Peter H. Argersinger – Författare

Before it was ""Populism"", the great reform movement of the 1890s was often called ""Pefferism"" after its most prominant leader, Kansas editor William Peffer. Peffer's memoir, ""Populism, Its Rise and Fall"" is the only significant memoir by a major Populist figure. The Populist movement arose as a revolt against the special privileges of industrialism and the American banking system. It spread quickly throughout the Midwest and South and reached its zenith with the founding of the People's Party in the early 1890s. William Peffer chaired the national conference that organized the People's Party and was the Party's first US senator and president of its national Reform Press Association. Peffer's memoir, written in 1899 but discovered decades later, offers an insider's view of the Populist movement. Peffer describes the development of Populism, the political manoeuverings and campaign practices of the People's Party, the effect of the famous silver movement on the critical election of 1896, and the behind-the-scenes conflicts and disagreements that ultimately led to the dissolution of America's last great third party. ""Populism, Its Rise and Fall"" includes the complete text of this singular memoir, transcribed, edited, and annotated by Peter H. Argersinger, a leading scholar of the Populist movement. Argersinger's introductory essay and extensive annotation evoke America at the turn of the century and place Peffer's memoir in the context of the times, at the vortex of the forces that shaped and ultimately destroyed Populism.

Examining the struggles of political third parties in the US, this text focuses on the Populist era. It shows how Populism evolved to challenge the American political system and describes its volatile personalities, controversies, programmes and frustrations.

This study focuses attention of the People's party which existed for a short time in the 1890s. Despite its brief existence the party and the movement that brought it into being had a lasting effect on American politics and society. Populism originally developed outside the political system because the system had proved incapable of responding to real needs. As the movement was transformed into the People's party, however, much of its responsive nature was lost. The People's party became subject to the same influences that guided the old parties and it became more concerned with winning office than with promoting genuine reform. In finding this sharp distinction between Populism and the People's party, Mr. Argersinger portrays Populism not as a success but as a tragic failure, betrayed from within by politicians who followed political dictates rather than Populist principles. Mr. Argersinger studies the Populist predicament in organizing a national movement in a time of political sectionalism and discovers neglected phases of Populist activity in the crucial campaign of 1896. He suggests that there may have been some validity to the charge of Populist "conspiracy-mindedness."

Challenging traditional approaches to the study of American political history, the essays in this book establish the significance of the institutional framework of the electoral system and argue the importance of its interaction with political conditions.

This book demonstrates that apportionment, although long overlooked by scholars, dominated state politics in late nineteenth-century America, setting the boundaries not only for legislative districts but for the nature of representative democracy. The book examines the fierce struggles over apportionment in the Midwest, where a distinctive constitutional and electoral context shaped their course with momentous consequences. As the major parties alternated in effectively disenfranchising their opponents through gerrymanders, growing tensions challenged established patterns of political behaviour and precipitated intense and even dangerous disputes. Unprecedented judicial intervention overturned gerrymanders in stunning decisions that electrified the public but intensified rather than resolved political conflict and uncertainty. Ultimately, America's political ideal of representative democracy was frustrated by its own political institutions, including the courts, because their decisions against gerrymandering in the 1890s helped parties and legislatures entrench the practice as a basic and profoundly undemocratic feature of American politics in the twentieth century.