The Partisan Imperative: The Dynamics of American Politics Before the Civil War

by Joel H. Silbey

In this provocative reinterpretation of American politics before the Civil War, Joel Silbey argues that local issues, ethnic and religious considerations, and the power of the national political parties were even more important than slavery in animating the political life of the era. He
traces the tensions that divided the nation in this critical period and offers intriguing explanations for how and why they developed. These essays significantly contribute to the existing perspectives on the Civil War and also pave the way for new approaches to understanding a vital time in
American history.

256 pages, Paperback

First published April 4, 1985

About the author

A specialist in mid-19th century American politics, Joel H. Silbey was Professor of History Emeritus at Cornell University, where he taught from 1966 until his retirement in 2002. A graduate of Brooklyn College, Silbey earned his master’s degree in 1956 and Ph.D. in 1963 from the University of Iowa. In addition to teaching at Cornell, Silbey taught as an assistant professor at San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University), the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Maryland.

Reviews

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 3 out of 5]

review

Civil War History
The Kent State University Press
Volume 31, Number 3, September 1985

This volume conveniently assembles what would otherwise be the scattered writings of an industrious scholar who has consistently enlarged our undertstanding of American political history. Although only one of the nine essays here has not previously been published, six date from the past several years, giving this anthology a freshness and vitality often abent in comparable collections.

Joel Silbey and other "new political historians" insist that we must know more about the partisan stage on which the drama of political batle has been played. Earlier historians, they content, tended to see only the major actors on the stage and tended to overlook all issues other than economic and sectional ones. The new political historians have thus labored since 1960 to develop a fresh understanding of the structural underpinnings of American politics. Their work touches all periods of American history, but it has focused primarily on the middle and late nineteenth-ventury when parties were strong, popular, and "the main agencies ordering the political system".

[Emily Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great to understanding partisan politics and electoral behaviors.