On many topics the reader will do well to go to monographs or other special works.  Thus Jackson’s policy of removals from public office is presented with good perspective in Carl R. Fish, The Civil Service and the Patronage (Harvard Historical Studies, xi, 1905).  The history of the bank controversy is best told in Ralph C. H. Catterall, The Second Bank of the United States (1903); and interesting chapters in the country’s financial history are presented in Edward G. Bourne, History of the Surplus Revenue of 1837 (1885), and David Kinley, The History, Organization, and Influence of the Independent Treasury of the United States (1893).  On the tariff one should consult Frank W. Taussig, Tariff History of the United States (6th ed., 1914) and Edward Stanwood, American Tariff Controversies, 2 vols. (1903).  Similarly illuminating studies of nullification are David F. Houston, Critical Study of Nullification in South Carolina (Harvard Historical Studies, in, 1896) and Ulrich B. Phillips, Georgia and State Rights (American Historical Association Reports, 1901, II).

Aside from newspapers, and from collections of public documents of private correspondence, which cannot be enumerated here, the source materials for the period fall into two main classes:  books of autobiography and reminiscence, and the writings of travelers.  Most conspicuous in the first group is Thomas H. Benton, Thirty Years’ View; or, a History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850, 2 vols. (1854).  Benton was an active member of the Senate throughout the Jacksonian period, and his book gives an interesting and valuable first-hand account of the public affairs of the time.  Amos Kendall’s Autobiography (1872) is, unfortunately, hardly more than a collection of papers and scattered memoranda.  Nathan Sargent’s Public Men and Events, 1817-1853, 2 vols. (1875), consists of chatty sketches, with an anti-Jackson slant.  Other books of contemporary reminiscence are Lyman Beecher’s Autobiography, 2 vols. (1863-65); Robert Mayo’s Political Sketches of Eight Years in Washington (1839); and S.C.  Goodrich’s Recollections of a Lifetime, 2 vols. (1856).  The one monumental diary is John Quincy Adams, Memoirs; Comprising Portions of his Diary from 1795 to 1848 (ed. by Charles F. Adams, 12 vols., 1874-77).  All things considered, there is no more important nonofficial source for the period.

In Jackson’s day the United States was visited by an extraordinary number of Europeans who forthwith wrote books descriptive of what they had seen.  Two of the most interesting—­although the least flattering—­of these works are Charles Dickens’s American Notes for General Circulation (1842, and many reprints) and Mrs. Frances E. Trollope’s Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832).  Two very readable and generally sympathetic English