Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 Structure and Practice of Elections
- Chapter 3 Social Construction of Identity in Eastern Rural Communities
- Chapter 4 Ethno-Cultural Stereotypes and Voting in Large Cities
- Chapter 5 Frontier Democracy
- Chapter 6 Loyalty Oaths, Troops, and Elections during the Civil War
- Chapter 7 Conclusion
- Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 Structure and Practice of Elections
- Chapter 3 Social Construction of Identity in Eastern Rural Communities
- Chapter 4 Ethno-Cultural Stereotypes and Voting in Large Cities
- Chapter 5 Frontier Democracy
- Chapter 6 Loyalty Oaths, Troops, and Elections during the Civil War
- Chapter 7 Conclusion
- Index
Summary
During the middle decades of the nineteenth century, the United States struggled through a long and bloody Civil War, settled much of the western prairie, and embarked upon a transition from an agrarian to an industrial society. During these two decades, Americans went to the polls, whether located in hamlets swarming with Union soldiers, wooden cabins so isolated that even neighbors had difficulty finding them, or saloons in the most densely populated sections of great cities. Their votes have come down to us as election returns reporting tens of millions of officially sanctioned and tabulated democratic acts. Neatly collated and arrayed in columns by office, candidate, and party, these returns are routinely interpreted as reflections of the preferences of the individuals composing the communities in which they were made out. Seen this way, we might conclude that the returns constitute unambiguous evidence of the existence of a robust democratic ethos. One of the purposes of this book is to suggest some important caveats that must attend this conclusion.
Most of the literature on mid-nineteenth-century politics has assumed that the electorate responded to the policy positions set down in party platforms. From this perspective, voters critically compared candidates and platform planks before choosing the alternative closest to their own personal tastes and policy positions. Rational choice theorists, usually operating under strong assumptions characteristic of methodological individualism, are particularly prone to such interpretations. Party organizations wrote platforms and chose candidates precisely because they believed these platforms and candidates would attract voters.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The American Ballot Box in the Mid-Nineteenth Century , pp. vii - xviiiPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004