Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson To Lincoln

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W. W. Norton & Company, Aug 29, 2006 - Biography & Autobiography - 1044 pages
Winner of the Bancroft Award: "Monumental…a tour de force…awesome in its coverage of political events."—Gordon Wood, New York Times Book Review

Acclaimed as the definitive study of the period by one of the greatest American historians, The Rise of American Democracy traces a historical arc from the earliest days of the republic to the opening shots of the Civil War. Ferocious clashes among the Founders over the role of ordinary citizens in a government of "we, the people" were eventually resolved in the triumph of Andrew Jackson. Thereafter, Sean Wilentz shows, a fateful division arose between two starkly opposed democracies—a division contained until the election of Abraham Lincoln sparked its bloody resolution. Winner of the Bancroft Award, shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2005 and best book of New York magazine and The Economist.

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Contents

Prologue
3
THE CRISIS OF THE NEW ORDER
9
American Democracy in a Revolutionary Age
11
The Republican Interest and the SelfCreated Democracy
38
The Making of Jeffersonian Democracy
70
Jeffersons Two Presidencies
97
Nationalism and the War of 1812
139
DEMOCRACY ASCENDANT
177
Whigs Democrats and Democracy
480
SLAVERY AND THE CRISIS OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
517
Whig Debacle Democratic Confusion
519
Antislavery Annexation and the Advent of Young Hickory
545
The Bitter Fruits of Manifest Destiny
575
War Slavery and the American 1848
600
Political Truce Uneasy Consequences
631
The Truce Collapses
666

The Era of Bad Feelings
179
Slavery Compromise and Democratic Politics
216
The Politics of Moral Improvement
252
The Aristocracy and Democracy of America
279
The Jackson Era Uneasy Beginnings
310
Radical Democracies
328
1832 Jacksons Crucial Year
357
Banks Abolitionists and the Equal Rights Democracy
389
The Republic has degenerated into a Democracy
423
The Politics of Hard Times
454
A Nightmare Broods Over Society
705
The Faith That Right Makes Might
743
The Iliad of All Our Woes
766
Epilogue
787
Notes
795
Acknowledgments
947
Credits
949
Index
951
Copyright

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About the author (2006)

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.

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