The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln

Sean Wilentz has achieved a reputation as a significant American public intellectual, and as a notably partisan historian, defending his beloved Democratic Party and its revered founder, Andrew Jackson. Thus many historians might be forgiven for expecting this work to be polemical and biased. They would be wrong. In seeking to grasp the entire span of American history between the Revolution and the Civil War, Wilentz has in this long-awaited volume embraced a balanced, nuanced, and judicious view of his subject. Moreover, despite the book's imposing length, I found myself continually surprised by Wilentz's admirable conciseness on matters of great complexity. It is not too much to say that this is an elegantly brief portrait of the crucial founding decades of the American republic. Finally, The Rise of American Democracy restores politics to the front and center of American history, not as an elite pastime, but as the main arena of American life. This is a bold and courageous corrective to the long reign of social history in the academy, from an author who is himself one of the pioneers of social and labor history.

I find it hard to describe this tremendous work of scholarship and learning. In all the 70-plus years that I've been reading American history, never have I learned so much new factual material and never have I seen such tightly reasoned analysis presented so concisely. My underlining of passages appears on almost every page. To take just one isolated case, the Bank of the United States, I learned what Hamilton had in mind, what the Federalists agenda was when it was established, how Andrew Jackson vetoed its re-charter and why, and the economic panics caused by the political jostling over a period of fifty years and more. From grand issues such as the expansion of slavery, to individual portraits of the little-known presidents who served in the 1830s and 40s, to such minutiae as the derivation of the word "booze" (from E. C. Booz, who operated a saloon in New York), I came away feeling that I had just completed a two-year postgraduate course in American history, a far superior one to that which I studied in Berkeley in the early 1950s. This is definitely a prize-winning work: it is balanced, detailed, easily read and grasped by those willing to take the time to do it, and I heartily recommend it to any reader unfamiliar with the crucial events of 1795-1861.

This long academic text covers the changes that took place in the development of American democracy between the presidencies of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. Actually the book begins with democracies roots in America during the period of the Revolution and the Articles of Federation. The book traces the growth of American democracy from the "top-down" democracy of the early Federalists and Jeffersonians to the more grass-rooots oriented democracy that really began to take shape in the 1830s and 1840s to the crisis that American democracy faced with the coming of the Civil War. Professor Wilenz does an excellent job chronicling the many changes that took place in American democracy during this time. In an easy to read style, Wilenz covers the changing political, economic, and sociological circumstances that effected the way that democracy developed in America. This text is an excellant political overview of the first 90 years of America's history. From the first stirrings of popular democracy under Jefferson, to the advances of the Jacksonian period, to the rise of abolition and southern fire-eaters, to the series of territorial crisis that finally brought about the Civil War. This book covers all of these events in a manner that is easy to understand and ties them together into a larger historical context. I have read other books covering the same period and came away feeling confused; not with this text. The example that sticks out in my head is the rise of the Whig Party in the late 1830s. Other texts have left me confused regarding the reasons behind the rise of the Whigs; I found Wilenz's explanation very easy to follow. My only word of caution regarding this book - it is not for casual reaaders. This is meant to be an in depth look at a complex set of historical circumstances. I do not recommend it for people with only a passing interest in American history or those who are just beginning to delve into the period. It is not a book that you will finish it a night, but the time it takes you to read it will be well spent!

In "The Rise of American Democracy" (2005) Sean Wilentz has written a sweeping study of pre-Civil War United States. His study explores the long-standing tensions in early America which led to the Civil War, and it emphasizes the nature and fragility of democratic government. Sean Wilentz is Professor of History and director of the Program in American Studies at Princeton. He has written extensively on American history. The primary goal of Professor Wilentz' book is to show how democracy expanded and grew in the United States from the earliest days of the Republic through the election of Abraham Lincoln. The book is lengthy (796 pages of text plus over 150 pages of notes) and filled with learning and detail. In his book, Professor Wilentz offers a traditional narrative history as he focuses, and stresses "the importance of political events, ideas, and leaders to democracy's rise -- once an all-too-prevalent assumption, now in need of some rescue and repair". (p. xx) The three primary characters in his story are Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln, and the history centers around the direction these leaders gave to the development of democracy in the United States. There are three large sections in the book. The first section covers the United States from the Revolution through the War of 1812 and emphasizes the transition from an elitist government founded on property and privilege to Jeffersonian democracy. The second section covers the "Era of Good Feelings" (which Professor Wilentz recharacterizes as the "Era of Bad Feelings"), moves through the Missouri Compromise, and then concentrates on the presidency of Andrew Jackson with his destruction of the Second Bank of the United States and his confrontation with South Carolina over nullification. This section concludes with the formation of the Whig party and the election of 1840. The third section of the book covers the growing and increasingly polarized conflict between North and South over slavery. This conflict was exacerbated by the War with Mexico and the resultant questions about the extension of slavery into the new territories. North and South became increasingly milit! ant following unsuccessful Congressional attempts to defuse the controversy in 1850 and 1854. Professor Wilentz gives the reader the history of this conflict, with perceptive treatments of the Fugitive Slave Act, "bleeding" Kansas, John Brown, Harriet Beecher Stowe, the Dred Scott decision and much else (including a good discussion of Herman Melville and "Moby Dick"). This section culminates in a discussion of the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln's election to the presidency in 1860, and Southern secession. The book has a thick, complex texture because of the disparate events it covers and the many threads Professor Wilentz integrates into his narrative. There are long economic discussions focusing on the Bank of the United States and the tariff. There are good treatments of Am

My computer log reveals that in the last 7 years I have read 133 books presenting the American government and its presidents during the 1800's. There are many classic's amongest them including McCullogh's - John Adams, Chernow's- Alexander Hamiltons and the recent "Team of Rivals". The latter two I predicted would compete for the Pulitzer Prize next year. However, The Rise of American Democracy could conceivably overshadow these two masterpieces to become the celebrated History work of 2005. Why? Because it is a profound and elegantly written piece which illuminates the gestational events leading to the civil war which sucha clear cause and effect presenatation of the facts that for once you will endeavor to say " I fully understand why the Civil War occurred and why slavery existed and why the South fought so diligently to preserve this institution and its lifestyle. What is slavery? "Receiving bt irresistible power, the work of another man, and not by his consent". The discussion on the Dred Scott decision which effectively produced a pivotal dichotomy in American politics by greating the great didvide or the Mason Dixson line. Every president partook in slavery's continuation either by compliance, ignorance, sheer stupidity (JQ Adams) or most often from fear of reprisal. The only statuesque figure who never found it fashionable to waver is opinion was Abraham Lincoln. Although, Lincoln expounded for their freedom he did not believe in their intellectual equality. Which if he had would truely have made him a man ahead of his time. But again he supported womens suffrage as early as 1841. Incidentally I do not recall learning anything on the Kansas-Nebraska bill with its attempt to circumnavigate the Missouri compromise of 1851. But the official blood letting began with the civil implosions by Missouri pro-slavery men attacking the free men of Kansas. Additionally, the interplay between Senators Clay, Webster (both abolitionists) and Calhoun (proslavery) gives the reader more insight into their propagation of slavery by their poor management of public affairs during the Missouri Compromise procedings. Reading the 800 pages of this classic history book will finally place the intellectual on equal footing with Scholars who we so active have read during these last five years. The many loose ends will finally be elucidated for the ample reading masses. Also Mr Wilentz book has won the 2006 Bancroft Award in History given out by Columbia University for the Best History Book of the year. This book was so note worthy that I feel it merited the Pulitzer for History.