Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., whose portrayal of Jackson as a 19th- century FDR stirred scholarly de- bates for years. While all agree that the age was (as Daniel Webster said) "full of excitement," historians have differed in their measurements of the general himself.
Few have been as underwhelmed as Samuel Eliot Morison: In The Ox- ford History of the American People,
vol. 2 (Oxford, 1965, cloth; Mentor, 1972, paper), he argues that Jackson "catered to mediocrity" and was so...