Book Review

Canada and the United States

Few American historians today write—or read—the detailed narrative studies of elections and the internal world of political professionals that once constituted the stock in trade of political history. Instead, historians pursue questions of power, authority, and ideology by intensively examining small communities, local associations, families, and the political activities of oppressed or marginalized groups. By that measure, Mark Wahlgren Summers's close study of the much-caricatured presidential election of 1884 is old-fashioned. Based on extensive research in manuscript collections and newspapers, the book focuses on Republican James G. Blaine, Democrat Grover Cleveland, and the scores of officeholders, factional leaders, and party operatives that conducted the tightly contested campaign. Discussions of the tariff, political scandals, and patronage matters figure prominently in the narrative. Yet, as in his studies of corruption and the political press from the sectional crisis through the Gilded Age, Summers again demonstrates that energetic, intelligent analysis of traditional topics can yield important insights into such major subjects as the construction of public power and the restricted nature of late nineteenth-century American democracy.

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