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The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War
The political home of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Horace Greeley, and the young Abraham Lincoln, the American Whig Party was involved at every level of American politics--local, state, and federal--in the years before the Civil War, and controlled the White House for eight of the twenty-two years that it existed. Now, in The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, Michael F. Holt gives us the only comprehensive history of the Whigs ever written--a monumental history covering in rich detail the American political landscape from the Age of Jackson to impending disunion. In Michael Holt's hands, the history of the Whig Party becomes a political history of the United States during the tumultuous Antebellum period. He offers a panoramic account of a time when a welter of parties (Whig, Democratic, Anti-Mason, Know Nothing, Free Soil, Republican) and many extraordinary political statesmen (including Andrew Jackson, John C. Calhoun, William Seward, Daniel Webster, Martin Van Buren, and Henry Clay) struggled to control the national agenda as the U.S. inched towards secession. It was an era when Americans were passionately involved in politics, when local concerns drove national policy, and when momentous political events rocked the country, including the Nullification Controversy, the Annexation of Texas, the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Holt captures all of this as he shows that, amid this contentious political activity, the Whig Party continuously strove to unite North and South, repeatedly trying to find a compromise position. Indeed, the Whig Party emerges as the nation's last great hope to prevent secession and civil war. The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party is a magisterial work of history, one that has already been hailed by William Gienapp of Harvard as "one of the most important books on nineteenth-century politics ever written."
1296 pages, Hardcover
First published June 17, 1999
37 people are currently reading
660 people want to read
About the author
Michael F. Holt
13 books17 followersMichael F. Holt is Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of Virginia. He earned his B.A. from Princeton in 1962 and his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1967.
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October 13, 2018
The antebellum period saw the formation and destruction of the second party system in U.S. politics between Andrew Jackson’s Democrats, which survived to the present, and their rivals the Whigs that did not. Michael F. Holt’s magnum opus, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, details how the Whigs emerged from all the anti-Jacksonian forces to their disintegration in the mid-1850s due to the factional and sectional divisions.
Beginning in the mid-1820s, Holt explains the origins of the anti-Jacksonian groups that formed and later coalesced to form the Whig party in the winter of 1833-4 in Washington, D.C. then how it eventually branched out and formed in states. Through thorough research from the national down to the state, county, and local levels Holt explored how the Whig party was planted and grew throughout the country and competed against their Democratic foes. Yet this research also exposed the intraparty feuds within state parties that affected conventions on all levels, platform fights, and Election Day enthusiasm. Exploring a political relationship between state politics and national politics that is completely different than that seen in the second half of the 20th-century and early 21st, Holt shows how this different political paradigm both rose up the Whigs and eventually destroyed them.
With almost 1300 pages of text and notes, Holt thoroughly explored the 20 year history of the American Whig party from the national to the local level within every state of the Union. Throughout Holt’s assertion that the Democrats always controlled “the narrative” of the Whig’s history and how that played on the Whig intraparty feuds which eventually was one of the main three causes of the party’s disintegration. The focuses on Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, party traitor John Tyler, party destabilizer Zachary Taylor, attempted party savior Millard Fillmore, and slew of other prominent Whigs gives the stage to historical actors who shaped history. Throughout the text, the reader sees how events if changed just slightly might have allowed the Whigs to continue as a national party and the effects that might have had going forward but ultimately who personalities and how some decisions out of the party’s control resulted in fatal wounds occurring.
The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party is not for the general history reader, this tome is for someone dedicated to an in-depth researched book that shifts from the halls of Congress to the “smoke-filled backrooms” of state conventions in states across the nation to election analysis in various congressional districts across the young republic. The work of an academic lifetime, Michael F. Holt gives insight into political party that ultimately lost in history but that still had a lasting impact to this day in modern American politics.
Beginning in the mid-1820s, Holt explains the origins of the anti-Jacksonian groups that formed and later coalesced to form the Whig party in the winter of 1833-4 in Washington, D.C. then how it eventually branched out and formed in states. Through thorough research from the national down to the state, county, and local levels Holt explored how the Whig party was planted and grew throughout the country and competed against their Democratic foes. Yet this research also exposed the intraparty feuds within state parties that affected conventions on all levels, platform fights, and Election Day enthusiasm. Exploring a political relationship between state politics and national politics that is completely different than that seen in the second half of the 20th-century and early 21st, Holt shows how this different political paradigm both rose up the Whigs and eventually destroyed them.
