Michael F. Holt. The Election of 1860: “A Campaign Fraught with Consequences.”

Abstract

Seven decades ago, in this journal, Thomas C. Cochran critiqued the “Presidential Synthesis” for reducing U.S. history to a litany of elections and administrations (“The ‘Presidential Synthesis’ in American History,” AHR 53, no. 4 [October 1948]: 748–759). Historians have broadened their horizons since then, of course, but few today would deny the magnitude of presidential politics. Published a year after another momentous and bitterly divisive contest, Michael F. Holt’s welcome contribution to the University Press of Kansas’s American Presidential Elections series expertly analyzes the most consequential presidential election to date. The Election of 1860: “A Campaign Fraught with Consequences” should be widely read: it provides novices with a superb introduction to the 1860 contest, and specialists will appreciate Holt’s engagement with recent scholarship. Holt’s crisp and concise narrative recounts the rise of the Republican Party and the fragmentation of its Democratic rival; analyzes the conventions that nominated four presidential hopefuls...