Reviews
With tremendous admiration, even reverence, for his subject, Buchanan (The Road to Guilford Courthouse) recounts Andrew Jackson's early career and rise to American war hero. He focuses on the westward expansion from the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River, which he describes as a "folk movement" or mass migration of rough, often lawless people determined to lay claim to a new land and to fight until they prevailed. With graphic first-person accounts of Indian massacres and the retaliatory strikes of settlers, the author provides a very detailed military history of Jackson's defeat of the Chicamunga Cherokees and the creek tribes who claimed sovereignty, until 1814, over the southeastern United States, and of his victory at the battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812. Buchanan uses quotations from primary sources so well that they blend almost seamlessly with his own writing, which can sound oddly archaic and overwrought to modern ears (soldiers are "released by death"; British ships bound "eaglelike over the waves"). In Buchanan's eyes, Jackson is nothing short of "superhuman," and there is little balance in his treatment of Jackson's controversial views on Indians (the future president eschewed the idea of Indian sovereignty, although Buchanan argues that it was the English, and not the Indians, whom Jackson hated) or his invasion of Florida, a possession of Neutral Spain, at the close of the Creek Indian war. Buchanan is unabashedly nostalgic for the days when battlefields were "fields of honor" and the ungoverned individualism and hunger for expansion of the frontier was at the forefront of the American experience. This account will appeal mainly to those who enjoy military history. (Publishers Weekly) "John Buchanan gives a compelling account of Jackson's Indian-fighting days, but he provides as well a grand sweep of the conquest of the trans-Appalachian West...Mr. Buchanan writes with style and insight. He accepts the reality of the conquest, understands the era and the people and, refreshingly, does not attempt to pose modern-day sensibilities on the events. This is history at its best." (The Wall Street Journal, July 26, 2001), * With tremendous admiration, even reverence, for his subject, Buchanan (The Road to Guilford Courthouse) recounts Andrew Jackson's early career and rise to American war hero. He focuses on the westward expansion from the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River, which he describes as a ""folk movement"" or mass migration of rough, often lawless people determined to lay claim to a new land and to fight until they prevailed. With graphic first-person accounts of Indian massacres and the retaliatory strikes of settlers, the author provides a very detailed military history of Jackson's defeat of the Chicamunga Cherokees and the creek tribes who claimed sovereignty, until 1814, over the southeastern United States, and of his victory at the battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812. Buchanan uses quotations from primary sources so well that they blend almost seamlessly with his own writing, which can sound oddly archaic and overwrought to modern ears (soldiers are ""released by death""; British ships bound ""eaglelike over the waves""). In Buchanan's eyes, Jackson is nothing short of ""superhuman,"" and there is little balance in his treatment of Jackson's controversial views on Indians (the future president eschewed the idea of Indian sovereignty, although Buchanan argues that it was the English, and not the Indians, whom Jackson hated) or his invasion of Florida, a possession of Neutral Spain, at the close of the Creek Indian war. Buchanan is unabashedly nostalgic for the days when battlefields were ""fields of honor"" and the ungoverned individualism and hunger for expansion of the frontier was at the forefront of the American experience. This account will appeal mainly to those who enjoy military history. (Publishers Weekly) ""John Buchanan gives a compelling account of Jackson's Indian-fighting days, but he provides as well a grand sweep of the conquest of the trans-Appalachian West...Mr. Buchanan writes with style and insight. He accepts the reality of the conquest, understands the era and the people and, refreshingly, does not attempt to pose modern-day sensibilities on the events. This is history at its best."" (The Wall Street Journal, July 26, 2001), * With tremendous admiration, even reverence, for his subject, Buchanan (The Road to Guilford Courthouse) recounts Andrew Jackson's early career and rise to American war hero. He focuses on the westward expansion from the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River, which he describes as a "folk movement" or mass migration of rough, often lawless people determined to lay claim to a new land and to fight until they prevailed. With graphic first-person accounts of Indian massacres and the retaliatory strikes of settlers, the author provides a very detailed military history of Jackson's defeat of the Chicamunga Cherokees and the creek tribes who claimed sovereignty, until 1814, over the southeastern United States, and of his victory at the battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812. Buchanan uses quotations from primary sources so well that they blend almost seamlessly with his own writing, which can sound oddly archaic and overwrought to modern ears (soldiers are "released by death"; British ships bound "eaglelike over the waves"). In Buchanan's eyes, Jackson is nothing short of "superhuman," and there is little balance in his treatment of Jackson's controversial views on Indians (the future president eschewed the idea of Indian sovereignty, although Buchanan argues that it was the English, and not the Indians, whom Jackson hated) or his invasion of Florida, a possession of Neutral Spain, at the close of the Creek Indian war. Buchanan is unabashedly nostalgic for the days when battlefields were "fields of honor" and the ungoverned individualism and hunger for expansion of the frontier was at the forefront of the American experience. This account will appeal mainly to those who enjoy military history. (Publishers Weekly) "John Buchanan gives a compelling account of Jackson's Indian-fighting days, but he provides as well a grand sweep of the conquest of the trans-Appalachian West...Mr. Buchanan writes with style and insight. He accepts the reality of the conquest, understands the era and the people and, refreshingly, does not attempt to pose modern-day sensibilities on the events. This is history at its best." (The Wall Street Journal, July 26, 2001)
