Andrew, John A(lfred), (III) 1943-2000

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ANDREW, John A(lfred), (III) 1943-2000

PERSONAL: Born January 16, 1943, in Boston, MA; died November 6, 2000; son of John A. Jr. and Deborah M. Andrew; married September, 1966; wife's name, Roz (a printer); children: John F., Lea W. Education: University of New Hampshire, B.A., 1965, M.A., 1967; University of Texas at Austin, Ph.D., 1973. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Unitarian-Universalist. Hobbies and other interests: Sports, politics.

CAREER: High school social studies teacher and department head in Lancaster, NH, 1966-68; University of Texas at Austin, lecturer in Evening Division, 1968-73, assistant instructor in history, 1972-73; Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA, assistant professor, 1973-80, associate professor, 1980-90, professor of history, 1990-2000, chair of American studies program, 1975-88, 1993-96, acting director of North Museum, 1979-80, head of history department, 1988-90, chair of Africana studies program, 1993-96. U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, field adviser for Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education, 1974-75. Lancaster, PA, Democratic party chair, 1989-94.

MEMBER: American Association of University Professors (chapter president, 1982-83, 1994-95), Organization of American Historians, American Studies Association, Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, Mid-Atlantic American Studies Association (vice president, 1979-81; president, 1981-83), Pennsylvania Historical Association (member of governing council, 1982-88, 1989-93), Phi Alpha Theta, Pi Sigma Alpha, Pi Gamma Mu.

AWARDS, HONORS: John Pine Graduate Student Scholarship Award, 1971-72; Frederick Jackson Turner Award finalist, Organization of American Historians, 1974; American Philosophical Society grant, 1975; Moody grants, L.B.J. Foundation, 1993, 1997; Bradley R. Dewey Award for Outstanding Scholarship, Franklin and Marshall College, 2001. The John A. Andrew III Scholarship Fund was established in honor of Andrew by Franklin and Marshall College.

WRITINGS:

Rebuilding the Christian Commonwealth: New England Congregationalists and Foreign Missions, 1800-1830, University Press of Kentucky (Lexington, KY), 1976.

From Revivals to Removal: Jeremiah Evarts, the Cherokee Nation, and the Search for the Soul of America, University of Georgia Press (Athens, GA), 1992.

The Other Side of the Sixties: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of Conservative Politics, Rutgers University Press (New Brunswick, NJ), 1997.

Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society, Ivan R. Dee (Chicago, IL), 1998.

Power to Destroy: The Political Uses of the IRS from Kennedy to Nixon, edited by David Schuyler, Ivan R. Dee (Chicago, IL), 2002.

Contributor of more than seventy-five articles and reviews to history journals, including Journal of Presbyterian History, Journal of American Studies, Viet Nam Generation, Historian, Choice, and Presidential Studies Quarterly.

SIDELIGHTS: The late John A. Andrew was a writer and history professor who specialized, as he once commented, "in primary sources through archival research." His chief interest lay in the exploration and explanation of social movements and social and political change in the United States. The author of numerous journal articles as well as five books, Andrew focused on both nineteenth-and twentieth-century America.

Andrew's first two books deal with religion and social change in the new American nation. The 1976 work Rebuilding the Christian Commonwealth: New England Congregationalists and Foreign Missions was his doctoral thesis, a study of the Congregational church in the early nineteenth century as well as the foreign missions that attempted to promulgate New England culture abroad. With his second book, From Revivals to Removal: Jeremiah Evarts, the Cherokee Nation, and the Search for the Soul of America, Andrew again examines the role of religious values in early America. Focusing on the Yale graduate, lawyer, and Christian propagandist Jeremiah Evart, the author attempts to examine how moral and religious values often come into conflict with political necessity. Evart, who left the law behind to devote his life to establishing a more Christian world, was both anti-slavery and prowomen's rights, in addition to embodying a program of Puritan beliefs. Evarts, in fact, dedicated his life to creating a nation built upon Christian moral and ethical values. In this capacity, he also supported the rights of the Cherokee Indians of Georgia and organized a nationwide movement that narrowly missed defeating the Indian Removal Act of 1830. As Richard W. Pointer, writing in Journal of Interdisciplinary History, noted, "The battle over Indian removal pitted republican versus liberal values in a struggle to determine nothing less than the character of the soul of America." Though he lost this battle, Evart helped the Cherokees take their case all the way to the Supreme Court. He died in 1831, after the Indians had lost their case. For Mary Young, reviewing the book in the Journal of American History, Andrew "offers a valuable analysis of Evart's faith in the power of a benevolent elite to curb the selfish propensities of an expanding capitalist and democratic society." Writing in the American Historical Review, Robert H. Keller thought that Andrew "excels at posing social contradictions and missionary dilemmas." For Pointer, Andrew's "placing of Evarts and the contest over Indian removal into the larger historiographical contexts of republicanism and liberals makes good sense." And Raymond Wilson observed in Historian that the author "skillfully relates how Evarts' beliefs influenced his attack on Jacksonian Indian policy."

