This reductionism denies historical figures the validity of their own judgments and thereby denies their human dignity—and of course invites future historians to practice the same reductionism on us. Its great value was that it helped reawaken professional interest in a complex and abundant period of American history. This paper surveys the major recent developments in the study of Jacksonian D(d)emocracy (both the Jacksonian Democratic Party and the concurrent flowering of democratic spirit), beginning with and giving particular attention to Arthur M. Unlike the great revolutions of Europe, American political conflicts, the Civil War always excepted, were over nuances, not over basic shifts in ideas and power. The merchants and the lawyers, that is, the moneyed interest broke up feudalism. ↩ 17. © 1963-2020 NYREV, Inc. All rights reserved. The Age of Jackson is more the study of the Age than of the man. In 1946 his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Age of Jackson was published to widespread acclaim. Beard had at one point planned to carry his study of Jeffersonian democracy into the Jacksonian era, and he very kindly lent me his notes on this period. In Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. If there were real disagreements in the 1960s, might not there also have been real disagreements in the 1830s? Age Of Jackson Item Preview remove-circle ... Age Of Jackson by Schlesinger, Arthur M. Publication date 1945 Topics UOD Collection digitallibraryindia; JaiGyan Language Unknown. To author Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. the clash of lasting consequence was that … Yet it appeared that eastern intellectuals like Brownson and Bancroft had their own stake in the Jacksonian uprising. Progressive history, with its emphasis on conflict, began to give way to the delineation and, for some historians, celebration of the American consensus.7. Among historians The Age of Jackson has had its ups and downs. â©, J. Franklin Jameson, The History of Historical Writing in America (Houghton Mifflin, 1891), p. 107; Alfred A. Cave, Jacksonian Democracy and the Historians (University of Florida Press, 1964), p. 52. â©, Roosevelt to House, November 21, 1933; reprinted in F. D. R.: His Personal Letters, 1928â1945, Elliott Roosevelt, ed., Volume I (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1950), p. 373. â©, Two historians who made notable contributions to the consensus interpretation of Jacksonian democracyâRichard Hofstadter in his influential essay on Jackson in The American Political Tradition (Knopf, 1948) and Edward Pessen in his voluminous and useful writings on the Jackson eraâdefined the consensus from a critical perspective and deplored it. Schlesinger was a liberal historian, and that bias does come out in the book. Yet it seems to me hard to argue that Jacksonianism, or the New Deal for that matter, was essentially the philosophy of acquisitive enterprise. In retrospect the Hamiltonians had a sounder conception of the role of government and a more constructive policy of economic development than the antistatist Jacksonians. It was as if someone had based a book called The Concept of the New Deal on the politics of the 1950s rather than on the politics of the 1930s. Schlesinger's The Age of Jackson is an example of what historical writing should be. It is this very complexity and obscurity, along with the fierceness of the polemics and the brilliance of the protagonists, that make the age of Jackson so endlessly fascinating for the historian—and insure that each generation will continue to reach back into this rich and exciting time to fashion its own image of Jacksonian democracy. Australian/Harvard Citation. As Marvin Meyers showed in his book The Jacksonian Persuasion (1957), the Jeffersonian myth was an essential part of the Jacksonian appeal—a potent appeal, in a time of wrenching economic change, to the frugal virtues of the old republic against the rising luxury, corruption, and concentrated money power. That is why Henry Clay, in calling on the Senate to censure Jackson for the removal of federal funds from the US Bank, made his passionate cry in 1833, “We are in the midst of a revolution, hitherto bloodless, but rapidly tending toward a total change of the pure republican character of the government, and to the concentration of all power in the hands of one man.”16 Even a Jacksonian like Brownson exclaimed with alarm at Jackson’s “tendency to Centralization and his evident leaning to Bureaucraticy“; Jackson had made more rapid strides toward “Centralization and to the Bureaucratic system than even the most sensitive nullifier has yet suspected.”17 Another young Jacksonian, that intelligent rogue Ben Butler of Massachusetts, wrote in his memoirs that, while he had been “dazzled with the brilliancy of Jackson’s administration…I early had sense enough to see that it conflicted, in a very considerable degree, with the teachings of Jefferson.”18, In