The scion of a political dynasty ushers in the era of big government
Politics was in Benjamin Harrison's blood. His great-grandfather signed the Declaration and his grandfather, William Henry Harrison, was the ninth president of the United States. Harrison, a leading Indiana lawyer, became a Republican Party champion, even taking a leave from the Civil War to campaign for Lincoln. After a scandal-free term in the Senate-no small feat in the Gilded Age-the Republicans chose Harrison as their presidential candidate in 1888. Despite losing the popular vote, he trounced the incumbent, Grover Cleveland, in the electoral college.
In contrast to standard histories, which dismiss Harrison's presidency as corrupt and inactive, Charles W. Calhoun sweeps away the stereotypes of the age to reveal the accomplishments of our twenty-third president. With Congress under Republican control, he exemplified the activist president, working feverishly to put the Party's planks into law and approving the first billion-dollar peacetime budget. But the Democrats won Congress in 1890, stalling his legislative agenda, and with the First Lady ill, his race for reelection proceeded quietly. (She died just before the election.) In the end, Harrison could not beat Cleveland in their unprecedented rematch.
With dazzling attention to this president's life and the social tapestry of his times, Calhoun compellingly reconsiders Harrison's legacy.

Choice Outstanding Academic TitleAs controversial in politics as he was in the military, Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) was an embattled president, enormously popular with the American people, yet the target of unrelenting censure by political enemies. For the first time in almost a century, this book by the distinguished historian Charles W. Calhoun examines Grant’s administration in depth, offering a fresh look at the 18th president’s policies and actions during his two terms in office (1869–1877). Most biographers focus on Grant’s military career, giving less attention to the significant and complex questions that marked his presidential terms. These concerns, the issues of politics and governance, are at the core of this book. As a political historian with a vast knowledge of nineteenth-century America and an extensive array of original sources at his command, Calhoun approaches Grant’s presidency not as an incongruous or inconsequential sequel to his military career but instead as the polestar of American public life during a crucial decade in the nation’s political development. He explores Grant’s leadership style and traces his contributions to the office of president, including creating a White House staff, employing modern technology to promote the mobility of the presidency, and developing strong ties with congressional leaders to enhance executive influence over legislation. The Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant provides a detailed discussion of the administration’s endeavors in a variety of areas—Reconstruction and civil rights, economic policy, the Peace Policy for Native Americans, foreign policy, and civil service reform. It also offers a straightforward examination of the scandals associated with the period, highlighting the “embattled” nature of Grant’s presidency and the deep antagonism that marked his relations with key critics such as Charles Sumner, Henry Adams, and Benjamin Bristow. In sum, this book is a long overdue re-evaluation of a pivotal presidency in America’s political history.

Designed as a text for the second half of the U.S. history survey course, The Human Tradition in America from 1865 to the Present is a collection of the best biographical essays from several volumes in SR Books' popular Human Tradition in America series. Like all books in the series, this text presents history from the "bottom up" by chronicling the lives of ordinary Americans. These brief biographical sketches stress to students that history is created by people, making the subject appealing and vibrant in a way that just names and dates in a standard textbook cannot. Capturing the rich diversity of the United States, The Human Tradition in America from 1865 to the Present includes the stories of a variety of Americans of different races, ethnic groups, sexual orientations, religious affiliations, and genders from many different regions of the country. For this reader, series editor Charles Calhoun has carefully selected biographies of individuals whose lives highlight important themes from this dynamic period of history. The essays included here are sure to engage students, provoke lively classroom discussion, and promote critical thinking.

During the late nineteenth century, Republicans struggled to reinvent America in the wake of civil war-and were consumed by the question of how the South should fit within the reconstituted Union. But the unity that Republicans had shown during the war was far from evident in facing this new challenge.

Conceiving a New Republic examines the Republicans' ideological struggle, focusing on how party thought-particularly concerning the concept of republicanism-determined the contours of that effort and was in turn shaped by it. In relating how Republicans strove to fashion a new democratic polity in the face of fierce southern opposition, Charles Calhoun focuses on what they thought about their actions, particularly their beliefs about the meaning and nature of the American Republic.

