For more than twenty years Michael F. Holt has been considered one of the leading specialists in the political history of the United States. Political Parties and American Political Development from the Age of Jackson to the Age of Lincoln is a collection of some of his more important shorter studies on the politics of nineteenth-century America.The collection focuses on the mass political parties that emerged in the 1820s and their role in broader political developments from that decade to 1865. Holt includes essays on the Democratic, Antimasonic, Whig, and Know Nothing parties, as well as one on Abraham Lincoln's relationship with the congressional wing of the Republican party during the Civil War. Almost all essays touch on the broad question of the role of partisan politics in explaining the outbreak of the war. Individual essays address the following questions as well: What explains the birth and death of powerful third parties? What was the relationship among economic conditions, party performance in office (especially legislative performance), and the mobilization of an unprecedented number of voters between 1836 and 1840? Why did the Whigs find it necessary to nominate military hero Zachary Taylor as their presidential candidate in 1848? What explains the death of the Whig party? What role did ethnoreligious issues and the Know Nothing party play in the realignment of the 1850s and the ultimate triumph of the Republican party? In what ways did the continuation of two-party competition after 1860 help the North win the Civil War?Most of the essays have been published previously over a twenty-year span, but there are also two new pieces. "The Mysterious Disappearance of the American Whig party," originally delivered as the Commonwealth Fund Lecture at University College London in February, 1990, seeks to explain why the Whig party died in the 1850s. This essay contrasts the fate of the Whig party with the fates of the Republican party in the 1930s and 1970s and the British Conservative party in the 1840s and 1850s - parties that survived similar, indeed graver, challenges than those to which the Whigs succumbed. In addition, Holt has written and excellent introduction in which he explains how he came to write the essays and reflects upon them in light of the current state of political history as a discipline.Political Parties and American Political Development from the Age of Jackson to the Age of Lincoln offers provocative insights into both the history of nineteenth-century politics and the way it is studied.

Here, Michael F. Holt gives us the only comprehensive history of the Whigs ever written. He offers a panoramic account of the tumultuous antebellum period, a time when a flurry of parties and larger-than-life politicians--Andrew Jackson, John C. Calhoun, Martin Van Buren, and Henry Clay--struggled for control as the U.S. inched towards secession. It was an era when Americans were passionately involved in politics, when local concerns drove national policy, and when momentous political events--like the Annexation of Texas and the Kansas-Nebraska Act--rocked the country. Amid this contentious political activity, the Whig Party continuously strove to unite North and South, emerging as the nation's last great hope to prevent secession.

Stunning in its breadth and conclusions, The Age of Lincoln is a fiercely original history of the five decades that pivoted around the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. Abolishing slavery, the age's most extraordinary accomplishment, was not its most profound. The enduring legacy of the age of Lincoln was inscribing personal liberty into the nation's millennial aspirations. America has always perceived providence in its progress, but in the 1840s and 1850s pessimism accompanied marked extremism, as Millerites predicted the Second Coming, utopianists planned perfection, Southerners made slavery an inviolable honor, and Northerners conflated Manifest Destiny with free-market opportunity. Even amid historic political compromises the middle ground collapsed. In a remarkable reappraisal of Lincoln, the distinguished historian Orville Vernon Burton shows how the president's authentic Southernness empowered him to conduct a civil war that redefined freedom as a personal right to be expanded to all Americans. In the violent decades to follow, the extent of that freedom would be contested but not its central place in what defined the country. Presenting a fresh conceptualization of the defining decades of modern America, The Age of Lincoln is narrative history of the highest order.

Arguably one of the most significant periods in US history, the American Civil War era continues to fascinate. In this essential reference guide to the period, Hugh Tulloch examines the war itself, alongside the political, constitutional, social, economic, literary and religious developments and trends that informed and were formed by the turbulent events that took place during America’s nineteenth century. Key themes examined here are: emancipation and the quest for racial justice abolitionism and debates regarding freedom versus slavery the confederacy and reconstruction civil war military strategy industry and agriculture Presidential elections and party politics cultural and intellectual developments. Including a compendium of information through timelines, chronologies, bibliographies and guides to sources as well, students of American history and the civil war will want a copy of this by their side.

