All White

THE CAVALIER OF TENNESSEE--Meredith Nicholson--Bobbs-Merrill ($2.50).

Andrew Jackson loved cockfighting, horse-racing, apple-toddies; but he worshipped womanhood, honor, democracy; and devoted his life to defending these three. This buckskinned Tennessee pioneer worshipped the epitome of exquisite womanhood in Mrs. Rachel Robards, victim of her husband's jealous bullying. He championed her in her plight, and married her the moment word was received that Robards had divorced her. The actual decree was delayed until long after the blissfully ignorant lovers were married. Village gossips taunted Rachel for "living in sin," and Jackson was quick to defend her honor, and his, in a series of duels. Gossip revived nonetheless every time Jackson ran for office--a frequent occurrence, for he was representative to Congress at Philadelphia (where as a Democrat he disapproved the aristocrat's salons), Senator, head of the state militia, President of the U. S. Election to this post he won chiefly by his spectacular defeat of the British in a campaign which he conducted with fury, picturesque oaths, and sound good sense.

It is as fighter and lover that Biographer Nicholson makes his glowing portrait of Old Hickory. And there is in the drawing no chiaroscuro of virtue and vice. Just as Andrew Jackson believed a thing to be all black or all white, so he has been painted all whiteman. His fiery tempers are matters of righteous indignation; his gullibility a matter of holding a man right until he is proved wrong.

Meredith Nicholson takes pride in the fact that he, like his hero, is a provincial American.

He had voted before he ever saw the sea or any Eastern city. Steeped in the Hoosier tradition, his 30-odd volumes of verse, essay, fiction, reflect the atmosphere of politics and pioneers.