The Political Culture of Middle-Period United States

Abstract

Kermit L. Hall. The Politics of Justice : lower Federal Judicial Selection and the Second Party System, 1829-61. Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, 1979. 268 + xvii pp. Daniel Walker Howe. The Political Culture of the American Whigs. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1979. 404 + vii pp. Richard B. Latner. The Presidency of Andrew Jackson: White House Politics, 1829-1837. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1979. 291 + ix pp. Harry L. Watson. Jacksonian Politics and Community Conflict: The Emergence of the Second American Party System in Cumberland County North Carolina. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981.354 + xii pp. Since the publication of Lee Benson's The Concept of Jacksonian Democ- racy more than twenty years ago, the progressive, socioeconomic inter- pretation of the Jacksonian period has been under heavy siege. A number of historians, the so-called "new political historians," following Benson's footsteps, have argued that it was ethnocultural factors such as ethnicity and religion that shaped antebellum voting patterns. Challenging the claims of the progressive historians, Benson concludes, in his study of middle-period New York, that "the stand of the major parties on socioeconomic issues had relatively little effect upon bloc voting." Instead, New Yorkers cast their ballots in response "to factors initially associated with positive and negative reference groups and subsequently with fulfillment of political roles."1 A student of Benson, Ronald Formisano, tested his mentor's hypotheses in Michigan and finds similar results. It was cultural and moral issues that divided the parties, with the Democrats appealing to the "antievangelical social groups who rejected the moral society which pietist Protestants pro- moted through Anti-masonry and then Whiggery." Formisano challenged his colleagues to confront the "brute fact that large portions of the electorate do not have meaningful beliefs, even on issues that have formed the basis of intense controversy for substantial periods of time."2