With almost 1300 pages of text and notes, Holt thoroughly explored the 20 year history of the American Whig party from the national to the local level within every state of the Union. Throughout Holt’s assertion that the Democrats always controlled “the narrative” of the Whig’s history and how that played on the Whig intraparty feuds which eventually was one of the main three causes of the party’s disintegration. The focuses on Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, party traitor John Tyler, party destabilizer Zachary Taylor, attempted party savior Millard Fillmore, and slew of other prominent Whigs gives the stage to historical actors who shaped history. Throughout the text, the reader sees how events if changed just slightly might have allowed the Whigs to continue as a national party and the effects that might have had going forward but ultimately who personalities and how some decisions out of the party’s control resulted in fatal wounds occurring.
The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party is not for the general history reader, this tome is for someone dedicated to an in-depth researched book that shifts from the halls of Congress to the “smoke-filled backrooms” of state conventions in states across the nation to election analysis in various congressional districts across the young republic. The work of an academic lifetime, Michael F. Holt gives insight into political party that ultimately lost in history but that still had a lasting impact to this day in modern American politics.
May 11, 2014
I recently finished the tome I affectionately refer to as “Dad’s Whig Book”, Michael Holt’s The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party. As an aside, it wasn’t me who dubbed that 985- page monster “Dad’s Whig Book.” That honor belongs to his kids. From sheer size alone, I can guess the work impacted their lives to no small extent, just as it’s had a harmless impact on mine for months now. I can no longer stay up and read until the wee hours of the morning, evening respites put me to sleep. I have, therefore, taken to rising ahead of everyone else still hanging around the old homestead and making myself a cup of coffee. I then relax for an hour or more with my book of choice. For months now, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party has helped me usher in daybreak; and though now anxious to dive into supplementary reading to build on all I’ve learned, I’m gonna miss it.
The book is neither a difficult read, nor an easy one. You need to be interested in the political history of the period leading up to the War Between the States. Doctor Holt is witty and entertaining. He also possesses extensive knowledge of his subject and is meticulous in his research. He has one hundred and ninety-three pages of footnotes nestled onto the end—I read every one—and twenty pages of bibliography. I’ve already made my list of what to read next.
The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party is a detailed history of that party from its founding in 1833 as the primary opposition to the Democratic Party, through its demise and the rise of the Republican Party, dark child of its northern wing [my take on the Republican Party, not Professor Holt’s]. The Whig Party’s tumultuous twenty plus years highlight the men and the political forces that led to sectionalism and finally war. One of the things I particularly liked was the detail with which Professor Holt delved into politics within the individual states and how the needs/demands of the states affected politics/political parties at the national level. In my opinion, one can’t develop a good appreciation for what went wrong without those details.
Though the book is about the Whig Party, its story cannot be complete without reference to the Democratic Party (primarily) and the third parties prone to pop up in 19th C. politics (i.e. Free Soil, Nativist, and the Know Nothings), which proved adept at provoking a reaction from the Whigs. Over the party’s lifetime, Whig reactions led to the perversion of Whig policies until, in the end, the party no longer represented its core values—at least not with enough constituents to sustain itself. And another point: the leadership of these splinter parties did not necessarily mean new faces on the political scene—some of these characters jumped from one party to the next depending on ideals, egos, the mindset of their constituents, and/or the social mores of the day—among other reasons. I think of such lapses in character as political “expediency.”
The book deals with politics. Comparatively speaking there is less detail given to economic conditions and political corruption within both parties at the local, state, and national levels. I infer such corruption must have been rampant given the sudden rise of the Know-Nothings in the early 1850s and the havoc their “no party” philosophy created for both Whigs and Democrats. I do not fault the author for this—the book is already just under 1,000 pages and its focus is politics. I am merely informing the reader. For economics and corruption I suggest consulting Professor Holt’s bibliography.
