The "third party tradition" reconsidered: Third parties and American public life, 1830-1900

Journal of American History

Volumn 86, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 121-150

  Voss Hubbard, Mark ^a  

^a EASTERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33750132542     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2567409     Document Type: Review

References (320)

1. John D. Hicks, "The Third Party Tradition in American Politics," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 20 (June 1933), 4.
2. See, for example, P. Orman Ray, An Introduction to Political Parties and Practical Politics (New York, 1913);
3. Fred E. Haynes, Third Party Movements since the Civil War, with Special Reference to Iowa: A Study in Social Politics (Iowa City, 1916);
4. John D. Hicks, The Populist Revolt: A History of the Farmers' Alliance and the People's Party (Minneapolis, 1931);
5. Moisei Ostrogorski, Democracy and the Party System in the United States (New York, 1910).
6. For reviews of this literature, see Paula Baker, "A Reply to Byron E. Shafer: Social Science in Political History," Journal of Policy History, 5 (no. 4, 1993), 480-84;
7. Ronald P. Formisano, "The Invention of the Ethnocultural Interpretation," American Historical Review, 99 (April 1994), 453-77;
8. J. Morgan Kousser, "The 'New Political History': A Methodological Critique," Reviews in American History, 4 (March 1976), 1-14;
9. and Richard L. McCormick, "The Realignment Synthesis in American History," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 13 (Summer 1982), 85-105.
10. Efforts to challenge, or at least problematize, the party period idea include Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin, "Limits of Political Engagement in Antebellum America: A New Look at the Golden Age of Participatory Democracy," Journal of American History, 84 (Dec. 1997), 855-85;
11. Ronald P. Formisano, "The 'Party Period' Revisited," Journal of American History, ibid., 86 (June 1999), 93-120;
12. and Mark H. Leff, "Revisioning U.S. Political History," American Historical Review, 100 (June 1995), 829-53.
13. Increasingly historians are turning to the work of Jürgen Habermas and the concept of the public sphere to organize more expansive and inclusive treatments of nineteenth-century politics. See, for example, Elsa Barkley Brown, "Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom," Public Culture, 7 (Fall 1994), 107-46;
14. Philip J. Ethington, The Public City: The Political Construction of Urban Life in San Francisco, 1850-1900 (New York, 1994);
15. Mary P. Ryan, Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825-1880 (Baltimore, 1990);
16. and Mary P. Ryan, Civic Wars: Democracy and Public Life in the American City during the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley, 1997).
17. For interdisciplinary discussions of the concept's problems and possibilities, see Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, Mass., 1992).
18. Joel H. Silbey, The American Political Nation, 1838-1893 (Stanford, 1991), 196;
19. Michael E. McGerr, The Decline of Popular Politics: The American North, 1865-1928 (New York, 1986), 215.
20. For third parties as marginal forces in the nineteenth-century polity, see Jerome M. Clubb, William H. Flanigan, and Nancy H. Zingale, Partisan Realignment: Voters, Parties, and Government in American History (London, 1981), 135-36;
21. V. O. Key Jr., Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups (New York, 1958), 280-309;
22. Paul Kleppner, "Partisanship and Ethnoreligous Conflict: The Third Electoral System, 1853-1892," in Paul Kleppner et al., The Evolution of American Electoral Systems (Westport, 1981), 114-46;
23. and Frank J. Sorauf, Party Politics in America (Boston, 1984), 42-47.
24. On parallels between third parties and the major parties, see Silbey, American Political Nation;
25. Alan M. Kraut, "Partisanship and Principles: The Liberty Party in Antebellum Political Culture," in Crusaders and Compromisers: Essays on the Relationship of the Antislavery Struggle to the Antebellum Party System, ed. Alan M. Kraut (Westport, 1983), 71-99;
26. and Steven J. Rosenstone, Roy L. Behr, and Edward H. Lazarus, Third Parties in America: Citizen Response to Major Party Failure (Princeton, 1984), 11-12, 78-80.
27. Good introductions to the historiography of the more significant nineteenth-century third parties are Tyler Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850s (New York, 1992), ix-xv;
28. William E. Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852-1856 (New York, 1987), 3-11;
29. Paul Goodman, Towards a Christian Republic: Antimasonry and the Great Transition, 1826-1836 (New York, 1988), vii-x;
30. William F. Holmes, "Populism: In Search of Context," Agricultural History, 64 (Fall 1990), 26-58;
31. Alan M. Kraut, "Introduction," in Crusaders and Compromisers, ed. Kraut, 1-22;
32. Kim Voss, The Making of American Exceptionalism: The Knights of Labor and Class Formation in the Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, 1993), 1-12;
33. and Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850 (New York, 1984), 3-19.
