Three times the Democratic Party’s nominee for president (1896, 1900, and 1908), and Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson, William Jennings Bryan voiced the concerns of many Americans left out of the post-Civil War economic growth. In this book, Robert W. Cherny traces Bryan’s major political crusades for a new currency policy, prohibition, and women’s suffrage, and against colonialism, monopolies, America’s entry into World War I, and the teaching of evolution in the public schools. Drawing on Bryan’s writings and correspondence, Cherny presents Bryan’s key role in the Democratic Party’s transformation from a proponent of minimal government to an advocate of active government.
Henry Watterson, editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal during the tumultuous decades between the Civil War and World War I, was one of the most influential and widely read journalists in American history. At the height of his fame in the early twentieth century, Watterson was so well known that his name and image were used to sell cigars and whiskey. A major player in American politics for more than fifty years, Watterson personally knew nearly every president from Andrew Jackson to Woodrow Wilson. Though he always refused to run, the renowned editor was frequently touted as a candidate for the U.S. Senate, the Kentucky governor's office, and even the White House. Shortly after his arrival in Louisville in 1868, Watterson merged competing interests and formed the Courier-Journal, quickly establishing it as the paper of record in Kentucky, a central promoter of economic development in the New South, and a prominent voice on the national political stage. An avowed Democrat in an era when newspapers were openly aligned with political parties, Watterson adopted a defiant independence within the Democratic Party and challenged the Democrats' consensus opinions as much as he reinforced them. In the first new study of Watterson's historical significance in more than fifty years, Daniel S. Margolies traces the development of Watterson's political and economic positions and his transformation from a strident Confederate newspaper editor into an admirer of Lincoln, a powerful voice of sectional reconciliation, and the nation's premier advocate of free trade. Henry Watterson and the New South provides the first study of Watterson's unique attempt to guide regional and national discussions of foreign affairs. Margolies details Watterson's quest to solve the sovereignty problems of the 1870s and to quell the economic and social upheavals of the 1890s through an expansive empire of free trade. Watterson's political and editorial contemporaries variously advocated free silverism, protectionism, and isolationism, but he rejected their narrow focus and maintained that the best way to improve the South's fortunes was to expand its economic activities to a truly global scale. Watterson's New Departure in foreign affairs was an often contradictory program of decentralized home rule and overseas imperialism, but he remained steadfast in his vision of a prosperous and independent South within an American economic empire of unfettered free trade. Watterson thus helped to bring about the eventual bipartisan embrace of globalization that came to define America's relationship with the rest of the world in the twentieth century. Margolies's groundbreaking analysis shows how Watterson's authoritative command of the nation's most divisive issues, his rhetorical zeal, and his willingness to stand against the tide of conventional wisdom made him a national icon.
"For anyone who believes that there was no important labor movement before Roosevelt, or before Gompers, or before the Knights of Labor, this well-documented work should prove a shocker. And for those who look to the past for enlightenment to guide us through our troubled tomorrows, this book is a reservoir of historic information and insights." -- New Leader "Beyond Equality is a masterpiece. . . . A book of bold and brilliant originality, it is now shaping the perspective of a new generation of graduate students." -- David Brion Davis, author of The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture
Forgotten Reformer traces criminal justice practice and reform developments in late nineteenth-century America through the life and career of Robert McClaughry, a leading reformer. As a warden of one of America's toughest prisons, as a chief of police of Chicago, as a superintendent of two different reformatories, and as one of the first wardens of the federal prison system, McClaughry developed and led a reform movement that resonates today. As a founding member of the reformatory movement that sought to "save" young first offenders, McClaughry advocated new sentencing structures, probation, parole, and rehabilitative regimes within new institutions for young first offenders called reformatories. McClaughry then successfully got these reformatory ideals placed into adult prisons. In addition, McClaughry became American's main advocate for a criminal identification method called the Bertillon system. He set up the first identification bureaus at the Illinois State Penitentiary, the Chicago police department, and the federal prison at Leavenworth, Kansas and these became models for others across the country. Finally, as a founding member of the National Association of Chiefs of Police (today the International Association of Chiefs of Police) and the National Prison Assocation (today American Corrections Association), McClaughry sought to professionalize police and prison administrators.
This is the first full history of voting in Wisconsin from statehood in 1848 to the present. Fowler both tells the story of voting in key elections across the years and investigates electoral trends and patterns over the course of Wisconsin's history. He explores the ways that ethnic and religious groups in the state have voted historically and how they vote today, and he looks at the successes and failures of the two major parties over the years. Highlighting important historical movements, Fowler discusses the great struggle for women's suffrage and the rich tales of many Wisconsin third parties--the Socialists, Progressives, the Prohibition Party, and others. Here, too, are the famous politicians in Wisconsin history, such as the La Follettes, William Proxmire, and Tommy Thompson. Winner, Award of Merit for Leadership in History, American Association for State and Local History
In this book which won the Pulitzer Prize, The Greenback Era is not a financial history; rather, it is an attempt to locate the source of political power in the crucial Reconstruction years through a socio-economic study of American financial conflict during the years 1865 to 1879.
This powerful book reminds us of the enormous power the nation accords its political leaders and how in the significant period, 1897–1913, these leaders failed to meet their responsibilities. Their inadequacies, the authors feel, delayed the administration of justice for all citizens, neglected the Negro, and seriously impaired the future effectiveness of their own once viable, successful, and justly proud Republican Party. The authors follow the maneuvers of McKinley, Roosevelt, Taft, Senators Aldrich, Platt, Allison, and Spooner, and House Speaker "Uncle" Joe Cannon as they juggled pressing domestic questions, perpetuating themselves in power without really confronting the public need. From the outset, when the party came into power in 1897 under remarkably auspicious circumstances, until it met final defeat at the hands of Woodrow Wilson in 1912, the Republican leaders laid a foundation by default for the Democratic return to power. Their neglect of major national problems afforded the Democrats a golden opportunity to appropriate those issues as their own.
