes. Boston: C. C. Little & J. Brown, 1851. Fascinating view of Washington and the Supreme Court during the first half of the nineteenth century.
Stuart, James. Three Years in North America. 2 volumes. Edinburgh: Robert Cadell, 1833. A Scotsman tours the former colonies.
Timberlake, Henry. Memoirs, 1756–1765. Edited by Samuel Cole Williams. Marietta, Ga.: Continental Book Co., 1948. Travels among the Cherokees in time of war.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. Edited by J. P. Mayer. Translated by George Lawrence. New York: Harper & Row, 1966; New York: HarperPerennial, 1988. The most famous analysis of Jacksonian America.
———. Journey to America. Edited by J. P. Mayer. Translated by George Lawrence. London: Faber & Faber, 1959. The journal that provided the basis for the above.
United States Congress. American State Papers. Various series and years.
———. Annals of Congress (The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States). Washington: Gales & Seaton, various years. Far from a verbatim account but the best that exists for the period in question.
———. Register of Debates. Various series and years. Successor to the previous.
———. Congressional Globe. Ditto.
Van Buren, Martin. The Autobiography of Martin Van Buren. Edited by John C. Fitzpatrick. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1920. Incomplete and never printed during Van Buren’s lifetime but revealing of the Jackson years.
Webster, Daniel. The Letters of Daniel Webster. Edited by C. H. Van Tyne. New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1902. Mostly from the archives of the New Hampshire Historical Society. Shows the fully human side of the “godlike Daniel.”
———. The Papers of Daniel Webster. Edited by Charles M. Wiltse. 5 volumes. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for Dartmouth College, 1974–83.
———. Reminiscences and Anecdotes of Daniel Webster. Gathered and edited by Peter Harvey. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1901. Mostly anecdotes.
Wikoff, Henry. The Reminiscences of an Idler. New York: Fords, Howard & Hulbert, 1880. One who observed Jackson and much else.
Wilkinson, James. “Papers Bearing on James Wilkinson’s Relations with Spain, 1787–1816.” American Historical Review 9 (1904): 748–66. Consisting mostly of Wilkinson’s second memorial to the Spanish government, regarding his hopes for Kentucky and Louisiana.
Williams, John S. History of the Invasion and Capture of Washington and of the Events Which Preceded and Followed. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1857. By one of the defenders, who contends that they weren’t as hapless as they seemed.
Windship, John. “Letters from Louisiana, 1813–1814.” Edited by Everett S. Brown. Mississippi Valley Historical Review 11 (March 1925): 570–79. Life in New Orleans.
Woodward, Thomas S. Reminiscences of the Creek, or Muscogee, Indians. Tuscaloosa: Alabama Book Store, 1939.
SECONDARY WORKS
Abernethy, Thomas Perkins. The Burr Conspiracy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1954. Untangles the web of intrigue; only a small knot of uncertainty remains.
Adams, Henry. History of the United States during the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson. Edited by Earl N. Harbert. New York: Library of America, 1986. An abridgment of Adams’s master historical work.
Anderson, Fred. Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000. A masterly account, at once detailed and sweeping.
Aptheker, Herbert. Abolitionism: A Revolutionary Movement. Boston: Twayne, 1989. An introduction to the movement that Jackson neither appreciated nor fully understood.
Arthur, Stanley Clisby. Jean Laffite, Gentleman Rover. New Orleans: Harmanson, 1952. The title conveys the tone, but the book includes useful letters and other primary documents.
Auchinleck, G[ilbert]. A History of the War between Great Britain and the United States of America during the Years 1812, 1813 & 1814. 1855; London: Arms & Armour Press, 1972. By a Briton who considered the war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent in December 1814 and who thereby spared himself having to write about Jackson’s victory at New Orleans.
Barber, James G. Andrew Jackson: A Portrait Study. Seattle: University of Washington Press, for National Portrait Gallery and Tennessee State Museum, 1991. The changing face of the hero.
Barker, Eugene C. “President Jackson and the Texas Revolution.” American Historical Review 12 (1907): 788–809. Absolves Jackson of conniving in the illegitimate overthrow of Mexican authority.
Bartlett, Richard A. The New Country: A Social History of the American Frontier, 1776–1890. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974. Includes material on those unruly Scotch-Irish.
Bass, Robert D. The Green Dragoon: The Lives of Banastre Tarleton and Mary Robinson. New York: Henry Holt, 1957. The most hated man in America.
