Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments For sharing the conviction that this material deserves publication, I am grate- ful to Aida Donald and her colleagues at the Harvard University Press, who welcomed these volumes into the John Harvard Library. Aida’s commitment and encouragement were exemplary. Donna Bouvier’s guidance of the manu- script through the publication process was done with understanding, grace, and expertise. Several historians of nineteenth-century American politics have helped me understand the American party battle in the period covered in these pages. Without implicating any of them in the particulars of my interpretation, I want to express my gratitude to Lee Benson, Allan G. Bogue, Ronald For- misano, William Gienapp, Michael Holt, Daniel Walker Howe, and William Shade, all of whose ªne scholarship has been cogent, informative, and singu- larly important to me as I deciphered the play of nineteenth-century partisan confrontation. The staffs of the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, and the Cornell University Library were most forthcoming as I perused their collec- tions, helping me ªnd and reproduce material that was often difªcult to lo- cate. They too deserve my appreciation and gratitude. In particular, both Julie Copenhagen and the interlibrary loan staff she heads at Cornell’s Olin Li- brary and the staff of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Department in the Kroch Library at Cornell were relentless in their commitment to locating many hard-to-ªnd pamphlets. As always, my family, Rosemary, Victoria, and David, and a number of xxiv Acknowledgments good friends, led by Glenn Altschuler and Alain Seznec, have energized and cosseted me in many important ways. I very much appreciate the warmth and constancy of their support. I dedicate this book to my colleagues in Cornell’s History Department, who for more than thirty years have, by their example and in their actions, created a ºourishing intellectual atmosphere that I have greatly beneªted from and deeply cherish. the american party battle Introduction: Deªning the Soul of the Nation The bases of nineteenth-century America’s partisan confrontation—the ideological and policy differences between the contending parties—always reºected speciªc concerns of the time. In each of the thirteen presidential elections between 1828 and 1876, and in the many off-year elections for Con- gress, state governorships, and other ofªces in that era, different issues ap- peared, were taken up, and were argued about, with one or another or a combination of them dominating the political arena at a particular moment. There was no shortage of such issues in any given election, and the advocates of the two major parties touched on a great many, from banking, the tariff, internal improvements, land policy, and other aspects of the nation’s political economy, to foreign affairs, immigration, religion, social reform, and sec- tional differences, to the momentous and transforming issues raised by the Civil War and Reconstruction. The debates over these matters were constant and pointed. In their electoral discourse, the parties clearly identiªed them- selves with contrasting positions about all of these issues without stint, as they also did in their behavior when holding ofªce.1 Their policy divisions formed the basic construct of American politics.2 The Great Themes: Continuity and Change At the same time, American political discourse had another characteristic as well. Whatever the particular policy matter discussed, there were overall con- 1. “The Contrast” is the title of at least two Whig pamphlets: [Richard Hildreth], “The Contrast: or William Henry Harrison versus Martin Van Buren” (Boston, 1840); and “The Contrast: The Whig and Democratic Platforms—the Whig and Democratic Candidates for the Presidency” (n.p., 1852). 2. There are a number of excellent studies of the various party ideologies throughout these years. For the 2 introduction tinuities in the nature of the arguments offered in this great partisan debate that moved beyond the individual issue or immediate context to stretch over the whole period. The arguments offered to the electorate were always framed within a set of boundaries that encompassed similar concerns affecting the American people across an entire half century, from the 1820s through the 1870s. Pamphlet writers were always adept at crystallizing current policy issues and immediate concerns while remaining cognizant of more constant, longer-run themes in the nation’s political culture. They effectively inte- grated, and surrounded, immediate concerns with larger arguments about the nation’s future, the ever-present threats and dangers to it and to the people’s liberties, Americans’ expectations, hopes, fears, and prejudices, and the future course of American freedom. These general concerns remained always at hand and were powerfully dis- played in every election campaign as the clear framework of American political discourse. This was not surprising given the continuities of American political life. Battles that had begun earlier over the extent of the government’s power were reborn