Mark Wahlgren Summers – författare

This book describes the southern Republicans' post- Civil War railroad aid program--the central element of the Gospel of Prosperity" designed to reestablish a vigorous economy in the devastated South. Conceding that race and Unionism were basic issues, Mark W. Summers explores a neglected facet of the postwar era: the attempt to build a new South and a biracial Republican majority through railroad aid. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This book describes the southern Republicans' post- Civil War railroad aid program--the central element of the Gospel of Prosperity" designed to reestablish a vigorous economy in the devastated South. Conceding that race and Unionism were basic issues, Mark W. Summers explores a neglected facet of the postwar era: the attempt to build a new South and a biracial Republican majority through railroad aid. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Relations between the press and politicians in modern America have always been contentious. In The Press Gang , Mark Summers tells the story of the first skirmishes in this ongoing battle. Following the Civil War, independent newspapers began to separate themselves from partisan control and assert direct political influence. The first investigative journalists uncovered genuine scandals such as those involving the Tweed Ring, but their standard practices were often sensational, as editors and reporters made their reputations by destroying political figures, not by carefully uncovering the facts. Objectivity as a professional standard scarcely existed. Considering more than ninety different papers, Summers analyzes not only what the press wrote but also what they chose not to write, and he details both how they got the stories and what mistakes they made in reporting them. He exposes the peculiarly ambivalent relationship of dependence and distaste among reporters and politicians. In exploring the shifting ground between writing the stories and making the news, Summers offers an important contribution to the history of journalism and mid-nineteenth-century politics and uncovers a story that has come to dominate our understanding of government and the media.

The presidential election of 1884, in which Grover Cleveland ended the Democrats' twenty-four-year presidential drought by defeating Republican challenger James G. Blaine, was one of the gaudiest in American history, remembered today less for its political significance than for the mudslinging and slander that characterized the campaign. But a closer look at the infamous election reveals far more complexity than previous stereotypes allowed, argues Mark Summers. Behind all the mud and malarkey, he says, lay a world of issues and consequences. Summers suggests that both Democrats and Republicans sensed a political system breaking apart, or perhaps a new political order forming, as voters began to drift away from voting by party affiliation toward voting according to a candidate's stand on specific issues. Mudslinging, then, was done not for public entertainment but to tear away or confirm votes that seemed in doubt. Uncovering the issues that really powered the election and stripping away the myths that still surround it, Summers uses the election of 1884 to challenge many of our preconceptions about Gilded Age politics. |Mark Summers challenges many preconceptions about Gilded Age politics in this close look at the infamous 1884 presidential campaign between Grover Cleveland and James G. Blaine. The mudslinging and slander were not for public entertainment, he argues, but to tear away or confirm votes that were in doubt during a time when voters were drifting away from party loyalty.

Much of late-nineteenth-century American politics was parade and pageant. Voters crowded the polls, and their votes made a real difference on policy. In Party Games, Mark Wahlgren Summers tells the full story and admires much of the political carnival, but he adds a cautionary note about the dark recesses: vote-buying, election-rigging, blackguarding, news suppression, and violence. Summers also points out that hardball politics and third-party challenges helped make the parties more responsive. Ballyhoo did not replace government action. In order to maintain power, major parties not only rigged the system but also gave dissidents part of what they wanted. The persistence of a two-party system, Summers concludes, resulted from its adaptability, as well as its ruthlessness. Even the reform of political abuses was shaped to fit the needs of the real owners of the political system - the politicians themselves.

A dramatic reappraisal and retelling of the destruction of the American UnionTo Save Us All from Slavery's Power is a novel assessment of the culmination of the sectional crisis before the Civil War. It is a story of mutual misunderstanding, journalistic mendacity, and irreconcilable visions of the country's future. With threats of disunion and rebellion rising in a thunderous chorus from the South in 1860, how could Republicans not have believed them until it was too late?As Summers shows, Republicans in 1860 found it difficult to take the disunionist threat seriously because they knew that their party posed no imminent danger to slavery where it existed. But by then Americans were living in different political realities, and white Southerners could not see Republicans as anything less than an existential threat. To Save Us All from Slavery's Power describes in dramatic detail how negative perceptions between the sections festered, and how the antagonism between them reached, and then went past, the breaking point.

A dramatic reappraisal and retelling of the destruction of the American UnionTo Save Us All from Slavery's Power is a novel assessment of the culmination of the sectional crisis before the Civil War. It is a story of mutual misunderstanding, journalistic mendacity, and irreconcilable visions of the country's future. With threats of disunion and rebellion rising in a thunderous chorus from the South in 1860, how could Republicans not have believed them until it was too late?As Summers shows, Republicans in 1860 found it difficult to take the disunionist threat seriously because they knew that their party posed no imminent danger to slavery where it existed. But by then Americans were living in different political realities, and white Southerners could not see Republicans as anything less than an existential threat. To Save Us All from Slavery's Power describes in dramatic detail how negative perceptions between the sections festered, and how the antagonism between them reached, and then went past, the breaking point.

Reconstruction policy after the Civil War, observes Mark Wahlgren Summers, was shaped not simply by politics, principles, and prejudices. Also at work were fears--often unreasonable fears of renewed civil war and a widespread sense that four years of war had thrown the normal constitutional process so dangerously out of kilter that the republic itself remained in peril. To understand Reconstruction, Summers contends, one must understand that the purpose of the North's war was--first and foremost--to save the Union with its republican institutions intact. During Reconstruction there were always fears in the mix--that the Civil War had settled nothing, that the Union was still in peril, and that its enemies and the enemies of republican government were more resilient and cunning than normal mortals. Many factors shaped the reintegration of the former Confederate states and the North's commitment to Reconstruction, Summers agrees, but the fears of war reigniting, plots against liberty, and a president prepared to father a coup d'etat ranked higher among them than historians have recognized. Both a dramatic narrative of the events of Reconstruction and a groundbreaking new look at what drove these events, A Dangerous Stir is also a valuable look at the role of fear in the politics of the time--and in politics in general.