Involved Disengagement? Reconsidering the Golden Age of Participatory Democracy

Abstract

has been said all history is informed by concerns about the present and Glenn Altschuler and Stuart Blumin's book is no exception. Reflecting on apprehensions about declining voter turnout, they question the implicit and sometimes explicit contrast drawn by pundits and historians between a of political engagement in the nineteenth century and the present. Writing more than 30 years after the last great popular political mobilizations in the United States, the authors conclude this is not the case, the nineteenth century, just like the twentieth century, was characterized by widespread disinterestedness among voters, to the point of an aggressive distaste for politics. Politics, they argue, is and was the affair of a minority of activists, doing their best to garner support and legitimacy from a largely uninformed and uninterested citizenry. Because there was no golden age of participatory democracy, there has also been no decline of popular politics, which sets Altschuler and Blumin's argument in sharp contrast to the interpretations of Michael McGerr, Robert Wiebe, William Gienapp, and others, all of whom have emphasized the transition from the broad-based democracy of the nineteenth century to the disenchanted and demobilized voters of the twentieth century.' While for these historians, entered into everything, Altschuler and Blumin see it remaining enclosed in its own, limited social space. It is our contention, they write, that the political engagement of nineteenth-century Americans did vary significantly, over time and among ordinary citizens at any given time, and the recognition of these variations leads to fundamental questions about Americans and their politics (p. 5). Rude Republic enters a spirited historiographical debate and does so with a clearly articulated argument. With strongly revisionist intentions, the authors' contend at the outset voting records, contemporary descriptions of massive rallies, and the lore of a mobilized citizenry alone are insufficient to