34. For insight into the systemic dimensions of third partyism in the nineteenth century, see Peter H. Argersinger, The Limits of Agrarian Radicalism: Western Populism and American Politics (Lawrence, 1995);
35. Ronald P. Formisano, The Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Parties, 1790s-1840s (New York, 1983);
36. Michael F. Holt, "The Antimasonic and Know-Nothing Parties," in History of U.S. Political Parties, ed. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (4 vols., New York, 1973), I, 575-620;
37. and Richard L. McCormick, The Party Period and Public Policy: American Politics from the Age of Jackson to the Progressive Era (New York, 1986), 89-259.
38. Proceedings and Address of the Native American State Convention, Held at Harrisburg, February 24th, 1846 (Harrisburg, 1846), 6-7, MG-458, Pennsylvania Native American Party Collection (Historical Society of Dauphin County, Harrisburg, Penn.);
39. national Prohibition party platform cited in Paul Kleppner, The Third Electoral System, 1853-1892: Parties, Voters, and Political Cultures (Chapel Hill, 1979), 253;
40. Lincoln Farmers Alliance, Sept. 27, 1890,
41. cited in Hicks, Populist Revolt, 168.
42. On classical antiparty thought, see Richard Hofstadter, The Idea of a Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780-1840 (Berkeley, 1969);
43. Edward L. Mayo, "Republicanism, Antipartyism, and Jacksonian Party Politics: A View from the Nation's Capital," American Quarterly, 31 (Spring 1979), 3-19;
44. James Roger Sharp, American Politics in the Early Republic: The New Nation in Crisis (New Haven, 1993);
45. and David Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776-1820 (Chapel Hill, 1997).
46. On evangelical antipartyism, see Ronald P. Formisano, "Political Character, Antipartyism, and the Second Party System," American Quarterly, 21 (Winter 1969), 683-709;
47. Ronald P. Formisano, The Birth of Mass Political Parties: Michigan, 1827-1861 (Princeton, 1971);
48. and Kleppner, Third Electoral System.
49. For related discussions, see Richard J. Carwardine, Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America (New Haven, 1993);
50. and Daniel Walker Howe, "The Evangelical Movement and Political Culture in the North during the Second Party System," Journal of American History, 78 (March 1991), 1216-39.
51. Popular antipartyism during the party period may well have prefigured the explosion of nonpartisanship around the turn of the century. See, for example, Amy Bridges, "Creating Cultures of Reform," Studies in American Political Development, 8 (Spring 1994), 1 -23;
52. Elisabeth S. Clemens, The People's Lobby: Organizational Innovation and the Rise of Interest Group Politics in the United States, 1890-1925 (Chicago, 1997);
53. and McCormick, Party Period and Public Policy, 228-59, 311-56.
54. Julian Bretz, "The Economic Background of the Liberty Party," American Historical Review, 34 (Jan. 1929), 250-64;
55. Solon Justus Buck, The Granger Movement: A Study of Agricultural Organization and Its Political, Economic, and Social Manifestations, 1870-1880 (Cambridge, Mass., 1913), esp. 80-237;
56. Frank T. Carlton, "The Working Men's Party of New York City, 1829-1831," Political Science Quarterly, 22 (Sept. 1907), 401-15;
57. Arthur B. Darling, Political Changes in Massachusetts, 1824-1848: A Study in Liberal Political Movements in Politics (New Haven, 1925);
58. Nathan Fine, Labor and Farmer Parties in the United States, 1828-1928 (New York, 1928);
59. Haynes, Third Party Movements;
60. Hicks, Populist Revolt;
61. Charles McCarthy, "The Anti-Masonic Party," Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1902 (2 vols., Washington, 1903), I, 365-574.
62. Criticism of the Progressive approach to third parties first appeared in the 1930s in works on nativism. See Ray Allen Billington, The Protestant Crusade, 1800-1860: A Study of the Origins of American Nativism (New York, 1938);
63. M. Theophane Geary, A History of Third Parties in Pennsylvania, 1840-1860 (Washington, 1938);
64. J. Carroll Noonan, Nativism in Connecticut, 1828-1860 (Washington, 1938);
65. and M. Evangeline Thomas, Nativism in the Old Northwest, 1850-1860 (Washington, 1936).
66. For a parallel interpretation of abolitionism and antislavery that portrayed antislavery reformers as reckless agitators whose overzealousness pitched the nation toward an otherwise avoidable Civil War, see Avery O. Craven, The Repressive Conflict, 1830-1861 (Baton Rouge, 1939).
