American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House

Reading this book on Andrew Jackson was much like watching "The West Wing - 1830s"--for while Jackson's dominating presence was always there, it was much like President Josh Bartlett's in the TV show. He was not always center stage. Rather much of the drama we witness swirls about the cohort who surround him.

No wonder. In reading the author's acknowledgements, the "new material" he credits for informing his narrative are the letters and personal papers of President Jackson's family members and assistants who shared the White House with him. It's therefore as much their story we hearing as it is Jackson's own.

I chose to read the book because while I knew Andrew Jackson occupied the pantheon of great presidents, what earned him that place show more always seemed like a blur to me. When I was a kid, I was told he was a hero. When I grew older and learned of his involvement sending the natives in the SE United States on the Trail of Tears, I came to think of him as cruel and monstrous. This book helped to flesh out the picture, revealing that he was indeed a greatly flawed man but unquestionably a leader and one whose impact upon American history is still felt in important ways.

Furthermore, I learned not only about the man but about the era. The things I remember about Jackson from high school history was that he did something with tariffs and he killed the Bank of the United States (although the significance of either of those never registered with me). Somehow I missed the fact that he also finessed the first efforts at southern secession, perhaps preventing civil war a couple of decades before Lincoln.

It's also a crazy story, but Jackson's first term was overly occupied with his defense of the honor of the wife of a Cabinet secretary. His administration was nearly ruined by it. Never heard that in high school.

I've read that some serious Jackson scholars have some contentions with this book. But if someone wants to learn more about his presidency short of seeking a Ph.D. in Jackson studies, I would say this is a good place to start. show less

Ralph Wright, Speaker of the Vermont House of Representatives from 1985 to 1995, entitled his memoir “All Politics is Personal.” Based solely on that title, I’ll put my money on this relatively minor American state politician over world-historical Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy.

What I mean is that Tolstoy promoted the view that history is governed by vast historical tides, and that so-called great men are nothing but the foam that got lucky enough to ride the crest of the wave. Tolstoy, writing of Napoleon's failed invasion from the safe distance of fifty years, could afford in “War and Peace” to write off the Corsican as a ripple in time’s ocean.

My point is that I think Tolstoy suffered from a common error of historians, show more lovers of history, and pundits who love to use history. The godlike process of creating or consuming historical narrative can suffuse the unwary with the shekinah of inevitability. So neatly do the gears interlock, so predictably does cause lead to effect, that the personal reduces to a variable in a predestined cosmic equation.

Jon Meacham neatly sidesteps this heresy in his book on the two-term administration of Andrew Jackson, the Tennessean general and grieving widower turned president whom some feared would become an American Napoleon. For Jackson, the first president to conceive of the office as an enforcer of the people’s will rather than a mere executor of legislation, politics was personality writ large.

Meacham demonstrates this in the huge amount of space he gives to the Petticoat War, a scandal that consumed over half of Jackson’s first term and destroyed his first cabinet. Lascivious rumors swirled around the marriage of his Secretary of War, and the president’s determination to force the couple on Washington society was a warning that his would be a presidency like none before it.

Indeed, it’s difficult to imagine the scale of Jackson’s achievements without Jackson. Whether staring down the nullifiers of South Carolina, zeroing out the national debt, or killing the Bank of the United States, he stands alone in his time as a man willing to go as far as necessary to do what he believed the people wanted done. And, more often than not, he read the people correctly: to the endlessly renewed horror of political elites, Jackson’s popularity on the ground never wavered.

Meacham’s account of Jackson’s service as the seventh President of the United States is well worth your time. Meacham is even-handed, giving the president deserved credit for preserving the Union through the Nullification Crisis without attempting to justify or excuse his culpability for the ghoulish removal of southern tribes down the Trail of Tears. A dominant personality can catalyze great good or commit great evil, and Jackson did both.

