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  • A Political Nation: New Directions in Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Political History ed. by Gary W. Gallagher and Rachel A. Shelden
  • Katherine E. Rohrer
A Political Nation: New Directions in Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Political History. Ed. Gary W. Gallagher and Rachel A. Shelden. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012. ISBN 978-0-8139-3282-8, 272 pp., cloth, $40.00.

Political history, particularly the history of political leadership, has long been one of the most popular subfields of history among both specialists and educated general readers. During the last forty years, however, historians have readily embraced newer subfields—including social history, gender history, cultural history, environmental history, the history of capitalism, and others—often in efforts to shed light on those Americans whose lives had been largely absent from the historical literature. What has this meant for political history? Quite simply, the popularity of these newer subfields has seriously transformed—and expanded—the ways researchers process and analyze political actors, institutions, [End Page 88] and ideologies. The essays contained within A Political Nation are emblematic of this veritable renaissance in political history and confirm that historians can and should apply new lenses of analysis to a myriad of political topics that have already received much scholarly attention. A Political Nation is an assemblage of ten essays—written by both established and nascent scholars—that exposes its readers to several of these recent and exciting trends within this revitalized field. More specifically, these pieces envelop such burgeoning areas and topics as political culture; language, rhetoric, and ideology; and cultural and institutional influences on political figures, as they applied to American political leadership between the antebellum era and the end of Reconstruction. Particularly evident across the essays is the reality that these scholars have been especially influenced by Michael F. Holt and his works that have emphasized the "fragility and fluidity of politics in the mid-nineteenth century" (5).

The essays are chronologically and thematically organized into three sections. The first three examine some of the ways political actors behaved within their cultural milieus before the Civil War. Rachel A. Shelden studies the (perhaps surprising to some) unity among—and friendships forged between—northern and southern Whigs in such environments as Washington, D.C., boardinghouses, ultimately concluding that scholars have exaggerated or misinterpreted sectionalism. Next, via an investigation of the murder of a New York City political organizer, Mark E. Neely Jr. considers the important, and often ignored, role that violence played in antebellum party politics and organization. Rounding out this section is veteran Jean Baker's exploration of women's political behavior; in particular, she places women into one of three categories: benevolent activists, political integrationists, and partisan enablers.

The second set of essays—which focus on those years and months immediately preceding the outbreak of war—is bound by its employment of such tools as language, rhetoric, and ideology. Exposing new insight on the Opposition party, Daniel W. Crofts argues that this party achieved notable success in the Upper South because its platform balanced the old Whig agenda with a distinctly proslavery rhetoric. William Freehling, likewise, examines rhetoric—specifically states' rights rhetoric—as it pertained to southern secession. Akin to William Gienapp's argument that "northern outrage at black slavery does not suffice to explain enough voters' support of Lincoln in 1860," Freehling maintains that southerners' vehement defense of black slavery simply does not suffice in accounting for the South's defection from the Union (114). Joining Freehling in the perennial debate on Civil War causation is William Cooper and his scrutiny of Abraham Lincoln's political behavior—particularly his extreme partisanship and refusal to compromise—between his election to the presidency in November 1860 and his inauguration on March 4, 1861.

The final set of essays is broadest with regard to chronological scope, addressing political topics between the Civil War and the end of Reconstruction, but [End Page 89] these share an emphasis on "the role of federalism in understanding American political behavior" (4). Sean Nalty sheds light on the appeal of the Union party, a national party whose members rejected the Republicans' radical antislavery policies, via an analysis of the development and success of a...

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