Andrew Jackson (102 page)

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 the 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.

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
.