The Jacksonian Promise

In Jacksonian Promise historian Daniel Feller offers a fresh look at the United States in the tumultuous Age of Jackson. Viewing the era through the eyes of people who lived in it, Feller's account captures the optimism and energy that filled America after the War of 1812. His emphasis on Americans' confidence in the future and faith in improvement challenges historians who depict the Jacksonian temperament in terms of anxiety and foreboding. Jacksonian Promise opens with the Jubilee anniversary of Independence in 1826, when Americans celebrated their national birthright of liberty and opportunity. Blessed with abundant resources and what they held to be the best government on earth, citizens believed they could accomplish nearly anything. They felt it in their power to remake themselves, their country, and the world. Feller traces the influence of this enterprising spirit across a broad range of Jacksonian activity. Experiment and innovation flourished as Americans built canals and factories, founded unions and utopias, staged religious revivals and moral crusades, and campaigned to eradicate social ills and to purify law and politics. Yet despite their common source, competing programs of progress soon clashed with each other. As citizens organized to pursue their hopes for America's future, divisions arose among that pointed ultimately toward civil war.

A perennial choice for courses on antebellum America, Jacksonian America continues to be a popular classroom text with scholars of the period, even among those who bridle at Pessen's iconoclastic views of Old Hickory and his "inegalitarian society."

The Jacksonian period under review in this dictionary served as a transition period for the United States. The growing pains of the republic’s infancy, during which time Americans learned that their nation would survive transitions of political power, gave way to the uncertainty of adolescence. While the United States did not win its second war, the War of 1812, with its mother country, it reaffirmed its independence and experienced significant maturation in many areas following the conflict’s end in 1815. As the second generation of leaders took charge in the 1820s, the United States experienced the challenges of adulthood. The height of those adult years, from 1829 to 1849, is the focus of the Historical Dictionary of the Jacksonian Era and Manifest Destiny. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of the Jacksonian Era and Manifest Destiny contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 200 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about this era in American history.

The brief period from 1829 to 1849 was one of the most important in American history. During just two decades, the American government was strengthened, the political system consolidated, and the economy diversified. All the while literature and the arts, the press and philanthropy, urbanization, and religious revivalism sparked other changes. The belief in Manifest Destiny simultaneously caused expansion across the continent and the wretched treatment of the Native Americans, while arguments over slavery slowly tore a rift in the country as sectional divisions grew and a national crisis became almost inevitable. The A to Z of the Jacksonian Era and Manifest Destiny takes a close look at these sensitive years. Through a chronology that traces events year-by-year and sometimes even month-by-month actions are clearly delineated. The introduction summarizes the major trends of the epoch and the four administrations therein. The details are then supplied in several hundred cross-referenced dictionary entries, and the bibliography concludes this essential tool for anyone interested in history.

Huntington examines the persistent gap between the promise of American ideals and the performance of American politics. He shows how Americans have always been united by the democratic creed of liberty, equality, and hostility to authority, but how these ideals have been frustrated through institutions and hierarchies needed to govern a democracy.

The story of the battle that saved New Orleans, made Andrew Jackson a hero for the ages, and shaped the American public memory of the war. Whether or not the United States “won” the war of 1812, two engagements that occurred toward the end of the conflict had an enormous influence on the development of American identity: the successful defenses of the cities of Baltimore and New Orleans. Both engagements bolstered national confidence and spoke to the élan of citizen soldiers and their militia officers. The Battle of New Orleans—perhaps because it punctuated the war, lent itself to frontier mythology, and involved the larger-than-life figure of Andrew Jackson—became especially important in popular memory. In Glorious Victory, leading War of 1812 scholar Donald R. Hickey recounts the New Orleans campaign and Jackson’s key role in the battle. Drawing on a lifetime of research, Hickey tells the story of America’s “forgotten conflict.” He explains why the fragile young republic chose to challenge Great Britain, then a global power with a formidable navy. He also recounts the early campaigns of the war—William Hull’s ignominious surrender at Detroit in 1812; Oliver H. Perry’s remarkable victory on Lake Erie; and the demoralizing British raids in the Chesapeake that culminated in the burning of Washington. Tracing Jackson’s emergence as a leader in Tennessee and his extraordinary success as a military commander in the field, Hickey finds in Jackson a bundle of contradictions: an enemy of privilege who belonged to Tennessee’s ruling elite, a slaveholder who welcomed free blacks into his army, an Indian-hater who adopted a native orphan, and a general who lectured his superiors and sometimes ignored their orders while simultaneously demanding unquestioning obedience from his men. Aimed at students and the general public, Glorious Victory will reward readers with a clear understanding of Andrew Jackson’s role in the War of 1812 and his iconic place in the postwar era.

“An important book that rescues George B. McClellan’s military reputation.” —Chronicles Bold, brash, and full of ambition, George Brinton McClellan seemed destined for greatness when he assumed command of all the Union armies before he was 35. It was not to be. Ultimately deemed a failure on the battlefield by Abraham Lincoln, he was finally dismissed from command following the bloody battle of Antietam. To better understand this fascinating, however flawed, character, Ethan S. Rafuse considers the broad and complicated political climate of the earlier 19th Century. Rather than blaming McClellan for the Union’s military losses, Rafuse attempts to understand his political thinking as it affected his wartime strategy. As a result, Rafuse sheds light not only on McClellan’s conduct on the battlefields of 1861-62 but also on United States politics and culture in the years leading up to the Civil War. “Any historian seriously interested in the period will come away from the book with useful material and a better understanding of George B. McClellan.” —Journal of Southern History “Exhaustively researched and lucidly written, Rafuse has done an excellent job in giving us a different perspective on ‘Little Mac.’” —Civil War History “Rafuse’s thoughtful study of Little Mac shows just how enthralling this complex and flawed individual continues to be.” —Blue & Gray magazine