The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party

This book chronologically tells the birth, life, and death of the Whigs, a major American political party that was the country's last and best hope to avert secession. Michael Holt has reconstructed, and recaptured, what politicians - including Andrew Jackson, John C.Calhoun, Henry Clay, William Seward, Daniel Webster, Martin Van Buren, and Abraham Lincoln - thought they were doing and why; to recreate their world as they lived it. The result is an utterly unique reconstruction of the chain of political developments that triggered southern secession and the subsequent Civil War.