C.V.

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)

Associate professor, Cumberland University (2008-15)

Assistant professor, Southern New Hampshire University (2004-2008)

Selected Publications

Who Is James K. Polk? The Presidential Election of 1844 (University Press of Kansas, 2024)

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)

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)

“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

Civil War America