in the 1820s, if in a quite different context. The appear- ance of potent issues stimulated by the Adams and Jackson presidencies and the emergence of national political parties, as well as a series of later wrench- ing changes on the political landscape, not the least of which was the Civil War, did not materially transform the nature of the general subjects that American political discourse focused on, nor the different perspectives that each party brought to them, whatever the important contextual differences in the speciªc policies being contested. Visions of a more secure and better society achieved through political ac- tion were always the core of the pamphlet writers’ arguments. They expressed ªrst an abiding and intense concern about the weaknesses, and susceptibility to overthrow, of the American nation—about the security and well-being of a republic that was always endangered, particularly in the face of the illegiti- mate antecedents, goals, leadership, and behavior of most of those on the other side from the writer. In the 1820s and later, stark negative charac- terizations of both the opposition and the general situation abounded, in- cluding expressions of the fear of an ill-intentioned and malevolent leadership and the subsequent decline and degeneracy of the society. These remained potent organizing themes for political discourse.3 early years, see Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (Chicago, 1979); John Ashworth, “Agrarians” and “Aristocrats”: Party Political Ideology in the United States, 1837–1846 (London, 1983); Lawrence F. Kohl, The Politics of Individualism: Parties and the American Character in the Jacksonian Era (New York, 1989). 3. For background on the abiding concerns about the future of the republic that resonated throughout Deªning the Soul of the Nation 3 The second organizing theme grew out of the panoply of speciªc issues rooted in the political economy and the social matrix of the nation. These issues, articulated usually by the Democrats (to which their opponents had to respond), raised basic questions and provoked sharp disagreements about the limits of the authority, power, and reach of the national government in Amer- ica’s free society. Did the national government have a responsibility to pro- mote “development”? Did its power reach as far as the most demanding wished that it did? If not, where were its limits? These questions echoed from the ªrst days under the new constitutional authority and had continued to be debated since.4 The third theme concerned the meaning, and continuing improvement, of the American experience—what was the nature of liberty in the nation, what were its possibilities and limits, and who among the partisan contestants was most willing, and best prepared, to preserve and/or extend it in the face of threatening or restrictive tendencies present on the political landscape. Who was included in the American republic? Who could participate in its decision making? What did liberty mean on this continent? Did the nation’s commitment to liberty extend to its expansion to groups not usually considered full- ºedged members of civil society? Should political authority be used to moni- tor who was an American and who was not? If so, and under what circumstances? Should such authority determine who could enter the nation and who could not? Could it be used to confront social evils and weaknesses in the society, all in the name of improvement, stability, and general welfare? In both the electoral battles fought and the descriptions offered in the pamphlets, these basic themes were never rigidly separated from one another. Rather, the pamphlet writers tended to mix them together. Most arguments put forward by party publicists raised a number of different subjects and brought together a great deal of information that quickly and inevitably be- came intertwined, so that problems of political economy, for example, were rarely discussed outside of expressions of concern for the liberty of the people. The central thrust of the discourse also varied over time among the three general themes. Emphasis on the dangers to the Republic, for example, domi- nated the early years of party warfare and reappeared later, during the Civil this period, one should begin with Robert Shalhope, The Roots of Democracy: American Thought and Cul- ture, 1760–1800 (Boston, 1990); and Steven Watts, The Republic Reborn: War and the Making of Liberal America (Baltimore, 1987). 4. On the early background of these battles, see (among the most recent of many such studies) Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism (New York, 1993); and J. Roger Sharp, American Politics in the Early Republic: The New Nation in Crisis (New Haven, 1993). On the renewed outbreak of ideological conºict, Harry L. Watson, Liberty and Power, The Politics of Jacksonian America (New York, 1990), is a good introduction. 4 introduction War years, while disagreements over the power of government grew central in the 1830s and remained so thereafter, at the heart of the battle to deªne what was at stake in the evolution of the American nation.

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