The rise and fall of the American Whig Party : Jacksonian politics and the onset of the Civil War
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The rise and fall of the American Whig Party : Jacksonian politics and the onset of the Civil War
Oxford University Press, 2003, c1999
- : pbk
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Note
Originally published: 1999
"First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 2003"--T.p. verso
Includes bibliographical references (p. [1181]-1201) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The political home of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Horace Greeley, and the young Abraham Lincoln, the American Whig Party was involved at every level of American politics-local, state, and federal-in the years before the Civil War, and controlled the White House for eight of the twenty-two years that it existed. Now, in The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, Michael F. Holt gives us the only comprehensive history of the Whigs ever written-a
monumental history covering in rich detail the American political landscape from the Age of Jackson to impending disunion.
In Michael Holt's hands, the history of the Whig Party becomes a political history of the United States during the tumultuous Antebellum period. He offers a panoramic account of a time when a welter of parties (Whig, Democratic, Anti-Mason, Know Nothing, Free Soil, Republican) and many extraordinary political statesmen (including Andrew Jackson, John C. Calhoun, William Seward, Daniel Webster, Martin Van Buren, and Henry Clay) struggled to control the national agenda 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 rocked the country, including the Nullification Controversy, the Panic of 1837, the Annexation of Texas, the Compromise of 1850, and
the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Holt captures all of this as he shows that, amid this contentious political activity, the Whig Party continuously strove to unite North and South, repeatedly trying to find a compromise position. Indeed, the Whig Party emerges as the nation's last great hope to prevent secession and civil war.
The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party is a magisterial work of history, one that has already been hailed by William Gienapp of Harvard as "one of the most important books on nineteenth-century politics ever written."
Table of Contents
- Preface Acknowledgments 1: "Not Fitted to Make Converts" 2: "To Rescue the Government and Public Library" 3: "No Opposition Man Can Be Elected President" 4: "We Have Many Recruits in Our Ranks from the Pressure of the Times" 5: "Harrison and Prosperity or Van Buren and Ruin" 6: "The Whig Party Seems Now Totally Broken Up and Dismembered" 7: "The Whigs Are in High Spirits" 8: "The Present Administration Are Your Best Recruiting Officers" 9: "The Contest for President Should Be Regarded as a Contest of Principles" 10: "We Must Have the Aid of Gunpowder" 11: "Stimulate Every Whig to Turn Out" 12: "Many Discordant Political Interests to Reconcile" 13: "Patronage Is a Dangerous Element of Power" 14: "The Slavery Excitement Seems Likely to Obliterate Party Lines" 15: "The Long Agony Is Over" 16: "God Save Us from Whig Vice Presidents" 17: "Fillmore...Is Precisely the Man for the Occasion" 18: "Webster Is Now Engaged in Strenuous Efforts to Secure the Succession" 19: "Scott & Scott Alone Is the Man for the Emergency" 20: "Like Pissing Against the Wind" 21: "Now Is the Time to Start New
- the Old Issues Are Gone" 22: "This Nebraska Business Will Entirely Denationalize the Whig Party" 23: "The Whig Party, as a Party, Are Entirely Disbanded" 24: "Confusion Worse Confounded" 25: "Let, Then, the Whig Party Pass" 26: "The Whig Party Is Dead and Buried" Notes Abbreviations Used in Notes Bibliography Index
by "Nielsen BookData"
