These boldly argued essays describe and analyze key developments in American politics and government in an era when political parties commanded mass loyalties and wielded unprecedented power over government affairs. McCormick follows the major parties from their emergence in the 1820s and 1830s to their transformation almost a century later, discussing the nature of governance, clarifying economic policies of promotion, distribution, and (later) regulation that characterized government functions at every level, and sorting out the complex relationships between politics and policy during the "party period."

Each of the three party systems that has emerged in the history of the United States in the 1790s, the 1830s, and the 1850s has differed fundamentally from the others. The second American party system was unique in its origins, national comprehensiveness and balance, and in the fatal flaws that brought about is early disruption."