The rise of American democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln

I: The crisis of the new order

American democracy in a revolutionary age

The Republican interest and the self-created democracy

The making of Jeffersonian democracy

Jefferson's two presidencies

Nationalism and the War of 1812

II: Democracy ascendant

The era of bad feelings

Slavery, compromise, and democratic politics

The politics of moral improvement

The aristocracy and democracy of America

The Jackson era: uneasy beginnings

Radical democracies

1832: Jackson's crucial year

Banks, abolitionists, and the equal rights democracy

"The republic has degenerated into a democracy"

The politics of hard times

Whigs, Democrats, and democracy

III: Slavery and the crisis of American democracy

Whig debacle, Democratic confusion

Antislavery, annexation, and the advent of young Hickory

The bitter fruits of Manifest Destiny

War, slavery, and the American 1848

Political truce, uneasy consequences

The truce collapses

A nightmare broods over society

The faith that right makes might

The Iliad of all our woes

Epilogue

Notes

Acknowledgments

Credits

Index.