Just as the 2016 presidential campaign enters the final, excruciating race to the finish line, the new issue of Common-place (16.4) takes a multi-faceted look at politics past.
In “Beards Bachelors and Brides” Thomas Balcerski analyzes the election of 1856 where attacks of a gendered and sexual nature figured large in the race between the bearded John Charles Fremont, married to the beautiful Jesse Benton Fremont, against the bachelor James Buchanan.
Daniel Peart provides us a revealing look into the long history of lobbying, while Matthew Mason focuses on Edward Everett and his reaction to the Fugitive Slave Act to reveal the Plight of Political Moderates in times of political polarization.
Richard D. Brown reminds us that historically, political suffrage and citizenship in this country were not always coupled, and Merry Ellen Scofield describes the politics of Washington’s very first social media – the calling card.
Endrina Tay provides a new interpretation of the motives behind Thomas Jefferson’s sale of his private library to Congress after the burning of the Capitol.
John Craig Hammond provides a thoughtful examination of the Constitution’s Framers original intentions regarding slavery in the United States, and in Common School Erik Chaput describes a student project analyzing Frederick Douglas’s changing, and diametrically opposed views regarding the Constitution’s position on slavery.
In Tales From the Vault, Whitney Martinko traces the origins and significance of a painting of Philadelphia’s Market Street that has long hung in the United States Portrait Gallery in Philadelphia.
Web Library presents a roundtable discussion about the current status of graduate training and digital history.
Finally, there are reviews of new books about James Madison’s journal accounts of the Constitutional Convention; the Marquis de Lafayette, the Egalitarian ideals of the Republican party, and the not-so-corrupt bargain that determined the outcome of the 1824 presidential election.
It’s politics as it once was casting reflections on the presidential campaign that is, online for you at Common-place.org.
www.common-place.org is produced by the American Antiquarian Society.
Editors, Anna Mae Duane and Walt Woodward, University of Connecticut
Published by a partnership of the American Antiquarian Society and the University of Connecticut.
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