Includes bibliographical references (p. 249-284) and index.

"What transformed a frontier bully into the seventh president of the United States? A southerner obsessed with personal honor who threatened his enemies with duels to the death, a passionate man who fled to Spanish Mississippi with the love of his life before she was divorced, Andrew Jackson of Tennessee left a vast personal correspondence detailing his stormy relationship with the world of early America. He helped shape the American personality, yet he remains largely unknown to most modern readers. Now historian Andrew Burstein (The Inner Jefferson, America's Jubilee) brings back Jackson with all his audacity and hot-tempered rhetoric." "Burstein gives us our first major reevaluation of Jackson's life in a generation. Unlike the extant biographies, Burstein examines Jackson's close relationships, discovering how the candidate advanced his political chances through a network of army friends - some famous, like Sam Houston, who became a hero himself; others, equally important, who have been lost to history until now. Yet due to his famous temper, Jackson ultimately lost his closest confidants to the opposition party." "The Passions of Andrew Jackson includes a fresh interpretation of Jackson's role in the Aaron Burr conspiracy and offers a more intimate view of the backcountry conditions and political setting that shaped the Tennessean's controversial understanding of democracy. This is the dynamic story of a larger-than-life American brought down to his authentic earthiness and thoughtfully demythologized. In a provocative conclusion, Burstein relates Jackson to the presidents with whom he was and still is often compared, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson."--BOOK JACKET.