Wilentz has written a history of the development and evolution of
the American ideal of democracy over the course of several decades that
simultaneously covers a lot of ground while in same ways remaining narrow in
focus. The time span is implied in the subtitle--From the rise of Thomas
Jefferson the election and inauguration of Abraham Lincoln.
After a brief consideration of the
Federalist period immediately after ratification of the Constitution, the focus
shifts to the Jefferson administration and how the Jeffersonian Republicans
coped with their own ideological assumptions--forged in political battles with
the Federalists and the conservative hierarchies they represented--as well as
with the lingering "country" and "city" democracies which
had been stirred up by the Revolution and which continued to flare up from time
to time in response to political shifts. The book traces this democratic
heritage through the decline of the Federalists, the split between
"Democratic" and "National" Republicans, and onto the rise
of the Jacksonian Democracy.
Jackson looms large in this book, which in some ways appears to be
Wilentz’s attempt to defend and update Schlesinger’s Age of Jackson for the 21st century. Although Wilentz is
sympathetic to the racial (and, to a much lesser degree, gender) inequities
inherent in Jacksonian Democracy, he spends a lot more time defending Jackson’s
legacy than in critiquing it, and Old Hickory and his political heirs (Martin
Van Buren could not complain too much about his treatment here) generally get
the benefit of the doubt in any political battle or ideological conflict.
That said, Wilentz does give the Whigs a more sympathetic hearing
than he afforded the Federalists, and acknowledges that the Jacksonians managed
to neither fully encompass the democratic yearnings of their era nor address
the logical inconsistencies in some of their actions and beliefs.
Hovering over all of this was the institution of slavery and the
questions it raised about the meaning and the limits of American democracy.
Those contradictions and challenges would ultimately destroy the Whig party
completely and split the Democracy in two.
If not already clear, it should be noted that the way in which
this hefty study is narrow in focus is this—Wilentz has written an
unapologetically political history of the period, which means that it is
top-down in focus and pays little mind to the broader tapestry of social and
cultural history. While perhaps unfashionable, this is appropriate given
Wilentz’s assertion that 19th century Americans located the center
of their social and cultural arguments within the political realm. Politics
were central to questions of what it meant to be American. It was a different
world than the one we live in, and we can only begin to understand it if we try
to see it as contemporaries did.