Andrew Jackson was a watershed in American history, reshaping the presidency forever. Events of his administration foreshadowed the coming civil war, and Abraham Lincoln would draw on Jacksonian precedent to take federal action against rebellious states. Jackson’s administration was in many ways the end of the beginning for the Early Republic as the drift toward disunion accelerated and his theories of executive power took root. Contra Tolstoy, the “American Napoleon” mattered, and such personalities will always matter, both for good and for ill. show less

In recent years I’ve learned that I love a good biography. Presidential bios are particularly interesting because I think it takes a specific kind of person to want to be in such a lauded and attacked position of power. American Lion has been on my radar for a while and it didn’t disappoint.

Jackson broke the mold of presidents at that time. He was a fighter, a pioneer, a country boy, the opposite of the elite group of founding fathers in New England. I think he rivals Teddy Roosevelt for the title of most badass president of all time. At one point he was shot in the chest during a duel and he kept fighting!

He was more astute than most people gave him credit for. His critics often focused on his temper and stubborn nature, but he show more seemed to know when to back down or be cordial if he would benefit from it. He was fiercely loyal to his family and friends, at times to a fault. I thought it was interesting that even hundreds of years ago, the presidential office was filled with scandal and petty fights, etc. That was nothing new in the 20th century.

Jackson had his own moral code and he stuck by it. There are certainly some dark spots during his tenure as president, especially the trail of tears, which was created by his policy even if it was enacted in another president's term. Just like any other president, there were both good decisions and bad, and I’m sure that it’s much easier for us to judge them with hindsight.

BOTTOM LINE: Jackson was such an interesting president! Also, I’ll keep reading whatever Meacham chooses to write. He’s up there on my list of must read nonfiction authors with Erik Larson, Mary Roach, Bill Bryson, and a few others. I didn’t love this one as much as the author’s biography of Thomas Jefferson, but I think that has more to do with my fascinating with Jefferson.

“I was born for a storm and a calm does not suit me.” show less

Imagine John Facenda, the iconic voice of NFL Films, telling a story about a man who is complex, evil, loving, tenacious, brilliant, a mass of contradiction who heroically saves the union by in part protecting its greatest failure and sin, and you will have an understanding of American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham.

As with any family, it’s OK if criticism comes from inside the family, but woe to those outside its circle who dare utter a word against a member. A native of Chattanooga, Mr. Meacham is certainly a member of the Volunteer State family, and his portrayal of Tennessee’s favorite and most famous son is brilliant, fair and captivating.

Andrew Jackson, the first self-made man to become President, is a show more difficult man to figure out. Jackson, just a boy of 13, fought for his infant country’s freedom in the Revolutionary War. Standing up to a British officer earned him a scar from the sword of the man whose boots Jackson refused to shine. The legend of “Old Hickory” begins here, and grows out of Jackson’s success as a soldier, and leader of men.
As President Jackson consolidates the power of the office, and defines it as being a direct representative of the people. This and so many other concepts about the job and its role in our government that we now accept and take for granted where given to us by our seventh President. Jackson remains the last President to leave office with the United States being completely debt free. He stood up to the “nullifiers” of the south who felt that states should be able to nullify laws they did not agree with, and by reaching a compromise delayed the Civil War already brewing, especially in the slave states. This also made visible aspects of Jackson’s character that are frightening and troubling to those of us who admire him.

Jackson was an unashamed slave owner, and his treatment of his slaves is no less barbaric than any other master of his day. Likewise, Jackson’s willingness to flat out lie to Native Americans, violate every treaty past and present, and ultimately create the genocide that was the “trail of tears” places him among history’s most brutal and callus leaders.

Here is my one criticism of Mr. Meacham’s work. While he certainly did not look away from these dark, dark moments of Jackson’s life, I think Mr. Meacham could have allowed a more honest and stark view of Jackson’s crimes. Committing the folly of judging historical figures not by the mores of their day, but rather today’s accepted attitudes is something I usually find to be unfair. However, the raw, naked lack of compassion Jackson had for slaves and Native Americans demands a strong condemnation, even nearly 200 years later. History is written by its winners, and if the United States is to continue the painfully slow process of healing from slavery and the treatment of Indians, we must unflinchingly embrace our responsibility for those horrors.

