ANDREW JACKSON BIOGRAPHY
"Andrew Jackson, I am given to understand, was a patriot and a traitor. He was one of the greatest of generals, and wholly ignorant of the art of war. A writer brilliant, elegant, eloquent, and without being able to compose a correct sentence, or spell words of four syllables. The first of statesmen, he never devised, he never framed a measure. He was the most candid of men, and was capable of the profoundest dissimulation. A most law-defying, law-obeying citizen. A stickler for discipline, he never hesitated to disobey his superior. A democratic aristocrat. An urbane savage. An atrocious saint."
James Parton, the "father of American biography", writing a few years after Jackson's presidency, was tempted to throw up his hands over Jackson - an apparent bundle of contradictions. It is not just that his friends and enemies see two different men; the very facts make one wonder whether he was pragmatic or dogmatic, a great statesman or a bull in the china shop.
Likewise the "Jackson Era" is bewildering in its complexity. A period of the strangest of strange bedfellows in politics. Of Anti-Masonic Parties and utopian communes. Of theological religious obsession such as most Westerners can hardly conceive today. A nation doubling in size, and moving from the age of wood and animal power to that of iron and steam power. The speed of change was very comparable to that of the 20th century.
Meanwhile, the United States was dividing along regional lines, with the established Northeast and Southeast each trying to put their stamp on the West.
Summary of Jackson's Life Prior to the Presidency
He lived from 1767 to 1845. The child of poor Scotch-Irish immigrants; he was orphaned by the ferocity of the American Revolution in the Carolinas. He got a reasonable education for his day, being qualified to practice law (educational requirements were low).
In his early 20s, he went to the territory of Tennessee, not yet a state, where he achieved prominence as a lawyer,
James Parton, the "father of American biography", writing a few years after Jackson's presidency, was tempted to throw up his hands over Jackson - an apparent bundle of contradictions. It is not just that his friends and enemies see two different men; the very facts make one wonder whether he was pragmatic or dogmatic, a great statesman or a bull in the china shop.
Likewise the "Jackson Era" is bewildering in its complexity. A period of the strangest of strange bedfellows in politics. Of Anti-Masonic Parties and utopian communes. Of theological religious obsession such as most Westerners can hardly conceive today. A nation doubling in size, and moving from the age of wood and animal power to that of iron and steam power. The speed of change was very comparable to that of the 20th century.
Meanwhile, the United States was dividing along regional lines, with the established Northeast and Southeast each trying to put their stamp on the West.
Summary of Jackson's Life Prior to the Presidency
He lived from 1767 to 1845. The child of poor Scotch-Irish immigrants; he was orphaned by the ferocity of the American Revolution in the Carolinas. He got a reasonable education for his day, being qualified to practice law (educational requirements were low).
In his early 20s, he went to the territory of Tennessee, not yet a state, where he achieved prominence as a lawyer,