Daniel Walker Howe

SECOND REVIEW - September 25, 2017

The Political Culture of the American Whigs should not be the only book you read to learn about the 19th-century Whig party.

The key to the book's huge limitation is in the title: the phrase "political culture." It's erroneous: the book is about the philosophical and intellectual predispositions of the Whigs, not any aspect of their politics. I read it five or six years ago, but frankly I remember that their was relatively little discussion of the Whigs in politics. If that's what you really want to know, you will be disappointed. From this book you will learn learn such interesting things as the nature of Abraham Lincoln's poetry (which the author snobbishly judges second-rate or amateurish) and the eccentricities of Massachusetts statesman Rufus Choate.

The book takes great care to avoid discussing topics that would make the Whigs look bad, such as "internal improvements" or why the Whig Party fell apart before the Civil War. The author obviously writes from a sympathetic viewpoint.


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First Review - 2011

This is an essential book on the 19th-century American Whig party. It explains what the Whig party was; what it stood for; what it did in politics; who its opponents were, how and why it officially died out (but unofficially survived in its similar successor, the Republican Party) and who its prominent members were.

Although highly informative, it is obviously biased in favor of the Whigs. It doesn't whitewash them, but has little or nothing critical to say about them. For instance, it makes little or no attempt to explore the downside of their strong belief in "internal improvements" (essentially, using government subsidies to stimulate economic development in ways they liked). The only time the Whigs really look bad in this book is when it explains why the Whig party fell apart. That was over slavery: the Whig Party opposed slavery, but was willing to compromise on it in order to keep the Union from fracturing; but when the sectional conflicts became too intense to be saved through compromise, the Southern Whigs--many of whom were rich slaveholders--sided with the South and openly expressed white supremacist views. The Northern Whigs were just as resolutely anti-slavery, and the irreconcilable opposition split the party. The Southern Whigs mostly became Democrats, while the Northern Whigs formed the Republican party, whose only substantial policy difference from the Whigs was refusing to compromise on slavery.

This book told me what I wanted to know about the Whigs. Now if only I can find a similarly illuminating book about the 19th-century Democrats and their viewpoint.… (more)

The real drawback for me of Daniel Walker Howe's early 19th century American history was not the writing, but the narrator. There were times that I wondered if the reader was a computer or a human. So monotone at different points it was almost enough to get me to turn it off. But Howe's writing was good and the topics/tales/history that were told were very interesting. Mix that with the turbulent times and exciting and unbelievable characters Walker Howe had a great canvas with which to work. So good as a book, didn't quite reach that level as a audiobook. Still, I would recommended it, well worth the time.… (more)

This is an outstanding history of the US between 1815 and 1848. Before I started this book, I had thought of this period as a tedious time when too little of interest occurred. As a result of Howe's book, I found this period to be full of exciting and important events. Although the book is 900 pages long (i.e. 300 pages per decade), I found the book to be such an appetizer that I now have a long list of other books I want to read. Howe's coverage is broad with discussions on the political, economic, military and cultural histories of the period as well as good overviews on slavery, native Americans, and Mexican Americans. The book was a pleasure to read.… (more)