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Andrew Jackson

Robert V. Remini, Foreword by General Wesley K. Clark, Palgrave MacMillan, 224 pp., $21.95

At first glance, Andrew Jackson’s inclusion in Clark’s Great Generals series seems an anomaly. Old Hickory fought precisely one major battle against a major opponent, at New Orleans in 1815. The rest of his victories involved small-scale encounters against isolated European outposts or were won against American Indians, who are seldom considered top-ranked combatants by the military history community. But Remini, the leading Jackson expert, challenges that conventional mode of thinking with this perceptive, convincing revisionist case: He considers Jackson an outstanding general whose military career had a significant impact on America’s development as a nation.

Jackson emerged from a frontier milieu where service in arms was expected of young men— militia service, that is, with raw, motley locals defending their isolated villages or counties, as opposed to anything resembling a regular army. Since officers were elected, it was possible for an ambitious, charismatic man to rise to a rank that brought him into the upper social classes. Here is the key to Andrew Jackson: He was furiously driven to succeed. He was also what Remini calls “a born leader of men.” A towering 6-foot-1, slender to the point of emaciated, crowned with that now-famous shock of hair, Jackson, known for his unflagging self-confidence and fiery temper, possessed unusual physical and moral presence in a tight-knit if spread-out community that valued those qualities highly.

Above all, he understood the dynamics of leading part-time soldiers: sharing their hardships, addressing their needs, recognizing their achievements. That style of leadership was well suited to the relatively small forces he commanded. In a larger, more systematically articulated army, Jackson’s personal dimension might have been lost, or limited in its effect. Instead he was able to make a forceful direct impression and sustain it even in the vicissitudes of frontier campaigning.

Remini calls Jackson “lucky,” someone regularly in the right place and time when opportunities developed. But as with most great figures, that luck was in good part a consequence of determination. Andrew Jackson was not a particularly inspired tactician. Nor was he a great battle captain: He never personally led his men at the crucial points of combat in the fashion of Mad Anthony Wayne or Daniel Morgan. But whether fighting Creeks or Seminoles, Spanish or British, Jackson possessed a clear and unwavering sense of strategic objectives and pursued them relentlessly.

Jackson’s military achievements were legion. He broke the Creeks as a military power. He ended British visions of an enclave at the mouth of the Mississippi. Moreover, by defeating America’s enemies as a general, Jackson confirmed this country’s independence. As president, he would assert that independence at home and abroad in ways that shaped American policy and growth virtually until the Civil War.

 

Originally published in the December 2008 issue of American History. To subscribe, click here