Andrew Jackson, Southerner (Southern Biography Series), by Mark R. Cheathem
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Andrew Jackson, Southerner (Southern Biography Series), by Mark R. Cheathem
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Many Americans view Andrew Jackson as a frontiersman who fought duels, killed Indians, and stole another man s wife. Historians have traditionally presented Jackson as a man who struggled to overcome the obstacles of his backwoods upbringing and helped create a more democratic United States. In his compelling new biography of Jackson, Mark R. Cheathem argues for a reassessment of these long-held views, suggesting that in fact Old Hickory lived as an elite southern gentleman. Jackson grew up along the border between North Carolina and South Carolina, a district tied to Charleston, where the city s gentry engaged in the transatlantic marketplace. Jackson then moved to North Carolina, where he joined various political and kinship networks that provided him with entrée into society. In fact, Cheathem contends, Jackson had already started to assume the characteristics of a southern gentleman by the time he arrived in Middle Tennessee in 1788.After moving to Nashville, Jackson further ensconced himself in an exclusive social order by marrying the daughter of one of the city s cofounders, engaging in land speculation, and leading the state militia. Cheathem notes that through these ventures Jackson grew to own multiple plantations and cultivated them with the labor of almost two hundred slaves. His status also enabled him to build a military career focused on eradicating the nation s enemies, including Indians residing on land desired by white southerners. Jackson s military success eventually propelled him onto the national political stage in the 1820s, where he won two terms as president. Jackson s years as chief executive demonstrated the complexity of the expectations of elite white southern men, as he earned the approval of many white southerners by continuing to pursue Manifest Destiny and opposing the spread of abolitionism, yet earned their ire because of his efforts to fight nullification and the Second Bank of the United States.By emphasizing Jackson s southern identity characterized by violence, honor, kinship, slavery, and Manifest Destiny Cheathem s narrative offers a bold new perspective on one of the nineteenth century s most renowned and controversial presidents.
Andrew Jackson, Southerner (Southern Biography Series), by Mark R. Cheathem - Amazon Sales Rank: #2376137 in Books
- Published on: 2015-09-28
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.02" h x .73" w x 5.98" l, 1.00 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 328 pages
Andrew Jackson, Southerner (Southern Biography Series), by Mark R. Cheathem Review Cheathem ably takes readers from Jackson s riotous beginnings on the Tennessee frontier to his military campaigns during the War of 1812 and subsequent years, the passionate and tumultuous years of his courtship and marriage(s) to Rachel, to his time as president. The author excels in conveying evidence familiar to Jackson scholars in highly readable prose and skillfully connecting the personal and political matters in thematic chapters...Cheathem has written a first-rate, highly readable account of Andrew Jackson. By positioning him as a southern patriarch rather than western frontiersman, the author offers a convincing reinterpretation of Jackson. Andrew Jackson, Southerner is a highly readable and concise overview of Jackson s life and career, and Cheathem should be applauded for his efforts. --Civil War Book Review''An excellent book and a must-have for anyone with an interest in the seventh president. . . . Highly recommended.''--CHOICE''An informative work which ties the seemingly rough-cut Old Hickory back to the early days of gentry culture in Virginia.''--The Historian''This study is a fresh and frequently fascinating examination of Jackson. . . . An impressive array of sources informs his interpretation. . . . A solid, compelling analysis of Jackson s life and character.''--Journal of Southern History''Mark R. Cheathem is a fine historian who has, in Andrew Jackson, Southerner, produced a well-researched, nicely written account of one of the nation's most controversial presidents.''--Journal of American History''Mark R. Cheathem's Andrew Jackson, Southerner (2013), however, provides a fresh take on this polarizing figure, centering his examination on the notion of the southerner to better understand the symbolic implications of many of Jackson's personal and political decisions. . . . Cheathem presents a strong example of the kind of nuanced historiography that closely assesses the cultural landscape of political actors to better understand the symbolic decision-making processes they negotiated.''--Journal of American Culture''Andrew Jackson, Southerner, is a well-written short biography. Professor Cheathem's thorough research and subject knowledge are impressive. . . . Andrew Jackson may be the most fascinating American in history, and this book could serve as an introduction to those interested in his life, or as a supplement to those already familiar with his story.''--H-War''An impressively researched and well-organized apologia for Andrew Jackson's southern (rather than frontier) credentials. . . . We will be discussing Cheathem's book for years to come.''--Journal of East Tennessee History''Carefully researched and clearly written. . . . Cheathem's biography of this near-great president is provocative and should be read by those interested in Andrew Jackson s life and presidency.''--North Carolina Historical Review''Writing with the ease and confidence of an experienced historian . . . Cheathem has accomplished an impressive feat in condensing such a vast amount of research into a concise, two-hundred-page book.''--Ohio Valley History''A fresh and convincing portrait of the enigmatic seventh president.''--Southwestern Historical Quarterly''Cheathem draws from Jackson's personal and professional correspondence and recent studies on Jackson, southern culture, and slavery to provide a valuable contribution to Jackson historiography.'' --Register of the Kentucky Historical Society
