Michael Holt: The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party – Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War

Covering in rich detail the American political landscape from the Age of Jackson to impending disunion, this book covers the history of the Whig Party and the ramifications on the United States during the tumultuous Antebellum period. The text offers a panoramic account of a time when a welter of parties (Whig, Democratic, Anti-Mason, Know Nothing, Free Soil, Republican) and many extraordinary political statesmen (including Andrew Jackson, John C. Calhoun, William Seward, Daniel Webster, Martin Van Buren, and Henry Clay) struggled to control the national agenda as the U.S. inched towards secession.