Jeffrey L. Pasley is associate professor of history at the University of Missouri, USA. He is the author of “The Tyranny of Printers”: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic and coeditor of Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic.
"Carefully researched and engagingly written, Pasley's volume is
the definitive work on this underappreciated election."--Journal of
Interdisciplinary History "A superb, important book. Likely to
become the definitive study of the 1796 election."--Journal of
American History"Presents a compelling and forward-moving
narrative."--Register of the Kentucky Historical Society"The
Presidential election of 1796, memorialized in history tomes for
the bitter divisions the campaign mirrored among citizens in the
fledgling Republic, receives innovative and refreshing analytical
consideration in this eminently readable and clever account of the
Adams-Jefferson contest."--Political Science Quarterly
"Vivid and precise, compelling and even funny, this is political
history as it needs to be written, as its best practitioners are
writing it today. The election year narrative may never be the
same--just better for Pasley's patient unpacking of where it all
began. Neither students nor fans of the presidency, of democracy,
or of the founding should miss it."--David Waldstreicher, author of
Slavery's Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification and Runaway
America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American
Revolution"Rich in lively characters, fiery rhetoric, dark
intrigue, and cunning spin, the presidential election of 1796
helped to create American partisan politics on a national scale.
With wry humor and a keen sense of political reality, both past and
present, Pasley offers the closest and best examination of our
Founders as politicians who slyly practiced what they piously
preached against."--Alan Taylor, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of
William Cooper's Town"Few historians tell a good political story
better than Jeffrey Pasley. Here he provides a wonderful account of
the presidential election of 1796, which finally gets the full
attention it deserves. Pasley shows how much political innovation
was already occurring across the country, and how quickly politics
became an active concern of citizens and their outspoken press.
This first contested presidential election was no mere prequel to
the dramatic contest of 1800. It was instead the critical
experiment upon which Federalists and Republicans built four years
later."--Jack Rakove, author of Revolutionaries: A New History of
the Invention of America"Jeffrey Pasley, one of America's premier
students of popular politics, has written a superb study of a
crucial but oft-neglected election. Filled with imaginative
research and brilliant vignettes involving the great and
not-so-great, The First Presidential Contest, is a major study of
one of the landmarks in the early history of democracy in the
United States."--Sean Wilentz, author of The Rise of American
Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln"Thoroughly researched, vividly
written, and persuasively argued, Pasley's book explores critically
how the framers' fantasy of 'Patriot Kings' mysteriously rising to
the presidency quickly transformed into 'local notables' attempting
to control presidential elections in their separate states. Anyone
interested in understanding the inevitable genesis of political
parties, the rise of public opinion as a check on government, and
the first stirrings of the slow transformation from a Republic to a
Democracy will find this book enormously helpful."--Richard K.
Matthews, author of The Radical Politics of Thomas Jefferson
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