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The fall of the Whig party is a central theme for Holt’s overall research, as I mentioned his lengthy work that encapsulates the arguments made throughout this current piece. By using his third party view, he argues that the formation of the Know Nothing party as a better anti-Democratic party during the mid 1850s was more influential to the fall of the party than was the rise of the Republicans at the time (116). Due to continued miscalculations of nominating presidential candidates on the premise that advocating Whig economic and responsive programs would not obtain the presidency, in response to state and local elections during 1839 and 1847, the party failed to place staunch party program men as the leaders when only months after both nominating conventions were held the nation slid into economic depression. In both occurrences, the Whigs failed to understand the very political structure that they were in, one in which party values were vital to winning elections. By pandering to the lowest denominator by nominating two military heroes with completely different backgrounds and term actions, both would ultimately end with the same result: the strained effort by the Whigs to regain voter faith and support in the following state and local elections. The primary issue after the debacle of Zachary Taylor’s nomination and election to the presidency was the conclusion of the Compromise of 1850. This may have kept the country from a Civil War ten years earlier, but it led to an inability for Whigs to advocate difference, or opposite sectional policies, due to the bi-partisan support the Compromise necessitated to pass Congress. As Whig voters were frustrated with a lack of policy follow through, an inability to see difference between both major parties, and an influx of immigrants during the past decade that was now resulting in current mass naturalizations that were not being contested by the party there became a rise in abstentions on the one hand, and defections to the Know Nothing party that directly formed to counter these pressing issues on the other. By the Election of 1856, most of the northern Know Nothings saw the Republicans as the best anti-Democratic and anti-Southern party that encompassed the same anti-Catholic and nativist ideology they joined the former party for, but now they can also contest the events of Bleeding Kansas and the caning of Charles Sumner. With a lack of voters the Whig party finally came to its demise by the end of the 1850s due to its inability to be the best secondary option for constituents.
The theory of American Political Development that Holt argues is one that counters most previous constructions of the topic. Holt contends that political development cannot be viewed within predetermined timeframes, but must encompass each event or voter reaction as it transpires to understand why a catastrophic event like the Civil War occurred. The merging of emphasis on all levels of the two-party system allows Holt to engage development in an innovative way, especially when placed in the context that he was so influential to forming a former conception that solely viewed grass-root movements and voters. Though there are contesting theories to the current day about how to view development, Holt creates an incorporative viewpoint that uniquely allows for a new interpretation of how third parties and the Whigs rose and fell, how the Democrats formed and transformed, and why the United States took a path toward secession and violent conflict by 1861. Though this theory works for the nineteenth century, it lacks the ability to be used in a longitudinal political study through the twentieth century. Although the book is a collection of different essays, aligned from date of conception and not chronology of content, Holt does a wonderful job in creating an easily read narrative for American political history and its development from 1820 to 1860.
[http://videri.org/index.php?title=Guide_to_the_Literature Check out other great articles at Videri.org.]
[[Category:United States History]][[Category:Political History]][[Category:Book Review]][[Category:19th Century History]][[Category:Videri.org]]