I loved the work, but though Professor Holt admits an admiration for the Whig Party, I do not. Nor do I suffer from admiration for the Democrat or Republican Parties. For this woman, political parties are necessary evils. But political forces make and break nations, they wage war, and impact our daily lives. I simply want to understand and be able to discuss the driving forces of this era, the factors that led to disunion and the subsequent destruction of the South and with it the Republic. In his conclusion, Professor Holt alludes to his possibly being identified as a purveyor of the now discredited argument that a “blundering generation of narrow-minded or misguided political leaders” were the cause of the Civil War. I didn't know it had been discredited. Apparently today the official (historian’s) line is that “the war’s coming…resulted from basic social, economic, and ideological differences between the sections deriving from the presence of African-American slavery in the South and its absence from the North. In its cruder—and more common—formulation, the ‘forces’ that caused the war were self-generating and operated toward their inevitable conclusion almost without the need of human agency.”
[Geeze, I do believe the proponents of this argument are saying “it was nobody’s fault.” Are you kidding me? Well, darn, that pretentious, politically-correct reference to “African-American slavery” vice just “slavery” speaks volumes about the mindset of whoever formulated this latest analysis of the causes of the Civil War. I hope not one drop of Southern blood flows through their veins. Oh, well, no matter what, I’d bet my next paycheck it didn’t emanate from the brain of a Southern layman. We know what caused the war—Yankees that's what. Yankees who didn’t live up to their side of the bargain and betrayed us! There. You have it in a nutshell.]
Seriously, Professor Holt’s The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party leaves no doubt in my mind that selfish, hate-filled, and “expedient” politicians played a major role in causing the Civil War—not that I believed differently when I started the book. Economics most definitely played a role as did ideological differences over slavery—fed, more often than not, by the above mentioned selfish, hate-filled, and “expedient” politicians of the day. Professor Holt, page after page, showed ’em doing it. “…self-generating and operated toward their inevitable conclusion almost without the need of human agency” my patootie!
The book is an importanat asset to any student of that period. If you like attempting to figure out what went wrong, you’ll love this book. I can’t promise you’ll come to any conclusion, but I don't think you'll close that backcover thinking you can't see human error--much of it intentional. And if you've got an interest in the period, you will enjoy the journey.
The book is neither a difficult read, nor an easy one. You need to be interested in the political history of the period leading up to the War Between the States. Doctor Holt is witty and entertaining. He also possesses extensive knowledge of his subject and is meticulous in his research. He has one hundred and ninety-three pages of footnotes nestled onto the end—I read every one—and twenty pages of bibliography. I’ve already made my list of what to read next.
The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party is a detailed history of that party from its founding in 1833 as the primary opposition to the Democratic Party, through its demise and the rise of the Republican Party, dark child of its northern wing [my take on the Republican Party, not Professor Holt’s]. The Whig Party’s tumultuous twenty plus years highlight the men and the political forces that led to sectionalism and finally war. One of the things I particularly liked was the detail with which Professor Holt delved into politics within the individual states and how the needs/demands of the states affected politics/political parties at the national level. In my opinion, one can’t develop a good appreciation for what went wrong without those details.
Though the book is about the Whig Party, its story cannot be complete without reference to the Democratic Party (primarily) and the third parties prone to pop up in 19th C. politics (i.e. Free Soil, Nativist, and the Know Nothings), which proved adept at provoking a reaction from the Whigs. Over the party’s lifetime, Whig reactions led to the perversion of Whig policies until, in the end, the party no longer represented its core values—at least not with enough constituents to sustain itself. And another point: the leadership of these splinter parties did not necessarily mean new faces on the political scene—some of these characters jumped from one party to the next depending on ideals, egos, the mindset of their constituents, and/or the social mores of the day—among other reasons. I think of such lapses in character as political “expediency.”
The book deals with politics. Comparatively speaking there is less detail given to economic conditions and political corruption within both parties at the local, state, and national levels. I infer such corruption must have been rampant given the sudden rise of the Know-Nothings in the early 1850s and the havoc their “no party” philosophy created for both Whigs and Democrats. I do not fault the author for this—the book is already just under 1,000 pages and its focus is politics. I am merely informing the reader. For economics and corruption I suggest consulting Professor Holt’s bibliography.
