The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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.)
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From Bookmarks Magazine

Going against prevailing historical fashion, Sean Wilentz delivers a long, exhaustive survey of political machinations, both grand and minute. Though he forays into social and cultural history, the bulk of The Rise of American Democracy is a blow-by-blow account of what happened in the corridors of young America with a "house divided." Wilentz, author of Chants Democratic (1984) and professor of history and director of the American studies program at Princeton University, tells this compelling story with precision and poise, but reviewers question whether anyone but scholars will slog through the 1000-page tome. Within academic halls, at least, this impressive volume is certainly eligible to be the definitive synthesis of the era.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 992 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton; First Edition edition (October 24, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393058204
• ISBN-13: 978-0393058208
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #345,658 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

85 of 90 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sean Wilentz on American Democracy, December 29, 2005

By	Robin Friedman (Washington, D.C. United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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 American expansionism and "manifest destiny", of Indian policy, and above all else slavery. Professor Wilentz covers both national and state and local politics as he offers detailed discussions of how the individual States, both North and South, gradually expanded the franchise to include, by the outset of the Civil War, virtually all white males. Professor Wilentz gives a wealth of information about coalition politics and about compromise as the many movements in American pre-Bellum society, from the Federalists, to the Northern and Southern Whigs, to the Northern and Southern Democrats of every political stripe formed alliances with each other in an attempt to create a national politics and to cover o!
ver increasing dissention and disagreement resulting from the "peculiar institution". Professor Wilentz also emphasizes how much of American democracy developed "from the ground up" beginning from the time of President George Washington. Americans formed combinations and organizations outside the political system to make their voices heard. There are many instances, but the fullest treatment in this study belongs to abolitionism and to incipient unionist organizations of workers.

Professor Wilentz ties his material together by lengthy summations and preludes at the beginning and end of virtually every section. This allows the reader to keep track of what otherwise would be (and still remains) a complicated story. There is an excellent use of biography of many people,familiar and unfamiliar, and of the telling story or anecdote. In addition, Professor Wilentz' interest in democracy -- how it developed and how it was unable to keep the United States from falling into sectionalism and near destruction -- gives a center to the book. Professor Wilentz' sympathies are obviously with the growth, expansion, and inclusiveness of American participatory democracy as they developed up to the Civil War and continued with the "New Birth of Freedom" that President Lincoln proclaimed at Gettysburg.

This book probably will overwhelm readers who lack at least a basic grounding in pre-Civil War American history. For those with the requisite background and interest, the book presents an outstanding overview of America's pre-Bellum history, and a thoughtful account of where our country has been and where, Professor Wilentz suggests, it should be going.


Robin Friedman

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A true prize-winner, September 24, 2006

By	Constant Weeder "batttman" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

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.

26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent! , March 27, 2006

By	Nathaniel H. Biggs "The History Guy" (Long Valley, NJ) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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!