Ruling Passions: Political Economy in Nineteenth-Century America

Abstract

In recent years, theJournal of Policy Historyhas emerged as a major venue for scholarship on American policy history in the period after 1900. Indeed, it is for this reason that it is often praised as the leading outlet for scholarship on American political history in the world. Only occasionally, however, has it featured essays on the early republic, the Civil War, or the post-Civil War era. And when it has, the essays have often focused on partisan electioneering rather than on governmental institutions. The rationale for this special issue of theJournal of Policy Historyis to expand the intellectual agenda of policy history backward in time so as to embrace more fully the history of governmental institutions in the period before 1900. The six essays that follow contain much that will be new even for specialists in nineteenth-century American policy history, yet they are written in a style that is intended to be accessible to college undergraduates and historians unfamiliar with the period.