ISBN
9780813179728
Publication Date
2020
Price
35.00
Publisher
University Press of Kentucky
Abstract
He frames his appraisal in the vocabulary of social analysis, repeatedly insisting that the Whigs were preeminently a middle-class party, but the core of his argument rests on Whigs’ beliefs and cultural assumptions rather than their socio-economic status. “The key idea,” he posits, “is not that Whigs met economic criteria (i.e., enjoying material affluence that was neither meager nor extravagant) that Jacksonians did not, or vice versa, but that Whigs thought about themselves, their world, and the future in far more middle-class terms and crucially, felt little need to apologize for that view” (3).
DOI
10.31390/cwbr.24.1.05
Recommended Citation
Watson, Harry
(2022)
"The Whigs’ America: Middle-Class Political Thought in the Age of Jackson and Clay,"
Civil War Book Review: Vol. 24
:
Iss.
1
.
DOI: 10.31390/cwbr.24.1.05
Available at:
https://repository.lsu.edu/cwbr/vol24/iss1/5
