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American Lion/ As Big as the West

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As Big as the West

Although his is not a household name today, Granville Stuart stands among the most influential and fascinating figures of the Old West. As much as any of the famous historical figures of his day, Stuart embodies the American ideal of the self-made man—an ideal heavily influenced by tales of the men and women who ventured westward to forge a new America with little to depend upon besides their wits and their weapons. Stuart’s story, however, also flips on its head the idealized version of the West, in which life, while certainly rough, was also simple; where people operated on one side or the other—cowboy or Indian, outlaw or lawman, adventurer or homesteader.

Admittedly, the dawn of the 21st century has ushered in a number of works designed to set the historical record straight, with myth-busting books on such figures as Jesse James, Kit Carson, Sitting Bull and Billy the Kid. But none of these subjects so clearly illustrates via his life story the social, political and historical complexities of the Western frontier quite like Granville Stuart.

Born in 1834, Stuart grew up in agricultural Iowa. During his relatively long 84 years on earth, he traveled the entire West and beyond, living numerous and, in many cases, contradictory lives. A self-appointed lawman, he collected guns, used them with as much skill as any of his contemporaries, and gunned down or hanged those he considered outlaws. But he also collected books; headed the public library in Butte, Montana and taught himself French, Spanish and Shoshone. A seemingly complete free thinker, Stuart took the radical step of denouncing formal religion, especially Christianity; he was, however, fully loyal to the Democratic Party. His first wife was a Shoshone woman, with whom he had 11 children; after abandoning his family, he married a young white schoolteacher, and had no children. At the age of 60, he became a full member of the mainstream when he was appointed U.S. diplomat to Paraguay and Uruguay.

In As Big as the West, authors Clyde A. Milner II and Carol A. O'Connor trace Stuart’s remarkable life and extraordinary accomplishments, from his tenure as the head of the million-dollar DHS Cattle Company to his term as state land agent overseeing more than half-a-million acres of newly acquired Montana land. By the time he died in 1918, Stuart was a Montana legend, revered for his pioneering spirit in much the same way the pilgrims of Plymouth Rock are to this day viewed in Massachusetts.

Stuart’s very complex, very large life makes this both an entertaining and highly educational read. As big as biographies come, As Big as the West provides a vivid view of the American frontier and a fascinating look at the man whose life events most embodied it.

American Lion

Review by Sanford Levinson

The subtitle of this book is important: This is not a “life and times” book that offers a full panorama of American political and social development in “the Age of Jackson.” For that, one should consult Sean Wilentz’s deservedly praised The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln. Instead, Meacham offers a laser-beam focus on “Andrew Jackson in the White House.”

Jackson had, of course, been famously denied the White House by the House of Representatives after the 1824 election. Even though he came in first among the four major candidates, he did not have the electoral vote majority needed to win. Instead, the House chose John Quincy Adams, who received the support of the man who came in fourth (Henry Clay) and thus was ineligible to be considered by the House. Jackson viewed himself as the victim of a corrupt bargain—Clay became Adams’s Secretary of State—and he immediately began plotting his revenge, attained in his 1828 victory.

Vivid chapters set out Jackson’s famous “war” against the Bank of the United States, whose extension he vetoed in 1832 just prior to his successful campaign for re-election against the detested Clay (who himself viewed Jackson as a basically Caesarist dictator); he ultimately destroyed the Bank by removing federal deposits and placing them instead in state banks. To do this, he had to fire his Secretary of the Treasury, who thought Jackson was behaving irresponsibly, and the Senate actually passed a vote of “censure” against what they viewed as his extraordinary (and, from their perspective, illegal) high-handedness.

As Meacham notes, Jackson became the first American president to use the constitutional veto power in order to attain his policy objectives. Among all presidents prior to Jackson, John Quincy Adams noted, “Not more than four or five Acts of Congress have been [vetoed] by six Presidents.” Jackson had “rejected four in three days.” And, in firing Secretary of Treasury Duane, Jackson became the first president to demand the resignation of a member of his Cabinet for refusal to follow presidential “orders.”

There was, of course, also the showdown with South Carolina over tariff policy, which many people believed would result in immediate civil war. Meacham is unsparing in his portrayal of Jackson’s insistence on Indian removal from the East to what was then the American west. (Nor, of course, did he question the sanctity of slavery.) A constant in these controversies, and others set out by Meacham, was the capaciousness of Jackson’s conception of presidential power, reinforced by his almost mystical belief that he was the personal representative of the (white) American people at large.

Meacham also tells the touching personal story of Jackson’s relationships with his nephew and his wife, Andrew and Emily Donelson (who became central to Jackson following the tragic death in 1828 of his beloved wife, Rachel). Less touching, but certainly fascinating, is the story of the “Peg Eaton affair,” where soap-opera-like snubbing of the “unsuitable” mate of Jackson’s Secretary of War had significant political consequences.

A well-researched and well-written book, this should be appreciated by academics and general readers alike.