1. In the beginning -- The received legacy -- The revolution and the vote -- The states and the nation -- 2. Democracy ascendant -- The course of things -- Sources of expansion -- Ideas and arguments -- 3. Backsliding and sideslipping -- Women, African Americans, and Native Americans -- Paupers, felons, and migrants -- Democracy, the working class, and American exceptionalism -- A case in point: the war in Rhode Island -- 4. Know-nothings, radicals, and redeemers -- Immigrants and know-nothings -- Race, war, and reconstruction -- The strange odyssey of the Fifteenth Amendment -- The lesser effects of war -- The South redeemed -- 5. The redemption of the North -- Losing faith -- Purifying the electorate -- Two special cases -- Sovereignty and self-rule -- The new electoral universe -- 6. Women's suffrage -- From Seneca Falls to the Fifteenth Amendment -- Citizenship and taxes -- Regrouping -- Doldrums and democracy -- A mass movement -- The Nineteenth Amendment -- Aftermath -- 7. The quiet years -- Stasis and its sources -- Franklin Roosevelt and the death of Blackstone -- War and race -- "Our oldest national minority" -- 8. Breaking barriers -- Race and the second reconstruction -- Universal suffrage -- The value of the vote -- Two uneasy pieces -- Getting the electorate to the polls -- Conclusion: the project of democracy -- Appendix: State suffrage laws, 1775-1920.
|
