Embracing Dissent: Political Violence and Party Development in the United States

263 Pages·2016·2.795 MB·English

by  Jeffrey S. Selinger

Embracing Dissent
AMERICAN GOVERNANCE: POLITICS,
POLICY, AND PUBLIC LAW
Series Editors:
Richard Valelly, Pamela Brandwein,
Marie Gottschalk, Christopher Howard
A complete list of books in the series
is available from the publisher.
EMBRACING DISSENT
Po liti cal Violence and Party Development
in the United States
Jeffrey S. Selinger
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
PHILADELPHIA
Copyright © 2016 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used
for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this
book may be reproduced in any form by any means without
written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
www . upenn . edu / pennpress
Printed in the United States of America
on acid- free paper
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Selinger, Jeffrey S., author.
Title: Embracing dissent : political violence and party
development in the United States / Jeffrey S. Selinger.
Other titles: American governance.
Description: Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press,
[2016] | Series: American governance : politics, policy, and
public law | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2015039598 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4797-8
Subjects: LCSH: Political parties—United States—History. |
United States—Politics and government—History.
Classifi cation: LCC JK2261 .S425 2016 | DDC 324.273—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015039598
For Barbara and Carl Selinger
This page intentionally left blank
CONTENTS
Chapter 1. Legitimate Party Opposition and the Early American State 1
Chapter 2. Economic Collapse and the Constitutional
Construction of Party Politics 28
Chapter 3. Th e French Revolutionary Wars and the Ordeal
of America’s First Party System 54
Chapter 4. Th e Second Party System and the Politics
of Displacing Confl ict 83
Chapter 5. Union, Emancipation, and Party Building
as Military Strategy 109
Chapter 6. Redrawing the Limits of Legitimate Party
Opposition: Party Politics and Its Discontents at the Turn
of the Twentieth Century 135
Epilogue. Party Legitimacy, Th en and Now 167
Notes 181
Index 245
Ac know ledg ments 253
This page intentionally left blank
CHAPTER 1
Legitimate Party Opposition and the
Early American State
Standing before a sympathetic audience adjacent to his home in Auburn,
New York, aft er years of civil war and just weeks before the election of 1864,
Republican secretary of state William Henry Seward issued a scathing de-
nunciation of the party in opposition: “It will seem a hard thing when I
imply that a party, like the demo cratic party, can either meditate or incon-
siderately adopt mea sures to overthrow the Republic. All experience, how-
ever, shows that it is by the malice or madness of great parties that free states
have been brought down to destruction.”1 Seward was mindful that the pub-
lic had grown accustomed to the rituals and practices of po liti cal parties
and would fi nd it jarring for a leader of his stature to malign the party in
opposition in such stark terms. It was, indeed, a “hard thing.” He pressed
his audience nonetheless to consider the diffi cult proposition that a vote for
the presidential ticket of the Demo cratic party was a vote for defeat and the
dismemberment of the federal Union. Modern ears are accustomed to dis-
counting apocalyptic pronouncements of this kind, especially when they are
off ered in an election season. In this instance, however, Seward may have been
correct in his assessment. Aft er all, the opposing ticket was committed to a
platform that called for a cease- fi re followed by negotiations to seek a compro-
mise with the Confederacy. Most po liti cally astute observers understood that
once the fi ghting was stopped, it could not be easily resumed and that the
Confederacy would accept no settlement short of full in de pen dence from the
federal Union. In Seward’s view, the Confederacy, with the assistance of their
Demo cratic party allies to the north, would obtain through the Union’s peace-
ful electoral pro cess that which they could not secure through military means.