This account of the 1828 election and Andrew Jackson's replacement of John Quincy Adams, part of the new Turning Points series from Oxford University Press, represents a break from the general “orphaned-child status” of electoral history in American studies.
Parsons could not be accused of obsessing about electoral trivia. Only the final chapter deals with the election itself, as opposed to the political events leading up to it. The content, particularly in the first half of the book, is distinctly high politics, and an enormous amount of the material is biographical coverage of Adams (Parsons is a former Adams biographer), Jackson and other key figures such as Martin Van Buren. That said, a place is found for other aspects of the election, such as campaigning methods and even, to a limited degree, state campaigns.
The book is useful and for its size fairly comprehensive. Parsons is fairly close to the central consensus of the current historiography. He is very well informed and attuned to nuance, as shown when he mentions that Adams may have had more press support than did Jackson (136). And in an era which arouses a surprising level of partisanship among academics, Parsons remains fairly neutral. This reviewer felt that Parsons leans slightly in favour of John Quincy Adams – but other reviewers have felt the opposite. It is also well written, with interesting and meaningful quotes scattered throughout the text – see Jackson's description of anti-slavery agitation as “the wicked design of demagogues” (63).
This is not to say that this is a perfect book. Its impressive brevity causes problems, including oversimplification, particularly in the epilogue where President Jackson is described as having “ignored” Worcester v. Georgia (193) – when, strictly speaking, the ruling only applied to Georgia. There is a neglect of fruitful lines of research, as with Indian Removal where the link to Jackson's overwhelming support in slave states (the land in dispute was mostly in “slave states”) is not really made clear, leaving readers with the misleading impression it was only a major electoral issue in Georgia (155–56). Inevitably, the importance of the 1828 election in setting up a two-party system in 1836 is exaggerated. This reviewer finds it a bit too deferential to the academic consensus – see its suggestion that Adams's press support was less significant and partisan than Jackson's (134). Some comments are open to question, as when he appears to ridicule the notion that a “Unitarian” would threaten the separation of church and state (175), when in fact the Unitarians were one of the few denominations in the US with a recent history of established churches.
Regardless, this is an excellent summary and is rightfully the standard work on this fascinating election. It is also accessible enough for undergraduates, who often find this a particularly baffling period.
