Jacksonian Politics and Community Conflict: The Emergence of the Second American Party System in Cumberland County, North Carolina (review)

BOOK REVIEWS79 Jacksonian Politics and Community Conflict: The Emergence of the Second American Party System in Cumberland County, North Carolina. By Harry L. Watson. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981, Pp. x, 354. $32.50.) This analysis quite successfully ties the political transformations which swept the United States between 1824 and 1848 to the social and economic changes linked to the Transportation Revolution. In the process Watson examines the social groupings composing the strengths of the two parties , the themes and values contained in party rhetoric, and the characteristics of party leaders. In addition, he produces a three-stage analysis of party development in Cumberland County involving a primitive first party system before 1828, a transitional phase between 1828 and 1836, and the emergence of the mature second party system by 1836, which created political stability for nearly twenty years afterward. In Cumberland County the first party system was a highly personalized one based on local prestige, gutter politics, and anti-partyism. It also involved ethnocultural voting patterns with Scots aligned opposite nonScots . As the second party system developed the ethnocultural factors in voting behavior became more blurred. Scots had supported Federalists, and then Adams in 1828, but as new social and economic issues emerged in the late 1820s Scottish voters found it easier to assimilate with their non-Scot neighbors. The burning question behind the formation of the second party system in the county was the concern over the lack of economic growth. This issue would link local politics to the national scene. It produced a party system based on geographic alignments involving primarily an urban, commercial outlook embodied in those who led and backed the Whigs versus the rural, old-school agrarian republican views of those who voted for the Jacksonian party. The positive, active government views presented by the Whigs upset the tradition-minded agrarians who did not want change. Watson's findings that Whig leaders and supporters tended to congregate in urban areas and areas that had commercial ties with the urban scene reinforces most other interpretations of southern Whigs. Even though leaders in both parties remained concentrated in Fayetteville, the Jacksonians were much more successful in bringing greater numbers of people into politically active roles in their party than the Whigs. Since Watson is dealing with a Southern county with a fairly homogeneous ethnic and religious makeup, these factors, which tended to evaporate over time in Cumberland, did not apply in this case as they so often have in recent examinations of Jacksonian politics in Northern states. This means that in this area, as well as in other parts of the South, political issues and rhetoric tieing local views to national problems held greater sway. The author's town versus country political dichotomy may well have implications in Northern states as well, despite the recent emphasis on ethnocultural interpretations there. Recent studies of the 80CIVIL WAR HISTORY Anti-Masonic party in various Northern states, whose members migrated to the Whigs, strongly indicate this same urban, commercial outlook dominated that organization. It is entirely possible Watson has hit upon something that ethnoculturalists have tended to overlook. This conjecture is not embodied in Watson's work, however, but is merely an observation of the reviewer. Watson does place emphasis on the role that issues and rhetoric played in local politics, and Southern politics in general to help voters view their own time and place, and their part in deciding the future course of the nation. The near absence of ethnocultural factors after 1828 leaves these Southern voters and leaders freer to concentrate on the economic impact of party proposals. Watson has written an excellent local history of party development. He uses his sources astutely. He has combined traditional methods with systematic ones that are summarized in numerous tables which he has explained quite clearly to the "non-elect" (non-systematicians). He has made a significant contribution to the historical literature of the period and of the South. John D. Morris Kent State University Lincoln and Kennedy: Medical and Ballistic Comparisons of TheirAssassinations . By John K. Lattimer. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980. Pp. xxii, 378. $19.95.) Previous generations of Lincoln scholars abandoned the study of...