Joel H. Silbey is Professor of History Emeritus at Cornell University. His books include Martin Van Buren and the Emergence of American Popular Politics (2002), Storm over Texas: The Annexation Controversy and the Road to Civil War (2005), and Party Over Section: The Election of 1848 (2009).

• Notes on Contributors viiIntroduction 1Joel H. SilbeyPart I General Themes 51. The Political World of the Antebellum Presidents 7Joel H. Silbey2. The Expansionist Impulse in Antebellum America 43Michael A. Morrison3. The Rise of Sectional Tensions: Parties, Slavery, and Abolitionism 65Nicole Etcheson4. The Antebellum Presidents and Foreign Policy 89Jay SextonPart II The Presidents 1075. Martin Van Buren as Party Leader and at Andrew Jackson’s Right Hand 109M. Philip Lucas6. Van Buren and the Economic Collapse of the Late 1830s 131Jonathan M. Atkins7. “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too”: William Henry Harrison and the Rise of Popular Politics 155William G. Shade8. President John Tyler, Henry Clay, and the Whig Party 173Edward P. Crapol9. James K. Polk and the Democratic Party 195M. J. Heale10. Polk in Office: Domestic Politics and Policies 221Paul H. Bergeron11. Polk as a War President 245John C. Pinheiro12. Polk as a Southern Sectionalist 269Michael Todd Landis13. Zachary Taylor in Office: Clay, the Whig Party, and the Sectional Crisis 291Michael J. Birkner14. Millard Fillmore, Whig Politician and Leader of His Party 309Damon R. Eubank15. President Fillmore and the Taming of Sectional Tensions 327Elizabeth R. Varon16. Franklin Pierce, Democratic Partisan 345Yonatan Eyal17. Franklin Pierce, the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and the Political Transformation of the Mid-1850s 367John F. Kirn, Jr18. James Buchanan: The Early Political Life of the Old Public Functionary 397Jean H. Baker19. James Buchanan, the Slavocracy, and the Disruption of the Democratic Party 421James L. Huston20. James Buchanan and the Secession Crisis 447John AshworthIndex 465

“Provocative and modestly revisionist, this enlightening collection should be the first-choice volume for anyone interested in the political historiography of the antebellum presidents.”  (Presidential Studies Quarterly, 28 July 2015)“Offers fresh perspectives into the largely forgotten men who served during one of the most decisive quarter centuries of United States history.”  (Expofairs.com, 17 December 2014)