With Ballots and Bullets
Partisanship and Violence in the American Civil War

Durable, acrimonious partisanship profoundly shapes contemporary American politics, yet scholars and analysts have been slow to consider the latent capacity of party leaders to mobilize violence.

Nathan P. Kalmoe (Author)

9781108792585, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 30 July 2020

260 pages, 29 b/w illus.
23 x 15 x 1.8 cm, 0.44 kg

'… With Ballots and Bullets is an excellent piece of scholarship that provides a template for the fusion of history and social science. Kalmoe builds on qualitative and historical accounts of the roles political parties played in the US Civil War with novel quantitative analysis and useful theory pulled from political science literature.' Michael A. Catalano, H-Net Reviews

What happens when partisanship is pushed to its extreme? In With Ballots and Bullets, Nathan P. Kalmoe combines historical and political science approaches to provide new insight into the American Civil War and deepen contemporary understandings of mass partisanship. The book reveals the fundamental role of partisanship in shaping the dynamics and legacies of the Civil War, drawing on an original analysis of newspapers and geo-coded data on voting returns and soldier enlistments, as well as retrospective surveys. Kalmoe shows that partisan identities motivated mass violence by ordinary citizens, not extremists, when activated by leaders and legitimated by the state. Similar processes also enabled partisans to rationalize staggering war casualties into predetermined vote choices, shaping durable political habits and memory after the war's end. Findings explain much about nineteenth century American politics, but the book also yields lessons for today, revealing the latent capacity of political leaders to mobilize violence.

1. An Introduction to Partisan Warfare
2. The Roots of Partisan Civil War
3. The Press Goes to War Elias Shammas, Timothy Klein, Nathan P. Kalmoe
4. Filling the Ranks
5. Election News during Wartime Elias Shammas, Timothy Klein, Nathan P. Kalmoe
6. Weighing the Dead
7. Partisan Stability & the Myth of Atlanta
8. Ghosts of the Civil War.

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP], American Civil War [HBWJ], History of the Americas [HBJK]