67. Later research into Jacksonian-era labor parties found coalitions of skilled tradesmen and middle-class reformers, hardly bona fide expressions of working-class politics. See Carl N. Degler, "The Loco-Focos: Urban 'Agrarians,'" Journal of Economic History, 16 (Sept. 1956), 322-33;
68. Joseph Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American Civilization (5 vols., New York, 1946), II, esp. 637-95;
69. Joseph Dorfman, "The Jackson Wage-Earner Thesis," American Historical Review, 54 (Jan. 1949), 296-306;
70. Walter E. Hugins, Jacksonian Democracy and the Working Class: A Study of the New York Workingmen's Movement, 1829-1837 (Stanford, 1960);
71. and William A. Sullivan, The Industrial Worker in Pennsylvania, 1800-1840 (Harrisburg, 1955), esp. 159-207.
72. Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York, 1955), 7, 4-5.
73. Counterprogressive studies in this vein include David Brion Davis, "Some Themes of Counter-Subversion: An Analysis of Anti-Masonic, Anti-Catholic, and Anti-Mormon Literature," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 47 (Sept. 1960), 205-24;
74. David Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered: Essays on the Civil War Era (New York, 1956), 19-36;
75. Joseph R. Gusfield, Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement (Urbana, 1963);
76. and Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics (New York, 1965), 7-22.
77. In state-level policy studies in the 1940s and 1950s, another orthodoxy of Progressive scholarship - third parties as the political systems wellspring of policy innovation - was also brushed aside. For attempts to link social and economic policy reform to a normative "liberal humanitarianism," see, for example, Oscar Handlin and Mary Flug Handlin, Commonwealth: A Study of the Role of Government in the American Economy, Massachusetts, 1776-1861 (Cambridge, Mass., 1947).
78. See also Lee Benson, Merchants, Farmers, and Railroads: Railroad Regulation and New York Politics, 1850-1887 (Cambridge, Mass., 1955);
79. Bray Hammond, Banks and Politics in America, from the Revolution to the Civil War (Princeton, 1957);
80. Louis Hartz, Economic Policy and Democratic Thought: Pennsylvania, 1776-1860 (Cambridge, Mass., 1948);
81. and Milton Sydney Heath, Constructive Liberalism: The Role of the State in Economic Development in Georgia to 1860 (Cambridge, Mass., 1954).
82. On partisan political culture, see William E. Gienapp, "'Politics Seems to Enter Into Everything': Political Culture in the North, 1840-1860," in Essays on Antebellum American Politics, 1840-1860, ed. Stephen E. Maizlish and John J. Kushma (College Station, 1982), 15-69;
83. William G. Shade, "Political Pluralism and Party Development: The Creation of a Modern Party System: 1815-1852," in Kleppner et al., Evolution of American Electoral Systems, 77-111;
84. John F. Reynolds, Testing Democracy: Electoral Behavior and Progressive Reform, 1880-1920 (Chapel Hill, 1988);
85. and Silbey, American Political Nation.
86. The new political history also greatly enlarged our knowledge of nineteenth-century policy making. See, for example, Thomas B. Alexander, Sectional Stress and Party Strength: A Study of Poll-Call Voting in the United States House of Representatives, 1836-1860 (Nashville, 1967);
87. Richard E. Beringer, "The Unconscious 'Spirit of Party' in the Confederate Congress," Civil War History, 18 (Dec. 1972), 312-33;
88. Allan G. Bogue, "Bloc and Party in the United States Senate, 1861-1863," Civil War History, ibid., 13 (Sept. 1967), 221 -41;
89. Ballard C. Campbell, Representative Democracy: Public Policy and Midwestern Legislatures in the Late Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1980);
90. Herbert Ershkowitz and William G. Shade, "Consensus or Conflict? Political Behavior in the State Legislatures during the Jacksonian Era," Journal of American History, 58 (Dec. 1971), 591-621;
91. and Joel H. Silbey, The Shrine of Party : Congressional Voting Behavior, 1841-1852 (Pittsburgh, 1967).
92. Good introductions to party systems include William Nisbet Chambers and Walter Dean Burnham, eds., The American Party Systems: Stages of Political Development (New York, 1975);
93. and Kleppner et al., Evolution of American Party Systems.
94. For the "ethnocultural interpretation," which holds that nineteenth-century voting alignments generally followed lines of ethnic and religious cleavage in American society, see Lee Benson, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy: New York as a Test Case (Princeton, 1961);
95. Formisano, Birth of Mass Political Parties;
96. Gienapp, Origins of the Republican Party;
97. Richard Jensen, The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888-1896 (Chicago, 1971);
98. Paul Kleppner, The Cross of Culture: A Social Analysis of Midwestern Politics, 1850-1900 (New York, 1970);
99. Kleppner, Third Electoral System;
100. Samuel T. McSeveney, The Politics of Depression: Political Behavior in the Northeast, 1893-1896 (New York, 1972);
101. and William G. Shade, Banks or No Banks: The Money Issue in Western Politics, 1832-1865 (Detroit, 1972).
