The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Volume VII, 1829

With this seventh volume, The Papers of Andrew Jackson enters the heart of Jackson’s career: his tumultuous two terms as President of the United States. The year 1829 began with Jackson fresh from a triumphant victory over incumbent John Quincy Adams in the 1828 campaign, yet mourning the sudden death of his beloved wife, Rachel. In January, having hired an overseer for his Hermitage plantation and arranged for Rachel’s tomb, he left Tennessee for Washington.

Jackson assumed the presidency with two objectives already fixed in mind: purging the federal bureaucracy of recreant officeholders and removing the southern Indian tribes westward beyond state authority. By year’s end he had added two more: purchasing Texas and destroying the Bank of the United States. But while in vigorous pursuit of these, he found himself diverted, and nearly consumed, by the notorious Peggy Eaton affair—a burgeoning scandal which pitted the president, his Secretary of War John Eaton, and the latter’s vivacious wife against the Washington guardians of feminine propriety.

This first presidential volume reveals all these stories, and many more, in a depth never seen before. It presents full texts of more than four hundred documents, most printed here for the first time. Gathered from a vast array of libraries, archives, and individual owners, they include Jackson’s intimate exchanges with family and friends, his private notes and musings, and the formative drafts of his public addresses. Administrative papers range from presidential pardons to military promotions to plans for discharging the public debt. They exhibit Jackson’s daily conduct of the executive office in close and sometimes startling detail, and cast new light on such controversial matters as Indian removal and the distribution of political patronage. Included also are letters to the president from people in every corner of the country and every walk of life: Indian delegations presenting grievances, distraught mothers pleading help for wayward sons, aged veterans begging pensions, politicians offering advice and seeking jobs. Embracing a broad spectrum of actors and events, this volume offers an incomparable window not only into Andrew Jackson and his presidency, but into America itself in 1829.