The Jacksonian Promise

In this book historian Daniel Feller takes a look at the USA in the tumultuous "Age of Jackson". Viewing the era through the eyes of people who lived in it, Feller's account tries to capture the optimism and energy that filled America after the War of 1812. His emphasis on Americans' confidence in the future and faith in improvement challenges historians who depict the Jacksonian temperament in terms of anxiety and foreboding. The book opens with the Jubilee anniversary of Independence in 1826, when Americans celebrated their national birthright of liberty and opportunity. Blessed with abundant resources and what they held to be the best government on earth, citizens believed they could accomplish nearly anything. They felt it in their power to remake themselves, their country, and the world. Feller traces the influence of this enterprising spirit across a broad range of Jacksonian activity. Experiment and innovation flourished as Americans built canals and factories, founded unions and Utopias, staged religious revivals and moral crusades, and campaigned to eradicate social ills and to purify law and politics.Yet despite their common source, competing programmes of progress soon clashed with each other. As citizens organized to pursue their hopes for America's future, divisions arose among that pointed ultimately toward civil war.