102. For an alternative view emphasizing the influence of family relations and community socialization on partisan identity, see Jean H. Baker, Affairs of Party: The Political Culture of Northern Democrats in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, 1983);
103. Paula Baker, The Culture of Politics in the Late Nineteenth Century: Community and Political Behavior in Rural New York," Journal of Social History, 18 (Winter 1984), 167-93;
104. Paul Bourke and Donald DeBats, Washington County: Politics and Community in Antebellum America (Baltimore, 1995);
105. Paul Goodman, "The Social Bases of New England Politics in Jacksonian America," Journal of the Early Republic, 6 (Spring 1986), 23-57;
106. and Harry L. Watson, Jacksonian Politics and Community Conflict: The Emergence of the Second Party System in Cumberland County, North Carolina (Baton Rouge, 1981).
107. Important treatments of nineteenth-century third parties from the perspective of the new political history include Benson, Concept of Jacksonian Democracy;
108. Formisano, Birth of Mass Political Parties;
109. and Gienapp, Origins of the Republican Party.
110. For the political science variant of this thesis, see Walter Dean Burnham, Critical Elections and the Mainspring of American Politics (New York, 1970), 27-30;
111. Key, Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups, 280-309;
112. and Nancy Zingale, "Third Party Alignments in a Two-Party System: The Case of Minnesota," in The History of American Electoral Behavior, ed. Joel H. Silbey, Allan G. Bogue, and William H. Flanigan (Princeton, 1978), 106-33.
113. A notable exception to this discussion is Ronald P. Formisano's richly textured case study of third party populism and the emergence of the second party system in Massachusetts. See Formisano, Transformation of Political Culture.
114. The social history literature on nineteenth-century third parties is especially large. Outstanding examples include Amy Bridges, A City in the Republic: Antebellum New York and the Origins of Machine Politics (New York, 1984);
115. Leon Fink, Workingmen's Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics (Chicago, 1983);
116. Goodman, Towards a Christian Republic;
117. Lawrence Goodwyn, Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America (New York, 1976);
118. Steven Hahn, The Roots of Southern Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry, 1850-1890 (New York, 1983);
119. Bruce Laurie, Artisans into Workers: Labor in Nineteenth-Century America (New York, 1989);
120. David Montgomery, Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862-1872 (Urbana, 1967);
121. Bruce Palmer, "Man over Money": The Southern Populist Critique of American Capitalism (Chapel Hill, 1980);
122. Richard Jules Oestreicher, Solidarity and Fragmentation: Working People and Class-Consciousness, 1875-1900 (Urbana, 1989);
123. Steven J. Ross, Workers' on the Edge: Work, Leisure, and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1790-1888 (New York, 1986);
124. and Wilentz, Chants Democratic.
125. Scholars have worked to transcend social history by integrating culture, race, gender, and subaltern discourses. See, for example, Brown, "Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere";
126. Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 (New York, 1990);
127. Dana Frank, Purchasing Power: Consumer Organizing, Gender, and the Seattle Labor Movement, 1919-1929 (New York, 1994);
128. Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920 (Chapel Hill, 1996);
129. Robin D. G. Kelley, "'We Are Not What We Seem': Rethinking Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South," Journal of American History, 80 (June 1993), 75-112;
130. Stephanie McCurry, Masters of Small Worlds: Yeoman Households, Gender Relations, and the Political Culture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low Country (New York, 1995);
131. David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (New York, 1991);
132. Alexander Saxton, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth Century America (New York, 1990);
133. and Lee Ann Whites, The Civil War as a Crisis in Gender: Augusta, Georgia, 1860-1890 (Athens, Ga., 1995).
134. For related critiques, see Geoff Eley and Keith Nield, "Why Does Social History Ignore Politics?," Social History, 5 (May 1980), 249-71;
135. and McCormick, Party Period and Public Policy, 89-140.
136. Recent studies that incorporate politics and the state in a broader systemic perspective of working-class politics include Amy Bridges, "Becoming American: The Working-Classes in the United States before the Civil War," in Working-Class Formation: Nineteenth-Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States, ed. Ira Katznelson and Aristide R. Zolberg (Princeton, 1986), 157-98;
137. Victoria C. Hattam, Labor Visions and State Power: The Origins of Business Unionism in the United States (Princeton, 1995);
138. Richard Oestreicher, "Urban Working-Class Political Behavior and Theories of American Electoral Politics, 1870-1940," Journal of American History, 74 (March 1988), 1257-86;
139. and Martin Shefter, "Trade Unions and Political Machines: The Organization and Disorganization of the American Working Class in the Late Nineteenth Century," in Working-Class Formation, ed. Katznelson and Zolberg, 197-278.
