The American Ballot Box in the Mid-Nineteenth Century PDF Download

Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download The American Ballot Box in the Mid-Nineteenth Century PDF full book. Access full book title The American Ballot Box in the Mid-Nineteenth Century by Richard Franklin Bensel. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.

The American Ballot Box in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

The American Ballot Box in the Mid-Nineteenth Century PDF Author: Richard Franklin Bensel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521537865
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 326

Book Description
During the middle of the nineteenth century, Americans voted in saloons in the most derelict sections of great cities, in hamlets swarming with Union soldiers, or in wooden cabins so isolated that even neighbors had difficulty finding them. Their votes have come down to us as election returns reporting tens of millions of officially sanctioned democratic acts. Neatly arrayed in columns by office, candidate, and party, these returns are routinely interpreted as reflections of the preferences of individual voters and thus seem to unambiguously document the existence of a robust democratic ethos. By carefully examining political activity in and around the polling place, this book suggests some important caveats which must attend this conclusion. These caveats, in turn, help to bridge the interpretive chasm now separating ethno-cultural descriptions of popular politics from political economic analyses of state and national policy-making.