I just finished reading American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham. It is a quite readable book providing a lot of information about Jackson and the Jacksonian age, about which I knew very little. Not surprising for a book that won the Pulitzer Prize.
Meacham seems to believe Jackson was a vary complex man whose personality was marked by many contradictions. I wonder whether that it true.
He was obviously touched by enormous good luck. Simply to have survived two great gunshot wounds and two later assassination attempts while he was in office required great luck. He must also have had great talent, else how could a poor orphan become a lawyer, successful general, and ultimately president of the United States.
But he seems a man who displayed the culture of his time and place. As a child he and his brothers fought for the revolutionary side in the American Revolution, and he saw his two brothers die as a result, so no wonder he was for the Union. He grew up poor, the son of Scots-Irish immigrants in South Carolina, so it does not surprise me that he bought slaves as soon as he was able to do so and that he supported the institution of slavery, nor that he fought against the native Americans and thought nothing of taking their land to give it to men of his own race and class, nor that he took the side of the working man against that of the oligarchy.
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