Bassett, John Spencer. The Life of Andrew Jackson. New York: Macmillan, 1931. This two-volumes-in-one version is a solid life by the editor of the most important completed edition of Jackson’s papers.
Bemis, Samuel Flagg. John Qu
incy Adams and the Union. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965. The best account of Adams’s diplomacy, and very good on the rest of his career.
Boucher, Chauncey Samuel. The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1916. Especially solid on Palmetto politics.
Brands, H. W. The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin. New York: Doubleday, 2000. The worldly founder.
———. Lone Star Nation: How a Ragged Army of Volunteers Won the Battle for Texas Independence and Changed America. New York: Doubleday, 2003. What Houston—and many others—wrought.
———. What America Owes the World: The Struggle for the Soul of Foreign Policy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Varieties of exceptionalism.
Brookhiser, Richard. America’s First Dynasty: The Adamses, 1735–1918. New York: Free Press, 2002. The family that fell as democracy rose.
Brown, John P. Old Frontiers: The Story of the Cherokee Indians from Earliest Times to the Date of Their Removal to the West, 1838. Kingsport, Tenn.: Southern Publishers, 1938. Contains a wealth of material not available elsewhere.
Brown, Roger H. The Republic in Peril, 1812. 1964; New York: W. W. Norton, 1971. Takes the rhetoric of the war hawks seriously.
Buchanan, John. Jackson’s Way: Andrew Jackson and the People of the Western Waters. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2001. The struggle for the old Southwest.
———. The Road to Guilford Courthouse: The American Revolution in the Carolinas. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997. The bitterest theater of the war.
Buckley, William Edward. The Hartford Convention. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934.
Buell, Augustus C. History of Andrew Jackson: Pioneer, Patriot, Soldier, Politician, President. 2 volumes. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1904. Especially useful on Jackson’s early years.
Burstein, Andrew. The Passions of Andrew Jackson. Jackson as Lear. For those who think Remini is too forgiving. Includes a careful reconstruction of the events surrounding the Jackson-Rachel elopement.
Caffrey, Kate. The Lion and the Unicorn: The Anglo-American War, 1812–1815. London: Andre Deutsch, 1978. A British perspective.
Catterall, Ralph C. H. The Second Bank of the United States. 1902; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960. Still the most thorough study of that star-crossed institution.
Chambers, William Nisbet. Old Bullion Benton: Senator from the New West; Thomas Hart Benton, 1782–1858. Boston: Atlantic Monthly/Little, Brown, 1956. The title, like the nickname, is a bit misleading, as Benton’s devotion to specie was but one aspect of a long and eventful life, otherwise told well here.
Cox, Isaac Joslin. “General Wilkinson and His Later Intrigues with the Spaniards.” American Historical Review 19 (1914): 794–812. Showing that Jackson was right about Wilkinson.
Curtis, George Ticknor. Life of Daniel Webster. 2 volumes. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1870.
Dangerfield, George. The Awakening of American Nationalism, 1815–1828. New York: Harper & Row, 1965. Jackson and America, from the victory at New Orleans to his election as president.
———. The Era of Good Feelings. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963. How Jeffersonian democracy became Jacksonian democracy.
De Grummond, Jane Lucas. The Baratarians and the Battle of New Orleans. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1961. How the pirates turned patriots.
Deppisch, Ludwig M., Jose A. Centeno, David J. Gemmel, and Norca L. Torres. “Andrew Jackson’s Exposure to Mercury and Lead.” Journal of the American Medical Association 282 (1999): 569–71. The most recent work of Jacksonian toxicology.
Dickson, R. J. Ulster Emigration to Colonial America, 1718–1775. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966. Jackson’s people.
Doherty, Herbert J. Jr. Richard Keith Call: Southern Unionist. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1961. A Jackson protégé who defected to the Whigs.
Drake, Benjamin. Life of Tecumseh. 1841; New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1969. By a near contemporary of the Shawnee chief.
Driver, Carl S. John Sevier: Pioneer of the Old Southwest. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1932. Tennessee’s hero before Jackson.
Eaton, John Henry. The Life of Andrew Jackson. Philadelphia: Samuel F. Bradford, 1824. A campaign biography that focuses on Jackson’s war record.
Eckert, Allan W. A Sorrow in Our Heart: The Life of Tecumseh. New York: Bantam Books, 1992. Surprisingly detailed.
Eriksson, Erik McKinley. “The Federal Civil Service under President Jackson.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 13 (1927): 517–40. The most thorough accounting of Jackson’s personnel policy in action.
