This fifth volume of 'The Papers of Andrew Jackson' documents Jackson's retirement from the military in 1821 and his emergence as the leading presidential candidate in 1824.

This volume presents more than four hundred documents from Andrew Jackson's fourth presidential year. It includes private memoranda, intimate family letters, drafts of official messages, and correspondence with government and military officers, diplomats, Indians, political friends and foes, and ordinary citizens throughout the country. The year 1832 began with Jackson still pursuing his feud with Vice President John C. Calhoun, whom Jackson accused of secretly siding against him in the 1818 controversy over Jackson's Seminole campaign in Florida. The episode ended embarrassingly for Jackson when a key witness, called on to prove his charges, instead directly contradicted them. Indian removal remained a preoccupation for Jackson. The Choctaws began emigrating westward, the Creeks and Chickasaws signed but then immediately protested removal treaties, and the Cherokees won what proved to be an empty victory against removal in the Supreme Court. Illinois Indians mounted armed resistance in the Black Hawk War. In midsummer, a cholera epidemic swept the country, and Jackson was urged to proclaim a day of fasting and prayer. He refused, saying it would intermingle church and state. A bill to recharter the Bank of the United States passed Congress in July, and Jackson vetoed it with a ringing message that became the signature document of his presidency. In November, Jackson, with new running mate Martin Van Buren, won triumphant reelection over Henry Clay. But only days later, South Carolina nullified the federal tariff law and began preparing for armed resistance. Jackson answered with an official proclamation that "disunion by armed force is treason." The year closed with Jackson immersed in plans to suppress nullification and destroy the Bank of the United States. Embracing all these stories and many more, this volume offers an incomparable window into Andrew Jackson, his presidency, and America itself in 1832.

"Andrew Jackson is one of the most critical and controversial figures in American history. A dominant actor on the American scene in the period between the Revolution and Civil War, he stamped his name first on a mass political movement and then an era. At the same time Jackson's ascendancy accelerated the dispossession and death of Native Americans and spurred the expansion of slavery. 'The Papers of Andrew Jackson' is a project to collect and publish Jackson's entire extant literary record. The project is now producing a series of seventeen volumes that will bring Jackson's most important papers to the public in easily readable form."--

"Andrew Jackson is one of the most critical and controversial figures in American history. A dominant actor on the American scene in the period between the Revolution and Civil War, he stamped his name first on a mass political movement and then an era. At the same time Jackson's ascendancy accelerated the dispossession and death of Native Americans and spurred the expansion of slavery. 'The Papers of Andrew Jackson' is a project to collect and publish Jackson's entire extant literary record. The project is now producing a series of seventeen volumes that will bring Jackson's most important papers to the public in easily readable form."--

"Andrew Jackson is one of the most critical and controversial figures in American history. A dominant actor on the American scene in the period between the Revolution and Civil War, he stamped his name first on a mass political movement and then an era. At the same time Jackson's ascendancy accelerated the dispossession and death of Native Americans and spurred the expansion of slavery. 'The Papers of Andrew Jackson' is a project to collect and publish Jackson's entire extant literary record. The project is now producing a series of seventeen volumes that will bring Jackson's most important papers to the public in easily readable form."--

This eighth volume of Andrew Jackson’s papers presents more than five hundred documents, many appearing here for the first time, from a core year in Jackson’s tumultuous presidency. They include Jackson’s handwritten drafts of his presidential messages, private notes and memoranda, and correspondence with government officials, Army and Navy officers, friends and family, Indian leaders, foreign diplomats, and ordinary citizens throughout the country. In 1830 Jackson pursued his controversial Indian removal policy, concluding treaties to compel the Choctaws and Chickasaws west of the Mississippi and refusing protection for the Cherokees against encroachments by Georgia. Jackson nurtured his opposition to the Bank of the United States and entered into an escalating confrontation with the Senate over presidential appointments to office. In April, Jackson pronounced his ban on nullification with the famous toast to “Our Federal Union,” and in May he began an explosive quarrel with Vice-President John C. Calhoun over the latter’s conduct as secretary of war during Jackson’s Seminole campaign of 1818. Also in May, Jackson delivered his first presidential veto, stopping federal funding for the Maysville Road and declaring opposition to Henry Clay’s “American System.” In July, Jackson’s refusal to use his pardoning power to save an Irish-born mail robber from the gallows provoked a near-riot in Philadelphia. By the end of the year, Jackson was preparing for his reelection campaign in 1832. Meanwhile the sex scandal surrounding Peggy Eaton, wife of the secretary of war, lurked throughout, dividing Jackson’s cabinet, sundering his own family and household, and threatening to wreck the administration. Embracing all these stories and many more, this volume offers an incomparable window not only into Andrew Jackson and his presidency but into 1830s America itself.