American Lion is now one of my favorite Presidential biographies. Meacham is able to capture President Jackson’s force of personality and determination, while at the same time letting us see his frailty and shortcomings. It is this combination that makes the book so powerful, and allows the appreciation of our seventh President. show less

Rather than read another Trump tell-all book, I turned to another populist, Andrew Jackson. In Jon Meacham's telling he's more patrician than vulgarian. There's behind-the-curtain fluff driving the action here too, though, including his loyalty to John Eaton, his secretary of war, and Eaton's wife, who was a bit too frank and flirtatious for Washington in 1829. Jackson's distrust of central power seems equal parts conviction and political grudge, which makes his efforts to drain the swamp appear only somewhat more admirable than Trump's. And his convictions aren't always admirable; Old Hickory battled Native Americans in the War of 1812 and as president wanted them removed as a security threat. Yet he turned back Southern secession, show more earning the admiration of Lincoln and many presidents that followed. History, like its actors, is complicated. show less

Reading about the electoral college made me want to revisit Andrew Jackson, our 7th President. I actually read this book back in 2010, close to when it came out, but I had just had my first son and was getting no sleep with a newborn. So though this is technically a reread, I remembered almost none of it.

Jackson is a controversial president. He greatly expanded presidential power and viewed himself as a direct representative of the people. He believed this was in contrast to Congress, which until then was viewed as having the most power of the three branches. He used his veto power in a much more expansive way, vetoing bills he didn't agree with whether because of a firm-held belief or simply for a political statement. While in some show more ways, Jackson felt that because he was the direct representative of the people he should have expanded power as President, in other instances he believed in States' rights. These inconsistencies are a bit hard to understand from a modern point of view.

Three major issues are explored in this book: South Carolina's desire to nullify a federal tariff (a state's rights issue) that could have led to greater state power (and the ability to keep slavery), the removal of the Native Americans from huge swaths of land previously granted to them in treaties, and the break up of the federal bank which dispersed federal money to state banks instead of the centralized federal bank. Jackson is credited with preserving the Union by compromising the tariff in a way that allowed SC to accept it. On the Native American issue, posterity has judged him more and more harshly - rightly so in my mind. And on the bank issue? Well, I'm still a bit confused. He was supposedly combatting corruption and did balance the budget, but the country also entered a depression shortly after this move. I'd need to read more.

Jackson was a President who spoke to the average American and viewed himself as their voice in a Capitol filled with wealthy, out of touch, elitist congressmen. I'm still not sure what I think of him. This biography admits to being less of a scholarly work, and more of a look at broad topics and Jackson's relationships during his Presidency. In this way, I really liked this as an introduction to Jackson. Some day I'll tackle a more scholarly biography that gets into more detail. show less

What a disappointing piece this was. American Lion takes everything wrong with armchair history as if to serve as a textbook example of what not to do. The writing style is captivating and well polished but so infatuated with the subject that the reader gets lost - what I suspect would be a trademark of Meacham as he is not trained as a historian but rather in English.
The chronology is confusing and chapters are spent on days and weeks while entire decades are summed up in a few paragraphs or pages. The reader is given no real sense of the timeline of Jacksons life, the impact that he had upon a broader America, or the actual changes and politics of his time. The story of the Eaton Affair, which rightfully deserves a large portion of show more the book, dominates along with the handful of scandals and issues of the Jackson presidency, but you get no sense of the true history of the period.
After reading this, you are left with a flashy sense of a few episodes in the life of Jackson, a hell of a lot of quotes from Jackson, his circle, contemporary and twentieth-century historians and commentators, but you get no real idea of what Meacham was adding to the conversation. So much of the book is quotes, I would be afraid of what would be left if we husked them out and left just Meacham. This is a perfect example of the poor history we get from biography and the problem with the popularity of the genre.
Masonry plays no role in the story, at any point. No mention is given to Jackson's Grand Mastership, and only a passage is spent on the Anti-Masonic crisis that gained traction just before Jackson's ascent to the Presidency. This would have made an interesting lens to understand the man, and given fertile grounds to understand the broader historical moment. show less