Fischer, David Hackett. Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. The cultural roots of the Anglo-American civil war—that is, the American Revolution.
Fleming, Thomas. Duel: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and the Future of America. New York: Basic Books, 1999. The fatal rivalry, recounted with flair.
Ford, Henry Jones. The Scotch-Irish in America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1915. The tribe from which Jackson sprang.
Freehling, William W. Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816–1836. New York: Harper & Row, 1966. How Jackson and the nullifiers nearly came to blows.
Garrison, Tim Alan. The Legal Ideology of Removal: The Southern Judiciary and the Sovereignty of Native American Nations. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2002. The Cherokees and other tribes in the courtroom.
Gayerré, Charles. History of Louisiana. 4 volumes. New York: Redfield and William J. Widdleton, 1854–66. Deep background on the Battle of New Orleans, and much else.
[Gordon, T. F.] The War on the Bank of the United States. 1834; New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1968. A contemporary view; includes many speeches and documents.
Govan, Thomas Payne. Nicholas Biddle: Nationalist and Public Banker, 1786–1844. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959. Gives Biddle his due and then some.
Green, Fletcher M. “On Tour with President Andrew Jackson.” New England Quarterly 36 (1963): 209–28. Democracy hits the road.
Griffith, Lucille. Alabama: A Documentary History. Revised and enlarged edition. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1972. Geographic context of the Creek War.
Haley, James L. Sam Houston. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002. The most thorough and judicious account of an almost unbelievable life.
Hall, Kermit L., ed. The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Heiskell, S. G. Andrew Jackson and Early Tennessee History. Nashville: Ambrose Printing Co., 1918–21. 3 volumes. Like many other antiquarian chronicles, includes much of worth and much not.
Hickey, Donald R. The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989. Less forgotten after this able survey.
Jacobs, James Ripley. Tarnished Warrior: Major-General James Wilkinson. New York: Macmillan, 1938. Sober and scholarly, unlike the man.
James, Marquis. The Life of Andrew Jackson. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1938. This edition comprises the two volumes published separately as The Border Captain (1933) and Portrait of a President (1937). A great story, but when history and literature collide, literature wins.
———. The Raven: A Biography of Sam Houston. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1929. Ditto.
Jennings, Francis. Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies, and Tribes in the Seven Years War in America. New York: W. W. Norton, 1988.
Kaplan, Edward S. The Bank of the United States and the American Economy. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999. The context of the bank war.
Kent, Donald H. “Communications.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 41 (March 1955): 762–63. Bacteriological warfare on the frontier.
Knollenberg, Bernhard. “General Amherst and Germ Warfare.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 41 (December 1954): 489–94. More on th
e previous.
Lamar, Howard R., ed. The New Encyclopedia of the American West. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. A landmark of American historical literature. Lamar’s West starts at the Appalachians.
Madeleine, Sister M. Grace. Monetary and Banking Theories of Jacksonian Democracy. Philadelphia: no publisher given, 1943. Among the few works that take Jacksonian monetary theory seriously.
Main, Jackson Turner. The Anti-Federalists: Critics of the Constitution, 1781–1788. New York: W. W. Norton, 1974. The losers get their licks, including the Bill of Rights.
Malone, Dumas. Jefferson and His Time. 6 volumes. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1948–81. A Jefferson for the ages; enormously informed, sympathetic but well short of hagiographic.
Marszalek, John F. The Petticoat Affair: Manners, Mutiny, and Sex in Andrew Jackson’s White House. New York: Free Press, 1997. The most thorough dissection of the Eaton affair.
McCullough, David. John Adams. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. Elevates the elder Adams perhaps above his merits.
Meier, Hugo A. “Technology and Democracy, 1800–1860.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 43 (1957); 618–40. Jacksonism and the Industrial Revolution.
Melton, Buckner F. Jr. Aaron Burr: Conspiracy to Treason. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2002. A recent attempt to unravel the case.
Meyers, Marvin. The Jacksonian Persuasion: Politics and Belief. New York: Vintage, 1960. The minds of Jacksonians.
Moore, Maureen T. “Andrew Jackson: ‘Pretty Near a Treason to Call Him Doctor!’” New England Quarterly 62 (September 1989): 424–35. The hero visits Harvard.
Nagel, Paul C. John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997. The best single volume on Jackson’s ally-turned-rival.
Newman, Richard S. The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. The troubled—and troubling—conscience of democracy.
Niven, John. Martin Van Buren: The Romantic Age of American Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. The political journey of Jackson’s heir.
