Andrew Jackson: The Course of American Freedom, 1822-1832, Vol. 2 Book

Volume II of Robert Remini's biography of Andrew Jackson picks up with an enfeebled and exhausted Jackson returning to Tennessee following his brief tenure as territorial governor of Florida. Remini details just how ill Jackson was and how hard he had been on his body. Reading about all of the physical ailments that plagued the man makes one wonder just how he continued living. Truly someone of only the strongest willpower could manage to survive all of his injuries, battle wounds, and deprivations. Regardless of what one may think about Jackson (and there is no shortage of thinks to dislike), anyone who willingly lances into his own arms in order to stop hemorrhaging deserves respect in the physical endurance category.

The Jackson we see here is (somewhat) less mean-spirited and vindictive than when he was younger. Jackson, in some respects but not others, mellowed a bit with age. He was more prone to attack people with his pen than a rifle, although there were still moments when his orneriness got the better of him and he threatened people. Despite this volume covering his election as President in 1828, a profound sense of melancholy hangs over it. Jackson was completely devoted to his wife Rachel. By now very fat, Rachel was in ill health which was not helped by nasty rumors about her running off with Jackson decades before while she was married to another man. These accusations (it is difficult to separate fact from fiction concerning Andrew and Rachel's courtship and early years together, although it seems at least fairly certain that they were not angels) hastened Rachel's deteriorating health, most likely contributing to her fatal heart attack only a few weeks after Jackson was declared the winner. Thus, by the time Jackson departs Nashville for Washington, he is grieving widower who steadfastly refuses to forgive anyone who spoke disrespectfully about his late wife.

While generally favorable to Jackson (Remini tends to make Jackson out to be more a benevolent father figure than a master to his slaves), Remini has no problem taking Jackson to task for his extremely poor Cabinet selection and his even more misguided loyalty to John Eaton, his pick for Secretary of War. Eaton had recently married Peggy Timberlake, who, to put it politely, had a well-known reputation for not being virtuous. This subsequently caused a major scandal in Jackson's administration, for a time derailing his efforts at governmental reform. Jackson foolishly not only stuck by Eaton but admonished his Cabinet and others who shunned Mrs. Eaton. He went so far as to even call a Cabinet meeting just to discuss how the affair and how he expected the other Cabinet members wives' to not shun the Eatons. While Eaton was loyal to Jackson, he was not particularly qualified to hold a Cabinet position in the first place. And, when adding his scandalous - for that time period - marriage (Eaton was a recent widower) to the mix, this was really a poorly made decision to have him be a top member of Jackson's administration.

Remini is fairly balanced when it comes to discussing Jackson's brutal and racist Indian removal policy. While he takes pains to point out that historians have tended to place the bulk of the blame on Jackson's doorstep for the atrocious and inexcusable treatment of Native American tribes, and that this tendency is not quite the whole picture, he does not give Jackson a pass. Jackson, while at times showing some concern for the tribes, adopted the condescending, paternal attitude of white men towards red men that permeated the 19th century, and sadly still exists in pockets today. While Jackson made some effort to be humane towards the chiefs and their peoples, his urgings were always cloaked with thinly-veiled threats that if the Indians did not do as he and the government wished, more heartache and bloodshed would occur for them, and that ultimately they would lose the battle to remain on their native lands. I thought Remini's treatment of this issue is much more nuanced, and also rightly critical of Jackson's actions and attitudes, than his discussion in Volume I about Jackson being a slaveholder.

The political machinations of Jackson's Cabinet are covered in great detail. While the discussion probably could have been edited better (do we really need to know every move that Martin Van Buren, John Eaton, and others, made?), the narrative does not bog down for too long. Jackson, the dominant man of the era, remains at the center of it all, being the undisputed man in charge. Remini ends this volume with Jackson vetoing the renewal of the charter of the Bank of the United States, and being re-elected President in 1832. Although Remini is still a little too pro-Jackson for my tastes (for example, on page 391 he writes that the American people reelected him because they "...had confidence in his leadership because he stood for morality and virtue in government..."), this is a satisfactory follow-up to Volume I.

Grade: B