Passionate political disagreement is as old as the American Republic, and the antebellum era—the thirty years before the Civil War—was as rife with partisan discord as any in our history. From 1834 to 1856, the Whigs battled their opponents, the Jacksonian Democrats, for offices, prestige, and power. The partisan expression of America's rising middle class, the Whigs boasted such famous members as Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and William Henry Seward, and the party supported tariffs, banks, internal improvements, moral reform, and public education. In The Whigs' America, Joseph W. Pearson explores a variety of topics, including the Whigs' understanding of the role of the individual in American politics, their perceptions of political power and the rule of law, and their impressions of the past and what should be learned from history. Long dismissed as a party bereft of ideas, Pearson provides a counterbalance to this trend through an attentive examination of writings from party leaders, contemporaneous newspapers, and other sources. Throughout, he shows that the party attracted optimistic Americans seeking achievement, community, and meaning through collaborative effort and self-control in a world growing more and more impersonal. Pearson effectively demonstrates that, while the Whigs never achieved the electoral success of their opponents, they were rich with ideas. His detailed study adds complexity and nuance to the history of the antebellum era by illuminating significant aspects of a deeply felt, shared culture that informed and shaped a changing nation.

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.

*Includes pictures *Includes excerpts of contemporary accounts *Includes a bibliography for further reading When President Thomas Jefferson went ahead with the Louisiana Purchase, he wasn't entirely sure what was on the land he was buying, or whether the purchase was even constitutional. Ultimately, the Louisiana Purchase encompassed all or part of 15 current U.S. states and two Canadian provinces, including Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, parts of Minnesota that were west of the Mississippi River, most of North Dakota, nearly all of South Dakota, northeastern New Mexico, northern Texas, the portions of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado east of the Continental Divide, and Louisiana west of the Mississippi River, including the city of New Orleans. In addition, the Purchase contained small portions of land that would eventually become part of the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. The purchase, which immediately doubled the size of the United States at the time, still comprises around 23% of current American territory. With so much new territory to carve into states, the balance of Congressional power became a hot topic in the decade after the purchase, especially when the people of Missouri sought to be admitted to the Union in 1819 with slavery being legal in the new state. While Congress was dealing with that, Alabama was admitted in December 1819, creating an equal number of free states and slave states. Thus, allowing Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state would disrupt the balance. It was against that backdrop and the election of Andrew Jackson that the Whigs emerged as opponents to the Jacksonian Democrats during a period of American history known as the Second Party System (1828-1854). Initially, the conflict was rooted not only in different visions for the United States - the Whigs believed in a strong central bank and federally funded infrastructure projects (known as "internal improvements") - but also in opposition to one man: Andrew Jackson. When it first formed, the Democratic Party coalesced around Jackson, and his beliefs and actions became Democratic Party dogma, which left the diverse group of people who opposed Jackson to become the Whigs. The problem with this arrangement is that while the Whigs scored some notable successes as an opposition party, they found governing more difficult. The two Whigs elected president, William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor, died in office, raising to the presidency their respective vice-presidents, John Tyler and Millard Fillmore. Neither man succeeded in uniting the Whig Party behind him (a gargantuan task, to be sure), and neither was ever elected president in his own right. The increasing rancor over slavery is what finally killed the Whig Party. A truly national party, there were both Southern and Northern Whigs. When the Mexican-American War resulted in the country gaining millions of acres of land for potential new states, it galvanized both pro- and anti-slavery forces, and the Whig Party found itself incapable of navigating this fraught political issue before it eventually collapsed in the mid-1850s. However, many of its policy objectives, including a strong protective tariff, were picked up by the newly formed Republican Party, which more or less dominated national politics from the Civil War through the early 20th century. The Whig Party: The History and Legacy of the Influential Political Party in 19th Century America looks at how the party came into being, its most important leaders and ideas, and why the party disappeared shortly before the Civil War. Along with pictures depicting important people, places, and events, you will learn about the Whig Party like never before.

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.

Five essays on the tendency of modern historians to update other eras and on the need to recapture the concrete life of the past.

Howe studies the American Whigs with the thoroughness so often devoted their party rivals, the Jacksonian Democrats. He shows that the Whigs were not just a temporary coalition of politicians but spokesmen for a heritage of political culture received from Anglo-American tradition and passed on, with adaptations, to the Whigs' Republican successors. He relates this culture to both the country's economic conditions and its ethnoreligious composition.

Charismatic, charming, and one of the best orators of his era, Henry Clay achieved success at many levels. Yet Clay still saw presidential greatness remain a fingertip away. Why? This book uses new sources to provide a focused, nuanced description of Clay's programs and politics and to explain why the man they called "The Great Rejected" never won the presidency but did win the accolades of history.