The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War

by Holt, Michael F.

• ISBN13: 9780195055443
• ISBN10: 0195055446
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-06-17
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This monumental history of the Whig Party and of the United States in the decades before the Civil War constitutes "one of the most important books on 19th-century politics ever written" (William Gienapp, Harvard University).

Author Biography

Michael F. Holt is Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History and Chair of the History Department at the University of Virginia. A leading authority on nineteenth-century American politics, he has been a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and of the National Humanites Center, and in 1993-94, he was the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at Cambridge University. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xv
``Not Fitted to Make Converts''	1	(18)
``To Rescue the Government and Public Liberty''	19	(14)
``No Opposition Man Can Be Elected President''	33	(27)
``We Have Many Recruits in Our Ranks from the Pressure of the Times''	60	(29)
``Harrison and Prosperity or Van Buren and Ruin''	89	(33)
``The Whig Party Seems Now Totally Broken, Up and Dismembered''	122	(40)
``The Whigs Are in High Spirits''	162	(46)
``The Present Administration Are Your Best Recruiting Officers''	208	(51)
``The Contest for President Should Be Regarded as a Contest of Principles''	259	(25)
``We Must Have the Aid of Gunpowder''	284	(47)
``Stimulate Every Whig to Turn Out''	331	(52)
``Many Discordant Political Interests to Reconcile''	383	(31)
``Patronage Is a Dangerous Element of Power''	414	(45)
``The Slavery Excitement Seems Likely to Obliterate Party Lines''	459	(62)
``The Long Agony Is Over''	521	(32)
``God Save Us from Whig Vice Presidents''	553	(45)
``Fillmore. . . Is Precisely the Man for the Occasion''	598	(37)
``Webster Is Now Engaged in Strenuous Efforts to Secure the Succession''	635	(38)
``Scott & Scott Alone Is the Man for the Emergency''	673	(53)
``Like Pissing Against the Wind''	726	(39)
``Now Is the Time to Start New; the Old Issues Are Gone''	765	(39)
``This Nebraska Business Will Entirely Denationalize the Whig Party''	804	(32)
``The Whig Party, as a Party, Are Entirely Disbanded''	836	(43)
``Confusion Worse Confounded''	879	(30)
``Let, Then, the Whig Party Pass''	909	(42)
``The Whig Party Is Dead and Buried''	951	(36)
Notes	987	(192)
Abbreviations Used in Notes	1179	(2)
Bibliography	1181	(22)
Index	1203
Illustrations appear after page	552