The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States

by Alexander Keyssar

Overview

Originally published in 2000, The Right to Vote was widely hailed as a magisterial account of the evolution of suffrage from the American Revolution to the end of the twentieth century. In this revised and updated edition, Keyssar carries the story forward, from the disputed presidential contest of 2000 through the 2008 campaign and the election of Barack Obama. The Right to Vote is a sweeping reinterpretation of American political history as well as a meditation on the meaning of democracy in contemporary American life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465005024
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	06/30/2009
Edition description:	Revised Edition
Pages:	494
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Alexander Keyssar is the Matthew W. Stirling, Jr., Professor of History and Social Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. His 1986 book, Out of Work, was awarded three scholarly prizes, and his book, The Right to Vote, was named the best book in U.S. history by both the American Historical Association and the Historical Society; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

	Preface	xi
	Introduction	xv
Part I	The Road to Partial Democracy	1
1	In the Beginning	3
	The Received Legacy	5
	The Revolution and the Vote	8
	The States and the Nation	21
2	Democracy Ascendant	26
	The Course of Things	27
	Sources of Expansion	33
	Ideas and Arguments	42
3	Backsliding and Sideslipping	53
	Women, African Americans, and Native Americans	54
	Paupers, Felons, and Migrants	61
	Registration and Immigration	65
	Democracy, the Working Class, and American Exceptionalism	67
	A Case in Point: The War in Rhode Island	71
Part II	Narrowing the Portals	77
4	Know-Nothings, Radicals, and Redeemers	81
	Immigrants and Know-Nothings	82
	Race, War, and Reconstruction	87
	The Strange Odyssey of the Fifteenth Amendment	93
	The Lesser Effects of War	104
	The South Redeemed	105
5	The Redemption of the North	117
	Losing Faith	119
	Purifying the Electorate	127
	Two Special Cases	162
	Sovereignty and Self-Rule	166
	The New Electoral Universe	168
6	Women's Suffrage	172
	From Seneca Falls to the Fifteenth Amendment	173
	Citizenship and Texes	180
	Regrouping	183
	Doldrums and Democracy	196
	A Mass Movement	202
	The Nineteenth Amendment	211
	Aftermath	218
Part III	Toward Universal Suffrage--and Beyond	223
7	The Quiet Years	225
	Stasis and Its Sources	226
	Franklin Roosevelt and the Death of Blackstone	237
	War and Race	244
	"Our Oldest National Minority,"	253
8	Breaking Barriers	256
	Race and the Second Reconstruction	257
	Universal Suffrage	268
	The Value of the Vote	284
	Two Uneasy Pieces	302
	Getting the Electorate to the Polls	311
	Conclusion: The Project of Democracy	316
Appendix	State Suffrage Laws	325
	Notes	403
	Index	453

What People are Saying About This

Benjamin I. Page

This magisterial work is of great importance to anyone who wants to understand American politics. (Benjamin I. Page, Professor of Political Science, Northwestern University)

Nancy Cott

A superb retelling of the history of the right to vote. . .instructive to anyone concerned with the fate of democracy. (Nancy F. Cott, Woodward Professor of History and American Studies at Yale)

Frances Fox Piven

. . . a masterful account of America's rocky progress toward realizing universal suffrage. . . .An enormously illuminating book! (Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, authors of Why Americans Still Don't Vote)

James C. Scott

Keyssar's bold and coercively argued revisionist history of the franchise will be of great value to students of democratization everywhere. (James C. Scott, Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Anthropology, Yale University)

Richard Reeves

A wonderful new book. . . It certainly is the right book at the right time if you are engaged by the drama of these times. (Richard Reeves, syndicated columnist)

Editorial Reviews

. . . a tale that boldly overturns almost everything you think you know about Americans' most taken-for-granted right. . .To students of U.S. political development, this counter-history matters a great, great deal. One of the hoariest chestnuts is that no working-class political movement has succeeded in America precisely because the American working class was unqualifiedly granted political rights. That cliche will fade in proportion to the number of people who read and take seriously this book. So will the number of people who take their vote enough for granted never to cast it at all.
— Washington Post

Rick Pearlstein

A broad-based, realistic picture of the various historical forces working for or against the expansion of democracy, which . . . makes sense of an otherwise bewildering array of advances and retreats. . . a marvelously coherent, richly detailed history of a most hard-won right.
—(The Denver Post)

Paul Rosenberg

Alexander Keyssar's scholarly masterpiece . . . is easily the wisest and most comprehensive study of who was and is allowed to cast a ballot that has ever been written. . .
—(The Los Angeles Times)

Michael Kazin

"Monumental".
—(The Chicago Tribune)

John M. Hamilton

. . . a tale that boldly overturns almost everything you think you know about Americans' most taken-for-granted right. . .To students of U.S. political development, this counter-history matters a great, great deal. One of the hoariest chestnuts is that no working-class political movement has succeeded in America precisely because the American working class was unqualifiedly granted political rights. That cliche will fade in proportion to the numbe3r of people who read and take seriously this book. So will the number of people who take their vote enough for granted never to cast it at all.
—(The Washington Post)

Rick Perlstein

Keyssar's new book is a stunning triumph. It is the first comprehensive history of voting rights and wrongs in America written since 1918, and Keyssar's graceful, penetrating examination of the recurrent struggles for the right to vote fills this void magnificently.
—(Raleigh News and Observer)

Jamin Raskin

Presents a detailed history of suffrage in the US, chronicling the surprisingly slow evolution of the right to vote from the American Revolution to the present. Highlights the gap between the image of the US as a democratic nation and the reality that it took nearly 200 years of universal suffrage to be achieved, describing the struggles of women, African Americans, and immigrants. Analyzes the story of voting in the context of currents in American economics, social, and political history, and explains the ways in which diverse forces shaped voting rights. Keyssar teaches history and public policy at Duke University. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

. . .a useful corrective to somuch of the nonsense written about this important subject.

Dallas Morning News