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Review
| Presidents from Adams through Polk, 1825-1849: Debating the Issues in Pro and Con Primary Documents, by David A. Smith. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005. 160 pages. $59.95, cloth.
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| This slim volume is the second in a series of nine volumes, edited by Mark Byrnes, that examine the role of U.S. presidents in making public policy from 1789 to the present. It is organized, as documentary readers for students usually are, but with more scholarly apparatus than such readers normally offer: a detailed introductory essay on the politics of Jacksonian America, short biographical sketches of each of the six presidents covered (Adams, Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, and Polk), and concise but detailed notes introducing each document. In addition, the book includes a timeline, a short bibliography for each chapter, a master bibliography, and an index. These features make the book exceptionally easy to navigate. |
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In the series forward, Mark Byrnes writes that "This series is presented, in part, as a reminder of the importance of the president's position" (p. xi). But he also emphasizes that presidents played a far more pivotal role in twentieth-century policy-making than they did in nineteenth-century policy-making and that "presidents cannot form policy through decrees; they must persuade members of Congress, other politicians, and the general public to follow their lead" (p. x). It is the latter points, rather than the former, that are most evident in this volume. The Jacksonian era was an era of frustrated presidents, from John Quincy Adams, who had an "ambitious agenda" but was "tone deaf to the political mood in the country" (p. 16), to Martin Van Buren, who disappointed the public and his political mentors alike, taking pride only in the fact that during his term, "No single problem spun out of control" (p. 66), to William Henry Harrison, who died after a month in office and whose successor, John Tyler, quickly became a president without a party. Smith makes heroic efforts to find redeeming merits in the administrations of such men as Van Buren and Tyler, and his observations are interesting. Nevertheless, the reader finishes the book with a conviction that focusing on presidential leadership is not the most meaningful way of analyzing antebellum political controversy. |
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The work's narrow focus on the president's role in shaping public policy limits its usefulness to teachers, whether at the secondary, college, or graduate level. This is a book about political history in the narrowest sense. The Jacksonian era was an era of industrialization, of immigration, of evangelical ferment; it was an era in which the most radical Americans espoused causes such as Mormonism, "Bible communism," and women's rights. Presidents from Adams through Polk scarcely offers a hint of this. It focuses exclusively on the issues that occupied the small number of relatively privileged men who held power: tariff reform, Indian removal, westward expansion and the annexation of Texas, and some relatively arcane questions related to slavery (such as whether the U.S. should protest the British navy's interference with the—by 1841—long illegal but still active slave trade to American ports). Presidents from Adams through Polk offers an unusual, but hardly a balanced, perspective on the antebellum United States and, for this reason, it will not be suitable for use as the sole or primary documentary reader for most courses on the Jacksonian era |
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Still, many historians teaching courses on Jacksonian America may find Presidents from Adams through Polk useful as a reference work. Smith has done teachers of nineteenth-century American history a service by anthologizing many documents not found in other primary source collections. For instance, Smith's discussion of U.S. actions towards the "Five Civilized Nations" in the southeast begins not with Cherokee Nation v. Georgia but with John Quincy Adams's 1827 message to Congress, in which he hinted that military force might be deployed against surveyors who encroached on Creek lands. Smith's discussion of the American acquisition of California includes a lively 1847 speech by Henry Clay that could be used to demonstrate to students that manifest destiny was controversial even at its height. Presidents from Adams through Polk is thus a useful resource for college and secondary teachers seeking to revitalize their teaching about federal politics in the Jacksonian era. Read alone, however, it offers only a very limited view of that period of American history. |
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| The Brearley School, New York, NY |
Darcy R. Fryer |
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