Andrew Jackson towered over American life during the second quarter of the nineteenth century, so much so that the period has been dubbed the Jacksonian era. With the passionate support of most voters and their families, he broke through the protocols of the Founding generation, defying constitutional and international norms in the name of the "sovereign people." And yet Jackson's career was no less about limiting that sovereignty, imposing one kind of law over Americans so that they could inflict his sort of "justice" on non-Americans. Jackson made his name along the Carolina and Tennessee frontiers by representing merchants and creditors and serving governors and judges. At times that meant ejecting white squatters from native lands and returning blacks slaves to native planters. Jackson performed such duties in the name of federal authority and the "law of nations." Yet he also survived an undeclared war with Cherokee and Creek fighters between 1792 and 1794, raging at the Washington administration's failure to "avenge the blood" of white colonists who sometimes leaned towards the Spanish Empire rather than the United States. Even under the friendlier presidency of Thomas Jefferson, Jackson chafed at the terms of national loyalty. During the long war in the south and west from 1811 to 1818 he repeatedly brushed aside state and federal restraints on organized violence, citing his deeper obligations to the people's safety within a terrifying world of hostile empires, lurking warriors, and rebellious slaves. By 1819 white Americans knew him as their "great avenger." Drawing from recent literatures on Jackson and the early republic and also from new archival sources, Avenging the People portrays him as a peculiar kind of nationalist for a particular form of nation, a grim and principled man whose grim principles made Americans fearsome in some respects and helpless in others.

About the Author
J.M. Opal is Associate Professor of History at McGill University. He is the author of Beyond the Farm: National Ambitions in Rural New England and the editor of Common Sense and Other Writings by Thomas Paine.

Reviews
Opal's Jackson is an extremely simple man who at times could be quite complex ... He was, in a few words, uncompromising, self-sufficient, unforgiving, determined, and a towering, heroic figure in American history. In example after example, Opal has fleshed out all these character traits, in what is an extremely well-argued and well-written contribution that all students of presidents and history will appreciate. * Gary Clayton Anderson, American Historical Review *
Deeply researched, skillfully argued, and written with an eye for irony, J. M. Opal's book is necessary reading for anyone wishing to understand how American exceptionalism so often turns out so mean. * John Mayfield, Register of the Kentucky Historical Society *
Opal does an excellent job of presenting Jackson as someone who used the law to seek justice for his view of American identity....Works such as Opal's are important to continue to probe who Andrew Jackson was and what he meant, and means, to the American people. * Mark R. Cheathem, The Historian *
In Avenging the People, Jason Opal develops a novel approach to the Jacksonian age....[The book] adds to the larger portrait Opal has built of the social, intellectual and cultural terrain of colonial and Revolutionary America.Instead of a traditional biography or political history of Jackson's presidency, the book offers a history of Jacksonian ideology that places vengeance at the heart of the national project he embodied....The importance of the book rests not only in the originality of the subject but also in the new light it sheds on Jackson's life. * Quentin Janel, Revue d'histoire du XIXXe siecle *
"The story of the bloody decades following the Revolution and the early development of the [Old Southwest] region is told graphically, succinctly, and with unusual and rewarding insight."-- Donald Ratcliffe, Journal of Southern History



Book Information
ISBN 9780199751709
Author J. M. Opal
Format Hardback
Page Count 352
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 612g
Dimensions(mm) 226mm * 150mm * 10mm