by H. W. Brands
O’Brien, Sean Michael. In Bitterness and in Tears: Andrew Jackson’s Destruction of the Creeks and the Seminoles. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003. A thorough and sometimes graphic account of Jackson’s Indian wars.
Owsley, Frank Lawrence Jr. Struggle for the Gulf Borderlands: The Creek War and the Battle of New Orleans, 1812–1815. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1981. How Jackson became famous, and much else.
Parkman, Francis. History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac, and the War of the North American Tribes against the English Colonies after the Conquest of Canada. 1851; New York: Book League of America, 1929. A great work by America’s greatest historian.
Parton, James. Life of Andrew Jackson. 3 volumes. New York: Mason Brothers, 1860–61. The first serious Jackson biography, by an author close enough to his subject to interview many who knew him but distant enough to escape most of the emotional eddies Jackson set in motion. Contains many documents since lost.
Peterson, Merrill D. Olive Branch and Sword: The Compromise of 1833. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982. How the nullification crisis stopped short of war.
———. The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. In the shadow of Jackson.
Pierson, George Wilson. Tocqueville and Beaumont in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1938. The journey that produced Democracy in America.
Pitch, Anthony S. The Burning of Washington: The British Invasion of 1814. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1998. The most ignominious moment in American military history.
Putnam, A. W. History of Middle Tennessee, or, Life and Times of Gen. James Robertson. 1859; Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1971. The making of the Cumberland Valley.
Ramsey, J. G. M. The Annals of Tennessee to the End of the Eighteenth Century. Charleston: Walker & James, 1853. Includes an account of the lost state of Franklin.
Reid, John, and John Henry Eaton. The Life of Andrew Jackson. 1817. Edited by Frank Lawrence Owsley Jr. University: University of Alabama Press, 1974. Authorized and corrected by the subject; as close to a Jackson memoir as exists.
Remini, Robert V. Andrew Jackson and the Bank War: A Study in the Growth of Presidential Power. New York: W. W. Norton, 1967. Much of this was subsumed in Remini’s big biography, but still a good introduction to the subject.
———. Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire: 1767–1821; Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Freedom, 1822–1832; Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Democracy, 1833–1845. New York: Harper & Row, 1977–84. A monumental work of research and exposition by the dean of Jackson studies.
———. Andrew Jackson and His Indian Wars. New York: Viking, 2001. From the first skirmishes with the Cherokees to the second Seminole War; argues that Jackson’s removal policy saved the southeastern Indians from extinction.
———. “Andrew Jackson Takes an Oath of Allegiance to Spain.” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 54 (Spring 1995): 2–15. Which he later wished he hadn’t.
———. The Battle of New Orleans. New York: Viking, 1999. Learned and succinct.
———. Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union. New York: W. W. Norton, 1991. Jackson’s longtime rival.
Roosevelt, Theodore. The Winning of the West. 6 volumes. New York: Current Literature, 1905. The conquest of the old Southwest, written by one who would have loved to have been there.
Royall, William L. Andrew Jackson and the Bank of the United States. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1880. Hardly more than a pamphlet, but includes insights into the problem of the American money supply.
Satz, Ronald N. American Indian Policy in the Jacksonian Era. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002. Beyond removal, beyond Jackson.
Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr. The Age of Jackson. Boston: Little, Brown, 1945. The classic study of Jacksonism; makes Old Hickory out to be the first New Dealer.
Sellers, Charles G. The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. How the American economy shaped democracy, and vice versa.
Shackford, James Atkins. David Crockett: The Man and the Legend. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1956. Captures the spirit of the man while correcting the more egregious parts of the legend.
Shepherd, William R. “Wilkinson and the Beginnings of the Spanish Conspiracy.” American Historical Review 9 (1904): 490–506. The opportunistic roots of contemplated treason.
Smith, Justin H. The Annexation of Texas. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1941. Jackson as one player among many in the final drama of his public life.
Sugden, John. Tecumseh: A Life. New York: Henry Holt, 1998. The best biography of the incomparable Indian leader.
Taylor, George Rogers, ed. Jackson vs. Biddle’s Bank: The Struggle over the Second Bank of the United States. 2nd edition. Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1972. Documents, speeches, editorials, and some historical interpretation.
Terrell, A. W. “Recollections of General Sam Houston.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 14 (1912): 113–36. What Houston remembered about Jackson and others.
Toplovich, Ann. “Marriage, Mayhem, and Presidential Politics: The Robards-Jackson Backcountry Scandal.” Unpublished paper. Contains the latest on the origins of Jackson’s marriage to Rachel.
Van West, Carroll, ed. The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture. Nashville: Tennessee Historical Society, 1998. Indispensable on matters Tennessean.
Walker, Alexander. The Life of Andrew Jackson. Philadelphia: John E. Potter, 1867. An utterly misleading title; the book is actually an extended account of the Battle of New Orleans.
Wilburn, Jean Alexander. Biddle’s Bank: The Crucial Years. New York: Columbia University Press, 1967. Brief but insightful.
Williams, Samuel Cole. History of the Lost State of Franklin. New York: Press of the Pioneers, 1933. Many surviving states lack such a detailed history.
Wiltse, Charles M. John C. Calhoun. 3 volumes. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1944–51. A thoroughly researched, closely argued life of the great sectionalist.
Woodward, Grace Steele. The Cherokees. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963. A solid study, with many eyewitness observations.
The author would like to thank the many archivists and librarians who made this book possible. Particularly helpful have been the staffs of the Library of Congress, especially Bruce Kirby; the Tennessee State Library and Archives; the Tennessee Historical Society, especially Ann Toplovich; the Hermitage; the University of Tennessee Special Collections Library, particularly Aaron Scott Crawford; the Massachusetts Historical Society; the Newberry Library; the Alabama Department of Archives and History; the Center for American History and the Perry-Castañeda Library at the University of Texas at Austin; and the Sterling Evans Library at Texas A&M University, especially Joel Kitchens.
The author would also like to thank Roger Scholl of Doubleday and James D. Hornfischer of Hornfischer Literary Management. Finally, thanks to Roslyn Schloss for a virtuoso performance as copy editor.
H. W. BRANDS is the Dickson Allen Anderson Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. The author of Lone Star Nation and The Age of Gold, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography for The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin. He lives with his family in Austin, Texas.
FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Nan A. Talese, an imprint of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2003.
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Maps by Mike Reagan
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brands, H. W.
Andrew Jackson, his life and times / H. W. Brands.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Jackson, Andrew, 1767–1845. 2. Presidents—United States—Biography. 3. United States—Politics and government—1829–1837. I. Title.
E382.B83 2005
973.5'6'092—dc22
[B] 2005042178
Copyright © 2005 by H. W. Brands
All Rights Reserved
eISBN: 978-0-307-27854-8
v3.0_r1
ALSO BY
H. W. BRANDS
A masterful biography of the Civil War general and two-term president who saved the Union twice—on the battlefield and in the White House.
“Once again, H.W. Brands has crafted a wonderful portrait of a great leader who endured and prevailed in hours of stress and strain. Brands’s U.S. Grant is a compelling figure, a man too often overlooked by history. This book rectifies that with grace and insight.”—JON MEACHAM, author of American Lion, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for biography
“There is a magnificent unity to this story of Grant’s leadership in both war and peace that is not found anywhere else. In this compelling narrative, Grant emerges more fascinating than ever before.”—DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN, author of Team of Rivals and No Ordinary Time, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for history
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