Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Mark E. Neely, Jr. vividly recounts the surprising story of political conflict in the North during the Civil War. Examining party conflict as viewed through the lens of the developing war, the excesses of party patronage, the impact of wartime elections, the highly partisan press, and the role of the loyal opposition, Neely deftly dismantles the argument long established in Civil War scholarship that the survival of the party system in the North contributed to its victory.

This book is the first to place the contemporary debate over media bias in historical context, illustrating how partisan bias in the American media has built political parties, set the stage for several wars, and even contributed to the rise and fall of U.S. presidents. The author discusses the rise of the unprecedented post-World War II model of objective journalism and explains why this model is breaking down under the challenge of a new generation of technology-driven partisan media alternatives.

Lincoln and the Democrats describes the vexatious behavior of a two-party system in war and points to the sound parts of the American system which proved to be the country's salvation: local civic pride, and quiet nonpartisanship in mobilization and funding for the war, for example. While revealing that the role of a noxious 'white supremacy' in American politics of the period has been exaggerated - as has the power of the Copperheads - Neely revives the claim that the Civil War put the country on the road to 'human rights', and also uncovers a previously unnoticed tendency toward deceptive and impractical grandstanding on the Constitution during war in the United States.

Henry Watterson (1840–1921), editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal from the 1860s through WWI, was one of the most important and widely read newspaper editors in American history. An influential New South supporter of sectional reconciliation and economic development, Watterson was also the nation’s premier advocate of free trade and globalization. Watterson’s vision of a prosperous and independent South within an expanding American empire was unique among prominent Southerners and Democrats. He helped articulate the bipartisan embrace of globalization that accompanied America’s rise to unmatched prosperity and world power. Daniel S. Margolies restores Watterson to his place at the heart of late nineteenth-century southern and American history by combining biographical narrative with an evaluation of Watterson’s unique involvement in the politics of free trade and globalization.

Here is the first full-length biography of Herbert Croly (1869-1930), one of the major American social thinkers of the twentieth century. David W. Levy explains the origins and impact of Croly's penetrating analysis of American life and tells the story of a career that included his founding of one of the most influential journals of the period, The New Republic, in 1914 and his writing of The Promise of American Life (1909), a landmark in the history of American ideas. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Richard A. Schwarzlose's long-awaited two-volume The Nation's Newsbrokers makes a major contribution to the history of journalism in the United States. Schwarzlose traces the development of the Associated Press and the predecessors of United Press International from scattered beginnings in the 1840s to their emergence as a mature national institution in the World War I era. Volume 2 studies the rapid growth of intercity news gathering and distribution after the Civil War, including the deterioration into collusion among newsbrokers, and changes in technology and reporting within the context of attempts to monopolize the flow of information.

Four men joined the Catholic Church in the mid-1840s: a soldier, his bishop brother, a priest born a slave and an editor. For the next two decades they were in the thick of the battles of the era--Catholicism versus Know-Nothingism, slavery versus abolition, North versus South. Much has been written about the Catholic Church and about the Civil War. This book is the first in more than half a century to focus exclusively on the intersection of these two topics.