Arguably, no event since the American Revolution has had a greater impact on US history than the Civil War. This devastating and formative conflict occupies a permanent place in the nation's psyche and continues to shape race relations, economic development, and regional politics. Naturally, an event of such significance has attracted much attention from historians, and tens of thousands of books have been published on the subject. Despite this breadth of study, new perspectives and tools are opening up fresh avenues of inquiry into this seminal era. In this timely and thoughtful book, Paul D. Escott surveys the current state of Civil War studies and explores the latest developments in research and interpretation. He focuses on specific issues where promising work is yet to be done, highlighting subjects such as the deep roots of the war, the role of African Americans, and environmental history, among others. He also identifies digital tools which have only recently become available and which allow researchers to take advantage of information in ways that were never before possible. Rethinking the Civil War Era is poised to guide young historians in much the way that James M. McPherson and William J. Cooper Jr.'s Writing the Civil War: The Quest to Understand did for a previous generation. Escott eloquently charts new ways forward for scholars, offering ideas, questions, and challenges. His work will not only illuminate emerging research but will also provide inspiration for future research in a field that continues to adapt and change.

This impressive collection joins the recent outpouring of exciting new work on American politics and political actors in the mid-nineteenth century. For several generations, much of the scholarship on the political history of the period from 1840 to 1877 has carried a theme of failure; after all, politicians in the antebellum years failed to prevent war, and those of the Civil War and Reconstruction failed to take advantage of opportunities to remake the nation. Moving beyond these older debates, the essays in this volume ask new questions about mid-nineteenth-century American politics and politicians. In A Political Nation, the contributors address the dynamics of political parties and factions, illuminate the presence of consensus and conflict in American political life, and analyze elections, voters, and issues. In addition to examining the structures of the United States Congress, state and local governments, and other political organizations, this collection emphasizes political leaders—those who made policy, ran for office, influenced elections, and helped to shape American life from the early years of the Second Party System to the turbulent period of Reconstruction. The book moves chronologically, beginning with an antebellum focus on how political actors behaved within their cultural surroundings. The authors then use the critical role of language, rhetoric, and ideology in mid-nineteenth-century political culture as a lens through which to reevaluate the secession crisis. The collection closes with an examination of cultural and institutional influences on politicians in the Civil War and Reconstruction years. Stressing the role of federalism in understanding American political behavior, A Political Nation underscores the vitality of scholarship on mid-nineteenth-century American politics. Contributors: Erik B. Alexander, University of Tennessee, Knoxville · Jean Harvey Baker, Goucher College · William J. Cooper, Louisiana State University · Daniel W. Crofts, The College of New Jersey · William W. Freehling, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities · Gary W. Gallagher, University of Virginia · Sean Nalty, University of Virginia · Mark E. Neely Jr., Pennsylvania State University · Rachel A. Shelden, Georgia College and State University · Brooks D. Simpson, Arizona State University · J. Mills Thornton, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

In the United States we elect members of the House of Representative from single-member districts: the candidate who receives the most votes from each geographically defined district wins a seat in the House. This system—so long in place that it seems perfectly natural—is, however, unusual. Most countries use proportional representation to elect their legislatures. Electing the House is the first book-length study to explore how the US came to adopt the single-member district system, how it solidified into a seemingly permanent fixture of American government and whether it performs well by the standards it was intended to achieve. The US Constitution grants the states the authority to elect representatives in a manner of their own choosing, subject to restrictions that Congress might impose. Electing the House reminds us that in the nation's early years the states exercised this privilege and elected their representatives using a variety of methods. Dow traces the general adoption of the present system to the Jacksonian Era—specifically to the major franchise expansion and voter mobilization of the time. The single-member district plurality-rule system was the Federalists' solution to tyranny of the majority under the expectation of universal franchise, and the Jacksonian-Whigs–Era response to the political uncertainty caused by large-scale voter mobilization. The system was solidified concurrently with the enfranchisement of women in the early twentieth century and African Americans in the Civil Rights Era. Dow persuasively argues that the single-member district system became the way that we elect our representatives because it fits especially well within the corpus of political thought that informs our collective understanding of good governance and it performs well by the standards it was meant to achieve, and these standards are still relevant today. Locating the development of single-member district system within the context of American political thought, Dow's study clarifies the workings and the significance of a critical electoral process in our time. In the process, the book informs and enhances our understanding of the evolution of the American political system.