Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/910

900 administrations of a triumphant new democracy. That character, of course, is, not the persuasive Clay nor the Titan Webster, but Andrew Jackson, idol of the common people. To that period and to that character Professor McMaster's study of our national development has now come. This sixth volume, comprising chapters to, inclusive, of the whole work, is devoted almost entirely to a continuous and thorough analysis of political events, forces, and controversies during the presidencies of Jackson and Van Buren. A single concluding chapter begins the narrative of John Tyler's first stormy year, and drops it abruptly as the fruit of the first great victory of the Whigs was turning into Apples of Sodom upon their lips.

The first two chapters present the familiar topics of Jackson's war against the Bank, the beginnings of the nullification movement, and the states'-rights discussions that sprang up over the propositions to sell the public lands, and to seize the Indian lands in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. Eight chapters contain the story of Jackson's second administration, with the elections of 1832 and 1836. Along this well-beaten path we find the controversies over the tariff and the end of Nullification, the removal of the deposits, the battle of "hard" and "soft" money which gave to Benton his picturesque sobriquet, the rise of anti-monopoly and abolition parties and the Southern wrath on account of anti-slavery petitions in Congress, the war between Texas and Mexico, the debates over the proposition to distribute the proceeds of the sales of public lands and the concomitant extravagances of speculation and of "internal improvements".

One chapter alone is professedly devoted to sketches, all too brief, of social conditions and movements in this period. The author reviews here the growth of anti-slavery sentiment and agitation, the upheaval of "Native American" antagonism to the evils of unrestricted immigration, the effect of railways and canals upon commercial and industrial progress, and the evidences of a gradual improvement in moral standards, as shown in prison reform and other projects of amelioration for which, although the author does not say so, we owed much to European example and leadership. It is instructive to observe how the age of the new democracy was an age of mob violence. The lack of unity between social classes was more marked than it now is. On one hand there was a racial revulsion against the first wave of Irish peasant immigration, and, on another, a strong moral revulsion against alleged injustice, first, politically, of Masonry and, next, of slavery. Democracy, confronted by problems that Jefferson had not solved, was compelled to re-define its political philosophy and to rediscover its conscience.

An interesting episode is revealed in the story of the boundary dispute between Michigan and Ohio, involving the territory wherein the city of Toledo now stands. An account of the origins and spread of Mormonism loses somewhat in interest and force from desultory