In his later writing, Andrew shifted his interests to the 1960s—the decade he came of age—and focused on politics as an expression of national culture. With The Other Side of the Sixties: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of Conservative Politics, Andrew presents a story seldom told about that turbulent decade. In this "meticulously researched" volume, as Library Journal critic Jack Forman described the book, Andrew traces the rise of the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) on college campuses. The YAF espoused conservative political ideals in opposition to much of the campus politics of the day embodied in the New Left and in groups such as the Students for a Democratic Society, and thereby helped to give rise to the New Right. Focusing on the first half of the 1960s, Andrew discusses the formation of the YAF, which was inspired by the writings of William F. Buckley, the Sharon Statement of its principles, its battle against John F. Kennedy's New Frontier policies, and its support of the candidacy of Barry Goldwater for president in 1964. For Forman, however, Andrew's landscape is too narrow. For example, Forman mentioned that "the social ferment of the decade emerges only as a backdrop to what was taking place with the YAF." Noting the need for a study of the rise of postwar conservatism in America, Choice contributor R. B. Fowler felt that Andrew's book "expertly fills this need." Fowler went on to note that Andrew is "especially sharp in providing a rewarding look inside the YAF," exploring factional battles and organization. Similarly, Ronald Lora, writing in the American Historical Review, found that the book's "signal merit is the detailed discussion of the organization's struggles over ideology and leadership." For David J. C. Perkins, writing in Journal of American Studies, the same book "is an important contribution to our understanding of American politics in the 1960s and beyond." Perkins further thought that Andrew "combines thorough research with balanced, sensible analysis and conclusions."

In Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society Andrew examines another aspect of the sixties and "sets out," as H. Warren Gardner wrote in Presidential Studies Quarterly, "to correct the distortions coming from both the political Right and Left of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society legislation." According to Gardner, Andrew "briefly but fairly reconstructs that turbulent and heady moment of American liberalism." Andrew examines civil rights legislation and Johnson's war on poverty, as well as initiatives on health, housing, and education. Intended for student use, the book is characterized by "sprightly" writing, according to Gardner, and presents a "valuable addition to the current research." Booklist reviewer Gilbert Taylor praised the "remarkable evenhandedness" in the book, while A. J. Dunar, writing in Choice, called it a "concise, cogent account." Similarly, a reviewer for Publishers Weekly thought this "succinct survey … will evoke a wave of nostalgia in those old enough to remember." The same critic concluded that Andrew was both "fair and humane" in his discussion.

Andrew was at work on his fifth book at the time of his death in 2000. Spurred by information uncovered while researching The Other Side of the Sixties, Andrew found that the Kennedy administration was using the Internal Revenue Service for political reasons. Following this path, he wrote early drafts of Power to Destroy: The Political Uses of the IRS from Kennedy to Nixon, a book edited by Andrew's friend and colleague, David Schuyler and published in 2002. Andrew shows in the book how three different presidents—Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon—used the IRS to fight groups opposed to White House policies. The badgering use of the audit during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations was aimed at conservative and right wing groups, while Nixon targeted mostly those on the Left. P. Fisher, writing in Choice, felt that Andrew's book "should be viewed as an important contribution to the study of executive power." Though finding the same book "less than gripping," a reviewer for Publishers Weekly allowed that the author "presents an important and serious study of one of the least understood agencies in the federal government." A critic for Kirkus Reviews dubbed the book a "sordid tale of the abuse of presidential power," and Kathryn Olmsted, reviewing Power to Destroy in American Historical Review, concluded that Andrew "performed a valuable service for the profession in wresting these files from the secretive IRS, describing these clandestine programs, and revealing their chilling power."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

American Historical Review, February, 1994, Robert H. Keller, review of From Revivals to Removal: Jeremiah Evarts, the Cherokee Nation, and the Search for the Soul of America, pp. 296-297; December 1998, Ronald Lora, review of The Other Side of the Sixties: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of Conservative Politics, pp. 1723-1725; June, 2003, Kathryn Olmsted, review of Power to Destroy: The Political Uses of the IRS from Kennedy to Nixon, pp. 872-873.

Booklist, February 15, 1998, Gilbert Taylor, review of Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society, p. 97.

Choice, January, 1998, R. B. Fowler, review of The Other Side of the Sixties; October, 1998, A. J. Dunar, review of Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society; May, 2003, P. Fisher, review of Power to Destroy.

Historian, winter, 1994, Raymond Wilson, review of From Revivals to Removal, pp. 376-377.

Insight on the News, September 16, 2003, John Berlau, review of Power to Destroy, p. 21.

Journal of American History, December, 1993, Mary Young, review of From Revivals to Removal, pp. 1080-1081.

Journal of American Studies, April, 1999, David J. C. Perkins, review of The Other Side of the Sixties, pp. 145-146.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, autumn, 1994, Richard W. Pointer, review of From Revivals to Removal, pp. 327-329.

Journal of Southern History, November, 1995, Jerry McKnight, review of Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society, pp. 912-913.

Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2002, review of Power to Destroy, p. 1185.

Library Journal, June 15, 1997, Jack Forman, review of The Other Side of the Sixties, p. 85.

Presidential Studies Quarterly, September, 1999, H. Warren Gardner, review of Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society, p. 721.

Publishers Weekly, February 2, 1998, review of Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society, pp. 73-74; September 2, 2002, review of Power to Destroy, p. 68.