The Third Electoral System, 1853-1892: Parties, Voters, and Political Cultures (review)

Abstract

ROOK REVIEWS73 the written statements of participating justices on the subject of who allegedly forced the court majority to present broader opinions (p. 309) . Discussion of the immediate effects of the Dred Scott case is generally limited to national and Northern politics, with relatively little attention to details of internal Southern sectional responses. This recalls attention to the fact that selected aspects of the sectional conflict over slavery are all that we were promised, for Fehrenbacher has not only brilliantly enlightened us on every aspect of the Dred Scott decision but has also gratifyingly fulfilled his promise to use that decision as "a point of illumination, casting fight upon more than a century of American history" (p. 7). Thomas B. Alexander University of Missouri—Columbia The Third Electoral System, 1853-1892: Parties, Voters, and Political Cultures. By Paul Kleppner. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979. Pp. 424. $21.00.) Kleppner explains that this book represents thesecondinstallment ofhis "continuing effort to analyze the social bases of American political behavior" (xv) . A short prologue deals with definitions and explanations of research strategy. If "congruent with" the "systematic description of political behaviors," informed content analysis of elite sources enables die historian "to posit sets of structured inferences concerning which public matters resonated emotionally with group political characters [sic] and, thus, about why groups voted as they did" (p. 15). Then follows an "empirical" overview of the period, touching upon major aspects of partisan distribution and continuity, electoral realignment, party competition, change in the characteristics of the electorate and aspects of voter mobilization. Next, the author traces party realignment from the 1840's to its stabilization during the 1870's. He contends that, "[t]he partisan cleavages of the third électorial era involved ethnocultural conflict along two separate but partially intersecting, dimensions .... a value-and-interest conflict between Yankee moralist subculture and white southern subculture .... and especially in die middle-belt states ... a religious-value conflict between pietistic and antipietistic subcultures" (p. 58). During the 1870's the system became more stable but "political combat during the stable phase . . . reflected intense and irreconciliable distinctions among social groups" (p. 142). However, Kleppner cautions, "[n]ot just ethno-cultural group distinctions, but denominational heterogeneity, degree of pietism, the historical experiences of the group and socio-political contexts were also considerations . . . relevant to native Protestant voting behavior" (p. 176) . The author then moves on to discuss the impact of changes in the 74CIVIL WAR HISTORY social composition of the electorate, largely due to immigration, the place of the minor parties in the system, and the resurgence of the Democracy in the 1880's when the Republicans embraced a "politics of righteousness." Still, "[e]xcept sporadically . . . ethnoreligious-group consciousnesses remained more salient to partisanship than did shared economic identifications" (p. 297). The final chapter of the book is an extended response to those who have criticized his earlier book or the publications of scholars with whom he admits intellectual ties. In this book, Kleppner attempts to apply the conceptual framework developed in his study, The Cross of Culture, to the remainder of the nation, excepting only the Pacific Coast and the territories. The analysis, we are told, rests upon an elaborate statistical analysis of the electoral returns of the period. The author also demonstrates considerable research in primary sources, as well as citing a very considerable secondary literature written by other scholars who appreciate the cultural dimension of politics and possess some ability in the handling of quantitative data. Kleppner writes in the genre shaped most notably by Lee Benson in various papers and articles of the 1950's and by the publication of The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy: New York as a Test Case in 1961. But Kleppner, along with Richard J. Jensen and Ronald Formisano, has developed die religious dimension of political culture far beyond the seminal work of Benson and others who have understood that religious bodies may also be important politicai reference groups. Here, Kleppner meets the challenge of describing Southern politics by arguing that many white Southerners were "Salvationist" pietists who subscribed to pietist principles of personal conduct but lacked the Northern pietist's compulsion to reform society. There have been...