Emily Donelson of Tennessee

Abstract

Emily Donelson of Tennessee. By Pauline Wilcox Burke. Edited by Jonathan M. Atkins. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2001. Pp. xx, 358. Illustrations. $35.00.) In 1941, Pauline Wilcox Burke published a two-volume account of life of her great-grandmother, Emily Donelson. Burke's ancestor was no ordinary southern woman. Donelson was a favorite niece of Andrew Jackson and had married her first cousin, Andrew Jackson Donelson, nephew of and private secretary to Jackson. After death of Jackson's wife Rachel, Donelson served as president's hostess in executive mansion. She also played a crucial role in Eaton Affair that tore apart not only Jackson's first administration, but also his beloved family circle. proper Emily Donelson squared off against her powerful uncle, staunchly refusing to socialize with Margaret Peggy Eaton. breach between them was finally overcome, but only after months of emotional anguish. Sadly, suffering from tuberculosis, she would not live to see end of Jackson's presidency. Donelson's short life is stuff of which a good biography might be made. Unfortunately, Emily Donelson of Tennessee is not it. In his editorial introduction, Jonathan M. Atkins explains that University of Tennessee Press asked him to produce a new edition of 1941 biography. Atkins chose to cut work down to a single accessible and affordable volume by eliminating material inessential to narrative (xviii) and trimming or deleting many of letters and documents that Burke had cited. Atkins is absolutely correct in his assertion that the historic Emily Donelson well deserves attention of a modern biographer as she offers a subject with ample sources for further understanding experience of an elite southern woman in Jacksonian era (xvii). Despite his recognition of Donelson's potential as an important biographical subject, Atkins was unable to edit Burke's original into much more than an account of personal and family life of Andrew Jackson rather than an insightful biography of activities and thoughts of Emily Donelson. At times, she disappears from scene or is merely on sidelines for pages and pages. I wish Atkins had chosen to take on challenge of writing a new biography of Donelson himself or, at least, to edit a collection of letters of Emily Donelson. Either of these options would have been more useful to scholars and general readers than an abridged edition of 1941 work. Burke's overly romanticized and melodramatic-and often racist-language already had grown outdated by 1941 and certainly has no place in 2002. A historical work likely to be read by a popular audience interested in Jackson or southern women does a disservice to field by preserving such sentences as: The warmth of a June sun was no greater than embrace of these two, husband [Andrew Jackson] and wife [Rachel Jackson], still lovers after thirty-three years of married life. …