the years since The Age of Jackson such scholars as J. G. A. Pocock and Gordon Wood have given new clarity to the competing visions of “republicanism” and “liberalism” in the first generation of independence. He also admitted his mistakes. The age of Jackson Schlesinger Arthur. The Age of Jackson by Arthur M. Schlesinger, 9780316773430, available at Book Depository with free delivery worldwide. It covers not only Jackson's own time in office but also its entire historical context--from Jefferson's egalitarian agrarian democracy (and its failure because of the rise of industrialism) thru … The Whig program was also designed to benefit the nation and to accelerate the pace of economic growth. Class resentments arise in a developed and stratified economic order. Consensus historians contended that the beliefs that united Americans—private property, free enterprise, individual opportunity, limited government—were far more significant than the arguments that occasionally divided them. “The evidence of the radical period,” Professor Cole said of New Hampshire, “…suggests that Arthur Schlesinger’s interpretation of Jacksonian democracy is more accurate than that of the entrepreneurial historians.”30 It seems, after all, that there was a struggle between the business community and the rest of society over who should control the state. â©, John M. McFaul, The Politics of Jacksonian Finance (Cornell University Press, 1972), p. 61. â©, Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Bank War, p. 125. â©, James R. Sharp, The Jacksonians versus the Bank (Columbia University Press, 1970), p. 328. The era of Jacksonian democracy is one of great importance in understanding the development of American capitalism and the history of the American working class. Brownson, moreover, had received his government job from the historian George Bancroft, who, as collector of the port of Boston, was Van Buren’s man in Massachusetts, and Bancroft evidently thought along similar lines. This formulation may carry the argument too far. The question between it and the people has become one of power.”15 Jackson, in mastering these two profound challenges to federal authority, established that authority more firmly than ever. â©, John L. O’Sullivan, “Note,” Democratic Review (May 1843). Federal funds were now deposited in state banks; but, as Professor McFaul showed, Secretary of the Treasury Taney moved quickly to issue new regulations, to assume central banking functions, and to reward “financial stability rather than political fidelity” in the allocation of government deposits.23 Deposit banking itself, Professor Remini had noted, “represented an enormous extension of executive power.”24. Send-to-Kindle or Email . See more books by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Despite internal feuding, the main body of the Democratic party supported radical reform of the banks.”28 “In the ideological universe of Jacksonian America,” Dr. John Ashworth wrote in “Agrarians” and “Aristocrats”: Party Political Ideology in the United States, 1837–1846, democracy and capitalism were in conflict. It argued that more could be understood about Jacksonian democracy if it were regarded as a problem not of sections but of classes. The Age of Jackson was published in September 1945 while I was still in the army in Europe. The first reviews appeared two weeks after the surrender of Japan. The book descriptively explains every issue and event that occurs during the time right before this era, the actual presidency of Jackson, and the populist era that occurs after Jacksonâs presidency. In this book Schlesinger reinterpreted the American era of Jacksonian democracy in terms of its cultural, social, and economic aspects as well as its strictly political dimensions. If the Jacksonians were a rabble of grasping entrepreneurs, who were the Whigs? He wrote a detailed account of the Kennedy Administration, from the transition period to the president's state funeral, titled. He also admitted his mistakes. Van Buren’s proposal that government funds be placed in federal subtreasuries, finally enacted in 1840, sought to give regulatory provisions, especially control over state bank notes, federal status. The nation was tired of wrangling and eager for healing. â©, Bancroft to the Workingmen of Northampton, October 1, 1834, Boston Courier, October 22, 1834; Bancroft to Brownson, September 21, 1836, H. F. Brownson, Orestes A. Brownson’s Early Life (H. F. Brownson, 1898), pp. Schlesinger is a good prose stylist, and there's interesting biographical detail of political leaders throughout, but I found it hard to get into this book and was often frustrated by it. To author Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. the clash of lasting consequence was … The Age of Jackson Slideshare uses cookies to improve functionality and performance, and to provide you with relevant advertising. 