VOLUME 15 JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 1829-1837 BY WILLIAM MACDONALD, LL.D. PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN BROWN UNIVERSITY : 1 HARVARD Copyright, 1906, by HARPER & BROTHERS. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA F-R xii.); removal of the deposits (chapter xiii.); and the hitherto rather neglected subject of Jackson's interesting though somewhat blundering attempts at reform (chapter xiv.). Chapter xv. passes out of national affairs into a discussion of the changes which the state governments were undergoing in this period of constitutional unrest. Chapters xvi. and xvii. describe the complicated questions of the public lands and surplus revenue, and lead up to chapter xvii., on the election of 1836. The text concludes with an interesting chapter (xviii.) on Jackson as president and man, which reviews his public service. The Critical Essay on Authorities is a convenient selection from the mass of literature on the period. The character of Andrew Jackson is so distinct and so aggressive that few writers upon the period can resist the temptation to group the events of his administration around his personality. This temptation Professor MacDonald has resisted. His conception of the period is that it witnessed the fruition of national policies, nearly all of which would have come up and would have divided the nation had there been no Andrew Jackson. At the same time, he shows how that dominant personality determined when and how most of the great questions should arise; and how Jackson hammered out a series of political principles which became the foundation of a new democratic party. TH AUTHOR'S PREFACE HE present narrative has been kept, for the most part, strictly within the limits of the eight years of Jackson's administrations. It has not, however, been possible in all cases to avoid summarizing the early course of movements having important development within this period, though I have tried to avoid undue overlapping. The subject of slavery is, by the plan of the series, excluded altogether. As I am not writing a life of Jackson, but an account of his time, many personal details have also been omitted. The volume is, in part, the outcome of special studies, of which the fruit has been presented in lectures given in the ordinary course of instruction at Bowdoin College and Brown University, and to summer classes at Harvard, Cornell, and the University of Chicago. I am under obligation to many students at all of these institutions for aid in the collection and sifting of data. I am also particularly indebted to Mr. Worthington C. Ford, of the manuscript division of the Library of Congress, for generous privileges in the consultation of the Jackson and Van Buren papers under his charge. As |