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Summary
Summary
In this magisterial work, Sean Wilentz traces a historical arc from the earliest days of the republic to the opening shots of the Civil War. One of our finest writers of history, Wilentz brings to life the era after the American Revolution, when the idea of democracy remained contentious, and Jeffersonians and Federalists clashed over the role of ordinary citizens in government of, by, and for the people. The triumph of Andrew Jackson soon defined this role on the national level, while city democrats, Anti-Masons, fugitive slaves, and a host of others hewed their own local definitions. In these definitions Wilentz recovers the beginnings of a discontenttwo starkly opposed democracies, one in the North and another in the Southand the wary balance that lasted until the election of Abraham Lincoln sparked its bloody resolution. 75 illustrations.
Author Notes
Robert sean Wilentz was born in 1951 in New York City. He earned his first B.A. from Colunbia University in 1972 and his second from Oxford University in 1974 on a Kellett Fellowship. He continued his education at Yale University where he earned his M.A. degree in 1975 and his PhD. in 1980. His writings are focused on the importance of class and race in the early national period. He has also co-authored books on nineteenth-century religion and working class life. His book The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln, won the Bancroft Prize. He has also written about modern U.S. history in his book, The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008. He has been the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor of History at Princeton University since 1979. Robert Wilentz is also a contributing editor at The New Republic. He writes on music, the arts, history and politics. He received a Grammy nomination and a 2005 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for musical commentary on the musician Bob Dylan.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
As the revolutionary fervor of the war for independence cooled, the new American republic, says Princeton historian Wilentz, might easily have hardened into rule by an aristocracy. Instead, the electoral franchise expanded and the democratic creed transformed every aspect of American society. At its least inspired, this ambitious study is a solid but unremarkable narrative of familiar episodes of electoral politics. But by viewing political history through the prism of democratization, Wilentz often discovers illuminating angles on his subject. His anti-elitist sympathies make for some lively interpretations, especially his defense of the Jacksonian revolt against the Bank of the United States. Wilentz unearths the roots of democratic radicalism in the campaigns for popular reform of state constitutions during the revolutionary and Jacksonian eras, and in the young nation's mess of factional and third-party enthusiasms. And he shows how the democratic ethos came to pervade civil society, most significantly in the Second Great Awakening, "a devotional upsurge... that can only be described as democratic." Wilentz's concluding section on the buildup to the Civil War, which he presents as a battle over the meaning of democracy between the South's "Master Race" localism and the egalitarian nationalism of Lincoln's Republicans, is a tour-de-force, a satisfying summation and validation of his analytical approach. 75 illus. not seen by PW. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Wilentz, a Princeton history professor, explores the arduous process that led to the creation of American democracy. Combining the traditional approach of focusing on important political events with the modern tendency to examine social forces and the role of ordinary people in shaping historical events, he traces the development of democratic principles from Thomas Jefferson, who played a primary role in establishing the terms of American democratic politics, to Abraham Lincoln, who represented a shift in ideals of democracy at a critical period in the nation's history. Recognizing that early democracy didn't include most citizens, certainly not blacks or women or even white men who lacked wealth and power, Wilentz explores the social forces that affected the evolution of democratic principles from the American Revolution to the Civil War. Wilentz's engaging narrative style and impressive detailing of the topic give a strong sense of immediacy to the account. --Vanessa Bush Copyright 2005 Booklist
Choice Review
In The Age of Jackson (1945), Arthur M. Schlesinger revised how the democratic rupture of the early 19th century was interpreted. He argued that the origins of US democracy were not rooted in Turner's fabled frontier or rural social equality, but within the context of the Founding Fathers' views toward the enlightened and unenlightened. Schlesinger also saw the emergence of democracy as the direct result of class conflict, not sectional strife. Since this seminal work, historians have become ever more specialized, losing sight of the import and relevance of political discourse. Wilentz (Princeton Univ.) rightfully returns the historical focus to the political ideas and activities of the working class, organized parties, Congress, and the presidency. He examines the rise of democracy between the presidencies of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, where the distinctive features of modern democratic politics were formed. This rise was neither providential nor inevitable, but transpired bit-by-bit through the pitched battles of city and rural democrats, anti-Masons, Whigs, abolitionists, and the slavocracy at the local, state, and national levels. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. All general and undergraduate collections and above. P. G. Connors Michigan Legislative Service Bureau
