The Age of Jackson

Not only is this a classic Progressive interpretation of Jacksonian era politics, it offers great insight into how intellectuals of the forties understood the New Deal and saw it foreshadowed by Jackson and Van Buren. It is far from comprehensive in scope, and lack of attention to the Trail of Tears says alot about how New Deal liberals thought about diversity.

Many conservatives love Andrew Jackson and hate Franklin Roosevelt; many liberals love Franklin Roosevelt and hate Andrew Jackson; rare it is will you find a historical scholar with the cojones to point out a truth that most are loathe to admit - that the two men, though separated by a century, represented manifestations of the same basic ideology, and as such should be admired by anyone who adheres to progressive political values. Arthur Schlesinger - a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian (for this and one other book) and a high-ranking employee for Franklin D. Roosevelt, Adlai E. Stevenson, and John F. Kennedy - is supremely well-qualified to render a verdict as to Jackson's legacy. This he does, and in spades, in a book that brilliantly captures the spirit of the Jacksonian Era even while digging deep into the political, economic, social, cultural, religious, and intellectual life of the time. This book is in part a chronicle of the movers and shakers of the Jacksonian movement(Martin Van Buren, John Calhoun, Jackson himself, and countless others), but it is primarily an all-encompassing chronicle of a political movement that has been more or less forgotten today. Anyone who doesn't recommend this book either doesn't know much about American history, or has an ideological agenda that they wish to foist upon you which is impeded by the facts presented in this volume. Ignore their imprecations and read it anyway.

This book is a classic of American History, and is very much a chapter in Schlesinger's broader project of discovering the roots of (then-) modern liberalism through history. This is a book that is best described as a history of ideas, and particularly of the idea of democracy as it expanded in the 1830s and 1840s, embracing universal suffrage and economic as well as political egalitarianism. The book very much reflects the time in which it was written and the debates which it was part of, and, like much history of the period, seeks to refocus discussion of American history away from themes of frontier and nationalialism. There are several things this book is not: This book is not a comprehensive history of the period; it is not even a social or economic history of the period; it is not a biography of Jackson (indeed, Martin Van Buren may well receive more ink than Jackson in this book); and it is not an attempt to write a definitive work; rather, it is a voice in a rather lively debate. Schlesigner's voice in the book is clear and open. His own biases and prejudices are on the surface, not hidden and not given any claims of a "disinterested" scientific approach. Yet his research and his mustering of support are thorough and meticulous, and he is just as clear in discussing the shortcomings of his analysis (such as in the closing chapters) as in describing the shortcoming of other's analyses. His fundamental argument is that the Jacksonian intellectual tradition was the first American intellectual tradition to clearly recognize a need for economic as well as political egalitarianism, and the first to make good on the fundamental concept that "All men (still men in the Jacksonian age) are created equal." He focuses on the entire intellectual movement of Jacksonian Democracy, not exclusively on the General himself, and shows the differing currents of thought and how they interacted to create a policy that fundamentally based itself on addressing a conflict between classes. Schlesinger's project does have difficulty in dealing with reactions to slavery, which cut across class and ideological lines, and he wrestles through this to recognize in the end that a fundamental conflict of the time was the conflict between a sectionally and ideologically motiviated politics, resulting in much "crossing of aisles" and in radically different alliances in the 50s and 60s than existed in the 30s and 40s. Perhaps, however, it is just as important to examine ideologies that go beyond the Jacksonian economic perspectives and focus on underlying religious and moral views. Schlesigner also wrestles briefly, and less successfully still, with the impact of immigration and the opening of the frontier on the development of American political ideas. In doing so, at the end of the book, however, he is more laying out the areas needing further work than attempting to actually tackle the issues in detail. Some of the many strenghts: Schlesigner provides us

I used this book as a resource for my AP US History term paper, and it was by far the best resource I could find on Jacksonian democracy. Schlesinger carefully details the events and attitudes surrounding the shift from Jeffersonian to Jacksonian (modern) democracy. It is tough reading, and there are a few somewhat opinionated comparisons between the 1940s and 1830s, but it is outstanding history.

In the sixty years since Schlessinger wrote TAOJ, our attitudes towards history have changed. Sparked in part by the civil rights movement, we now realize the importance of Jackson's policies towards the Native Americans. In this sense, as Schlessinger and all other historians before the 1960s fail to note, Jackson was deeply flawed. Still, no one is either all good or all bad. Schlessinger paints a very good and convincing portrait of Jackson's policies towards white Americans. He shows the logic behind Jackson's opposition to the Bank of the United States and support of hard money beautifully.