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The Right To Vote The Contested History Of Democracy In The United States

by Alexander Keyssar (Author)

4.5 101 ratings

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The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States
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Most Americans take for granted their right to vote, whether they choose to exercise it or not. But the history of suffrage in the U.S. is, in fact,the story of a struggle to achieve this right by our society's marginalized groups. In The Right to Vote, Duke historian Alexander Keyssar explores the evolution of suffrage over the course of the nation's history. Examining the many features of the history of the right to vote in the U.S.class, ethnicity, race, gender, religion, and agethe book explores the conditions under which American democracy has expanded and contracted over the years.Keyssar presents convincing evidence that the history of the right to vote has not been one of a steady history of expansion and increasing inclusion, noting that voting rights contracted substantially in the U.S. between 1850 and 1920. Keyssar also presents a controversial thesis: that the primary factor promoting the expansion of the suffrage has been war and the primary factors promoting contraction or delaying expansion have been class tension and class conflict.

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ISBN-10

0465029698
ISBN-13

978-0465029693
Publisher

Basic Books
Publication date

August 15, 2001
Language

English
Dimensions

5.5 x 1.25 x 7.75 inches
Print length

512 pages
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About the Author

Alexander Keyssar is Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University. He is the author of Out of Work: The First Century of Unemployment in Massachusetts (A New York Times Notable Book for 1986) and has written essays and reviews for The Nation, Times Literary Supplement, the New York Times, The New Republic, and a host of other popular and academic publications.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books (August 15, 2001)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 512 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0465029698
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0465029693
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.2 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1.25 x 7.75 inches

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4.5 101 ratings

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Tim Olson

Excellent Book

Reviewed in the United States on February 24, 2021

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Detailed exhaustively researched history of the right to vote in America. I learned more from this book than any other source.

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anomymous

Incredibly well researched

Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2022

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Purchased in light of the current election fraud/security debates. I learned nothing so far is new. Data intensive. Can be dry at times, though many of the quotes from historical figures are revealing as to prevailing attitudes.

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Jack Lechelt

Excellent and thorough

Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2007

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This must be the definitive history of voting in America. I hold back from giving it five stars because it was a little more than what I was looking for, but this is as thorough as I have ever come across. Also, I love charts and graphs, and he has a great array of tables at the end. Interesting tidbit was the role war played throughout American history in expanding the right to vote. Also, though we all know how the right to vote gradually expanded, but what many of us didn't realize was how the right to vote actually shrunk at various points in American history. That is, some people who had the right to vote had it taken away at various moments in American history. When all is said and done, this is a great book.

9 people found this helpful

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Philly Fan

democracy in action or am I allowed to vote

Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2020

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This is a superb document on the history of voting rights in America from its founding to 2000. Well worth reading about the struggles of Americans to get the vote. The discussion of suffrage for all Americans. How those that had the vote trying to prevent other people from getting the vote. We struggle with this today, given that President Drumpf is more than willing to disregard the majority of American voters. Our democracy beware and here is the history.

5 people found this helpful

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How Family

Great reference for college US History I & Ii.

Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2022

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My college course references this book for US History I & Ii at Temple College in Texas.

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Randall Lindsey

Unfolding of the right to vote in the U.S.

Reviewed in the United States on November 4, 2006

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In my forty years of studying the history of the U.S., I find this work to be the most authoritative and complete work yet encountered. Not only is the book a thorough guide through the evolution of our democracy, it is an entertaining read. The book is a 'must' read for those who seek a perspective on many of the current issues involving voting rights.

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pnotley@hotmail.com

A useful study

Reviewed in the United States on October 18, 2000

This is a book that will make you angry. If you are a conservative, this book should make you feel very guilty. It is important to begin with that this book is a detour from Keyssar's larger project, which was supposed to be a history of the American working class' electoral participation. After struggling with the work for several years he realized that he needed to publish a whole book explaining what the right to vote actually was in American history. The result is a history of the slow and uneven path to universal suffrage in American history. We learn about the existence of the vote before 1776, the improvement that occured with the revolution, and the larger improvement that occured with the Jeffersonian/Jacksonian period in which the large majority of white men were able to vote. At the same time we learn of efforts to counter the expanding suffrage, such as disfranchisement of free blacks all over the country before 1861, attacks on the voting rights of paupers, felons, migrants and aliens, as well as the disfranchisment in the early 1800s of the limited voting rights women had in the early 1800s. Keyssar then goes on to discuss the narrowing of the portals from the 1860s to the 1920s, periods ironically bounded by giving the vote to blacks in the 1870s and to women by the 1920s. But in between that period nearly all blacks and many whites were disenfranchised in the south, while literacy, residence, nationality and registration systems sought to limit the vote in the North (while "asiatics" were barred in the west). The book concludes with the successful passage of the Voting Rights Act and the twenty-sixth amendment, but also with low turnout, an extremely narrow political spectrum, and government structures which limit political participation and reinforce conservative values.
Much of this will not be new to historians, though never before has there been such detail and the twenty appendixes provided at the back will be invaluable for future reference. Sometimes Keyssar gives a qualititative estimate of how many Americans could vote (he suggests that perhaps 60% of white Americans could vote before 1776, a figure much lower than the 80-90% posited by more Panglossian historians). And there are many interesting details, such as the New York plan where registration was supposed to take place on Yom Kippur, conventiently leaving out many Jews. But otherwise the full results have been reserved for his upcoming work. This weakens his criticisms of American exceptionalism, since without a clear understanding of how much the vote declined in the North, we cannot see how fully the ponderous elitism of Parkman and Godkin were like the undemocratic aspects of German or Italian or even British liberalism. I am also do not agree with his description of slaves as a "peasantry." This implies that the majority of white farmers who were not slaveholders were a) not peasants and b) were otherwise indistinguishable on a class basis from the slaveholders. Recent southern agrarian history makes this assumption quite questionable. It is true that Americans were unenthusiatic as Europeans about the rise of the proletariat and rural subaltern classes, but it is insufficient to say that mass suffrage only occured because such classes were a small proportion of the population. They were also a small proportion of the population in France in 1848 and 1851 when universal male suffrage was declared, which did not prevent a greater degree of struggle over the question in that country. Enfranchising the majority of any population would raise serious issues of class domination and control regardless of the class structure. Nevertheless this is still a useful study, and reading the petty, racist, misogynist, self-serving and self-satisfied arguments against the suffrage will be a depressing experience. To think that such injustices could be continued for two centuries thanks to the endless cant of "state's rights" long after the republican content of that slogan had drained away will infuriate you.

64 people found this helpful

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William A. Blackwell

read!

Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2014

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I had to read this book for a political theory class, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Keysarr did a great job of researching and writing it. It was not as dry as some of the other, similar books I've read. I would definitely recommend this one, even if it's not for a class.

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