| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

A Perfect War of Politics: Parties, Politicians, and Democracy in Louisiana, 1824–1861. By John M. Sacher. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003. xx, 331 pp. $39.95, ISBN 0-8071-2848-1.)

Students of southern history have long known that in Louisiana politics are, well, different. Adding a new dimension to the debate concerning the character of Louisiana politics is John M. Sacher's A Perfect War of Politics, which centers on the evolution of political parties in antebellum Louisiana. Sacher concludes that ultimately Louisianians identified with their political parties more than with issues, a perspective certain to raise eyebrows among those well versed in Louisiana's political history. Far from content to question the validity of the determining power of ethnicity, regionalism, personality, and class considerations, which he regularly glosses over, Sacher depicts a Louisiana of abundant democracy where politicians answer to the will of the people and great men typically get elected just because that is the way Americans tend to vote. While a candidate anywhere must be conscious of the needs of the voters, whether such a certainty in Louisiana translated to far greater political power vested in the hands of the common people than previously considered demands a second look.

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