The First Populist: The Defiant Life of Andrew Jackson

A number of biographies have been written about the seventh president of the United States, but none has positioned Andrew Jackson so firmly in the forefront of the country's populist tradition. Now, historian David S. Brown traces Jackson's unusual life and legacy, shedding new light on his place in our nation's history and focusing on his role as a leader "of the people." Andrew Jackson rose from rural poverty in the Carolinas to become the dominant figure in American politics between the ages of Jefferson and Lincoln. His reputation, however, defies easy description. Some regard him as the symbol of a powerful democratic movement that saw early nineteenth-century voting rights expanded for propertyless white males. Others stress Jackson's prominent role in removing Native Americans from their ancestral lands, which became the center of a thriving southern cotton kingdom worked by more than a million enslaved people. A combative, self-defined champion of "farmers, mechanics, and laborers," Jackson railed against East Coast elites and Virginia aristocracy, fostering a brand of democracy that struck a chord with the comman man and helped catapult him into the presidency. "The General," as he was known, was the first president to be born of humble origins, the first who was an orphan, and the first and thus far only former prisoner of war -- a nearly fatal experience that occurred during the American Revolution when, as a teenage courier, he was captured and assaulted by British soldiers. Drawing on a wide range of sources, The First Populist takes a fresh look at Jackson's public career, including the pivotal Battle of New Orleans (1815) and the bitterly fought Bank War that pitted Jackson against the federally authorized second Bank of the United States, which he attacked as fundamentally corrupt and controlled by financial elites. It reveals Jackson's marriage to an already married woman and deadly duel with a Nashville dandy, and analyzes his magnetic hold on the public imagination in the momentous decades between the War of 1812 and the Civil War. Presenting a full portrait of a consequential and controversial American life, The First Populist offers a new interpretation of Jackson's legacy, showing Old Hickory's place in a larger historical context of division, dissent, and partisanship that have been rekindled in our own times. Scribner, Hardcover, 1st Edition, 1st Printing, 2022. THIS IS A BRAND NEW BOOK.…