Calhoun revolutionizes our understanding of this era by showing that although it eventually failed in its lofty purpose, the party set out to reconstruct a nation that would abide by the promises of the Declaration of Independence. While earlier scholars have blamed Republicans for not being more steadfast advocates for blacks, Calhoun shows that southern Democrats so strongly resisted the breakdown of white supremacy that Republicans ultimately could not prevail. He assesses their actions in the election of 1876 and the ensuing electoral crisis less as an abandonment of black rights than as an effort to salvage as much of the republican experiment as possible. He also examines their struggle to revive the experiment with the Lodge Federal Elections bill of 1890-the last serious attempt at civil rights legislation until the 1950s.

Offering new insights into Presidents Grant, Hayes, Harrison, and McKinley, Calhoun shows that even before the latter's administration had begun, a confluence of forces had conspired to defeat the Republicans' attempt to create a new Republic. He spells out the reasons why Republicans, defeated by southern and Democratic intransigence, ultimately abandoned the effort to remake the Republic and found ways to accommodate themselves intellectually and morally to the failure of their earlier ideals.
In showing how Republican leaders envisioned nothing less than an essential reordering of the Republic, Conceiving a New Republic offers a bold reinterpretation of the Gilded Age that reflects a deep understanding of the period and its issues.

As controversial in politics as he was in the military, Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885) was an embattled president, enormously popular with the American people, yet the target of unrelenting censure by political enemies. For the first time in almost a century, this book by the distinguished historian Charles W. Calhoun examines Grant's administration in depth, offering a fresh look at the 18th president's policies and actions during his two terms in office (1869-1877). Most biographers focus on Grant's military career, giving less attention to the significant and complex questions that marked his presidential terms. These concerns, the issues of politics and governance, are at the core of this book. As a political historian with a vast knowledge of nineteenth-century America and an extensive array of original sources at his command, Calhoun approaches Grant's presidency not as an incongruous or inconsequential sequel to his military career but instead as the polestar of American public life during a crucial decade in the nation's political development. He explores Grant's leadership style and traces his contributions to the office of president, including creating a White House staff, employing modern technology to promote the mobility of the presidency, and developing strong ties with congressional leaders to enhance executive influence over legislation. The Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant provides a detailed discussion of the administration's endeavors in a variety of areas-Reconstruction and civil rights, economic policy, the Peace Policy for Native Americans, foreign policy, and civil service reform. It also offers a straightforward examination of the scandals associated with the period, highlighting the "embattled" nature of Grant's presidency and the deep antagonism that marked his relations with key critics such as Charles Sumner, Henry Adams, and Benjamin Bristow. In sum, this book is a long overdue re-evaluation of a pivotal presidency in America's political history.

In the wake of civil war, American politics were racially charged and intensely sectionalist, with politicians waving the proverbial bloody shirt and encouraging their constituents, as Republicans did in 1868, to "vote as you shot." By the close of the century, however, burgeoning industrial development and the roller-coaster economy of the postwar decades had shifted the agenda to pocketbook concerns--the tariff, monetary policy, business regulation. In "From Bloody Shirt to Full Dinner Pail," the historian Charles W. Calhoun provides a brief, elegant overview of the transformation in national governance and its concerns in the Gilded Age. Sweeping from the election of Grant to the death of McKinley in 1901, this narrative history broadly sketches the intense and divided political universe of the period, as well as the colorful characters who inhabited it.

During the run-up to the 1888 presidential election, Americans flocked to party rallies, marched in endless parades, and otherwise participated zealously in the political process. Although they faced a choice between two uncharismatic candidates-Republican challenger Benjamin Harrison and Democratic incumbent Grover Cleveland-voters took intense interest in the issues they espoused. And though Harrison became one of only four candidates to win the presidency while losing the popular vote, the lasting significance of the election was its foreshadowing of both the modern campaign and the modern presidency.

