Author: Donald A. Zinman
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700637796
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 278
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Book Description
As the heir apparent to the presidency in 1808, James Madison had a substantial reputation and an impressive list of credentials, including having cofounded the Democratic-Republican party with Thomas Jefferson and serving as Jefferson’s secretary of state. Despite this, Madison’s presidential victory in 1808 was hardly uncontested as he faced internal opposition from supporters of James Monroe and Vice President George Clinton. In 1812, then, it was by no means a sure thing that Madison would secure a second term, and that uncertainty grew substantially after Madison essentially asked Congress for a declaration of war on June 1, 1812, mere months before the election. America’s First Wartime Election focuses on an overlooked moment in political history. The War of 1812 has generated a significant amount of attention, overshadowing the election that took place in the early stages of the conflict. As the United States and Great Britain clashed on the battlefield, President James Madison was challenged by DeWitt Clinton, the nephew of George Clinton, who was the simultaneous mayor of New York City and the lieutenant governor of his state. Clinton held a base of Democratic-Republican support in New York where many in his party opposed the war. Many New Yorkers also resented Virginia’s domination of the presidency going back to George Washington’s tenure. Other Democratic-Republicans supported the war but faulted Madison for his poor preparations and early battlefield setbacks. United in their opposition to the war, Federalists joined forces with Clinton, but the alliance was tardy, disorganized, and awkward. The story of this election is also a tale of weak political parties. The Federalist party had steadily lost strength since the election of Jefferson in 1800, and the Democratic-Republican party was still a young, disjointed, and fractious coalition. In order to sustain the party that he had helped to start, Madison was under pressure not only to secure his reelection but also to successfully conduct the war. While Madison had vulnerabilities, given America’s poor preparation for the war, the fusionist ticket supporting Clinton was poorly positioned to challenge the incumbent president. Political parties in general were still in their infancy, thus complicating efforts to build a coherent alternative to Madison. For a fusion ticket to succeed in elections, strong political parties are necessary, which was not the case in 1812. Red-hot passions over the divisive War of 1812 overlapped with a presidential election that became a referendum on the conflict itself. Momentum is important in politics—a principle that was just as important over 200 years ago as it is today. Written for scholars, students, and the public alike, Donald A. Zinman’s accessible study of this important but often ignored election is another illuminating entry in the University Press of Kansas’s longstanding American Presidential Elections series.
Author: Adam J. Berinsky
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226043460
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 710
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Book Description
From World War II to the war in Iraq, periods of international conflict seem like unique moments in U.S. political history—but when it comes to public opinion, they are not. To make this groundbreaking revelation, In Time of War explodes conventional wisdom about American reactions to World War II, as well as the more recent conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Adam Berinsky argues that public response to these crises has been shaped less by their defining characteristics—such as what they cost in lives and resources—than by the same political interests and group affiliations that influence our ideas about domestic issues. With the help of World War II–era survey data that had gone virtually untouched for the past sixty years, Berinsky begins by disproving the myth of “the good war” that Americans all fell in line to support after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The attack, he reveals, did not significantly alter public opinion but merely punctuated interventionist sentiment that had already risen in response to the ways that political leaders at home had framed the fighting abroad. Weaving his findings into the first general theory of the factors that shape American wartime opinion, Berinsky also sheds new light on our reactions to other crises. He shows, for example, that our attitudes toward restricted civil liberties during Vietnam and after 9/11 stemmed from the same kinds of judgments we make during times of peace. With Iraq and Afghanistan now competing for attention with urgent issues within the United States, In Time of War offers a timely reminder of the full extent to which foreign and domestic politics profoundly influence—and ultimately illuminate—each other.
Author: John Waugh
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 0786747110
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 478
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Book Description
Here, from the author of the acclaimed book The Class of 1846, is the dramatic story of what may have been the most critical election campaign in American history. Taking place in the midst of the Civil War, the election of 1864 would determine the very future of the nation. Would the country be unified or permanently divided? Would slavery continue? Weaving rich anecdotal material into a fast-paced narrative, John C. Waugh places this pivotal election in its historical context while evoking its human drama. The men and women who figured in this epic campaign—most notably Lincoln himself—emerge with all their strengths, weaknesses, and idiosyncrasies. "It's an inherently dramatic story, and one that has been told before. But never quite so well as by John C. Waugh, [who] brings to his task the keen eye for detail and scene-setting that one would expect from a career reporter," said the Wall Street Journal. Drawing on an extensive array of sources, including published and unpublished reminiscences, memoirs, autobiographies, letters, newspapers, and periodicals, Waugh re-creates that fateful year with all the immediacy of a political reporter covering a national presidential election today.
Author: John Lothrop Motley
Publisher: University of Michigan Library
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 36
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Book Description
This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.
