Andrew Jackson, Southerner by Mark R. Cheathem (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 86 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Andrew Jackson, Southerner Mark R. Cheathem Writing with the ease and confidence of an experienced historian, Mark Cheathem argues that Andrew Jackson is best understood as a southern gentleman whose identity resonated with millions of Americans (2-4). Eagerly seeking admission into the exclusive world of the southern gentry, Jackson embraced horse racing, land speculation , slave trading, gambling, Indian fighting, and dueling. As an antebellum southern gentleman , Jackson obeyed the strictures of patriarchy, masculinity, honor, loyalty, and kinship networks, utilizing the latter to great effect in his personal, professional, and political life. Cheathem holds that Jackson’s southern identity—replete with internal tensions and demonstrated most visibly in the pursuit of Manifest Destiny—inspired both admiration and consternation among Americans in the years before the Civil War. Synthesizing a wealth of primary and older and current secondary sources, including numerousmanuscriptcollectionsatTheFilsonHistorical Society, Cheathem covers virtually every major controversy in Jackson’s times, including nullification , abolition, Indian Removal, the Bank War, the Margaret Eaton scandal, and Texas independence . The author begins with Jackson’s formative years in the Scots-Irish cultural milieu of the South Carolina backcountry. Cheathem argues that Jackson’s identity as a southerner grew out trans-Mississippi expansion. Bergmann successfully assaults the ideal of the lone pioneer farmer, the autonomous militiaman, the entrepreneurial fur-trader, the hardy British-Canadian exile, and the noble but doomed Indian as isolated agents of change. All these groups saw and used the emerging federal state as a powerful catalyst for nation building and when it imperiled their goals, recognized the state as a violent and formidable military and economic force. This book should appeal to anyone interested the transformation of the early national West and the role played by a surprisingly potent federal government. Daniel Ingram Ball State University Mark R. Cheathem. Andrew Jackson, Southerner. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013. 312 pp. ISBN: 9780807150986 (cloth), $39.95. BOOK REVIEWS SPRING 2014 87 of this region’s links to the Atlantic economy (8). ReadersalsogaininterestinginsightsintoJackson’s early adoption of classical republican theory and his behavior as a slave dealer, father, and ruthless military leader. A theoretically sophisticated chapter on patriarchy advances the author’s argument effectively while the chapter on the 1828 election proves entertaining. Still, Cheathem leaves unanswered some questions and issues worth considering. For example, what specifically differentiated a western frontiersman from a southern gentleman and were these two identities mutually exclusive? Jackson’s political base clearly lay in the South, but his candidacy also attracted many northern small farmers, laborers, and artisans. The term “Democratic party” (135, 162) did not become standardized nationwide until 1834, with many newspapers in early 1832 using the term “Jackson Party.” In addition, the chapters on Indian Removal and the Bank War could have been stronger. Cheathem cites Robert Remini and Francis Paul Prucha—both generally sympathetic to Jackson—but he fails to note Mary Hershberger’s excellent article linking women reformers to Indian Removal. To use the words “emigration” and “displaced” (155, 159) interchangeably with “forced removal,” as Cheathem does, results in a more euphemistic discourse that understates the human tragedy of Indian removal. Other historians have viewed removal as genocide, imperialism, and white supremacy whereas Cheathem argues that Jackson saw removal as necessary to end a security threat to white southern society (159). The House committee that investigated the Bank of the United States on allegations of corruption in early 1832 was not, as the author states, “controlled by Biddle’s backers,” but by the antiBUSRepresentativeAugustinClaytonofGeorgia . And while the author demonstrates clearly that many southerners drifted from Jackson because of his heavy-handed maneuvers in the Bank War, the author misses the point that the BUS proved both popular and valuable in many parts of the South, which helps explain some southern defections from Jackson. Indeed, though it may seem counterintuitive, a few historians have posited that the BUS may have been more popular in the South than New England (167), where competing financial institutions thrived. Congressional votes do not tell the complete story. Many planters , merchants, factors, state bankers, and slave trading firms appreciated the BUS’s unique ability to provide a stable currency, equalize exchange...