About the Author Mark R. Cheathem is an associate professor of history at Cumberland University and the author of Old Hickory s Nephew: The Political and Private Struggles of Andrew Jackson Donelson.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. Interview with the Author By David George Moore Moore: What circumstances led you to tackle this project?Cheathem: While finishing my first book, Old Hickory’s Nephew: The Political and Private Struggles of Andrew Jackson Donelson, I began looking for a new project to undertake. I wanted to continue working in the Jacksonian/antebellum period and considered several possibilities, including an examination of slavery in Tennessee and a study of the southern Know Nothings. I settled on the book that became Andrew Jackson, Southerner largely because of a conversation with my former doctoral supervisor at Mississippi State University, John F. Marszalek. He knew I wanted to do something related to Jackson and encouraged me to follow my passion. I tell people that if I had known that Jon Meacham was going to win a Pulitzer Prize for American Lion, I likely would have chosen another project!Moore: Give us a general idea of what you are seeking to accomplish in this book?Cheathem: Tackling a subject as significant as Jackson required having something new to say. In studying his nephew, Andrew Jackson Donelson, it became clear to me that historians had largely ignored the importance of southern plantation society in Jackson’s personal life. Historians like to talk about him as the frontier westerner, but that view ignores Jackson’s South Carolina origins and his purposeful adoption and pursuit of southern gentility when he moved to Nashville. Addressing that part of Jackson’s identity in detail and connecting it to his military and political careers seemed important enough to warrant a new biography.Looking at Jackson as a southerner does not mean ignoring his identity as a westerner, by the way. In fact, he often identified himself as a westerner, which makes sense given the geographic orientation of the American people at the time. Nevertheless, we have a different perspective of Jackson, his times, and his region than he possessed, and we can see that for most of his life, Middle Tennessee was more southern than western and that Jackson was one of many elites responsible for causing that transformation.Moore: You mention that “One of the greatest ironies of Jackson’s life was that his identification with the South laid the foundation for the Civil War.” How so?Cheathem: Jackson’s military career in the 1810s and early 1820s had removed Native Americans from millions of acres of land in the Deep South. White settlers filled this land vacuum, intent on growing cash crops that relied on slave labor. By the time he became president, Jackson was a member of the southern gentry, with multiple plantations and over 100 slaves. Logically, his southern identity should have led him to support the South Carolina nullifiers, who were concerned that the national government’s power to increase the tariff could be used to limit or abolish slavery.Yet, Jackson opposed the nullification movement, arguing that it was treasonous and the Union was inviolable. In doing so, he appealed to a nationalist sentiment that flew in the face of his Jeffersonian roots in states’ rights.Another great example is Jackson’s support of Manifest Destiny. He argued that territorial expansion was necessary to protect American interests and national security, but he, like many elite southerners, also took advantage of those land acquisitions to benefit his own slaveholdings.When you consider Jackson in terms of the intertwining of nationalism and southern interests, he provided both sides of the secession crisis that arose fifteen years after his death with political ammunition: the southern fire-eaters who wanted to leave the Union to protect slavery and its westward expansion and the Unionists, including Abraham Lincoln, who wanted to keep the nation intact.Moore: Many of us think of Jackson as the prototypical man of action and therefore rather anti-intellectual. Is that a fair assessment?Cheathem: I would not call Jackson anti-intellectual. His correspondence clearly shows him as a man who read widely. He made frequent literary and historical allusions, and his private library consisted of hundreds of books. He was not as well-studied or well-educated as John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, or any number of other contemporaries, but his ignorance has been overstated.It is also worth mentioning that Jackson was much more rational and calculating than many people then and now believe. When he was younger, he certainly seemed more apt to allow emotions to determine his actions. By the time he ran for the presidency in the 1820s, however, Jackson demonstrated that he was usually in control of his emotions. In fact, he sometimes appeared to use his reputation for emotional explosions in order to manipulate situations to his advantage.Moore: Years back, I read John William Ward’s book, Andrew Jackson--Symbol for an Age. What do you think about employing Jackson in the way Ward did?Cheathem: I agree with Ward’s argument that Jackson symbolized the changes happening in the early nineteenth-century United States. I think his perspective was limited, though. He focused on political democratization for white men, missing the ways in which Jackson also reflected contemporary views on minority groups such as Native Americans and African Americans.One of my planned future projects, in fact, is to look at Jackson’s image from his lifetime until the twenty-first century. For example, how