It was a raucous time of duels with words and swords, the fifty-year period between the War of 1812 and the Civil War called the Age of Jackson. It was, in its own special way, a time of revolution. People weren't killing each other, and mobs didn't riot in the streets. But enormous changes were shaking and transforming America. And a generation of political geniuses appeared, to wrestle with the nation's prospects and with each other. The men? Andrew Jackson. Daniel Webster. Henry Clay. John C. Calhoun. Martin Van Buren. And the issues? How to make America truly democratic. How to hold the Union together, when slavery was threatening to tear it apart. What to do with the Indians, who seemed to many to stand in the way of America's westward "destiny." And - probably most important to us today - how to solve the fierce power struggle between the President and the Congress. The revolutionary Age of Andrew Jackson changed much of America's way of life. It established the nation's basic political practices and patterns. It stands at the beginning of the modern America we have inherited.