140. 1834 Maine Antimasonic Convention cited in Goodman, Towards a Christian Republic, 108;
141. Detroit Courier, July 31, 1833, Jan. 29, 1834,
142. cited in Formisano, Birth of Mass Political Parties, 66.
143. On the Antimasonic movement, see John L. Brooke, The Heart of the Commonwealth: Society and Political Culture in Worcester County, Massachusetts, 1713-1861 (New York, 1989), 310-52;
144. Formisano, Transformation of Political Culture, 197-221;
145. Goodman, Towards a Christian Republic;
146. Holt, "The Antimasonic and Know-Nothing Parties," 575-93;
147. and Kathleen Smith Kutolowski, "Antimasonry Re-examined: Social Bases of a Grass-Roots Party," Journal of American History, 71 (Sept. 1984), 269-93.
148. New York Working Man's Advocate, July 28, 1830,
149. cited in William B. Hesseltine, Third-Party Movements in the United States (New York, 1962), 113;
150. Fitzwilliam Byrdsall, The History of the Loco-Foco Or Equal Rights Party, Its Movements, Conventions and Proceedings (New York, 1842), 40, 39.
151. On the Workingmen's movement, see especially Bridges, "Becoming American";
152. Formisano, Transformation of Political Culture, 222-44;
153. Hugins, Jacksonian Democracy and the Working Class;
154. Edward Pessen, Most Uncommon Jacksonians: The Radical Leaders of the Early Labor Movement (Albany, 1967);
155. and Wilentz, Chants Democratic, 172-216.
156. Salmon P. Chase cited in Richard H. Sewell, Ballots for Freedom: Antislavery Politics in the United States, 1837-1860 (New York, 1976), 83;
157. Louis Ruchames, ed., The Abolitionists: A Collection of Their Writings (New York, 1964), 211.
158. Good studies of antislavery third parties include Sewell, Ballots for Freedom;
159. Reinhard O. Johnson, "The Liberty Party in Massachusetts, 1840-1848: Antislavery Third Party Politics in the Bay State," Civil War History, 28 (Sept. 1982), 237-65;
160. James Brewer Stewart, Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and American Slavery (New York, 1976);
161. and James Brewer Stewart, "Abolitionists, Insurgents, and Third Parties: Sectionalism and Partisan Politics in Northern Whiggery, 1836-1844," in Crusaders and Compromisers, ed. Kraut, 25-43.
162. Thomas L. Nugent 1892 campaign speech cited in Norman Pollack, ed., The Populist Mind (New York, 1967), 285;
163. Jay Burroughs cited in Jeffrey Ostler, Prairie Populism: The Fate of Agrarian Radicalism in Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa, 1880-1892 (Lawrence, 1993), 114.
164. On the Populist movement, see Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life after Reconstruction (New York, 1992), 187-298;
165. Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An American History (New York, 1995), 27-46;
166. and Robert C. McMath Jr., American Populism: A Social History, 1877-1898 (New York, 1993).
167. In recommending a regime-centered approach to third parties, I have been influenced by the new institutionalist literature in political science, historical sociology, and history. See Richard Franklin Bensel, Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859-1877 (Cambridge, Eng., 1990);
168. Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1992);
169. and Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877-1920 (Cambridge, Eng., 1982).
170. For a related discussion, see Ira Karznelson, "The 'Bourgeois' Dimension: A Provocation about Institutions, Politics, and the Future of Labor History," International Labor and Working-Class History (Fall 1994), 7-32.
171. Council No. 12, Principles and Objects of the American Party (New York, 1855), 10 (Connecticut State Library, Hartford);
172. Harrisburg Telegraph, July 12, 1854;
173. Cincinnati Dollar Weekly Times, "Prospectus," Dec. 1855, vertical file manuscript no. 4183 (Ohio Historical Society, Columbus).
174. On antiparryism in the Know-Nothing movement, see Formisano, Birth of Mass Political Parties, 247-50;
175. Holt, "Antimasonic and Know-Nothing Parties";
176. and Michael F. Holt, "The Politics of Impatience: The Origins of Know Nothingism," Journal of American History, 60 (Sept. 1973), 309-31.