Kirkus Review
Is the U.S. a democracy, or a republic? As Wilentz (History/Princeton Univ.) shows in this sprawling account, Americans debated the issue from the post-revolutionary era to the Civil War. In classical terms, a republic is governed "through the ministrations of the most worthy, enlightened men," whereas a democracy "dangerously handed power to the impassioned, unenlightened masses." One-time revolutionary firebrand Noah Webster so mistrusted the mob that, he thundered, had he foreseen popular rule, he would never have fought for freedom; even Thomas Jefferson, that most impassioned of democrats, allowed that given a free choice, the public chose wrongly more often than not. Democracy as such was an oxymoron, Wilentz observes, with power limited to white propertied men in the early days of the republic; the extension of rights throughout the 19th century to a wider polity was a matter of fierce fighting, and eventually war. The battle over just who was to be in charge began almost as soon as national freedom was achieved, an early test, Wilentz writes, being the Whisky Rebellion of 1794, fought by country people against an excise tax on distilled liquor imposed by urbanite arch-republican Alexander Hamilton. As the contest expanded, Wilentz notes, some of the differences between country and city people gave way to other divisions, and by the time Andrew Jackson ran for office in 1824, the gulf between North and South was beginning to widen (as, for a time, was that between those who believed in a cash economy and those who argued for the merits of credit). Abraham Lincoln, though deeply committed to democratic values, would insist on the supremacy of federal over states' rights, while the nominally democratic leaders of the South meant to exalt "the supreme political power of local elites." Wilentz shows that none of these battles was new when Lincoln took office; in some respects, they are still being fought today. Wilentz's book, though very long, wastes no words. A well-crafted, highly readable political history. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
A central question of American history is how U.S. democratic institutions developed from the early republic to the beginning of the Civil War. In this informative, thoughtful, and thoroughgoing book, Wilentz (history & American studies, Princeton Univ.; Chants Democratic) demonstrates how multiple meanings that have attached to American ideas of democracy, both as a form of government and as a social construct, were altered in a complex fashion from the egalitarian Jeffersonian view to the populist Lincolnian perspective. He examines events and experiences, in particular the phenomenon of increased popular oversight of state and national government, that led to changing relationships between governors and the governed. Wilentz's themes include the political conflicts found in the development of representative democracy and the implications of the slavery controversy in battles concerning democratic reforms. His clear, insightful narrative conveys new interconnected understandings of main historical dimensions in our national life and will enhance citizens' understanding of the history of American political development. This superb analysis is highly recommended for public and academic libraries. -Steven Puro, St. Louis Univ. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| List of Illustrations | p. ix |
| Maps | p. xiii |
| Preface | p. xvii |
| Prologue | p. 3 |
| I The Crisis of the New Order | |
| 1 American Democracy in a Revolutionary Age | p. 13 |
| 2 The Republican Interest and the Self-Created Democracy | p. 40 |
| 3 The Making of Jeffersonian Democracy | p. 72 |
| 4 Jefferson's Two Presidencies | p. 99 |
| 5 Nationalism and the War of 1812 | p. 141 |
| II Democracy Ascendant | |
| 6 The Era of Bad Feelings | p. 181 |
| 7 Slavery, Compromise, and Democratic Politics | p. 218 |
| 8 The Politics of Moral Improvement | p. 254 |
| 9 The Aristocracy and Democracy of America | p. 281 |
| 10 The Jackson Era: Uneasy Beginnings | p. 312 |
| 11 Radical Democracies | p. 330 |
| 12 1832: Jackson's Crucial Year | p. 359 |
| 13 Banks, Abolitionists, and the Equal Rights Democracy | p. 391 |
| 14 "The Republic has degenerated into a Democracy" | p. 425 |
| 15 The Politics of Hard Times | p. 456 |
| 16 Whigs, Democrats, and Democracy | p. 482 |
| III Slavery and the Crisis of American Democracy | |
| 17 Whig Debacle, Democratic Confusion | p. 521 |
| 18 Antislavery, Annexation, and the Advent of Young Hickory | p. 547 |
| 19 The Bitter Fruits of Manifest Destiny | p. 577 |
| 20 War, Slavery, and the American 1848 | p. 602 |
| 21 Political Truce, Uneasy Consequences | p. 633 |
| 22 The Truce Collapses | p. 668 |
| 23 A Nightmare Broods Over Society | p. 707 |
| 24 The Faith That Right Makes Might | p. 745 |
| 25 The Iliad of All Our Woes | p. 768 |
| Epilogue | p. 789 |
| Notes | p. 797 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 951 |
| Credits | p. 953 |
| Index | p. 955 |
