Tag: Presidential elections

John Sherman’s Struggle to Preserve Democracy: How 1860 Connects to 2020

John Sherman’s Struggle to Preserve Democracy: How 1860 Connects to 2020

This is not the first time in American history when democratic governance appeared to be under assault. In the years before the Civil War, just as today, minority rule was the norm. White Southerners dominated the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party dominated the federal government. In this way, what ...
Read More
“Grand, national, democratic banner. Press onward,” 1848. A campaign banner for Democratic presidential candidate Lewis Cass and William O. Butler, produced by Nathaniel Currier, 1848. People often displayed these banners at home. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Of Presidential Campaigns and Partisan Press: Journalism in the Elections of 1848 and 2016

In this presidential election year, some political observers have lamented the disappearance of a non-partisan press. Today, Republicans watch Fox News and read the Wall Street Journal; Democrats prefer MSNBC and the New York Times. The Internet has further fragmented journalism, putting the mass in mass media. For the Republican ...
Read More
Abraham Lincoln in 1846. Image courtesy of the House Divided Project and Library of Congress.

A. Lincoln, Conventioneer

Abraham Lincoln was a diehard politico and devoted partisan, but he only attended one national party convention, a Whig gathering that took place in Philadelphia in 1848. He was not even an official delegate to that big event, but just elbowed his way in among thousands of attendees. Yet, like ...
Read More