Jon Grinspan Bücher

Focusing on the vibrant role of youth in American democracy during the late nineteenth century, the narrative highlights how young people energized political participation through lively rallies and passionate engagement. With parents encouraging their children to embrace partisanship, young adults were seen as vital to the electoral process, especially with their first votes at age twenty-one. The book illustrates how schools, saloons, and public squares became arenas for young men and women to assert their identities and influence the political landscape, showcasing the deeply personal nature of democracy.

A raucous history of American democracy at its wildest--and a bold rethinking of the relationship between the people and their politics. Democracy was broken. Or that was what many Americans believed in the decades after the Civil War. Shaken by economic and technological disruption, they sought safety in aggressive, tribal partisanship. The results were the loudest, closest, most violent elections in U.S. history, driven by vibrant campaigns that drew our highest-ever voter turnouts. At the century's end, reformers finally restrained this wild system, trading away participation for civility and restraint came from can we understand what is happening to our democracy today. The Age of Acrimony charts the rise and fall of nineteenth-century America's unruly politics through the lives of a remarkable father-daughter dynasty. The radical congressman William "Pig Iron" Kelley and his fiery, Progressive daughter Florence Kelley led lives packed with drama, intimately tied to their nation's politics. Through their friendships and feuds, campaigns and crusades, Will and Florie trace the narrative of a democracy in crisis. In telling the tale of what it cost to cool our republic, historian Jon Grinspan reveals our divisive political system's enduring capacity to reinvent itself. -- From dust jacket