Political History

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Bert Combs The Politician: An Oral History

This is the story of Combs' political life as remembered by him and by some sixty others who shared with him that experience. Robinson shows how Combs emerged from an Eastern Kentucky background to become an outstanding jurist and progressive political force.

"Worth reading for students of oral history and Kentucky political history."—Journal of American History
Perspectives on Irish Nationalism

Perspectives on Irish Nationalism examines the cultural, political, religious, economic, linguistic, folklore, and historical dimensions of the phenomenon of Irish nationalism. Its essayists are among the most distinguished Irish studies scholars. Their essays include a comprehensive analysis of the tapestry of Irish nationalism and focused studies that often challenge myths, pieties, and the scholarly consensus. Thomas E. Hachey is Professor of Irish, Irish-American, and British history and Chair of the department at Marquette University. He wrote Britain and Irish Separatism: From the Fenians to the Free State 1807-1922 (1977), coauthored and edited The Problem of Partition: Peril to World Peace ...Read More
The Life and Death of the Solid South: A Political History

Southern-style politics was one of those peculiar institutions that differentiated the South from other American regions. This system—long referred to as the Solid South—embodied a distinctive regional culture and was perpetuated through an undemocratic distribution of power and a structure based on disfranchisement, malapportioned legislatures, and one-party politics. It was the mechanism that determined who would govern in the states and localities, and in national politics it was the means through which the South’s politicians defended their region’s special interests and political autonomy. The history of this remarkable institution can be traced in the gradual rise, long persistence, and ultimate ...Read More
Divide and Dissent: Kentucky Politics, 1930-1963

Few men have been more important to the life of Kentucky than three of those who governed it between 1930 and 1963—Albert B. Chandler, Earle C. Clements, and Bert T. Combs. While reams of newspaper copy have been written about them, the historical record offers little to mark their roles in the drama of Kentucky and the nation. In this authoritative and sometimes intimate view of Bluegrass State politics and government at ground level, John Ed Pearce—one of Kentucky’s favorite writers—helps fill this gap.

In half a century as a close observer of Kentucky politics—as reporter, editorial writer, and columnist ...Read More
Mexican Lobby: Matías Romero in Washington 1861–1867

For Americans the Civil War was simply an internal conflict, and they have emphasized its military exploits and the romantic myths that have grown up around it. They have given little regard to its international aspects. In truth, however, the American Civil War attracted worldwide attention. Other nations followed the fortunes of the war and sought to understand its goals because they saw that the fate of the American system would likely have a profound effect on their own social and political economies. One such nation was the United States' southern neighbor Mexico, and in Mexican Lobby Thomas Schoonover reveals ...Read More
Claude A. Swanson of Virginia: A Political Biography

Spanning most of the years of the one-party South, the public career of Virginian Claude A. Swanson, congressman, governor, senator, and secretary of the navy, extended from the second administration of Grover Cleveland into that of Franklin Roosevelt. His record, writes Henry C. Ferrell, Jr., in this definitive biography, is that of “a skillful legislative diplomat and an exceedingly wise executive encompassed in the personality of a professional politician.”

As a congressman, Swanson abandoned Cleveland's laissez faire doctrines to become the leading Virginia spokesman for William Jennings Bryan and the Democratic platform of 1896. His achievements as a reform governor ...Read More
The Mood/Interest Theory of American Foreign Policy

In 1952, Frank L. Klingberg's article on introvert and extrovert American foreign policy moods projected an American turn toward introversion in the late 1960s. After this came to pass, Jack Holmes began to develop a theory of how these moods might work in a more specific sense. His mood/interest theory points to a basic conflict between politico-military interests and the foreign policy moods of the American electorate.

Holmes presents a pioneering account of the over-whelming impact of public moods on foreign policy. Policy-making structures, executive-legislative relations, presidential personality, pragmatism, moralism, elitism, conservatism, international economics, and humanitarianism are related to the ...Read More
The Anti-Masonic Party in the United States: 1826-1843

Here, for the first time in more than eighty years, is a detailed study of political Antimasonry on the national, state, and local levels, based on a survey of existing sources. The Antimasonic party, whose avowed goal was the destruction of the Masonic Lodge and other secret societies, was the first influential third party in the United States and introduced the device of the national presidential nominating convention in 1831.

Vaughn focuses on the celebrated "Morgan Affair” of 1826, the alleged murder of a former Mason who exposed the fraternity's secrets. Thurlow Weed quickly transformed the crusading spirit aroused by ...Read More
Luke Pryor Blackburn: Physician, Governor, Reformer

Deadly epidemics of yellow fever and Asiatic cholera plagued the South throughout the nineteenth century, yet doctors had few effective weapons against the diseases. Luke Pryor Blackburn, a Kentucky-born physician, worked with more success than most to save the lives of those who were stricken and to prevent the spread of infection. He aided towns throughout Kentucky and the Deep South where resident doctors had fled or had fallen ill themselves.

Blackburn’s reputation as a humanitarian soared following his aid to Western Kentucky during the yellow fever epidemic of 1878. A year later he was easily elected governor of Kentucky ...Read More
William Goebel: The Politics of Wrath

The turbulent career of William Goebel (1856–1900), which culminated in assassination, marked an end-of-the-century struggle for political control of Kentucky. Although populism had become a strong force in the nation, the Louisville and Nashville Railroad and ex-Confederates still dominated the state and its Democratic party. Touting reforms and attaching the railroad monopoly, Goebel challenged this old order.

A Yankee in a state that fancied itself southern, Goebel had to depend on a strong organization to win votes. As “The Kenton King” he created a new style of politics. To some he was a progressive reformer; to others, a tyrannical machine ...Read More