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Durable, acrimonious partisanship profoundly shapes contemporary American politics, yet scholars and analysts have been slow to consider the latent capacity of party leaders to mobilize violence.
List of contents
1. An Introduction to Partisan Warfare; 2. The Roots of Partisan Civil War; 3. The Press Goes to War Elias Shammas, Timothy Klein, Nathan P. Kalmoe; 4. Filling the Ranks; 5. Election News during Wartime Elias Shammas, Timothy Klein, Nathan P. Kalmoe; 6. Weighing the Dead; 7. Partisan Stability & the Myth of Atlanta; 8. Ghosts of the Civil War.
About the author
Nathan P. Kalmoe is Associate Professor of Political Communication at Louisiana State University. He is author of Neither Liberal nor Conservative: Ideological Innocence in the American Public (with Donald Kinder) and over a dozen academic articles about public opinion and political communication. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and other popular outlets. Kalmoe was recognized with the Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Scholar Award and is proud to be an award-winner teacher (Tiger Athletic Foundation Teaching Award).
Summary
Combining historical and political science approaches, With Ballots and Bullets reveals the fundamental role of partisanship in the American Civil War and deepens contemporary understandings of mass partisanship, showing the latent capacity of political elites to mobilize violence. The book will interest political scientists, historians, and general readers.
Additional text
'With Ballots and Bullets is an important book which advances a provocative and timely thesis. Kalmoe reexamines support for the Civil War in the north and argues that the conflict was fueled by partisan animosity. From his perspective, the war was fought in part over the issue of slavery but its flames were fanned by northern partisan leaders. Kalmoe makes his case through painstaking analysis of partisan newspaper content, voluntary enlistment, desertion, and death rates, and state and county vote records. The book challenges conventional wisdom on a number of different fronts and deserves to be read and discussed widely. By focusing on the partisan nature of the civil war, the book provides a disturbing parallel to present times.' Leonie Huddy, Stony Brook University
