The Age of Jackson was published by Little, Brown in 1945 and won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1946. Schlesinger was twenty-eight. The book transformed understanding of Andrew Jackson’s presidency by arguing that Jacksonian democracy was not primarily a frontier movement (as Frederick Jackson Turner had claimed) but an alliance between eastern workers, urban intellectuals, and radical democrats who opposed the concentrations of power represented by the Bank of the United States and the Whig commercial elite.
Schlesinger’s larger argument is that American history moves through recurring cycles of democratic advance against entrenched privilege — that Jackson’s fight against Nicholas Biddle’s Bank prefigured FDR’s fight against Wall Street, and that both expressed the same fundamental tension in American life between democracy and plutocracy. The book is simultaneously history and political argument: written during World War II, it implicitly justifies New Deal liberalism by presenting it as the continuation of America’s oldest democratic tradition.
The historiographical controversy was immediate and lasting. Historians criticized Schlesinger for projecting New Deal categories backward onto the 1830s, for underestimating the frontier’s role, and for treating Jacksonian rhetoric at face value while ignoring Jackson’s policies toward Native Americans and his support for slavery. Nevertheless, the book established Schlesinger as the preeminent liberal historian of his generation and fixed the terms of debate about Jacksonian America for decades.
Collecting The Age of Jackson
First edition (Little, Brown, Boston, 1945): Blue cloth, gold stamping, dust jacket with portrait.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $200–$500
- Very good/very good: $75–$200
- Signed copies: $400–$800
Projected values (2026–2036): Strong appreciation. Pulitzer Prize winner.
Jacksonian Democracy Reinterpreted
The Age of Jackson (1945) won the Pulitzer Prize when Schlesinger was just twenty-eight — an astonishing debut that reinterpreted Jacksonian democracy as a precursor to the New Deal. Schlesinger argued that Jackson’s movement was not primarily a frontier phenomenon but an alliance of Eastern workers and reformers against the business establishment. The book was both a work of historical scholarship and a political argument: Schlesinger was explicitly connecting the democratic tradition of Jackson to FDR’s New Deal. Published by Little, Brown, the first edition in dust jacket is the primary collecting target.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.? Schlesinger (1917–2007) was an American historian, political commentator, and presidential adviser — one of the most prominent public intellectuals of the twentieth century. He won two Pulitzer Prizes, served as Special Assistant to President Kennedy, and wrote major works on Jackson, Roosevelt, and the Kennedys. He was the foremost historian of American liberalism.