I loved the work, but though Professor Holt admits an admiration for the Whig Party, I do not. Nor do I suffer from admiration for the Democrat or Republican Parties. For this woman, political parties are necessary evils. But political forces make and break nations, they wage war, and impact our daily lives. I simply want to understand and be able to discuss the driving forces of this era, the factors that led to disunion and the subsequent destruction of the South and with it the Republic. In his conclusion, Professor Holt alludes to his possibly being identified as a purveyor of the now discredited argument that a “blundering generation of narrow-minded or misguided political leaders” were the cause of the Civil War. I didn't know it had been discredited. Apparently today the official (historian’s) line is that “the war’s coming…resulted from basic social, economic, and ideological differences between the sections deriving from the presence of African-American slavery in the South and its absence from the North. In its cruder—and more common—formulation, the ‘forces’ that caused the war were self-generating and operated toward their inevitable conclusion almost without the need of human agency.”
[Geeze, I do believe the proponents of this argument are saying “it was nobody’s fault.” Are you kidding me? Well, darn, that pretentious, politically-correct reference to “African-American slavery” vice just “slavery” speaks volumes about the mindset of whoever formulated this latest analysis of the causes of the Civil War. I hope not one drop of Southern blood flows through their veins. Oh, well, no matter what, I’d bet my next paycheck it didn’t emanate from the brain of a Southern layman. We know what caused the war—Yankees that's what. Yankees who didn’t live up to their side of the bargain and betrayed us! There. You have it in a nutshell.]
Seriously, Professor Holt’s The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party leaves no doubt in my mind that selfish, hate-filled, and “expedient” politicians played a major role in causing the Civil War—not that I believed differently when I started the book. Economics most definitely played a role as did ideological differences over slavery—fed, more often than not, by the above mentioned selfish, hate-filled, and “expedient” politicians of the day. Professor Holt, page after page, showed ’em doing it. “…self-generating and operated toward their inevitable conclusion almost without the need of human agency” my patootie!
The book is an importanat asset to any student of that period. If you like attempting to figure out what went wrong, you’ll love this book. I can’t promise you’ll come to any conclusion, but I don't think you'll close that backcover thinking you can't see human error--much of it intentional. And if you've got an interest in the period, you will enjoy the journey.
February 4, 2015
The first 200-300 pages are very good, discussing how the party evolved out of the Madison wing of the Democratic-Republicans after the factious and misnamed "Era of Good Feeling." However, their is another 1,000 pages after that. The book gets bogged down in the details of various elections (all branches of state government, congressional, presidential, even local) which can be good for references if, say, one wanted to know how President Taylor's opposition to the "Compromise" of 1850 played out electorally before his death. If it the book had been half as long to 2/3 as long, more focused on the broad strokes and written more like the first couple of hundred pages it would be masterful, but it is not and, in its current state takes more dedication than I can muster to read straight through in the first go.
February 24, 2018
Truth be told, this is my second time through this book, so it was more of a brush-up read than a thorough going-through had I just cracked the binding on it. But it is a great book. Holt spent much of his career as a history professor working on the history of the American Whig Party, and it shows. I don't think there is any book, or series of books, with this level of detail about the forgotten political party that dared to stand against the tide of the Jacksonian Democrats. He tells great stories of many politicians of the time, some you may have heard of - Henry Clay, Daniel Webster - and some whose names were lost to history. Weighing in at about 1,000 pages (and no pictures), it is a dense read. Only true history nerds need apply. But if you count yourself among that crowd, and you have a desire to delve into some serious info on Antebellum politics, then this book will be right up your alley.
October 4, 2020
This book took a long time to read. It is not hard reading but there is a lot of information. This is a good history of the American Whig Party, but it is also a good history of the United States in the years just before the Civil War. Relevant to today's readers, the book provides insights into the inner workings and thought processes of the Whig party insiders. There was only one unifying factor that brought together the northern and southern Whigs, and that was their opposition to Andrew Jackson. But to attract votes, and therefore power, they had to come up with issues that would attract voters. That appears to be the situation with today's political parties. Their issues are not really based on principles that are best for the citizens but on what will attract the most votes, and therefore power.