177. For other interpretations of Know-Nothingism, see Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery;
178. Jean H. Baker, Ambivalent Americans: The Know-Nothing Party in Maryland (Baltimore, 1977);
179. Robert W. Fogel, Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (New York, 1989), 354-80;
180. Formisano, Transformation of Political Culture;
181. Gienapp, Origins of the Republican Party;
182. Michael F. Holt, Forging a Majority: The Formation of the Republican Party in Pittsburgh, 1848-1860 (New Haven, 1969);
183. James L. Huston, "Economic Change and Political Realignment in Antebellum Pennsylvania," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 113 (July 1989), 347-95;
184. John R. Mulkern, The Know-Nothing Party in Massachusetts: The Rise and Fall of a People's Movement (Boston, 1991);
185. and Mark Voss-Hubbard, "The Amesbury-Salisbury Strike and the Social Origins of Political Nativism in Antebellum Massachusetts," Journal of Social History, 29 (March 1996), 565-90.
186. See also Mark Voss-Hubbard, Beyond Party: Northern Politics and Nonpartisan Culture before the Civil War (Baltimore, forthcoming).
187. The conflation of populist, antiparty idioms with major party rhetoric is a striking feature of an otherwise admirable account of America's insurgent tradition: Kazin, Populist Persuasion.
188. Sophisticated accounts of nineteenth-century partisan campaign style include McGerr, Decline of Popular Politics;
189. and Silbey, American Political Nation.
190. 1874 Indiana Independent party convention cited in Haynes, Third Party Movements, 57;
191. Annie Diggs cited in Argersinger, Limits of Agrarian Radicalism, 12;
192. Elizabeth N. Barr cited in Hicks, Populist Revolt, 159.
193. Argersinger implies that antipartyism was crucial to Populism's appeal. See Argersinger, Limits of Agrarian Radicalism.
194. New York Leader, Oct. 22, 1886,
195. cited in David Scobey, "Boycotting the Politics Factory: Labor Radicalism and the New York City Election of 1884," Radical History Review (nos. 28-30, 1984), 306;
196. Detroit Labor Leaf, Oct. 21, 1885,
197. cited in Oestreicher, Solidarity and Fragmentation, 124;
198. Rutland Herald, Oct. 6, 1886,
199. cited in Fink, Workingmen's Democracy, 81.
200. Cf. Altschuler and Blumin, "Limits of Political Engagement in Antebellum America."
201. See Daniel T. Rodgers, "Republicanism: The Career of a Concept," Journal of American History, 79 (June 1992), 11-38.
202. On women's nonpartisan voluntary activism, see, for example, Paula Baker, "The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780-1920," American Historical Review, 89 (June 1984), 620-47;
203. Ruth Bordin, Women and Temperance: The Quest for Power and Liberty, 1873-1900 (Philadelphia, 1981);
204. Lori D. Ginzberg, Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the 19th-century United States (New Haven, 1990);
205. Nancy A. Hewitt, Women's Activism and Social Change: Rochester, New York, 1822-1872 (Ithaca, 1984);
206. Michael McGerr, "Political Style and Women's Power, 1830-1930," Journal of American History, 77 (Dec. 1990), 864-85;
207. Kathryn Kish Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Women's Political Culture, 1830-1900 (New Haven, 1995);
208. and Jean Fagan Yellin and John C. Van Home, eds., The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women's Political Culture in Antebellum America (Ithaca, 1994).
209. On women's partisanship, see Brown, "Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere";
210. Rebecca Edwards, Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Politics from the Civil War to the Progressive Era (New York, 1997);
211. Ryan, Women in Public, 156-58;
212. Elizabeth R. Varon, "Tippecanoe and the Ladies, Too: White Women and Party Politics in Antebellum Virginia," Journal of American History, 82 (Sept. 1995), 494-521;
213. and Ronald Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray, "Whig Women, Politics, and Culture in the Campaign of 1840: Three Perspectives from Massachusetts," Journal of the Early Republic, 17 (Summer 1997), 277-315.
214. I know of no empirical study of women in third parties versus women in the major parties, but the anecdotal evidence on women in third party movements seems stronger. See, for example, Fink, Workingmens Democracy;
215. Michael Lewis Goldberg, An Army of Women: Gender and Politics in Gilded Age Kansas (Baltimore, 1997);
216. Goodman, Towards a Christian Republic;
217. Jean Gould Hales, "'Co-Laborers in the Cause': Women in the Antebellum Nativist Movement," Civil War History, 25 (June 1979), 119-38;
218. Hicks, Populist Revolt;
219. Kleppner, Third Electoral System;
220. and Ostler, Prairie Populism.
221. Paula Baker, The Moral Frameworks of Public Life: Gender, Politics, and the State in Rural New York, 1870-1930 (New York, 1991), 54.
