Civilization in the Balance
I am not a great fan of President Andrew Jackson. Yet this equestrian statue (erected in 1852, five years after its commissioning), in front of the White House, is one of the most important pieces… »
No Worse Enemy. No Better Friend
A review of In Defense of Andrew Jackson (Regnery History, 2018) by Bradley J. Birzer I was recently in Nashville, Tennessee, with family, and took the opportunity to visit Andrew Jackson’s home-turned-museum, “The Hermitage.” I… »
In Defense of Andrew Jackson
A review of In Defense of Andrew Jackson by Brad Birzer (Regnery History, 2018). Andrew Jackson, who Davy Crockett famously mocked as “the great man in the white house,” occupies an entire epoch in American… »
On Tour at The Hermitage
On Labor Day, I visited The Hermitage, Andrew Jackson’s Nashville manor. As a Tennessee native, going to The Hermitage was always a goal of mine – even though for various reasons I had never been… »
Trump on Jackson
Historians and pundits came out in droves decrying President Trump’s recent claim that Andrew Jackson could have negotiated a peaceful resolution to the Civil War. Infusing their alarm was Trump’s clumsy chronology connecting Jackson to… »
Trump as Historian
In a recent interview on Sirius XM, President Trump, now completely enthralled by Andrew Jackson, made a couple of interesting remarks about the War of Northern Aggression, specifically theorizing that if Andrew Jackson were President… »
The Cause of Jackson is the Cause of Us All
Old Hickory has been chopped off the front of the twenty-dollar bill. Andrew Jackson will still appear on the back of the bill, but Harriet Tubman (freed slave, conductor on the mostly mythical Underground Railroad,… »
Andrew Jackson: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
‘If only I can restore to our institutions their primitive simplicity and purity, can only succeed in banishing those extraneous corrupting influences which tend to fasten monopoly and aristocracy on the Constitution and to make… »
The Southern Cradle: A Review of The Other Irish by Karen F. McCarthy
The sub-title of Karen F. McCarthy’s highly readable The Other Irish: The Scots-Irish Rascals Who Made America sums up the book’s tone and scope: “The Scots-Irish Rascals Who Made America.” This is a general introduction… »
The South and the West, Part 2
It seems my mission here is to bring to your attention unfamiliar and unfashionable truths about American history. Let me give you another one. The American West, the frontier, was NOT conquered and settled by… »
