Books The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln
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Rating: - Monumental view of ante-bellum America
This is a long book on early 19th century America. It covers 1800 to 1860 in slightly less than 800 pages.

The broad theme is the rise of democracy and the decline of aristocratic government. Wilentz is an unabashed partisan of Jefferson. His account prior to Andrew Jackson is good guy Jeffersonians versus bad guy Federalists.

It gets more complicated with Jackson. Wilentz tries hard to be an unapologetic advocate for Andrew Jackson, but he can not quite do it. The group which Wilentz really supports are the radical northern Democrats, the Loco Focos of New York. He sees in them a radical assualt on wealth and privilege, which carries forward Jeffersonian principles to a new era.

The Loco Focos were a local group, who never took national power. The guy running the show was Andrew Jackson, and Wilentz -- as hard as he tries to hide it -- had deeply mixed feelings about Old Hickory. On the one hand, Wilentz argues that Jackson's war on the Second Bank of the United States was a highly principled, well though-out attack on privilege, a defense of democracy and good economic policy. This part of the book is very valuable. Most historians see Jackson's attack on the Bank as mis-guided, retrograde and destructive. I know of no one else who defends so lucidly the logic of the hard-money anti-bank Jackson position. (Wilentz does NOT put it this way, I suspect because Wilentz is not himself a conservative in modern politics, but his argument can be explained to the modern reader by saying that, according to Wilentz, Jackson's economic policy anticipated the key arguments of Milton Friedman. He saw monetary policy as key to the economy, the bank's as irresponsibily inclined to put out too much currency and hard money as the only path to monetary stability and long-term growth.)

On the other hand, Wilentz can not accept Jackson's aggressiveness. Jackson most lasting legacy was conquest. As a general, he fought the Indians, the Spanish and the British. As President, he unapologetically threw the Indians out. He took the Southwest for white America, and he kept it. He also nourished the career of James K. Polk, who attacked Mexico for the purpose of conquering California, Arizona and New Mexico. Any objective historian has to admit that the Jacksonian Democratic Party was defined by its expansionism clear across the South from Florida to San Diego. In short, the Jacksonians were VERY politically incorrect, and no modern professor could possibly fully embrace their jingoist views.

A Whig-leaning historian like David Walker Howe has no trouble with this. Howe does not like Jackson anyway, so this is just more evidence that Jackson was a crude barbarian. Wilentz, however, has great trouble with this. Wilentz wants to love Jackson. He wants to see in him a native-grown New Left radical, who shouts "Power to the People." And, of course, that is exactly what Jackson was: the voice of the people of his time. But what Wilentz can not face, is that Jackson, the voice of popular democracy, would also be Jackson, the leader of the white majority, which ruthlessly crushed everyone -- black, Indian or Mexican -- who got in their way. So, on this subject, Wilentz' ordinarily lucid analysis becomes remarkably murky and evasive.

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Rating: - Flawed
I came to this book with no preconceptions. As I read I began to note problems. Every issue is presented in a one-sided manner. I began writing notes in the margins criticizing the author's views. They started innocuously. As the narrative progressed through the election of 1800 the criticism became more pointed. To the author Federalism collapsed due to its alleged antidemocratic posture in the face of a rising democratic tide. Yet this is not even close. Kurtz's analysis of the collapse of Federalism, emphasizing issues like taxation, the raising of a standing army, etc. is a much better job. More to the point, what evidence is presented that the Federalists, whatever its elitist pretensions, opposed the extension of suffrage or other aspects of "democracy", a term the author does not define? Historians specifically anaylzing that issue have concluded that the expansion of suffrage was not the exclusive province of either party. Nor did the Federalists neglect grass roots organization as the author implies. Yet the author discusses none of this, even in his endnotes.
The point here is that the author adopts a particular opinion and doesn't bother to adequately support it nor even to confront other historians who don't share his views. Thus the Federalists wear the black hats as supposedly intransigently opposed to democracy, Jefferson and his party are the heroes in democratic expansion, democratic expansion is supposedly the engine that drives events, and the analysis goes no deeper. That, for example, the ultra-Republican Virginia is among the last states to expand suffrage and other contradictions to the thesis are not even addressed, and the thesis is articulated without evidence as a sought of a priori fact.
As to the heroes of the tale, they are heroes in every way. For example when the author discusses Jefferson and the Embargo Act and its various enforcement measures he is much more excited about supposed Federalist opposition than the wisdom of the acts themselves. As to slavery, as with other Progressive historians, it is important for the author to downplay the association of Jefferson and Jackson to slavery and to deemphasize the relationship of their opponents to antislavery. And the author's claim that the party of Jefferson and Jackson provided the foundation of the antislavery parties is as flismy as it is unoriginal.
A great work of historical scholarship must above all things be honest both to the facts and how those facts have been interpreted across the years. This is the mark of truly great historical writing, such as Potter's The Impending Crisis, which goes to great lengths to analyze things fairly and comprehensively. Wilentz however doesn't do this and instead ignores divergent historical interpretations entirely. What emerges is a tendency to try to manipulate the reader as opposed to educating them, where politics becomes more important then something so mundane as getting it right. This is hardly surprising seeing that the author expressly mentions his debt to another explicitly politicized history, The Age of Jackson.
Having made that point, the book is still worth reading. It is highly detailed and well written, and it addresses an interesting issue that is worth exploring. Just read it with both eyes opened and with the appropriate skepticism about the author's bad faith.

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Rating: - ...reviewers question whether anyone but scholars will slog through the 1000-page tome. --Bookmarks Magazine.
Well I slogged through this massive tome and I'm glad I did.

It's a very rewarding journey from the end of the Federalists through the rise of Jacksonian democracy to the election of Lincoln.

If you're wondering why an American Civil War was almost inevitable from the moment the Constitution was ratified you will find the answer here.

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Rating: - A Wonderful Read covering the paradox of expansion of "American Democracy" and the centrifugal forces that tore America asunder
Sean Wilentz's "The Rise of American Democracy" is a fantastic read covering my favorite period of American History. The general thesis of the book discusses the expansion of democracy in America, beginning with the Federalist Period and concluding with the first shot fired at Fort Sumter in April 1861. Wilentz splendidly details not only how democracy was expanded through this seventy year period, but also the various political, social, and economic forces that contributed to the expansion. Lastly, in my opinion, Wilentz makes a very strong case that the root cause of the Civil War was slavery, plain and simple, as opposed the argument I was taught in high school ("southern states rights").

I also found many of the subtopics covered in the book very relevant to today. For example, the odd Whig coalition of Southern slaveholding aristocrats and northern businessmen strikes me as very similar to today's Republican Party of Southern Evangelicals and northern Wall Street financial interests. It will be interesting if today's GOP will fade as did the Whigs.

Secondly, I found it very interesting how today's Democratic Party has, on one hand, strayed so far from the party's original principles. Both Jefferson, the Democrat's founding "godfather" and Jackson, the party's patriarch, tended to advocate the principles of limited Federal powers. Of course, once in power, both Jefferson (Louisiana Purchase) and Jackson (Indian Affairs, Nullification Crisis) contradicted these professed principles. On the other hand, the Democratic Party of yesterday and today has courted the same coalition of rural and urban working class voters, often manipulating the cause of "the common man" for pure political gain. Alas, I guess Politics and Democracy in America, good and/or bad, hasn't changed much since the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s.

"The Rise of American Democracy" deserves a place on the bookshelf as a companion to Arthur Schlesinger's "The Age of Jackson" and David Potter's "The Impending Crisis", two other very enjoyable texts covering this period.