9780807848494 - Rum, Romanism, & Rebellion: The Making of a President, 1884 von Summers, Mark Wahlgren (4 Ergebnisse)

Paperback. Zustand: Good.

Trade paperback. Zustand: Very good. xv, [3], 377, [5] pages. Illustrations. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Minor wear and soiling to the cover. The presidential election of 1884, in which Grover Cleveland ended the Democrats' twenty-four-year presidential drought by defeating Republican challenger James G. Blaine, was one of the gaudiest in American history, remembered today less for its political significance than for the mudslinging and slander that characterized the campaign. But a closer look at the infamous election reveals far more complexity than previous stereotypes allowed, argues Mark Summers. Behind all the mud and malarkey, he says, lay a world of issues and consequences. Summers suggests that both Democrats and Republicans sensed a political system breaking apart, or perhaps a new political order forming, as voters began to drift away from voting by party affiliation toward voting according to a candidate's stand on specific issues. Mudslinging, then, was done not for public entertainment but to tear away or confirm votes that seemed in doubt. Uncovering the issues that really powered the election and stripping away the myths that still surround it, Summers uses the election of 1884 to challenge many of our preconceptions about Gilded Age politics. Mark Wahlgren Summers (born 1951) is an American historian who is a professor at the University of Kentucky. He has written books about political cartoons, and the election of U.S. president Grover Cleveland after a series of Republican officeholders, and the role of fear in American politics after the Civil War. Summers "has become this generation's reigning expert on historical political corruption, an academic Lincoln Steffens with an extraordinary command of his subject and an important message for his readers," commented John Lauritz Larson in the Historian. Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion: The Making of a President, 1884 is Summers's analysis of the late-nineteenth-century presidential campaign between Republican James G. Blaine and Democrat Grover Cleveland. "Seldom have voters faced a choice between two such contrasting personalities," observed Charles W. Calhoun in the Presidential Studies Quarterly. On the one hand was the popular, energetic, and personable Blaine, charming but touched by accusations of profiteering and other irregularities. Blaine was much adored by many, but many of the reformers throughout America thoroughly disliked him. His opponent was the leaden and plodding Cleveland, supported by those who sought reform but in general a character who was difficult to like. Cleveland had his own accusers and he too had to deal with the effects of scandal as he entered the presidential race. Many of the accusations against both Blaine and Cleveland were exaggerated and fanciful, yet these lurid stories invigorated the public, leaving the voters eager for more hints of overwrought impropriety. "Cleveland's razor-thin victory compounded the fabulous character of the tale," Calhoun noted. With Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion, Summers offers a book that "deserves attention as the first book-length scholarly examination of the contest that gave the White House to its only Democratic occupant between James Buchanan and Woodrow Wilson," Calhoun remarked. In the book, Summers carefully considers the meaning of the 1884 election. He notes that since the disputed election that occurred in 1876, the American political system had been deliberately moving away from the system that reigned during the Civil War. Political parties had become less important to voters than economic concerns and other issues, Summers asserts. Nationwide problems such as taxation, temperance, and volatile questions of race and equality were still of great concern to voters. Summers looks at how the political parties addressed the concerns as they struggled to achieve dominance over one another. Summers also outlines many of the scandals, accusations, and dirty tricks used in the more rough-and-tumble politics of the day. He t.

Zustand: New. In.

Paperback. Zustand: Brand New. 1st edition. 408 pages. 9.00x6.25x1.00 inches. In Stock.