Author: Abraham Lincoln
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Campaign debates
Languages : en
Pages : 582
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Book Description
Author: William G. Howell
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022604842X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 367
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Book Description
“It is the nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of the legislative authority,” wrote Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers. The balance of power between Congress and the president has been a powerful thread throughout American political thought since the time of the Founding Fathers. And yet, for all that has been written on the topic, we still lack a solid empirical or theoretical justification for Hamilton’s proposition. For the first time, William G. Howell, Saul P. Jackman, and Jon C. Rogowski systematically analyze the question. Congress, they show, is more likely to defer to the president’s policy preferences when political debates center on national rather than local considerations. Thus, World War II and the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq significantly augmented presidential power, allowing the president to enact foreign and domestic policies that would have been unattainable in times of peace. But, contrary to popular belief, there are also times when war has little effect on a president’s influence in Congress. The Vietnam and Gulf Wars, for instance, did not nationalize our politics nearly so much, and presidential influence expanded only moderately. Built on groundbreaking research, The Wartime President offers one of the most significant works ever written on the wartime powers presidents wield at home.
Author: Abraham Lincoln
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504080246
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 9
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Book Description
The complete text of one of the most important speeches in American history, delivered by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. On November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln arrived at the battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to remember not only the grim bloodshed that had just occurred there, but also to remember the American ideals that were being put to the ultimate test by the Civil War. A rousing appeal to the nation’s better angels, The Gettysburg Address remains an inspiring vision of the United States as a country “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
Author: Alexander Keyssar
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465010148
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496
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Book Description
Originally published in 2000, The Right to Vote was widely hailed as a magisterial account of the evolution of suffrage from the American Revolution to the end of the twentieth century. In this revised and updated edition, Keyssar carries the story forward, from the disputed presidential contest of 2000 through the 2008 campaign and the election of Barack Obama. The Right to Vote is a sweeping reinterpretation of American political history as well as a meditation on the meaning of democracy in contemporary American life.
Author: Jonathan W. White
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 080715458X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 294
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Book Description
The Union army's overwhelming vote for Abraham Lincoln's reelection in 1864 has led many Civil War scholars to conclude that the soldiers supported the Republican Party and its effort to abolish slavery. In Emancipation, the Union Army, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln Jonathan W. White challenges this reigning paradigm in Civil War historiography, arguing instead that the soldier vote in the presidential election of 1864 is not a reliable index of the army's ideological motivation or political sentiment. Although 78 percent of the soldiers' votes were cast for Lincoln, White contends that this was not wholly due to a political or social conversion to the Republican Party. Rather, he argues, historians have ignored mitigating factors such as voter turnout, intimidation at the polls, and how soldiers voted in nonpresidential elections in 1864. While recognizing that many soldiers changed their views on slavery and emancipation during the war, White suggests that a considerable number still rejected the Republican platform, and that many who voted for Lincoln disagreed with his views on slavery. He likewise explains that many northerners considered a vote for the Democratic ticket as treasonous and an admission of defeat. Using previously untapped court-martial records from the National Archives, as well as manuscript collections from across the country, White convincingly revises many commonly held assumptions about the Civil War era and provides a deeper understanding of the Union Army.
Author: Joseph E. Persico
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0679645438
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 689
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Book Description
“FDR’s centurions were my heroes and guides. Now Joe Persico has written the best account of those leaders I've ever read.”—Colin L. Powell All American presidents are commanders in chief by law. Few perform as such in practice. In Roosevelt’s Centurions, distinguished historian Joseph E. Persico reveals how, during World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt seized the levers of wartime power like no president since Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. Declaring himself “Dr. Win-the-War,” FDR assumed the role of strategist in chief, and, though surrounded by star-studded generals and admirals, he made clear who was running the war. FDR was a hands-on war leader, involving himself in everything from choosing bomber targets to planning naval convoys to the design of landing craft. Persico explores whether his strategic decisions, including his insistence on the Axis powers’ unconditional surrender, helped end or may have prolonged the war. Taking us inside the Allied war councils, the author reveals how the president brokered strategy with contentious allies, particularly the iron-willed Winston Churchill; rallied morale on the home front; and handpicked a team of proud, sometimes prickly warriors who, he believed, could fight a global war. Persico’s history offers indelible portraits of the outsize figures who roused the “sleeping giant” that defeated the Axis war machine: the dutiful yet independent-minded George C. Marshall, charged with rebuilding an army whose troops trained with broomsticks for rifles, eggs for hand grenades; Dwight Eisenhower, an unassuming Kansan elevated from obscurity to command of the greatest fighting force ever assembled; the vainglorious Douglas MacArthur; and the bizarre battlefield genius George S. Patton. Here too are less widely celebrated military leaders whose contributions were just as critical: the irascible, dictatorial navy chief, Ernest King; the acerbic army advisor in China, “Vinegar” Joe Stilwell; and Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, who zealously preached the gospel of modern air power. The Roosevelt who emerges from these pages is a wartime chess master guiding America’s armed forces to a victory that was anything but foreordained. What are the qualities we look for in a commander in chief? In an era of renewed conflict, when Americans are again confronting the questions that FDR faced—about the nature and exercise of global power—Roosevelt’s Centurions is a timely and revealing examination of what it takes to be a wartime leader in a freewheeling, complicated, and tumultuous democracy.
