aashtech's Full Review: David S. Reynolds - Waking Giant: America in the A...
Looking for a book about Andrew Jackson—one of the most significant American Presidents—cursory research brought David S Reynolds’ recent book, Waking Giant, America in the Age of Jackson. Jackson was larger than life. The author saw him as, “one of the rarities of American politics; a man whose personal magnetism transcended his flaws.”
This book is a solid overview of the times, fully covering 1815 to 1848. We get a studious, in-depth analysis of daily life. Much of the times are fascinating.
However, I really wanted to take more substance about Andrew Jackson and selected the wrong book for that. There are a few paragraphs and pages here and there but the larger issues of the economy, slavery, and the Indian relocation (notably the Trail of Tears) came up short for me.
Here are some examples.
In the Battle of New Orleans, Jackson “cobbled together a small force of army regulars, militiamen, Choctaw Indians, liberated Haitian slaves, and Baratarian pirates.” This was the irregular band at his disposal, set to hold off 10,000 British troops. Jackson’s men were behind a wall of earth, wood, and cotton bales. The British attacked on January 8, 1815. Before the day was done, nearly two-thousand redcoats were killed, wounded, or captured compared to sixty on the American side. Jackson’s victory made him an American hero.
That merited two paragraphs, although it is referenced throughout his campaign by supporters and foes alike.
In 1824 Jackson ran for President and won 43 percent of the popular vote, ahead of Adams (31,) Clay (13,) and Crawford (13.) Clay had won three large states and so his support behind one of the other candidates would make the difference. He reluctantly swung his votes to Adams. Jackson was perturbed but quiet until Adams appointed Clay as his secretary of state. Charging this as a “corrupt bargain” that robbed him of a clearly popular victory, Jackson set his sights on the 1828 election. He secured 56 percent of the votes in that election, a margin unmatched in the entire century.
Slavery, Indian relocation, a turbulent central economy, expanding consciousness and experimental lifestyles, lawlessness in the west, and both scientific and religious expansion made a challenging backdrop for Jackson which he stood up well to. He made some mistakes—and some enemies—but became the only American President to pay off the national debt.
Just the facts Pub year: 2008 ISBN: 978-0-06-082656-7
Author David S Reynolds is Distinguished Professor of English and American Studies at the Graduate Center and Baruch College of the City University of New York. He is the author of Walt Whitman’s America: A Cultural Biography, winner of the Bancroft Prize and the Ambassador Book Award and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His other books include Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville (winner of the Christian Gauss Award and Honorable Mention for the John Hope Franklin Prize),Whitman: A Very Short Introduction,George Lippard, and Faith in Fiction: The Emergence of Religious Literature in America. He is the editor of A Historical Guide to Walt Whitman, George Lippard, Prophet of Protest: Writings of an American Radical, 1822-1854, and Lippard’s The Quaker City; or, The Monks of Monk Hall by George Lippard. He is the coeditor of The Serpent in the Cup: Temperance in American Literature and George Thompson’s “Venus in Boston” and Other Tales of Nineteenth-Century City Life.
David Reynolds was born and raised in Barrington, Rhode Island. He earned the B.A. at Amherst College and the Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley. He is married to the author and professor Suzanne Nalbantian. They live in Old Westbury, New York. They have a daughter, Aline Reynolds, who attends Barnard College.
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