222. Lynn Bay State, May 9, 1850.
223. See also Carl Abbott, Boosters and Businessmen: Popular Economic Thought and Urban Growth in the Antebellum Middle West (Westport, 1981), esp. 163-67;
224. Gary Lawson Browne, Baltimore in the Nation, 1789-1861 (Chapel Hill, 1980), esp. 149-58;
225. Alan Dawley, Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), esp. 194-219;
226. Ethington, Public City, esp. 66-67;
227. Fink, Workingmen's Democracy;
228. and Robert J. Kolesar, "The Politics of Development: Worcester, Massachusetts, in the Late Nineteenth Century," Journal of Urban History, 16 (Nov. 1989), 3-28.
229. Abbott, Boosters and Businessmen;
230. Hal S. Barron, "And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight: Public Road Administration and the Decline of Localism in the Rural North, 1870-1930," Journal of Social History, 26 (Fall 1992), 81-103;
231. Thelma M. Kistler, "The Rise of Railroads in the Connecticut River Valley," Smith College Studies in History (no. 23, Oct. 1937-July 1938);
232. Daniel B. Klein and John Majewski, "Economy, Community, and Law: The Turnpike Movement in New York, 1797-1845," Law & Society Review, 26 (no. 3, 1992), 469-512;
233. John Majewski, Christopher Baer, and Daniel B. Klein, "Responding to Relative Economic Decline: The Plank Road Boom of Antebellum New York," Journal of Economic History, 53 (March 1993), 106-22.
234. On matters that were closely tied to party platforms, state assemblies often became embroiled in highly partisan debates and roll calls. Yet it seems that such examples of partisan legislative behavior were more extensions of election campaigns than a fundamental determinant of policy making; partisan issues composed only a tiny fraction of legislative agendas. See Douglas E. Bowers, "From Logrolling to Corruption: The Development of Lobbying in Pennsylvania, 1815-1861," Journal of the Early Republic, 3 (Winter 1982), 439-74;
235. Campbell, Representative Democracy;
236. Tony A. Freyer, Producers versus Capitalists: Constitutional Conflict in Antebellum America (Charlottesville, 1994), 113-19;
237. L. Ray Gunn, The Decline of Public Authority: Public Economic Policy and Political Development in New York State, 1800-1860 (Ithaca, 1988), 57-143;
238. Hartz, Economic Policy and Democratic Thought, 21-33, 42-51;
239. Richard L. McCormick, "The Party Period and Public Policy: An Exploratory Hypothesis," Journal of American History, 66 (Sept. 1979), 279-98;
240. Morton Keller, Affairs of State: Public Life in Late Nineteenth Century America (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), 85-121, 285-370;
241. and Harry N. Scheiber, "Federalism and the American Economic Order, 1789-1910," Law & Society Review, 10 (Fall 1975), 57-118.
242. Clemens, People's Lobby, 4, 3.
243. For a related discussion of nineteenth-century voluntary associationalism, see David Thelen, Paths of Resistance: Tradition and Democracy in Industrializing Missouri (Columbia, Mo., 1991), 132-200.
244. See Hicks, Populist Revolt, 147.
245. For more on the extrapartisan tradition of political activism in specific contexts, see Buck, Granger Movement, 40-301;
246. Fink, Workingmen's Democracy, 18-37;
247. Goodman, Towards a Christian Republic, 3-102;
248. Goodwyn, Democratic Promise, 51-70, 81-94;
249. Haynes, Third Party Movements, 67-88;
250. Robert C. McMath Jr., Populist Vanguard: A History of the Southern Farmers' Alliance (Chapel Hill, 1975), 10-89;
251. and Wilentz, Chants Democratic, 219-96.
252. For treatments that skillfully blend internal and external explanations, see Argersinger, Limits of Agrarian Radicalism;
253. and Oestreicher, "Urban Working-Class Political Behavior." Third party mobilization became difficult after turn-of-the-century election laws raised legal barriers to insurgent politics.
254. See Peter Argersinger, "'A Place On the Ballot': Fusion Politics and Antifusion Laws," American Historical Review, 85 (April 1980), 287-306;
255. Keller, Affairs of State, 522-31;
256. J. Morgan Kousser, The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880-1910 (New Haven, 1974), 45-223;
257. Richard L. McCormick, From Realignment to Reform: Political Change in New York State, 1893-1910 (Ithaca, 1981), 260-63;
258. and Reynolds, Testing Democracy, 49-70.
259. Joseph R. Buchanan, The Story of a Labor Agitator (New York, 1903), 428-29.
260. See also Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery, 162-219;
261. Argersinger, Limits of Agrarian Radicalism, 102-35;
262. McMath, American Populism, 137-42, 180-211;
263. and Palmer, "Man over Money," 96-125.
264. Consider, too, the factionalism that marked Henry George's 1886 Clarendon Hall coalition and the Workingmen's movement. See Fine, Labor and Farmer Parties in the United States, 37-50;
265. and Wilentz, Chants Democratic, 172-216.
