by Sean Wilentz
First published 2005
Sean Wilentz examines how Americans fought over democracy's meaning from the republic's founding through the Civil War's outbreak. He shows how the post-Revolutionary generation remained divided on whether ordinary citizens should govern. Jeffersonians battled Federalists over popular participation in government. Andrew Jackson's presidency established democracy on the national stage, while city democrats, Anti-Masons, and fugitive slaves created their own local versions. Wilentz traces how these competing visions split into two incompatible systems. The North developed one form of democracy while the South built another. This uneasy arrangement held until Abraham Lincoln's election shattered the balance and triggered armed conflict. The book reveals how early Americans transformed the revolutionary ideal of self-government into conflicting realities that ultimately could not coexist.
Genres: history, civil-war, 20th-century, american, 19th-century, american-history
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: historical-fiction
Setting: North, South
Period: Civil War, Post-Revolutionary
1044 pages · Hardcover · W. W. Norton & Company