Party Games: Getting, Keeping, and Using Power in Gilded Age Politics (review)

Combining rigorous research, superb narrative capacities, and robust enthusiasm for his subject, seasoned historian and writer Mark Wahlgren Summers relates the complex and comprehensive details accounting for the survival and thriving of the two-party system in American politics. He provides annotated references and an extensive bibliography encompassing manuscript collections, newspapers and periodicals, books, professional journal articles, and unpublished dissertations. Kindred writings by Summers, Thomas D. Clark Professor of History at the University of Kentucky, include Gilded Age, or, The Hazard ofNew Functions (1997) and Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion: The Making of a President,1884 (2000).

"The Gilded Age" (1865–1901), a coinage adapted from the title of a novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, is a time of driving transformation and momentum. The tempo and temptations of everyday life lend themselves to pugilism, greed, and "hoopla politics." The expansion of the railroads, growth of cities, immigration, controversies concerning both tariff rates and trade, currency issues, worker protection demands, development of big business, franchise issues for blacks and women, emergence of alternative political parties, forging of a national identity, social class issues, prohibitionism, race relations, agrarian economic problems, and civil service reform create battlefields of action for Party Games: Getting, Keeping, and Using Power in Gilded Age Politics.

Conflicting interests lend themselves to the development of factions, fusionism, and fence-sitting. The creation of alternative political parties heightens interest in the political process, generates widespread voter participation, and, on occasion, modifies the platforms and activities of the two major political parties. "Party hoopla" ranges from a festive atmosphere to voter intimidation, fraud, and vote buying. Local, state, regional, and national politics each waves the banners of this energized, corrupt atmosphere.

The author asserts this central theme and purpose: "The popular politics of the Gilded Age . . . was a guided popularity, where great work behind the scenes went into driving as many voters to the polls as possible. That was the politicians' job. How they did that job, and how that affected the shape of Gilded Age politics and set limits on the possibilities for change, is what Party Games is all about" (xii). "Third parties flared, flickered, and guttered out" (x). Summers answers the question "What accounts for the demise of third parties and the tenacity of the two major parties?"

Party Games will interest scholars focusing on the history of political parties, nineteenth-century political campaigns, labor union history, the impact of big business (such as railroads) on political processes, and the effects of reform movements. Media specialists will appreciate Summers's expansive commentary on the role of the press in political contests. Those involved with public address will gain insight into the Gilded Age milieu influencing rhetorical events—a popular avenue of campaigning. Finally, individuals mindful of ethical issues and practices will find abundant examples of unethical practices and their political and societal consequences.

The author gives readers a flavor of the times in an engaging, reflective chapter, "Politics Is Only War without the Bayonets." The three keys to winning wars apply to political campaigns: "organization, discipline, and aggression" (34). Political discussions use military analogies such as "A campaign was 'the fight' or 'the smoke and dust of the battle.'" This reinforces the secondary role of women around the unsound reasoning of "those unable to defend America with bullets ought not to control it with ballots" (33).

Summers focuses on the expanding role of "participatory politics." Neighborhood meetings, caucuses, and state and national conventions followed by campaigns embrace an ever wider portion of the voting (white male) population. A carnival atmosphere prevails with parades, marching bands, banners, and cartoons. An increasingly literate public is besieged with party newspapers, handbills, leaflets, political almanacs, "authorized campaign biographies," and, of course, newspapers. Accompanying this burgeoning distribution and popular media readership, press "rascality" accommodates the printing of forged letters, decoded telegrams, and lying...