Robert Remini is Andrew Jackson's finest biographer—and the finest biographer of Jackson's arch-nemesis, three-time presidential loser Henry Clay. The author illuminates how the rivalry between Jackson and Clay, echoing that between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, further defined the debate over the function and power of our federal government. Where Jefferson and Jackson dreamed of preserving a bucolic nation of yeoman farmers, Clay adopted Hamilton's more prophetic vision of using a strong and active central government to create a powerful industrial and commercial state, and to create a new freedom: the freedom of opportunity.
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