In Era of Experimentation, Daniel Peart challenges the pervasive assumption that the present-day political system, organized around two competing parties, represents the logical fulfillment of participatory democracy. Recent accounts of "the rise of American democracy" between the Revolution and the Civil War applaud political parties for opening up public life to mass participation and making government responsive to the people. Yet this celebratory narrative tells only half of t...

The first book-length study of lobbying prior to the Civil War.Since the 2008 global economic crisis, historians have embraced the challenge of making visible the invisible hand of the market. This renewed interest in the politics of political economy makes it all the more timely to remind ourselves that debates over free trade and protection were just as controversial in the early United States as they have once again become, and that lobbying, then as now, played...

How the role of the Speaker of the House evolved amid power struggles and conflict in the early American Congress.The Speaker of the House occupies a central place in American political life, yet the office's authority has never been fixed or inevitable. The Soul of the House offers a history of the Speakership during the nation's formative decades, when its power depended as much on circumstance and character as on formal rules. Covering twenty-three Spea...

In Practicing Democracy, eleven historians challenge conventional narratives of democratization in the early United States, offering new perspectives on the period between the ratification of the Constitution and the outbreak of the Civil War. The essays in this collection address critical themes such as the origins, evolution, and disintegration of party competition, the relationship between political parties and popular participation, and the place that parties occupied within t...