A biography of President Andrew Jackson that offers a new perspective on this charismatic figure in the context of American populism—identifying the reasons for his unprecedented appeal as it shows us the man and politician in his full complexity.
David S. Brown's compelling new biography of a former American president depicts a man who was imperious and sensitive to slights and and collected enemies throughout his career...He ran for the presidency as a populist who condemned elites and convinced voters that he could turn back the clock in a changing America...Many denounced him for his autocratic tendencies, but the criticisms did little to slow his rise...While this description carries echoes of recent history, the presidency of Brown’s subject commenced nearly 200 years ago...In The First Populist: The Defiant Life of Andrew Jackson, the author covers the early years, military service, and political career of the seventh president, the most significant leader between the eras of Jefferson and Lincoln...Brown, a historian and author of biographies of Henry Adams and F. Scott Fitzgerald, succeeds in placing his subject in the context of his fraught times...By assessing the frequent comparisons between Jackson and Donald Trump, Brown is positioning his reexamination of Jackson as a particularly timely one...The hope is that a fresh understanding of the divisive times of 'the country’s original anti-establishment president' might shed light on our own.
The Schlesinger who oversaw the early polls that ranked Jackson so high, of course, was Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Age of Jackson, which lauded Old Hickory as a powerful president who ushered in a greater democratic order in the United States....Brown’s Jackson is a dueler, a 'slaveholder, architect of Indian removal, and a critic of abolitionism'...Jackson, Brown writes, 'ruled by agitating, confronting, and dividing,' developed a 'cult of personality,' and 'practiced a politics of disruption and populism, while fostering and anti-establishment ethos'...The old Democratic Party hero has become a villain for those who judge historical figures by contemporary values, standards, and ideologies...So Schlesinger’s hagiography has been replaced by Brown’s political correctness...And our times suffer from an ideological wokeness that is obsessed with pulling down statues, renaming schools and military bases, re-interpreting history, and revising our estimates of historical figures who don’t measure-up to 21st century sensibilities...For Brown, Jackson’s politics prefigured Trump in racial animosities, populism, and partisanship...Brown’s liberal ideological bias is clear for all to see.
Brown, a history professor and author of books on Richard Hofstadter and F. Scott Fitzgerald, adds to the already rich biographical material on Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) by focusing on his advocacy for ordinary citizens against 'established elites'...Brown’s approach offers an often revealing view of how Jackson, drawing on reserves of charisma and ferocity, leveraged his identity as a political outsider to claim widespread popular support...Brown also makes clear the essential contradictions in Jackson’s character and ideology...Though avowedly committed to the rights of common people, Jackson became a wealthy slave owner, fiercely defended the honor code of aristocratic plantation owners, and saw few limitations to the legitimate powers of the presidency itself...As Brown argues, 'the script being written today, that economic inequality, liberal elitism, and demographic changes in America and elsewhere have encouraged a backlash reflected in the rise of charismatic strongman leadership, is one that applies to Jackson as well'...An instructive exploration of a controversial and enduringly relevant president.