266. For evidence that nineteenth-century third parties are best viewed as cross-class coalitions, though with a marked central tendency among the middling ranks - skilled craftsmen and industrial workers, small farmers, small businesspeople, and petty professionals - see Baker, Ambivalent Americans, 142-46;
267. Fink, Workingmens Democracy;
268. Goodman, Towards a Christian Republic, 157-62;
269. Holt, Forging a Majority, 151-57;
270. Hugins, Jacksonian Democracy and the Working Class, 112-28;
271. Alan M. Kraut, "The Forgotten Reformers: A Profile of Third Party Abolitionists in Antebellum New York," in Antislavery Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Abolitionists, ed. Lewis Perry and Michael Fellman (Baton Rouge, 1979), 119-45;
272. Bruce Laurie, "'Spavined Ministers, Lying Toothpullers, and Buggering Priests': Third Partyism and the Search for Security in the Antebellum North," in American Artisans: Crafting Social Identity, 1750-1850, ed. Howard B. Rock, Paul A. Gilje, and Robert Asher (Baltimore, 1995), 98-119;
273. Edward Magdol, The Antislavery Rank and File: A Social Profile of the Abolitionist Constituency (Westport, 1986), 101-15;
274. and McMath, Populist Vanguard, 163.
275. Argersinger, Limits of Agrarian Radicalism, 102-35;
276. McMath, Populist Vanguard, 90-150;
277. McMath, American Populism, 143-211;
278. Ostler, Prairie Populism, 154-74;
279. Palmer, "Man over Money," 144-96;
280. Thelen, Paths of Resistance, 212-16.
281. Butler Free Press, Feb. 11, 1897,
282. cited in Thelen, Paths of Resistance, 215.
283. On the conflicting interests between leaders and led, see Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery, 150-54;
284. Ayers, Promise of the New South, 222-30;
285. Gienapp, Origins of the Republican Party, 172-73;
286. McMath, Populist Vanguard, 110-31;
287. Montgomery, Beyond Equality, 360-70;
288. Mulkern, Know-Nothing Party in Massachusetts, 30-44, 78-80, 118-29;
289. Ostler, Prairie Populism, 39-45, 168-70;
290. Richard H. Sewell, John P. Hale and the Politics of Abolition (Cambridge, Mass., 1965);
291. C. Vann Woodward, Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel (New York, 1938);
292. C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 (Baton Rouge, 1951), 237-40, 279-85.
293. North Carolina Know-Nothing cited in Holt, "Antimasonic and Know-Nothing Parties," 605;
294. Indianapolis American Non-Conformist, Nov. 15, 1894,
295. cited in Argersinger, Limits of Agrarian Radicalism, 12;
296. Norwich Mechanics', Operatives', and Laborers' Advocate, Oct. 10, 1836 (Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford).
297. Historians have noted this contradiction, even if they have not linked it explicitly to antiparty movement culture. See, for example, Argersinger, Limits of Agrarian Radicalism, esp. 1-36;
298. Fink, Workingmen's Democracy, esp. 18-37;
299. and Thelen, Paths of Resistance, esp. 211-16.
300. Argersinger, Limits of Agrarian Radicalism, 10-11.
301. On fusion in specific contexts see, for example, Gienapp, Origins of the Republican Party, 189-411;
302. Hugins, Jacksonian Democracy and the Working Class, 11-50;
303. Kleppner, Third Electoral System, 239, 243, 277-78;
304. and Oestreicher, Solidarity and Fragmentation, 121-27.
305. See Bridges, "Becoming American," 166-68;
306. Formisano, Transformation of Political Culture, 245-67;
307. McMath, American Populism, 180-211;
308. Oestreicher, Solidarity and Fragmentation, 233-36;
309. Ostler, Prairie Populism, 45-68;
310. and Shelter, "Trade Unions and Political Machines," 251-72.
311. On the role of courts and the law, see William E. Forbath, Law and the Shaping of the American Labor Movement (Cambridge, Mass., 1991);
312. Hattam, Labor Visions and State Power, esp. 30-75;
313. Donald J. Pisani, "Promotion and Regulation: Constitutionalism and the American Economy," Journal of American History, 74 (Dec. 1987), 740-68;
314. and Christopher L. Tomlins, Law, Labor, and Ideology in the Early American Republic (New York, 1993).
315. For examinations of Republican ascendancy, see Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (New York, 1970);
316. Gienapp, Origins of the Republican Party;
317. Holt, Forging a Majority;
318. and David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 (New York, 1976).
319. The phrase is from the title of Baker, Affairs of Party.
320. A suggestion also advanced by Baker, "A Reply to Byron E. Shafer," 482.