Democracy and Civility in Gilded Age America

Abstract

Jon Grinspan provides a stimulating account of the state of American democracy in the post – Civil War period, chronicling the rise of what he labels the “ normal ” politics that would come to define twentieth-century America. Reconstruction, covered in the first part of the book, began with the promise of mass, or “ pure, ” democracy, with citizens embracing politics “ with a zealous fixation ” but leading to “ maddening ” results (xi). The post-Reconstruction period is characterized as a period of inertia, in which the political “ system was overheating and standing still, attracting great interest but offering little change ” (108). Ultimately, attempts to “ fix ” American democracy, discussed in the third part of the book, provided a series of “ new tools ” of democracy that acted as restraints on the system, curtailing the era ’ s perceived vices — for instance, the tribalism of mass partisanship — but also the virtues of mass participation and the sense of community provided by strong parties. The “ normal ” politics of the twentieth century, according to Grinspan, is “ an invention ” (ix) and a historical aberration, but a standard by which we evaluate contemporary American politics. At its core, The Age of Acrimony documents a set of interrelated tradeoffs: civility for participation, private decision-making for public engagement, and independence for partisanship.