'Agrarians' and 'Aristocrats': Party Political Ideology in the United States, 1837–1846 - Softcover

Ashworth, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521335671 ISBN 13: 9780521335676

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1987

Synopsis

This is a paperback edition of a book originally published in hard covers by the Royal Historical Society.

About this title

Review:

'With enviable assurance and clarity of mind, (Ashworth) efficiently analyses the political ideologies of the two major parties of the Jacksonian era, and in so doing exposes the shortcomings of most recent interpretations of Jacksonian democracy. Each major party is shown to possess a coherent world view, or ideology, and the policies it espoused accurately reflected that ideology. More importantly, perhaps, in Mr Ashworth's eyes, the Democrats were much more radical and the Whigs more conservative than has commonly been realized. The Jacksonians were true levellers who were hostile to the entrepreneurial thrust of American capitalism with which the Whigs identified themselves. Thus he is able to argue that the 'American economy was on a collision course with the American democratic tradition'. Journal of American Studies

'Agrarians and Aristocrats is about the ideology of the Democratic and Whig parties in the decade immediately following the introduction of Van Buren's Independent Treasury Bill ... Ashworth demonstrates how sharply different, indeed opposing, the Democratic and Whig ideologies were.' Reviews in American History

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0521335671
• ISBN 13: 9780521335676
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336