Research Catalog

Title

The right to vote : the contested history of democracy in the United States / Alexander Keyssar.

Author

Keyssar, Alexander.

Publication

New York : Basic Books, 2009.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xxvi, 467 p.; 24 cm.

Summary

Synopsis: 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.

Alternative Title

Contested history of democracy in the United States

Subjects

• History
• HKS Faculty
• DPI – Democracy, Politics, & Institutions
• Voting > United States > History
• Suffrage > United States > History

Genre/Form

History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [381]-450) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Preface to the revised edition -- Preface to the original edition -- Introduction -- Part 1: Road To Partial Democracy: -- 1: In the beginning -- Received legacy -- Revolution and the vote -- States and the nation -- 2: Democracy Ascendant -- Course of things -- Sources of expansion -- Ideas and arguments -- 3: Backsliding And Sideslipping -- Women, African Americans, and Native Americans -- Paupers, felons, and migrants -- Registration and immigration -- Democracy, the working class, and American exceptionalism -- Case in point: the war in Rhode Island -- Part 2: Narrowing The Portals: -- 4: Know-nothings, radicals, and redeemers -- Immigrants and know-nothings -- Race, war, and reconstruction -- Strange odyssey of the Fifteenth Amendment -- Lesser effects of war -- South redeemed -- 5: Redemption of the North -- Losing faith -- Purifying the electorate -- Two special cases -- Sovereignty and self-rule -- New electoral universe -- 6: Women's suffrage -- From Seneca Falls to the Fifteenth Amendment -- Citizenship and taxes -- Regrouping -- Doldrums and democracy -- Mass movement -- Nineteenth Amendment -- Aftermath -- Part 3: Toward Universal Suffrage-And Beyond: -- 7: Quiet years -- Stasis and its sources -- Franklin Roosevelt and the death of Blackstone -- War and race -- Our oldest national minority -- 8: Breaking barriers -- Race and the second reconstruction -- Universal suffrage -- Value of the vote -- Two uneasy pieces -- Getting the electorate to the polls -- 9: Story unfinished -- November 2000 -- What is to be done? -- Helping Americans vote -- Crime and punishment -- Suppression and fraud -- Boundaries of competence -- Constitutional right to vote -- November 2008 -- Conclusion: Project of democracy -- Appendix: State suffrage laws, 1775-1920 -- List of tables -- Appendix sources -- Notes -- Index.

ISBN

• 9780465005024
• 0465029698

OCLC

841200836

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library