Robert V. Remini

Remini is best known for his work on America's seventh President Andrew Jackson.[2] After his book on Van Buren, he initially planned on writing a full biography of him until deciding to write about Jackson instead. In the 1960s, Remini wrote a series of short books about Jackson, which were The Election of Andrew Jackson (1963), Andrew Jackson (1966), and Andrew Jackson and the Bank War (1967).[5]

Remini's initial books on Andrew Jackson convinced him to write a fuller account of the man's life.[5] This led to the writing of his book Andrew Jackson, published in three volumes (1977, 1981, 1984), which is considered his magnum opus. It was originally conceived as a single volume, but Remini tried to convince his editor, Hugh Van Dusen, to allow for two. He at first refused, saying, "I can't sell two volumes." Remini recalled, "We were sitting there in the middle of The Marriage of Figaro and he turned to me and he said, 'You can have two volumes,' and that was the beginning of it. Then, when the presidential years grew to be more than another volume, I needed a third volume. I took him to see Tristan und Isolde — and it worked!" The finished series totaled approximately 1,600 pages.[9] "There was an electrifying dynamism about Jackson that I found irresistible," Remini said. He went on to call him "the embodiment of the new American." He added, "This new man was no longer British. He no longer wore the queue and silk pants. He wore trousers, and he had stopped speaking with a British accent."[2]

Remini's books on Jackson have generally received praise.[2][9] Jon Meacham read Remini's trilogy in high school and later wrote his own biography of Jackson, which Remini read in manuscript form. Meacham said, "He was practicing a kind of narrative historical biographical craft at exactly the moment when most of the academy was moving toward intellectual and group-driven history." He described Remini as "someone who never believed that his interpretation was the last word." Meacham continued, "You cannot write about Jackson without standing on Remini's shoulders."[9] Daniel Walker Howe, a historian who took a rather critical view of Jackson, speaks favorably of Remini, writing: "A forthright admirer of his subject, Remini is laudatory in his assessments of Jackson's achievements. At the same time, he is also a meticulous scholar who does not allow his prejudices to get in the way of the evidence he finds."[10] Of Remini's trilogy, Joel H. Silbey says that "one comes away with the feeling that here is how Jackson saw himself, might have set forth his won case, and wished to be remembered."[11] In his own biography of Jackson, historian H. W. Brands calls Remini's three volume series "[a] monumental work of research and exposition by the dean of Jackson studies."[12] The final volume, Andrew Jackson: The Course of American Democracy, 1833-1845, won the 1984 U.S. National Book Award for Nonfiction.[1]

While Remini has been credited for his unique focus on Jackson the individual, he has also received criticism for seeing things too much from Jackson's point of view and for identifying too closely with his subject.[2][9] "No historian knows more about Andrew Jackson than Robert V. Remini," John William Ward, also a Jackson biographer, wrote in a 1981 review of the second volume of the Jackson trilogy, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Freedom, 1822-1833. He added that Remini "has mastered in all their complex detail the many issues and events of Jackson's private and public life, but in doing so he has come to see the world too much from Jackson's point of view."[9] "Seeing the world through Old Hickory's eyes, we appreciate him as a complex human being," history professor Andrew R.L. Cayton wrote in a New York Times book review of Remini's Andrew Jackson and his Indian Wars (2001). "The problem . . . is that we see the world only through Jackson's eyes."[2] A 1984 review by James M. Banner of the New York Times of the final volume of Remini's Jackson trilogy says that "he cannot be said to be respectful of interpretations more skeptical than his own, nor of being detached." Banner argues that Remini's work is "a biography of the old school, governed by an old strategy and unabashed in its sympathies." He concludes by declaring that Remini's three volumes are not "the right vehicle for what we need."[13]

Remini took a moderate view of Jackson's behavior during the Bank War. He believed that the Bank had "too much power, which it was obviously using in politics. It had too much money which it was using to corrupt individuals. And so Jackson felt he had to get rid of it. It is a pity because we do need a national bank, but it requires control." He refuted the idea that the collapse of the Bank was responsible for the Panic of 1837, which he describes as "a world-wide economic collapse", but conceded that it "may have exacerbated" the crisis.[14] Remini partially defended Jackson's Indian removal policies.[15][16] He held that had Jackson not orchestrated the removal of the Five Civilized Tribes from their ancestral homelands, they would have been totally wiped out, just like other tribes-namely, the Yamasee, Mahican, and Narragansett–which did not move.[15] In his review of Andrew Jackson and His Indian Wars, Andrew Denson criticizes Remini's "silly" conclusion that Jackson's support for Indian removal saved the Indians from extinction, pointing to the continued existence of other Indian communities east of the Mississippi River as evidence to the contrary.[16]

Remini wrote a one-volume abridgment to the original three-volume series, called The Life of Andrew Jackson, which was published in 1988.[17] He delivered a lecture on Jackson at the White House in 1991.[5]

Remini also wrote biographies of other prominent Americans of the early 19th century, namely Martin Van Buren, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John Quincy Adams, and Joseph Smith.[2] His 1991 biography of Clay, entitled Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union, was well-received.[18][19] Brian Boylan of the Los Angeles Times credits Remini for the ability to write a fair biography of Clay even after his extensive work on Jackson, who was Clay's "bitter enemy." Remini "treats Clay with such affection and care that after half a century of being a vague name in pre-Civil War American history, Henry Clay springs to life in all his fascinating brilliance."[18] Historian Otis A. Singletary writes that the biography of Clay was "thoroughly researched and written in a lively and engaging style."[19] Remini enjoyed recounting how, once when he was delivering a speech on the steps of Clay's home Ashland, a large thunderclap struck, which he regarded as a sign of Jackson's disapproval.[5] The biography of Webster, published in 1997 as Daniel Webster: The Man and His Time, won the D.B. Hardeman Prize.[20]

In 2008, Remini published A Short History of the United States, which was just under 400 pages long. According to a book review:

Remini's final chapters are slightly rushed and his judgments too general to be useful, but these flaws are easily overshadowed by his masterful middle sections focusing on the 19th century (his scholarly specialty). In contrast to some surveys of American history, like Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States or William Bennett's America: The Last Best Hope, Remini delivers an objective narrative of this nation's history that readers of all political stripes will appreciate.[21]

His last work was At the Edge of the Precipice: Henry Clay and the Compromise that Saved the Union (2010).[4] In a review of the book, Russell McClintock praises Remini for his engaging writing style and depiction of Clay, which he calls "both heroic and credible," but accuses him of overemphasizing the importance of compromise and overlooking times when it did not work. McClintock summarized his thoughts by calling the book "a concise and lively account of a critical but understudied episode that, while it breaks no new scholarly ground, does raise valuable points about the importance of compromise in republican government."[22]