September 15, 2008
The book is over 1200 pages long (including extensive notes and index), so you really have to care about the Whigs to read it in its entirety. If you do, it's a wonderful experience. If you don't, you could still learn quite a bit by sticking to the more narrative or personality-driven segments, which make up something more than half the book, and skipping over the detailed analyses of election results. Just the parts about Millard Fillmore, who couldn't be called a major character, are more enlightening than entire Fillmore biographies that I've read. Either way, this book is a must for anyone deeply interested in ante-bellum politics.
February 29, 2020
Really good book on the history of the American Whig Party from a national and local level.
While the book is well written and contains a stunning amount of information, this is also a drawback, as many chapters are filled with dry statistics and numbers from elections results.
Reading a story about the national party is one thing, but Holt covers the Whigs history from a state by state basis, including local elections.
Recommended for the bookshelf of any serious reader of history.
While the book is well written and contains a stunning amount of information, this is also a drawback, as many chapters are filled with dry statistics and numbers from elections results.
Reading a story about the national party is one thing, but Holt covers the Whigs history from a state by state basis, including local elections.
Recommended for the bookshelf of any serious reader of history.
November 11, 2019
A dense history of the American Whig Party over a thirty or so year period. I would recommend it to those with a strong interest in the politics of antebellum America and an abundance of free time and patience (at approximately one thousand pages it gets pretty granular). While it is a resource with a lot of information, it became a bit of a reading war of attrition to finish it.
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September 29, 2015Huge, epic study of the Whig Party. Like Wilentz, it is a big/long read, but essential reading for anyone who's interested in the politics of the early republic.
March 4, 2025
Truly, this is THE source for the history of the Whig Party. Clocking in at 985, it's incredible comprehensive. Holt convincingly argues that the Whig Party survived when it best drew a conflict between its principles of economic developmentalism, tariffs, etc and those of the Democratic Party, who foresaw a smaller role for the state. He also identifies a particular strain of small-r republicanism and skepticism of an overly strong executive as a uniting force in the party. Yet, he argues that the party was always marked by a battle between centrifugal and centripetal forces--in the end, the centrifugal ones won out and partisan loyalties were torn apart not only by slavery but by other issues like prohibition and anti-Catholicism that new partisan formations took advantage of.
Even when the Whigs looked on the cusp of success, they often faltered. Their history is primarily one of coming tantalizingly close and falling short of their goals. For example, William Henry Harrison passed away after a very short time and left the Whigs with John Tyler, effectively a Southern Democrat in Whig clothing. This made the Whigs seem to similar to Demorats and in turn they lost elections. But Polk's war with Mexico changed the calculus. All of a sudden, it looked like the party could unite behind something. Yet in 1844, Henry Clay fell just short of the Presidency, representing a loss despite the Whigs' peak unity because of division over nativism and Democratic fraud.
The Whigs walked a fine line to not appear unpatrotic. In turn, they nominated Zachary Taylor, who proposed a novel idea to avoid expanding slavery and wanted to build a new partisan coalition, reviving some of the old anti-partyism of the Whigs. But he exacerbated fights over spoils, died, and was replaced by Millard Fillmore, who accepted the Compromise of 1850. And in the early 1850s, an improving economy robbed the Whigs of a key issue in 1852. Again, the parties found the lines between them blurring. Plus, Winfield Scott's attempts to reach Catholic voters alienated many in the Whigs' Protestant base.
By 1856, a seemingly unified opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act was tanked by the Free Soil Party painting opposition as tied to abolitionism. And in the North, prohibition and nativism were seized by new political actors who threw out the Whigs in the form of the GOP and the American Party.
The one major issue I had with this book is that it gets too detailed for its own good. Holt walks readers through the minutiae of Whig politics in every single state. While giving color to his arguments, it bogs down the book with excessive detail and makes it hard to get through at points. But that shouldn't discourage you too much if you want to become an expert on the Whigs.
