An Elusive Unity

An Elusive Unity
Author: James J. Connolly
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2018-07-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0801461553

Although many observers have assumed that pluralism prevailed in American political life from the start, inherited ideals of civic virtue and moral unity proved stubbornly persistent and influential. The tension between these conceptions of public life was especially evident in the young nation's burgeoning cities. Exploiting a wide range of sources, including novels, cartoons, memoirs, and journalistic accounts, James J. Connolly traces efforts to reconcile democracy and diversity in the industrializing cities of the United States from the antebellum period through the Progressive Era. The necessity of redesigning civic institutions and practices to suit city life triggered enduring disagreements centered on what came to be called machine politics. Featuring plebian leadership, a sharp masculinity, party discipline, and frank acknowledgment of social differences, this new political formula first arose in eastern cities during the mid-nineteenth century and became a subject of national discussion after the Civil War. During the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, business leaders, workers, and women proposed alternative understandings of how urban democracy might work. Some tried to create venues for deliberation that built common ground among citizens of all classes, faiths, ethnicities, and political persuasions. But accommodating such differences proved difficult, and a vision of politics as the businesslike management of a contentious modern society took precedence. As Connolly makes clear, machine politics offered at best a quasi-democratic way to organize urban public life. Where unity proved elusive, machine politics provided a viable, if imperfect, alternative.

Fernando Wood

Fernando Wood
Author: Jerome Mushkat
Publisher: Kent State University Press
Total Pages: 348
Release: 1990
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780873384131

Fernando Wood was one of the most controversial figures of nineteenth-century America. His fellow New Yorkers either respected or despised him, depending whether they considered his policies beneficial or harmful to their interests. The character revealed herein possessed some admirable qualities; high intelligence, sharp analytic skills, great capacity for hard work, and a clear talent to set his executive agenda. But equally evident are Wood's less admirable qualities; ruthless business practices, shoddy personal ethics, corrupt politics, dictatorial tendencies. What emerges is the story of a very complex person: a successful businessman, consummate politician, resourceful three-time may of New York City, and nine-term congressman, beneath which lurked mean and self-destructive tendencies. Take as a whole, Wood's colorful career was a unique microcosm of American history both during and after his lifetime. His business achievements mirrored popular beliefs in upward mobility. And Wood's mayoralty held a promise of revitalizing municipal government, giving it a social conscience, and setting new standards for the future. Despite his shortcomings, Fernando Wood played a major but unappreciated role in the urban and political history of time.

"Boss" Tweed

Author: Denis Tilden Lynch
Publisher:
Total Pages: 428
Release: 1927
Genre: New York (N.Y.)
ISBN:

No political scandal in American history has had a greater impact on America's political consciousness than the rise and fall of the "Tweed Ring" in New York City between 1866 and 1871. In an age ripe with scandal both public and private, the spectacular corruption charged to "Boss" Tweed and his associates-estimates of their extortion range from $20 million to $200 million-became an enduring symbol of the dark side of democratic politics. The Tweed Ring contributed much more than cartoonist impressions; it helped to shape a powerful theory of political reform. It was in truth one of the formative events of progressivism, that multifaceted doctrine that has evolved into the modern American creed. In this sense, the Tweed Ring was to produce not only deep misgivings about the existing regime, but an insight into how it should be reformed. Denis Tilden Lynch's biography of "Boss" Tweed was published in a time filled, like Tweed's, with sudden prosperity, daunting problems, and spectacular scandals. It is a straight-forward, workmanlike study, untroubled by the conceits of modern historical scholarship, and close enough to its subject's generation to have some of the immediacy of journalism. Of all the books published about the Tweed affair, Lynch's study is the only one that is a genuine biography, in which the man himself is the focus. For this reason it conveys something of the texture of daily life in New York in the nineteenth century, while bringing Tweed out from behind the shadows of Thomas Nast's leering cartoons, and presenting him, as much as is possible, as a man and not an icon. An interesting example of Americana, this volume will be of interest to historians of the period as well as those interested in American urban and political life