Carmen M. Ganser Illinois State University

This revealing monograph portrayed an effective argument: that regular (male) citizens of the United States did not participate in politics in as high of numbers as we have usually understood. Covering the 1840 election to the Gilded Age, the authors demonstrate through a variety of methodologies political participation in various small towns throughout the nation in states such as New York, Georgia, Iowa, and Tennessee. Their findings show that political participation was rather low, contrary to our general conceptions of this period. For instance, they write that local party leaders would loan "their activists to the leaders of other towns to help swell their rallies, expecting payment in kind when they planned their own affairs" (62). Thus, attendance at political rallies could have been artificially inflated, many of the attendees unable to vote in that district, When the authors look at participation at parades and rallies, they find that it was the spectacle that people thronged to see, rather than the candidates, because at such events were fireworks explosions and circus worthy exhibits. The authors even turn to popular fiction from the century to investigate the frequency of political suggestions in these texts, finding that they lack almost entirely any suggestion of political engagement.

Though this is a monograph intended for an intelligent lay readership or one of more scholarly inclination, it is not beyond the reach of employing its arguments for the sake of pedagogical benefit. High school students, taught so frequently that political participation by common men soared by leaps and bounds throughout the mid nineteenth century could benefit wholly by a deeper, and possibly more complex understanding of politics at this time. Perhaps then teachers will not continually perpetuate myths that, though help to create a mystical ideal of our past, does nothing to engender an appreciable knowledge of the multifacetous nature of our political history.

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