For whatever reason I’ve been struggling to find inspiration or motivation to review two history books I’ve read in the last month or so, and since they’re similar — early American history — I’m going to regretfully short-round them.
Most recently I finished Waking Giant, a history of Jacksonian America. It proved be quite surprising, because it revealed that a lot of what I regard as characteristic of the late 19th century — immigration, the penny press, etc — had already begun expanding dramatically in the 1830s and 1840s. Irish immigration was especially significant: the number of Catholics roared in this period, moving from Catholicism being insignificant to becoming the Union’s third-largest religion. (By the end of the 19th century, it would move into the number one slot.) Suffrage was expanding to include most white males, at least those who could pay a $1 poll tax, and with that less selective voter base came more varied candidates. Jackson was not a respectable lawyer voted in by other landed lawyers; he was a hero of the people, and they loved him. The author begins by following politics from Madison on to Jackson, allowing us to see the formation of the Whig and Democratic parties and caps the book off by looking at Tyler and Polk. In the middle there’s the expected history of Jackson himself, but also sections on how American culture was changing in this period — diving into religious expression, the popularity of individualist writers like Thoreau and Emerson, and so on. It made for fun reading, but I’m wary of some of its claims and want to read more into the era.
Some highlights:
Andrew Jackson was one of the rarities of American politics: a man whose personal magnetism transcended his flaws. To his opponents, he was ignorant, violent, politically inexperienced, even immoral. But few could deny his courage, his self-reliance, and his ability to rise above adversity.
Many Americans worshipped him—not as a god, but as one of them. He was Everyman writ large. The crowds didn’t just clap or cheer for him. They screamed at the top of their lungs. They mobbed him, they tried to touch him and shake his hand.
Legend has it that after Jackson’s death one of his slaves was asked if he thought the General had made it to heaven. The man responded, “If General Jackson wants to go to Heaven, who’s to stop him?”
Another preacher, Billy Hibbard, attacked Calvinism so strongly that a Presbyterian approached him and said his feelings were hurt. Hibbard replied, “O, I’m sorry you took that,—I meant that for the Devil, and you have stepped in and taken the blow. Don’t get between me and the Devil, brother, and then you won’t get hurt.”
When the revivalist Jesse Lee was asked by two lawyers if he ever misquoted the Bible in his unscripted sermons and had to correct himself, Lee admitted he often made a mistake but did not correct it “if it involves nothing essential.” He gave a pointed example: “The other day I tried to repeat the passage where it says the Devil ‘is a liar, and the father of them’; I got it, ‘The Devil is a lawyer, and the father of them’; but I hardly thought it necessary to rectify so unimportant an error.”
The Log Cabin campaign represented what would become a common phenomenon in American politics: the triumph of illusion over reality. In the twisted melodrama of the 1840 race, Van Buren, the self-made son of a humble farmer and tavern keeper, became a dissipated lord, while Harrison, scion of Virginia’s ruling class, became a plain frontiersman.
Many letters went undelivered. For instance, when Zachary Taylor won the Whig nomination in 1848, he did not know of the victory for weeks, because he refused to pay COD on several official notifications sent to him, and the letters went to the Dead Letter Office in Washington instead.
Back in July, I read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Benjamin Franklin, which I enjoyed enormously. Franklin was the first founding father I ever read a biography of, though I was young enough to remember it came with colored drawings. Franklin is quite the character, running away from an apprenticeship and starting over as a kid in Philadelphia, then making so much of a success of himself that he retired at age 42. The chapters on Franklin’s life as a printer were hilarious at times because he was an absolute fiend at marketing: he once predicted the death of a competing printer, then carried on pretending that the man had died and that his firm was lying about it. When the printer did die, Franklin then had the cheek to post an article written by the man’s “ghost” asserting that yes, he did in fact die last year. The man would have been a menace on social media! Although Franklin is largely remembered for his participation in the Revolution and the early Republic, I think he cuts a more interesting figure as a citizen — founding as he did multiple civic organizations, including a lending library and an early fire brigade. There’s a fair bit in here on Franklin’s issue with the Penn family that controlled Pennsylvania, an issue that took him to Britain where he served the colonies — until he realized the King and Parliament were so obdurate that only rebellion could answer their policies. He continued to be amusing, though: when he and Adams journeyed to France, Adams was the serious-minded statesman who studied his French, while Franklin learned his by flirting with ladies at court. Isaacson’s biography was extremely readable, and I intend to read more of his works.
Reading Freely 
