Remini can be credited with using the findings of the most recent scholarship, but he cannot be said to be respectful of interpretations more skeptical than his own, nor of being detached. A fetching view, it was also that of Jackson and his legion of partisans. The central theme of this volume, rarely set forth before with such thoroughness, this view has long been the stuff of history texts. His charisma, popularity, and accomplishments made it all possible.” Andrew Jackson was their agent - he “loosed the power of the masses,” in Remini’s words - and his eight-year administration was the engine of national life, a “moral force.” “More than any other single individual,” Remini argues,”he contributed to and symbolized the arrival and acceptance of (the concept of democracy). A restless people, moving both to the West and into the cities, found their voice. An arrangement of carefully calibrated structural checks and balances and legislative representation gave way to a national political community in which the will of the majority of adult white males was embodied in the chief magistrate of the land. During the rough half-century of Jackson’s public career, the American republic became a democracy, a modest national territory became nearly continental, and the population rushed in to settle and exploit its new frontiers.
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