Andrew Jackson
by [Bobbs-Merrill, ,$5.00]
IN Andrew Jackson, Portrait of a President, Mr. Marquis James brings to a close the notable biography of General Jackson begun in Andrew Jackson, Border Captain. Mr. James writes, as always, with great felicity of expression and fine ability for the selection and the portrayal of the dramatic in events. If it cannot be said that the new volume has quite the swing and stirring appeal of his fine lile of Sam Houston or even of his first volume on Jackson, it must be remembered that the former volumes dealt with wars and threats of war, with heroic events and desperate situations upon the battlefield, with the romance of pioneering, with border affrays and personal encounters.
In this new volume Mr. James presents a moving picture of General Jackson from the time of the beginning of his candidacy for the Presidency to his death, emphasizing his family and public relationships with much sympathy and power. The book exhibits great energy in research and skill in the selection of materials. The matter of research in the Jackson history has of course been very much simplified by the admirable work of the late Professor Bassett both as biographer and as editor of the Jackson papers, but Mr. James’s book shows the results of extensive research in other collections and many other sources outside of the Jackson papers themselves. In view of the extent of his research and the care of his selection, it is a little surprising to find him guilty of such minor mistakes as his persistent reference to Charles Dickinson, who was killed by Jackson, as John Dickinson.
Mr. James’s book opens with Jackson being put forward as a candidate prior to the election of 1824, at the conclusion of the period generally but erroneously known as the ‘Era of Good Feeling.’ Mr. James adopts the conventional theory of a blunt old soldier forced into an unfamiliar contest as the tool of certain designing political friends whose machinations he was unable to resist. This view ignores certain most important facts. While it is true that Jackson had spoken longingly of retirement after his military and Floridan adventures and that Mrs. Jackson undoubtedly wished him to remain at home, the expressions of each were not dissimilar to those which both had been indulging for years and which Jackson continued to use for years after her death.
The picture of Jackson as an old soldier unfamiliar with the wiles of politicians does not conform to the facts. To be sure, he was an old soldier and had been an amazingly successful and efficient one. But he had been an old politician long before he became an old soldier. He was District Attorney in Tennessee before statehood, he was the first Representative in Congress from Tennessee, one of its earliest Senators, later a Supreme Judge, and always a leading member of the chief political machine of the state. He undoubtedly owed his opportunity for military greatness to his influence in politics. Such a man was not likely to go along with the aims of a group of local politicians unless he happened to desire to do so.
Nor has Mr. James been fortunate in his flat assumption of a bargain between John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay by which one was to be President and the other Secretary of State with an eye to the succession. There is not one scintilla of evidence that there was actually a bargain except such presumptions as arise from the fact that Adams was elected President largely through Clay’s influence and that he did appoint Clay Secretary of State. Certainly there was no more occasion for this surmise than there was between Woodrow Wilson and William Jennings Bryan in 1912, about whom the question was never raised. But what Mr. James states as a fact without proof General Jackson certainly believed in good faith, and used as an engine of destruction against the Adams-Clay coalition. Mr. James is hardly at his best in his arbitrary assumption of fact.
The depiction of the character of Jackson and his emergence as a statesman of the highest order is admirable. That he was elected President upon his military record is as undeniable as that he became a general upon his political record. There is about Jackson’s career a singular and appealing consistency from his first appearance as a boy receiving a sabre cut for refusal to black the boots of one of Tarleton’s subalterns to the day lie died at the Hermitage, covered with age and with the honors conferred by the love and veneration of his countrymen. The qualities of flaming courage, of iron determination, of intense devotion to his country, of sagacity, of inflexible integrity, run through the drama of his life like the threads in a tapestry. Mr. James has made them splendidly plain.
Throughout Mr. James’s book march a succession of historic figures — Benton, Van Buren, Clay, Webster, Calhoun, Cass, Livingston, Hayne, the Kitchen Cabinet , John Quincy Adams; the relatives and friends of the President; Nick Biddle, his great antagonist in the Bank fight, and many others. As a background we see the struggle for recognition of the humbler class of our citizens, particularly those in the newer sections of the country. But clearest of all we see Old Hickory himself, brave, determined, devoted to the Union, of the highest integrity, loyal to his friends and to himself, emerging as the great leader of the people and developing into a great statesman after a lifetime of turmoil in politics and war.
BENNETT CHAMP CLARK