Disputes the conventional wisdom that the birth of the United States was a relatively painless and unexceptional one. The author tells the story of how the euphoria surrounding Washington's inauguration quickly soured and the nation almost collapsed.

Giving close consideration to previously neglected debates, Matthew Mason challenges the common contention that slavery held little political significance in America until the Missouri Crisis of 1819. Mason demonstrates that slavery and politics were enme

American political and policy history has revived since the turn of the twenty-first century. After social and cultural history emerged as dominant forces to reveal the importance of class, race, and gender within the United States, the application of this line of work to American politics and policy followed. In addition, social movements, particularly the civil rights and feminism, helped rekindle political and policy history. As a result, a new generation of historians turned their attention to American politics. Their new approach still covers traditional subjects, but more often it combines an interest in the state, politics, and policy with other specialties (urban, labor, social, and race, among others) within the history and social science disciplines. The Oxford Handbook of American Political History incorporates and reflects this renaissance of American political history. It not only provides a chronological framework but also illustrates fundamental political themes and debates about public policy, including party systems, women in politics, political advertising, religion, and more. Chapters on economy, defense, agriculture, immigration, transportation, communication, environment, social welfare, health care, drugs and alcohol, education, and civil rights trace the development and shifts in American policy history. This collection of essays by 29 distinguished scholars offers a comprehensive overview of American politics and policy.

The Seneca Falls Convention is typically seen as the beginning of the first women's rights movement in the United States. Revolutionary Backlash argues otherwise. According to Rosemarie Zagarri, the debate over women's rights began not in the decades prior to 1848 but during the American Revolution itself. Integrating the approaches of women's historians and political historians, this book explores changes in women's status that occurred from the time of the American Revolution until the election of Andrew Jackson. Although the period after the Revolution produced no collective movement for women's rights, women built on precedents established during the Revolution and gained an informal foothold in party politics and male electoral activities. Federalists and Jeffersonians vied for women's allegiance and sought their support in times of national crisis. Women, in turn, attended rallies, organized political activities, and voiced their opinions on the issues of the day. After the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, a widespread debate about the nature of women's rights ensued. The state of New Jersey attempted a bold experiment: for a brief time, women there voted on the same terms as men. Yet as Rosemarie Zagarri argues in Revolutionary Backlash, this opening for women soon closed. By 1828, women's politicization was seen more as a liability than as a strength, contributing to a divisive political climate that repeatedly brought the country to the brink of civil war. The increasing sophistication of party organizations and triumph of universal suffrage for white males marginalized those who could not vote, especially women. Yet all was not lost. Women had already begun to participate in charitable movements, benevolent societies, and social reform organizations. Through these organizations, women found another way to practice politics.

In Era of Experimentation, Daniel Peart challenges the pervasive assumption that the present-day political system, organized around two competing parties, represents the logical fulfillment of participatory democracy. Recent accounts of "the rise of American democracy" between the Revolution and the Civil War applaud political parties for opening up public life to mass participation and making government responsive to the people. Yet this celebratory narrative tells only half of the story. By exploring American political practices during the early 1820s, a period of particular flux in the young republic, Peart argues that while parties could serve as vehicles for mass participation, they could also be employed to channel, control, and even curb it. Far from equating democracy with the party system, Americans freely experimented with alternative forms of political organization and resisted efforts to confine their public presence to the polling place. Era of Experimentation demonstrates the sheer variety of political practices that made up what subsequent scholars have labeled "democracy" in the early United States. Peart also highlights some overlooked consequences of the nationalization of competitive two-party politics during the antebellum period, particularly with regard to the closing of alternative avenues for popular participation.

In pursuit of a more sophisticated and inclusive American history, the contributors to Beyond the Founders propose new directions for the study of the political history of the republic before the Civil War. In ways formal and informal, symbolic and tactile, this political world encompassed blacks, women, entrepreneurs, and Native Americans, as well as the Adamses, Jeffersons, and Jacksons, all struggling in their own ways to shape the new nation and express their ideas of American democracy. Taking inspiration from the new cultural and social histories, these political historians show that the early history of the United States was not just the product of a few "founding fathers," but was also marked by widespread and passionate popular involvement; print media more politically potent than that of later eras; and political conflicts and influences that crossed lines of race, gender, and class. Contributors: John L. Brooke, The Ohio State University Andrew R. L. Cayton, Miami University (Ohio) Saul Cornell, The Ohio State University Seth Cotlar, Willamette University Reeve Huston, Duke University Nancy Isenberg, University of Tulsa Richard R. John, University of Illinois at Chicago Albrecht Koschnik, Florida State University Rich Newman, Rochester Institute of Technology Jeffrey L. Pasley, University of Missouri, Columbia Andrew W. Robertson, City University of New York William G. Shade, Lehigh University David Waldstreicher, Temple University Rosemarie Zagarri, George Mason University

In this engaging, succinct study of the accomplishments and difficulties of the young American republic, key historical questions are discussed with references to important scholarship. Among the topics covered are the development of political parties, the animosity between the Republicans and Federalists and the eventual disintegration of the latter group, the leadership abilities of the first presidents, and the foreign relations problems that led to the War of 1812.