The Jacksonian Promise

Daniel Feller. The Jacksonian Promise: America, 1815-1840. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.

Originally published 20 years ago, Feller's book on the Jacksonian period seeks to address what he saw as a too pessimistic or gloomy interpretation of the period. The emphasis on the market revolution and the corresponding anxieties, Feller argues, ignores the tone of public and private statements of the people who lived through the era. Jacksonian America was remarkable not for its fears and uncertainties, but for its optimism and its certainties about the "promise" of the future. Jacksonian Americans were excited about the possibilities that change promised rather than primarily discomforted by it. Furthermore, this optimism was a common thread that united disparate elements in society.

The narrative begins with the "Year of Jubilee" 1826, which was prefaced by the triumphant return of the Marquis de Lafayette in 1824. Lafayette was treated to an endless parade of well-wishers and adulation, but he was also witness to a nation experiencing incredibly dynamic growth in geographic, demographic, and economic terms, as well as seeing a huge surge in infrastructure development. The America that Lafayette visited was proud of its past, but even more excited about its future.

Feller does a passable job making his case, although sometimes he seems to make it by re-framing intense disagreements as two sides of the same coin; arguing that both the American System of Henry Clay and the small-government nationalism of Andrew Jackson were really nothing more than different manifestations of the same optimistic faith in American progress. This is not an unconvincing argument in and of itself, but when Feller continues to present other disagreements (such as over the proper role of women in society, the role of benevolent institutions in social uplift, etc.) in the same interpretive framework--particularly in a text that is just over 200 pages--he invites speculation that he over-simplifies.

If his argument that the optimism of Jacksonian America was universally shared risks being a little strained, he does a very convincing job of arguing that the era was indeed marked by a wide-open atmosphere of restlessness and openness to experimentation. It should also be noted that he ties a lot of different threads together rather deftly. By bookmarking the era with the aftermath of the Panic of 1837 and the rise of the Second Party System through the election of William Henry Harrison in 1840, he effectively closes his narrative with a deft rhetorical touch. Whatever one thinks of his argument, he certainly makes it well.

This book also serves as a fairly brisk and readable introduction to the larger social, cultural, and political themes of the period. Aside from Feller's interpretation, he has written a reasonably far-ranging survey.