Description
A timely solidly researched and gracefully written The Wall Street Journal biography of President Andrew Jackson that offers a fresh reexamination of this charismatic figure in the context of American populismconnecting the complex man and the politician to a longer history of division dissent and partisanship that has come to define our current times
Andrew Jackson rose from rural poverty in the Carolinas to become the dominant figure in American politics between Jefferson and Lincoln His reputation however defies easy description Some regard him as the symbol of a powerful democratic movement that saw early 19thcentury voting rights expanded for propertyless white men Others stress Jacksons prominent role in removing Native American peoples from their ancestral lands which then became the center of a thriving southern cotton kingdom worked by more than a million enslaved people
A combative selfdefined champion of farmers mechanics and laborers Jackson railed against East Coast elites and Virginia aristocracy fostering a brand of democracy that struck a chord with the common man and helped catapult him into the presidency The General as he was known was the first president to be born of humble origins first orphan and thus far the only former prisoner of war to occupy the office
Drawing on a wide range of sources The First Populist takes a fresh look at Jacksons public career including the pivotal Battle of New Orleans 1815 and the bitterly fought Bank War it reveals his marriage to an already married woman and a deadly duel with a Nashville dandy and analyzes his magnetic hold on the public imagination of the country in the decades between the War of 1812 and the Civil War
By assessing the frequent comparisons between Jackson and Donald Trumpthe hope is that a fresh understanding of the divisive times of the countrys original antiestablishment president might shed light on our own The Christian Science Monitor
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