Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century. [Hardcover]

Glenn C. Altschuler (Author), Stuart M. Blumin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 13, 2000

What did politics and public affairs mean to those generations of Americans who first experienced democratic self-rule? Taking their cue from vibrant political campaigns and very high voter turnouts, historians have depicted the nineteenth century as an era of intense and widespread political enthusiasm. But rarely have these historians examined popular political engagement directly, or within the broader contexts of day-to-day life. In this bold and in-depth look at Americans and their politics, Glenn Altschuler and Stuart Blumin argue for a more complex understanding of the "space" occupied by politics in nineteenth-century American society and culture. Mining such sources as diaries, letters, autobiographies, novels, cartoons, contested-election voter testimony to state legislative committees, and the partisan newspapers of representative American communities ranging from Massachusetts and Georgia to Texas and California, the authors explore a wide range of political actions and attitudes. They consider the enthusiastic commitment celebrated by historians together with various forms of skepticism, conflicted engagement, detachment, and hostility that rarely have been recognized as part of the American political landscape. Rude Republic sets the political parties and their noisy and attractive campaign spectacles, as well as the massive turnout of voters on election day, within the communal social structure and calendar, the local human landscape of farms, roads, and county towns, and the organizational capacities of emerging nineteenth-century institutions. Political action and engagement are set, too, within the tide of events: the construction of the mass-based party system, the gathering crisis over slavery and disunion, and the gradual expansion of government (and of cities) in the post-Civil War era. By placing the question of popular engagement within these broader social, cultural, and historical contexts, the authors bring new understanding to the complex trajectory of American democracy.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Nineteenth-century Americans, Cornell professors Altschuler and Blumin argue, were political animals, and politics did not stop at the voting booth--it encroached upon everyday life, with references to elections and political parties popping up in plays, songs, parades and teatime small talk. If there were Americans before 1860 who doubted the importance of politics, the Civil War drove home the relevance of congressional votes and presidential elections. One local newspaper reported that two women ended a decades-long friendship because they disagreed about Lincoln. After the Civil War, politics, which had occupied a peripheral role in fiction before the war, took center stage in such bestsellers as Albion Tourgee's A Fool's Errand (1880), a novel about the politics of Reconstruction. (Altschuler and Blumin often exaggerate the extent to which politics' pervasiveness was a new phenomenon. When they write that during the Civil War, politics invaded the pulpit, with preachers offering their opinions not just of the Bible but of the president as well, readers may recall the highly politicized sermons from the Revolutionary era. The authors constantly complicate the story they tell: just after convincing readers that politics dominated every novel written after 1870, they show that a close reading of diaries from the era indicates that some men were increasingly detached from electoral politics--a tension that is never satisfactorily resolved. Still, theirs is a rich and entertaining study. 22 b&w illustrations. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Cornell professors Altschuler and Blumin scrutinize a wide range of political actions and attitudes within the broader context of everyday life to clarify the intense political engagement of 19th-century America. They do so by examining diaries, letters, novels, and the autobiographies of political men and their wives. They also consider local and partisan newspapers, census manuscripts, city directories, political humor tracts, and the testimony of ordinary voters who came before a state legislative committee charged with investigating disputed elections. Popular political engagement in democratic America--from the 1830s through the end of the century and beyond--is viewed from cultural, social, and historical angles. This book offers an impressive in-depth analysis of politics and society in America's first experience with democratic self-rule. It has very good chapter notes and fills a void in the literature on the subject. The range of issues raised and the quality of their documentation make this an excellent text for teaching and for research.
-Edward G. McCormack, Univ. of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast, Long Beach
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 328 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (March 13, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691001308
• ISBN-13: 978-0691001302
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #675,841 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Almost incomprehensible, March 11, 2005

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Air Force Member (Fort McPherson, GA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century. (Hardcover)

"Rude Republic" is an attempt to portray the heated political atmosphere of the first years of the United States, where everyone seemed to have a political opinion on any subject and was willing to share it. It's a great premise of a politically charged time in US history that hasn't really been explored in great detail. The authors attempt to dispute the premise that the average citizen during the 19th century was politically active because of the exceptionally high turnout at the polls. The authors contend that this just means that the political parties were successful in getting men to the polls, but that the average citizen considered party politics as dirty and beneath the genteel citizen. The book provides a good examination of popular literature, both magazines and novels, and how it reflected the opinion of politics. Unfortunately, the authors' prose is dense and hard to follow; descriptions of historical facts are often interrupted for opinions; and the historical perspective veers too far into the sociological realm without seeming to make a point.