Description: The first study in half a century to focus on the election of 1796. Colorfully portrays the young nation's politics, focusing especially on images of Adams and Jefferson created by supporters and detractors through the press, capturing the way that ordinary citizens in 1796 would have experienced candidates they never heard speak.
Brief description: Jeffrey L. Pasley is associate professor of history at the University of Missouri. He is the author of "The Tyranny of Printers" Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic and coeditor of Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic.
Review Quotes:
"Carefully researched and engagingly written, Pasley's volume is the definitive work on this underappreciated election."--Journal of Interdisciplinary History
"A superb, important book. Likely to become the definitive study of the 1796 election."--Journal of American History
"Presents a compelling and forward-moving narrative."--Register of the Kentucky Historical Society
"The Presidential election of 1796, memorialized in history tomes for the bitter divisions the campaign mirrored among citizens in the fledgling Republic, receives innovative and refreshing analytical consideration in this eminently readable and clever account of the Adams-Jefferson contest."--Political Science Quarterly