Charles W. Calhoun shows how this presidential contest not only exemplified Gilded Age politics but also marked a major shift from divisive sectional rhetoric to an emphasis on voters' economic concerns. Calhoun first explores Cleveland's rise to the presidency and explains why he turned to economic issues, especially tariff reduction, in framing his bid for reelection. He then provides a detailed analysis of the raucous Republican national convention and describes Harrison's effective front porch campaign, in which he proclaimed his views almost daily to visiting voters and reporters. Calhoun also explores the role of party organizations, business interests, labor, women, African Americans, and third parties in the campaign; discusses alleged fraud in the election; and analyzes the Democrats' suppression of black votes in the South.

The 1888 campaign marked an important phase in the evolution of American political culture and augured significant innovations in American politics and governance. The Republicans' performance, in particular, reflected the party's future winning strategies: emphasis on economic development, personal participation by the presidential candidate, a well-financed organization, and coordination with beneficiaries of the party's agenda.

Harrison set important precedents for campaigning and then, once in office, fashioned new leadership strategies and governing techniques-emphasizing legislative intervention, extensive travel, and a focus on foreign affairs-that would become the stock-in-trade of later presidents. His Republican successors built upon these transformations, making the GOP the majority party for a generation and putting the presidency at the center of American governance-where it has remained ever since.

Union general, federal judge, presidential contender, and cabinet officer -- Walter Q. Gresham of Indiana stands as an enigmatic character in the politics of the Gilded Age, one who never seemed comfortable in the offices he sought. This first scholarly biography not only follows the turns of his career but seeks also to find the roots of his disaffection. Entering politics as a Whig, Gresham shortly turned to help organize the new Republican Party and was a contender for its presidential nomination in the 1880s. But he became popular with labor and with the Populists and closed his political career by serving as secretary of state under Grover Cleveland. In reviewing Gresham's conduct of foreign affairs, Charles W. Calhoun disputes the widely held view that he was an economic expansionist who paved the way for imperialism. Gresham, instead, is seen here as a traditionalist who tried to steer the country away from entanglements abroad. It is this traditionalism that Calhoun finds to be the clue to Gresham's career. Troubled with self-doubt, Gresham, like the Cato of old, sought strength in a return to the republican virtues of the Revolutionary generation. Based on a thorough use of the available resources, this will stand as the definitive biography of an important figure in American political and diplomatic history, and in its portrayal of a man out of step with his times it sheds a different light on the politics of the Gilded Age.

The United States that entered the twentieth century was vastly different from the nation that emerged from the Civil War. Industrialization, mass immigration, the growing presence of women in the work force, and the rapid advance of the cities had transformed American society. Broad in scope, The Gilded Age brings together sixteen original essays that offer lively syntheses of modern scholarship while making their own interpretive arguments. These engaging pieces allow students to consider the various societal, cultural and political factors that make studying the Gilded Age crucial to our understanding of America today. Charles W. Calhoun connects all of these essays with a comprehensive introduction that places each article in an understandable historical context. For the second edition of this successful book, each essay was revised and three new pieces have been added that explore technology, consumerism, intellectual life, and race in late nineteenth century America.

The Human Tradition in America from the Colonial Era through Reconstruction is a collection of the best biographical sketches from several volumes in SR Books' popular Human Tradition in America Series. Compiled by Series Editor Charles W. Calhoun, this book brings American history to life by illuminating the lives of ordinary Americans. This examination of common individuals helps personalize the nation's past in a way that examining only broad concepts and forces cannot. By including a wide range of people with respect to ethnicity, race, gender and geographic region, Prof. Calhoun has developed a text that highlights the diversity of the American experience.

The United States that entered the twentieth century was vastly different from the nation that emerged from the Civil War. Industrialization, mass immigration, the growing presence of women in the work force, and the rapid advance of the cities had transformed American society. Broad in scope, The Gilded Age brings together sixteen original essays that offer lively syntheses of modern scholarship while making their own interpretive arguments. These engaging pieces allow students to consider the various societal, cultural and political factors that make studying the Gilded Age crucial to our understanding of America today. Charles W. Calhoun connects all of these essays with a comprehensive introduction that places each article in an understandable historical context. For the second edition of this successful book, each essay was revised and three new pieces have been added that explore technology, consumerism, intellectual life, and race in late nineteenth century America.