Even when the Whigs looked on the cusp of success, they often faltered. Their history is primarily one of coming tantalizingly close and falling short of their goals. For example, William Henry Harrison passed away after a very short time and left the Whigs with John Tyler, effectively a Southern Democrat in Whig clothing. This made the Whigs seem to similar to Demorats and in turn they lost elections. But Polk's war with Mexico changed the calculus. All of a sudden, it looked like the party could unite behind something. Yet in 1844, Henry Clay fell just short of the Presidency, representing a loss despite the Whigs' peak unity because of division over nativism and Democratic fraud.
The Whigs walked a fine line to not appear unpatrotic. In turn, they nominated Zachary Taylor, who proposed a novel idea to avoid expanding slavery and wanted to build a new partisan coalition, reviving some of the old anti-partyism of the Whigs. But he exacerbated fights over spoils, died, and was replaced by Millard Fillmore, who accepted the Compromise of 1850. And in the early 1850s, an improving economy robbed the Whigs of a key issue in 1852. Again, the parties found the lines between them blurring. Plus, Winfield Scott's attempts to reach Catholic voters alienated many in the Whigs' Protestant base.
By 1856, a seemingly unified opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act was tanked by the Free Soil Party painting opposition as tied to abolitionism. And in the North, prohibition and nativism were seized by new political actors who threw out the Whigs in the form of the GOP and the American Party.
The one major issue I had with this book is that it gets too detailed for its own good. Holt walks readers through the minutiae of Whig politics in every single state. While giving color to his arguments, it bogs down the book with excessive detail and makes it hard to get through at points. But that shouldn't discourage you too much if you want to become an expert on the Whigs.
March 24, 2022
3.5-4
An exhaustive and comprehensive survey of the creation, historical context and the rise and fall of the Whig Party. Holt goes into great depth covering various state and national elections (even on the municipal level at some points). Election results and names fly at the reader. The strength of the book is the detailed analysis of the election results and the policies and impacts of the Whig administrations and the historical context of this period.
Holt goes into detail of the slow disintegration of the Whigs starting in 1844 with party founder Henry Clay’s close electoral loss, the 1848 nomination of Taylor and his drive to form a separate “Taylor Republican” party and Daniel Webster’s selfishly constant drive for the presidential nomination at the expense of Clay in 1840 and 1848, Millard Fillmore in 1852 and the party itself.
The last quarter of the book is a detailed and interesting look at the break up of the Party with a close look at the rise of the Know Nothing movement and Fillmore’s courting of that group in order to turn it into a national union party and receive its nomination under the American Party banner. Various factions and the formation of the Republican Party are also looked at. Millard Fillmore comes off very good in this telling and is far from the nonentity that he is generally considered when he is covered in survey literature and high school and college courses.
This is a seminal book in the field and a must read for anyone that wants a detailed look at the Whigs. It’s not for the faint of heart and your eyes can glaze over when he goes through state by state election results for every election, but the examination of the Whig Party, its administrations, patronage fights, key figures, nomination fights at conventions, platforms, influence of state factional leaders such as Thurlow Weed and William Henry Seward, and policies is a must read for anyone who wants to understand this critical period prior to the Civil War.
An exhaustive and comprehensive survey of the creation, historical context and the rise and fall of the Whig Party. Holt goes into great depth covering various state and national elections (even on the municipal level at some points). Election results and names fly at the reader. The strength of the book is the detailed analysis of the election results and the policies and impacts of the Whig administrations and the historical context of this period.
Holt goes into detail of the slow disintegration of the Whigs starting in 1844 with party founder Henry Clay’s close electoral loss, the 1848 nomination of Taylor and his drive to form a separate “Taylor Republican” party and Daniel Webster’s selfishly constant drive for the presidential nomination at the expense of Clay in 1840 and 1848, Millard Fillmore in 1852 and the party itself.
The last quarter of the book is a detailed and interesting look at the break up of the Party with a close look at the rise of the Know Nothing movement and Fillmore’s courting of that group in order to turn it into a national union party and receive its nomination under the American Party banner. Various factions and the formation of the Republican Party are also looked at. Millard Fillmore comes off very good in this telling and is far from the nonentity that he is generally considered when he is covered in survey literature and high school and college courses.
