Most Americans remember the Whigs as morally uptight New Englanders who provided us with some of our more mediocre presidents. In his exhaustively researched book The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, Michael F. Holt partially rehabilitates the reputation of this once-thriving political party. Founded in 1833, following Andrew Jackson's decimation of the Second Bank of the United States, the Whigs were united in the belief that the federal government was obligated to sponsor the nation's internal development and to promote manufacturing and large-scale agricultural endeavors. In Holt's account, however, proponents of Whiggery were divided on numerous other issues. The nature of these disagreements amongst party leaders (most notably Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and future presidents such as John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, and Millard Fillmore) take up the majority of space in Holt's 1,200-page account. Instead of relating how general sentiment on major issues (such as territorial expansion and the Compromise of 1850) determined the Whigs' fate, Holt shows how local and statewide political caucuses, party "kingmakers," federal patronage, and special interests created competing factions within the party even before sectionalism fractured cooperation between Northern and Southern wings in 1854. Amidst the diffused levels of power that defined the Federalism of the post-Jacksonian era, Holt concludes that the more popular leaders (such as Taylor and Fillmore) tried to balance competition amongst party factions instead of imposing an ideological "hard line" on sectional issues, a move that alienated many of the party's key ideological supporters. Written in an engaging narrative style with a minimal engagement of abstract theory, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party meticulously reconstructs the byzantine world of 19th-century American politics. --John M. Anderson
From Kirkus Reviews
In a massively researched survey, Holt (American History/Univ. of Virginia) painstakingly details the career of an odd political party that flourished, then vanished in the three decades before the Civil War. An unlikely union of Southern states' rights enthusiasts, Anti-Masonic Party members, supporters of the Bank of the United States, and moderate pro-development republicans hobbled together by opponents of the populist nationalism of Andrew Jackson, the Whig Party became the party of such giants as Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Abraham Lincoln, but also of such eminently forgettable figures as Thurlow Weed and Millard Fillmore. Because state and local elections were of comprehensive importance to national politicians in the 19th century, Holt delves in minutest detail into electoral developments in states and localities. Surveying the impacts of local conditions on national elections, Holt tries to show that the Whig Party's development hinged on a variety of factorsits competitive relationship with the Democratic Party, which had local, state, and national dimensions, and the internal divisions of Whigs (which ultimately destroyed the party) as the country's sectional crisis split them into factions were the most dynamic of these. The disparate nature of the Whigs' ideology in different sections prevented them from developing a coherent national program, though they did win the White House with military heroes in issue-free campaigns in 1840 (William Henry Harrison) and 1848 (Zachary Taylor). Holt shows that the Whigs were consistent in their goal of attempting to unite the nation's sections and to find a compromise on the issue of slavery, and represented the country's last failed hope of avoiding civil war. Of evident importance to specialists, but because of its massive size and detailed emphasis on the minutiae of state and local events, inaccessible to all but the hardiest general reader. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"Michael Holt's long-awaited magnum opus combines massive archival research and sophisticated analysis of election returns with judicious interpretations. Defying current academic fashions, this book displays not only the author's perseverance but his intellectual courage." --Daniel Walker Howe, Rhodes Professor of American History, Oxford University"In its short life the Whig party helped shape the political and economic institutions of the antebellum United States. And the party's death in the mid-1850's was both effect and cause of the political breakdown that led to secession and Civil War. Michael Holt tells this story in more detail and with deeper insight than any other historian. The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party will instantly become an indispensable reference work on antebellum political history." --James McPherson, Princeton UniversityMike Holt's history of the Whig Party is magesterial....this massive book will have a thunderous impact on scholarship and on the understanding of the American past." --William J. Cooper, Jr., Louisiana State University"I think it is the best and most impressive book on the period to appear in years, and one of the most important books on nineteenth century politics ever written." --William E. Gienapp, Harvard University"This book caps the career of a prominent political historian and will long be a staple for academic library collections in history and political science."--Library Journal"In its short life the Whig party helped shape the political and economic institutions of the antebellum United States. And the party's death in the mid-1850's was both effect and cause of the political breakdown that led to secession and Civil War. Michael Holt tells this story in more detail and with deeper insight than any other historian. The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party will instantly become an indispensable reference work on antebellum political history."--James McPherson, Princeton University"Mike Holt's history of the Whig Party is magisterial.... This massive book will have a thunderous impact on scholarship and on the understanding of the American past." --William J. Cooper, Jr., Louisiana State University"Now, in The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, Michael F. Holt has disinterred the party's entire 22-year history, examining it to see what mad eit tick and what brought about its demise."-- Stuart Ferguson, The Wall Street Journal"Now, in The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, Michael F. Holt has disinterred the party's entire 22-year history, examining it to see what mad eit tick and what brought about its demise."-- Stuart Ferguson, The Wall Street Journal"Steeped in extensive archival research, this detailed recounting of the policies and practices of Whig politicos and the party's achievements, shortcomings, and eventual demise will long stand as definitive."--Choice"An invaluable work of scholarship and a significant book on understanding one of the most exciting and controversial periods in American history."--Times Literary Supplement"by far the most comprehensive account of the Whig party ever written and is perhaps the single most essential reference today for research into American antebellum politics."--Wesley Allen Riddle, Civil War Book Review""The Rise and Fall of the Whig Party is a magestrial work, one that cannot be neglected by nineteenth-century historians even if their particular emphasis is not political history. While it is intended to be the history of a political partym it has something worthwhile to say about almost every major issue in United States history from the nullification controversy of 1832 to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854."--Civil War History, March 2000"The Rise and Fall of the Whig Party is a magesterial work, one that cannot be neglected by nineteenth-century historians even if their particular emphasis is not political history. While it is intended to be the history of a political party, it has something worthwhile to say about almost every major issue in United States history from the nullification controversy of 1832 to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854."--Civil War History, March 2000"Holt's history of the Whigs, the fruit of many long hard years of research and writing, is an important work."--American Historical Review, December 2000
Book Description
A monumental history of the Whig Party and of the United States in the decades before the Civil War
About the Author
Michael F. Holt is Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History and Chair of the History Department at the University of Virginia. A leading authority on nineteenth-century American politics, he has been a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and of the National Humanites Center, and in 1993-94, he was the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at Cambridge University. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
