Jon Meachem titled American Lion’s prologue “With The Feelings of a Father,” displaying from the first page of the book the motif of Jackson as a loving, passionate father-both to his close-knit family, as well as the young nation. Throughout his work, the author showcases his view of Jackson as the father to America by describing Americans as “children of a distant and commanding father, a father long dead yet forever with us” (Page 361) with Jackson acting as the collective parent, and by including a report about Jackson’s visit to Philadelphia, when a local newspaper painted him as appearing to “feel as a father surrounded by a numerous band of children” (Page 261). Meachem also highlights Jackson’s fatherly qualities directed towards the…show more content… Meachem has had a lengthy career in journalism ever since he graduated from Sewanee: The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. He has tackled the challenge of writing books centered on several other historical figures, including Franklin Delano Roosevelt, George H.W. Bush, and Winston Churchill. Meachem wrote American Lion because of his fascination by the mythos of Andrew Jackson, whom he describes as “a figure who could be at once so brilliant and yet so bloody-minded, so tender yet so cold” (Page 363). Meachem deems that he deserves the attention of historians because “the virtues and vices of this single man tell us much about the virtues and vices of our country” (Page 363). Likely as a result of this enthrallment with Jackson, Meachem appears sympathetic, and often supportive of him throughout the book, calling Jackson “a great general and transformative president” (Page 28), a man who “proved the principle that the character of the President matters enormously” (Page 356), and a person who “has not always been given his due for his own conduct” (Page 246). However, the author did hold him accountable for the Indian removal that he engineered, as well as his views on slavery, plainly stating that “there is nothing redemptive about Jackson’s Indian policy” (Page 97), and that, on the issue of slavery, Jackson was “blinded by the prejudice of his age” (Page 303). The author ultimately