This is a seminal book in the field and a must read for anyone that wants a detailed look at the Whigs. It’s not for the faint of heart and your eyes can glaze over when he goes through state by state election results for every election, but the examination of the Whig Party, its administrations, patronage fights, key figures, nomination fights at conventions, platforms, influence of state factional leaders such as Thurlow Weed and William Henry Seward, and policies is a must read for anyone who wants to understand this critical period prior to the Civil War.
June 23, 2022
A monumental study of the birth, life and death of the American Whig Party, Professor Holt's work combines historical study and statistical analysis of the operations of the Whig Party and its contemporary competitors not only at the federal level but at the level of state and local politics. For the amateur political scientist/historian, this is a daunting work, made more so by the small type in which the book is printed. A caveat: if you are not intimately familiar with American History for the period 1820-1855 you should read this book only with history books for this period readily available, as there is minimal context provided.
August 2, 2022
Long book: 980 pages of text much of it concerned with all kinds of election results data. The shear quantity of data was a drag for me and I think without it the book could have been reduced to less than a quarter of the size and still have conveyed a decent impression of the history. Indeed, so much data may actually get in the way. As it is I don't think one can deny that it is a comprehensive political history of the period and if one wants to get some knowledge of the antecedents (going back decades) of the Republican party and the Civil War I don't know of an alternative and, believe me, I would've preferred something not so weighted down with data.
March 15, 2024
An interesting, if overly detailed account of the rise of the anti-Jacksonian Whig Party under the leadership of Henry Clay and its rapid decline after Clay's death and the rise of abolitionist sentiment in the North in the 1850s. Fascinating is the description of the only two presidential elections the Whigs won, including the election of Zachary Taylor who actually hoped to replace the political party that elected him with a new party. While the history is fascinating the decision to detail the various state elections in which the Whigs competed is a bit overwhelming. All in all, a good history if not a great read.
January 12, 2025
I feel like I cannot give this book anything other than 5 stars solely because of the amount of research Holt applied onto The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party. Holt did an amazing job of research due to how specific he got throughout the book regarding local elections and addressing personal letters that each politician sent to one another. I feel like I learned a lot more about the Whig Party, how American politics worked at that time, and how applicable it can be onto modern American politics.
Genuinely a very good read by Holt, but I will not be reading it again because of how dense it is.
Genuinely a very good read by Holt, but I will not be reading it again because of how dense it is.
October 2, 2023
Good book. This book is insanely well researched and comprehensive. I certainly came away with a much stronger understanding of antebellum American politics generally and the Whig Party specifically. The author also does a good job of making the stories and personalities of antebellum politics come to life. At the same time this book could definitely have been a bit shorter as there are a number of repetitive sections.
December 11, 2022
A very long, detailed look at the American Whig Party from every perspective one could think of, from the minor offices in state governments to the federal positions. How they came to power, how they lost power, and how the party came to its final end. It's not an easy read, but it's one worth taking.
September 28, 2025
This book is extremely detailed and only for those who want a very deep dive into the politics of the era. It ends up giving a good view of the political landscape that led to the civil war. It really helped to have read biographies of all the presidents of that era for the context of most of the major players.
October 20, 2009
Wow. This book is very long, and very detailed. There's a lot here that's very interesting, but I feel, overall, that Holt missed his chance by focusing too much on highlighting data and examining state-by-state election returns, which he used to support certain conclusions that may be revisionist. It seems as though the book is written more for historians who already know a lot about antebellum politics, as a means of getting the mainstream view to change. However, he missed a good opportunity to educate his readers more broadly about the period.
Holt would argue, I'm sure, that his intent was to focus exclusively on the Whig Party, and that plenty has been written about the other parties and personalities of the time. Fair enough. But when your main thesis is that the Whigs' fortunes were always tied to actions taken by the Democrats (e.g., Texas annexation, the Mexican War or Kansas-Nebraska), isn't it worth stopping to examine what motivated those decisions in the first place? And since the parties took different approaches on these big issues, as well as tariffs and internal improvements, isn't is worth a bit more examination of the merits of these claims, and how they appealed to different constituencies at the time? The trouble with focusing so much on the purely political forces is that we're left with politicians staking out positions to enhance their electoral fortunes, but without an understanding of the popular currents of opinion that presumably drove the politicians to take those positions in the first place.
