Synopses & Reviews
Howe studies the American Whigs with the thoroughness so often devoted their party rivals, the Jacksonian Democrats. He shows that the Whigs were not just a temporary coalition of politicians but spokesmen for a heritage of political culture received from Anglo-American tradition and passed on, with adaptations, to the Whigs' Republican successors. He relates this culture to both the country's economic conditions and its ethnoreligious composition.
About the Author
Daniel Walker Howe is professor of history and chairman of the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Whigs and Their Age
2. The Language and Values of the Whigs
3. John Quincy Adams, Nonpartisan Politician
4. The Whig Interpretation of History
5. The Entrepreneurial Ethos
6. Henry Clay, Ideologue of the Center
7. The Evangelicals
8. The Modernizers
9. Whig Conservatism
10. Alexander Stephens and the Failure of Southern Whiggery
11. Abraham Lincoln and the Transformation of Northern Whiggery
Conclusion
Notes
Index