The Papers of Andrew Jackson. Vol 11: 1833 ed. by Daniel Feller, Laura Eve-Moss and Thomas Coens

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Papers of Andrew Jackson. Vol 11: 1833 ed. by Daniel Feller, Laura Eve-Moss and Thomas Coens James Humphreys The Papers of Andrew Jackson. Volume 11: 1833. Edited by Daniel Feller, Laura Eve-Moss, and Thomas Coens. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2020. Pp. xxxiv, 1007. $110.00, ISBN 978-1-62190-538-7.) The eleventh volume of The Papers of Andrew Jackson—edited by Daniel Feller, Laura-Eve Moss, and Thomas Coens—provides historians with a source of inestimable value. The editors arrange the papers chronologically from January to December 1833. The documents compiled in this volume include Andrew Jackson’s correspondence with family members, friends, and political associates, as well as drafts of his 1833 inaugural address, his last will and testament, and his collected statements on major public issues. The documents alone span more than eight hundred pages. This volume focuses on an especially important year of Jackson’s two-term presidency. Voters reelected Old Hickory in November 1832, and in the next year Jackson confronted the nullification crisis and a titanic struggle over the future of the Bank of the United States. Letters dealing with the nullification crisis, which erupted when South Carolina politicians refused to comply with federal law due to disagreements concerning tariff policy, dominate the book’s early section. Joel Roberts Poinsett, a South Carolinian opposed to nullification, wrote often to Jackson, keeping the president abreast of the controversy in his home state and urging him to oppose the movement firmly but calmly. Poinsett beseeched Jackson to let public opinion, which Poinsett thought recoiled from nullification, sink the cause of the agitators in South Carolina. Jackson himself considered nullification an illegal act that threatened to destroy the Union. Letters of support arrived in Jackson’s office from every region of the United States, with writers sometimes detailing the number of men that could be raised in their states to fight if the conflict grew more serious. The letters and documents related to the nullification crisis demonstrate just how close the country came to a violent standoff in 1833. Members of Congress defused the crisis by agreeing to lower tariff rates. President Jackson (ironically, as later events showed) declared the death of the secession idea. In July 1832, Jackson had vetoed a bill to extend the charter of the Bank of the United States, which was set to expire in 1836. This volume details his plan to weaken the national bank by placing its deposits in state banks. Jackson asked his cabinet members for opinions on this strategy. Both Louis McClane, who served as Jackson’s treasury secretary from 1831 to 1833, and William John Duane, who replaced him, opposed the scheme. In his correspondence with Jackson, Duane explained that only Congress could approve such a plan and that unilateral action by the executive branch smacked of unjustified, arbitrary power. Attorney General Roger Brooke Taney disagreed, informing Jackson that the president possessed the right to undermine the Bank on the grounds that it was unconstitutional and had abused its power. Jackson appointed Taney to the Treasury post, and in October 1833 Taney began authorizing the [End Page 352] removal of funds. The Bank of the United States never recovered from Jackson’s onslaught. This volume also includes documents that reveal aspects of Andrew Jackson’s personal life. Jackson complained of bad health in many letters, informing his adopted son that “a copious bleeding” had helped relieve one of his ailments (p. 63). Jackson’s correspondence mentions the loneliness that dogged him; his wife, Rachel, had succumbed to heart trouble in 1828. He also inquired about the health of his slaves and about the state of farming operations on his Nashville plantation, the Hermitage. The effort and thought the editors have invested in this volume is stunning. They include a calendar that lists documents chronologically and have annotated, sometimes extensively, the papers in order to provide scholars with relevant background information. A fifty-six-page index concludes the volume, offering historians a quick method for finding specific documents. Volume 11 of The Papers of Andrew Jackson is an extremely impressive, highly useful collection of primary sources. James Humphreys Murray State University Copyright...