Holt does a great job describing the sectional rift within the Whig party, and how it grows over time (though, again, it would be helpful to understand how the Democrats were able to navigate those rifts more successfully). He spends a lot of time discussing the patronage and administrative decisions of the Tyler, Taylor and Fillmore administrations, which provide a fascinating (if overlong)look at how 19th century politics worked, mechanically. The discussion of the maneuverings over the Compromise of 1850 were the fastest read in the book, which is good since they consumed over 200 pages.
Ultimately, though, i wish Holt had spent less time on data and detail (which could have been reserved for the notes), and more on ideas, people, and what made individuals tick. In the end, Holt proclaims that the demise of the Whigs, and ultimately the onset of the Civil War, was not perhaps as inevitable as it has been made out to be, and his case is persuasive. He points to specific decisions, made by political actors such as Tyler, Clay, Fillmore and Webster, that might have changed history had they been made differently (and speculates that Clay, four-time loser in presidential contests, would have won in 1840 if he had only been nominated, which also would have produced substantially different results). But to make the case that the actions and decisions of individuals impacted history so significantly fairly begs for more extensive examinations of those men, their beliefs, and the reasons for their actions. I get the feeling Holt could write another 1000+ pages on that topic; I wish he had done so.
Holt would argue, I'm sure, that his intent was to focus exclusively on the Whig Party, and that plenty has been written about the other parties and personalities of the time. Fair enough. But when your main thesis is that the Whigs' fortunes were always tied to actions taken by the Democrats (e.g., Texas annexation, the Mexican War or Kansas-Nebraska), isn't it worth stopping to examine what motivated those decisions in the first place? And since the parties took different approaches on these big issues, as well as tariffs and internal improvements, isn't is worth a bit more examination of the merits of these claims, and how they appealed to different constituencies at the time? The trouble with focusing so much on the purely political forces is that we're left with politicians staking out positions to enhance their electoral fortunes, but without an understanding of the popular currents of opinion that presumably drove the politicians to take those positions in the first place.
Holt does a great job describing the sectional rift within the Whig party, and how it grows over time (though, again, it would be helpful to understand how the Democrats were able to navigate those rifts more successfully). He spends a lot of time discussing the patronage and administrative decisions of the Tyler, Taylor and Fillmore administrations, which provide a fascinating (if overlong)look at how 19th century politics worked, mechanically. The discussion of the maneuverings over the Compromise of 1850 were the fastest read in the book, which is good since they consumed over 200 pages.
Ultimately, though, i wish Holt had spent less time on data and detail (which could have been reserved for the notes), and more on ideas, people, and what made individuals tick. In the end, Holt proclaims that the demise of the Whigs, and ultimately the onset of the Civil War, was not perhaps as inevitable as it has been made out to be, and his case is persuasive. He points to specific decisions, made by political actors such as Tyler, Clay, Fillmore and Webster, that might have changed history had they been made differently (and speculates that Clay, four-time loser in presidential contests, would have won in 1840 if he had only been nominated, which also would have produced substantially different results). But to make the case that the actions and decisions of individuals impacted history so significantly fairly begs for more extensive examinations of those men, their beliefs, and the reasons for their actions. I get the feeling Holt could write another 1000+ pages on that topic; I wish he had done so.
August 10, 2016
This book is fascinating, but reading it is like eating sand. Holt is a statistician, and this book is choked with them. Often the narrative will stop cold to expound on page after page of percentages and voting tallies. Such evidence might be necessary to the case at hand, but it makes for stultifying reading, and more than once, I swore I would rather shave my nethers with a chainsaw than read another page.
Worth a read, but best taken in small doses.
Worth a read, but best taken in small doses.
January 3, 2011
helps with understanding the Whig Part
Read
July 19, 20111296 pages of Jacksonian goodness! I promise you I am reading parts of this and not all of it! But, I'll be back! :)
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