did the president who hated paper money come to reside on the twenty-dollar bill? And how did a man who embodied expansive presidential authority turn in to the anarchic punk rocker in the Broadway play Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson?Moore: It seems Jackson embraced a much more authentic, Christian faith after leaving office. What were the factors that motivated him to do so?Cheathem: Jackson was someone well acquainted with religion from an early age. James Parton, his first biographer, interviewed people who allegedly knew Jackson as a boy and claimed that his mother wanted him to become a Presbyterian minister. Throughout his life, Jackson was always careful to separate religion and politics. He held fast to that stance even as his wife Rachel became increasingly religious (some would even say overly pious).One finds in reading Jackson’s correspondence a man versed in Scripture and confident in the hand of Providence actively working in human affairs. Not until after he left the presidential office in 1837, however, did Jackson officially join a church. In this case, it was the Presbyterian church that he had built for Rachel on the Hermitage property. His conversion is sometimes seen as the desperate act of a man, close to death, who regretted his life. I see it as a public expression of an internal faith that had evolved and matured over Jackson’s life.Moore: Though Jackson could be brutal with Native Americans and in his role as a slave-owner, it is amazing how your book ends. Why did so many of Jackson’s own slaves grieve over his death?Cheathem: The men and women Jackson owned as property may have had several reasons to mourn his death. They may have experienced sincere grief at his passing. They may have feared their future under Jackson’s son, Andrew Jr., who was not a very good manager of money or property. They may also have been fulfilling the role of faithful family members that was expected of them. Likely, it was a combination of these three reasons.Moore: As a Christian who loves to read history, I am attracted to learning about complicated figures who demonstrate both virtue and vice. Do you think this is one of the dynamics which makes Jackson one of the more fascinating presidents to study?Cheathem: Absolutely. My students like to kid me that I love Andrew Jackson. In reality, he can be a hard person to stomach at times, but that does not lessen my fascination with him as a pivotal figure in U.S. history.Several individuals have asked me recently why modern film makers have not seized on Jackson’s life to make a movie. It has all of the elements of intrigue that one could want: violence, sex, conspiracy, etc. His life’s complexity, however, makes him a hard subject to present on the big screen in any manageable way, which is a shame. Jackson’s embodiment of virtue and vice won him lifelong friends and permanent enemies, and it makes him someone that we cannot overlook when we examine our nation’s history.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. Well done By Christopher Leahy This is a terrific book, certainly the best one volume biography of the nation's seventh president. Cheathem makes a compelling--and persuasive--case that Jackson is best viewed historically and chiefly as a Southern planter. He argues that while Jackson was "not solely responsible for creating the antebellum South, [he] was a crucial figure in determining its influence on the nation's future (p. 205)."Cheathem writes well and displays an obvious understanding of the historical literature on his subject, without allowing it to overwhelm the reader. He aptly uses quotations from Jackson's correspondence to illustrate his larger points.I have long been a fan of the massive biographies Robert Remini wrote on Jackson (3 volumes), Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster. But Cheathem's work demonstrates that a judicious culling of the sources and fewer pages can yield a book that allows the reader to understand the entirety of Jackson's life.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Short, but good. By Shane Looking for a good biography of Andrew Jackson, I was hesitant to read the Remini or Brands books due to similar complaints about both, so I choose this one, being the newest and featuring a fresh interpretation of Jackson as a southern patriarch rather than a frontier ruffian. The length is 328 pages but the biography itself only takes up about 200. He does a good job condensing all of the key information and this book will probably tell you everything you need to know about Jackson, but it could have benefited from the extra 100 pages as I was sometimes left wishing more detail, or confused by the brevity of his summarization of events. For example, I was hoping to learn more about the Battle of New Orleans, but Cheathem's account of it is reduced to "several circumstances including British troops forgetting to bring ladders needed for climbing the American ramparts contributed to an overwhelming and unexpected victory for the United States that day." What circumstances? What happened? I would like to have heard more about his relationship with Rachel, and his failed assassination attempt is also sadly absent.Nonetheless, the research and the amount of sources packed in the book is impressive. He does well defending his thesis that Jackson was in fact a southerner and getting into his psyche to explain his many controversial actions in this context. Jackson's kinship network is a persistent theme here. As a consequence, the book contains a massive amount of names and after a while it can be difficult to remember who is who. Despite these criticisms, it still a solid biography and a good introduction on the subject that gave me a more positive, nuanced view of Jackson and inspired me for further reading.
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Andrew Jackson, Southerner (Southern Biography Series), by Mark R. Cheathem