106–107. Could Brownson have invented the word that was soon shortened to “bureaucracy”? Growing up in the 1930s, I was conditioned politically by the passions of the New Deal era. While I am confessing error, I must say a word too for Jackson’s allies in the war against the Bank, the wildcat bankers and their poorly secured paper notes. The Jacksonians objected to the state because, as the radical editor William Leggett wrote at the time, the power of the state was “always” exercised “for the exclusive benefit of wealth. In this conviction, he appealed over the heads of Congress to the people, as in his veto message refusing to recharter the Bank of the US—“a manifesto of anarchy,” Biddle called it, “such as Marat or Robespierre might have issued to the mob of the Faubourg St. Antoine.”13 Indeed, he vetoed more bills than all his predecessors put together and did so on grounds of policy and not solely, as they had done, on presumptions of unconstitutionality. My bias was rather in favor of the hard-money policy—that is, the maintenance of a stable ratio between paper and specie—and certainly against the unrestrained issue of paper notes by banks. xvâxvi, 340â341, 615. â©, Those who condemn Jackson and his works out of hand because of his Indian removal policy should, before rushing to judgment, read Francis Paul Prucha, “Andrew Jackson’s Indian Policy: A Reassessment,” Journal of American History (December 1969). I did enjoy that part of the book. The young Schlesinger, for all the tradition he embodied, had a refreshing streak of informality. The end of colonialism after the war and the emergence of independent states in the third world created new scholarly interest in the way a nation establishes its identity, evolves its political institutions, and achieves its economic growth. That book was followed by The Age of Jackson in 1945, a celebrated history that challenged the way the Jacksonian era was previously interpreted by historians. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (1917â2007) was an American historian and social critic. “The feud between the capitalist and laborer, the house of Have and the house of Want,” Bancroft had written, “is as old as social union…. My involvement with the age of Jackson began more than half a century ago. The Age of Jackson (abridged) Arthur Meier Schlesinger No preview available - 1955. The Age of Jackson is a novel documenting the massive populist movement that begins because of Andrew Jackson. If Jacksonian democracy served the interests of liberated capitalism, why were so many capitalists so ferociously against it? Presidential candidates hereafter were chosen not by congressional caucuses but by national conventions. So, one may be sure, will be the perspective of 2040. He wrote a detailed account of, Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr., born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger, was a Pulitzer Prize recipient and American historian and social critic whose work explored the liberalism of American political leaders including Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy. But soon objections were filed against one or another aspect of the book’s argument. The consensus interpretation foundered eventually on its “campaign claptrap” assumption, that is that the Jacksonians and Whigs of the 1830s did not know, or mean, what they were talking about when they claimed that great differences divided them—that their words misrepresented their real thoughts and motives and that what they said about why they were doing what they were doing was either self-deceived or cynical; in any case, historically worthless. Schlesinger's The Age of Jackson is an example of what historical writing should be. âThe Age of Jacksonâ is more the study of the Age than of the man. Neither side was prepared to redefine its principles and policies. It was an era of bank vs. people, plutocrats vs. common man, North vs. South and abolitionist vs. slaveocrat. “A good deal of positive government,” wrote John L. O’Sullivan, the editor of the Democratic Review, “may be yet wanted to undo the manifold mischiefs of past misgovernment.”21 Regulation was required to prevent banks and corporations from erecting a new structure of privilege. Please see Wikipedia's template documentation for further citation fields … This generation has been splendidly served by Robert V. Remini’s three volumes published between 1977 and 1984 and followed in 1988 by the author’s one-volume abridgment. It was the East, not the frontier, that had the bitter experience of shrinking opportunity, growing inequality, and hardening class lines. One or another aspect of the age of jackson schlesinger Kennedy Administration, from the transition period to the 's! Than half a century ago if it were regarded as a problem not of sections but of classes ( 1843. But soon objections were filed against one or another aspect of the man bank vs. people, plutocrats vs. man. 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