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Title: Andrew Jackson and His Indian Wars by Robert V. Remini ISBN: 0-14-200128-7 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 25 June, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.83 (12 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: sad story
Comment: After reading this book, I suddenly understood why so many Indians today believed that there was some sort of genocide being worked against them. This book covered a very unglorious period of our nation's history and how our nation grew. The author proves to be quite informative in his study and tried to take everything within the context of the period. Was the Indians in the east coast doomed as Jackson believed? The book make it very plain that they were doom because of people like Jackson. If the whites were honorable and true, most of these Indian nations would have survived easily but since the whites were not, the Indians were doomed as Jackson stated and wanted. Its almost amazing how treaties were made and thrown away like toliet paper. After reading a book like this, it really hard for our nation to stand so tall morally. Yes, all this took place a long time ago but we still whine about Pearl Harbor and the Alamo like yesterday. Our nation commited thousands of Pearl Harbor and Alamo on the American Indians as this book tell us so I think for that, it worth a read.
Rating: 2
Summary: A book of wasted possibilities
Comment: Robert Remini is without a doubt one of the most prolific and well-regarded scholars of the "Jacksonian" period of American history, and any book by him of the man himself should be much awaited. Yet this book is a rather curious and peculiar beast. On one hand, Remini gives us what he says he will: a study of Andy Jackson and his relations with American Indians. For a man whose career was built and sustained on killing Indians, this promised to a very interesting study. But on the other, Remini disappoints. The author never seems to engage the Indians on their own terms. In such a book as this, that failure does harm Remini's conclusions. Perhaps Andy couldn't distinguish between Indians, but Remini, writing in an era of impressive ethnohistorical studies of these tribes, damn well should. We are repeatedly informed of the danger the Cherokees, Creeks, Seminoles, Chickasaws and Choctaws posed to the southern frontier of the infant US, and for dirt farmers in that region, Indians were always on their minds. But Remini goes further, arguing that these tribes were easy prey for foreign influence working against the US. Indeed, after Remini's continous harping on "national security", one feels as though they just escaped a Pentagon briefing. Yet these tribes were hardly so malleable. Rather, they shrewdly assessed their options and played nations off of one another, trying to gain advantage. Moreover, none of the Indians posed any sort of threat to America. I know of no Creek, Seminole or Cherokee attempts to invade Charleston, Richmond, New York or Washington D.C. Rather, they resisted white invasions of their territory; in many cases, the boundaries had been set by treaty with the US. Remini accepts Andy's version too easily, and asks too few questions of his subject. In another example, Remini uncritically accepts Jackson's assertion that escaped slaves and Indians holed up in Fort Negro (later Fort Gadsen) presented yet another threat to national security. But no evidence is offered to substantiate the claim. In fact, the fort was in Spanish territory and the occupants accepted weapons from Europeans in order to protect themselves from Jackson and the Americans. As it turns out, their fears of a slave hunting and Indian killing Jackson expedition were well-founded. But Remini just accepts Jackson's claims with no further research.
And that is the nub of the problem with this book. If one wants Andy's version of events mixed with compelling narrative, this will suffice. Indeed, this book comes very close to Remini as ghostwriter for Jackson's justification of his actions. But historians should try to ask more questions of their subjects to tease out the fuller story. Did Andy believe the hostility of Indians deserved a nasty fate? Of course. But Remini should have attempted to understand why and held Andy's reasons up to the light of reason. The Cherokees were quite different than the Seminoles. Why were their fates similar? Why did Jackson treat his Indian allies (who were critical to his military successes) equally to his enemies in negotations? Were the Indians really so vulnerable to European soothsayers? Let's study the Indians and find out. And why did a certifiable Indian-hater and happy killer (as so many of the Scots-Irish were) suddenly care a whit for Indian culture as he sent them off on a death march to Oklahoma that far exceeded the brutality of Bataan? Remini does not care to ask or answer such obvious questions and that leaves this effort wanting.
Rating: 2
Summary: Disappointing, especially from such a renowned scholar
Comment: Let me start with a disclaimer: Prof. Remini was both my instructor in a history course and my Master's seminar advisor when he was a visiting professor at Columbia in 1959-'60. He approved my Master's Essay; I received my M.A. that year.
While his book is, as one would expect from Prof. Remini, clearly written and well-documened, it has a fundamental flaw which leads to my low rating. Not only is Remini unpersuasive in justifying Jackson's relentless efforts to remove the Indians, but he is also internally inconsistent. He argues: "There was no way the American people would continue to allow the presence of the tribes..." yet immediately before this assertion Remini had acknowledged that removal had barely passed Congress. Why was Congress so divided? Because - according to Remini himself - the American people had pressured Congress to protect the Indians' rights.
Not only does Remini have nothing to say to shoot down his own evidence showing wide popular support for the Indians, but he also fails to even discuss why the President who was ready, even eager, to use military force to compel obedience from a rebellious South Carolina at the time of the tariff/nullification controversy would be cowed by supposed popular opposition to the Indians removal.
I've long felt that Jackson had a generally very impressive administration but that his brutality towards the Indians was his greatest flaw as President. (His support for slavery was very wrong, of course, but it was not an issue in which he played a decisive role - as he did regarding the Southeastern tribes.) I wanted to read Remini's book because I thought that he, as the pre-eminent Jacksonian scholar, might at least provide a reasoned explanation for Jackson's actions. As I've made clear, he completely failed to do so.
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Title: 1831: Year of Eclipse by Louis P. Masur ISBN: 0809041197 Publisher: Hill & Wang Pub Pub. Date: 09 February, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair: Soldiers and Social Conflict during the Mexican-American War by Paul Foos ISBN: 0807854050 Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press Pub. Date: 07 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Why the Civil War Came by G. S. Boritt, David W. Blight ISBN: 0195113764 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: May, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Life of Andrew Jackson by Robert V. Remini ISBN: 0060937351 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: The Battle of New Orleans: Andrew Jackson and America's First Military Victory by Robert Vincent Remini ISBN: 0141001798 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: May, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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