Biographies are numerous and in a number of instances excellent. Of lives of Jackson, upwards of a dozen have been published. The most recent and in every respect the best is John S. Bassett's Life of Andrew Jackson, 2 vols. (1911). This work is based throughout on the sources; its literary quality is above the average and it appraises Jackson and his times in an unimpeachable spirit of fairness. Within very limited space, William G. Brown's Andrew Jackson (1900) tells the story of Jackson admirably; and a good biography, marred only by a lack of sympathy and by occasional inaccuracy in details, is William G. Sumner's Andrew Jackson (rev. ed., 1899). Of older biographies, the most important is James Parton's Life of Andrew Jackson, 3 vols. (1861). This work is sketchy, full of irrelevant or unimportant matter, and uncritical; but for a half-century it was the repository from which historians and biographers chiefly drew in dealing with Jackson's epoch. John H. Eaton's Life of Andrew Jackson (1842) describes Jackson's earlier career, mainly on the military side; but it never rises above the level of a campaign document. Among biographies of Jackson's contemporaries may be mentioned George T. Curtis, Life of Daniel Webster, 2 vols. (1870); Henry C. Lodge, Daniel Webster (1883); John B. McMaster, Daniel Webster (1902); Frederic A. Ogg, Daniel Webster (1914); Carl Schurz, Henry Clay, 2 vols. (1887); Gaillard Hunt, John C. Calhoun (1908); William M. Meigs, The Life of John Caldwell Calhoun, 2 vols. (1917); John T. Morse, John Quincy Adams (1882); Edward M. Shepard, Martin Van Buren (1888); Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Hart Benton (1888); and Theodore D. Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne and His Times (1909). 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, III, 1896) and Ulrich B. Phillips, Georgia and State Rights (American Historical Association Reports, 1901, II).