mailing address
Cumberland University
Department of History
1 Cumberland Square
Lebanon TN 37087
Education
Ph.D., History, Mississippi State University
M.A., History, Middle Tennessee State University
B.A., History, Cumberland University
Faculty Appointments
Professor, Cumberland University (2015-present)
- Project Director, The Papers of Martin Van Buren (2014-present)
Associate professor, Cumberland University (2008-15)
Assistant professor, Southern New Hampshire University (2004-2008)
Selected Publications
Books
Who Is James K. Polk? The Presidential Election of 1844 (University Press of Kansas, 2023)
The Coming of Democracy: Presidential Campaigning in the Age of Jackson (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018)–Winner, 2018 Phi Alpha Theta Best Subsequent Book Award
Andrew Jackson and the Rise of the Democratic Party (Univ. of Tennessee Press, 2018)
Co-editor (with Terry Corps), Historical Dictionary of the Jacksonian Era and Manifest Destiny, 2d. ed. (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016).
Andrew Jackson and the Rise of the Democrats (ABC-CLIO, 2015)
Andrew Jackson, Southerner (LSU Press, 2013)–Winner, 2013 Tennessee History Book Award
Co-editor (with Michael B. Ballard), Of Times and Race: Essays Inspired by John F. Marszalek (Univ. of Mississippi Press, 2013)
Editor, Jacksonian and Antebellum Age: People and Perspectives (ABC-CLIO, 2008)
Old Hickory’s Nephew: The Political and Private Struggles of Andrew Jackson Donelson (LSU Press, 2007)
Articles/Essays
“‘It has caused me considerable embarrassment and not a little pain’: The Ruptured Relationship of Martin Van Buren and James K. Polk,” in James K. Polk and His Time: Essays at the Conclusion of the Polk Project, ed. Michael D. Cohen (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2022), 111-133.
“‘I Owe to Britain a Debt of Retaliatory Vengeance’: Assessing Andrew Jackson’s Hatred of the British,” in The Battle of New Orleans in History and Memory, ed. Laura Lyons McLemore (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2016), 28-55.
“Hannah, Andrew Jackson’s Slave,” Humanities 35, no. 2 (March/April 2014).
“Confederate General George Washington Gordon and the Ku Klux Klan,” West Tennessee Historical Society Papers 67 (2013): 36-57. Co-authored with Emily J. Taylor.
“Andrew Jackson, Slavery, and Historians,” History Compass 9 (April 2011): 326-338.
“The Shape of Democracy: Jacksonian History and Historians,” The Age of Andrew Jackson, ed. Brian D. McKnight and James S. Humphreys (2011)
“The Failure of a Moderate Southern Voice: Andrew Jackson Donelson’s Role as Editor of the Washington Union, 1851-1852,” in Words at War: The Civil War and American Journalism, ed. David B. Sachsman, S. Kittrell Rushing, and Roy Morris, Jr. (2008)
“Slavery, Plantation Life, and Debt in Antebellum Tennessee and Mississippi: The Example of Andrew Jackson Donelson,” West Tennessee Historical Society Papers (2007)
“‘The High Minded Honourable Man’: Honor, Kinship, and Conflict in the Life of Andrew Jackson Donelson,” Journal of the Early Republic (2007)
“‘I Shall Persevere in the Cause of Truth’: Andrew Jackson Donelson and the Election of 1856,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly (2003)
Teaching Areas
Jacksonian America
Documentary Editing
U.S. Conspiracy Theories
U.S. Presidency
The U.S. South
Civil War America
Digital Humanities
Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics 