Invisible sovereign : imagining public opinion from the Revolution to Reconstruction / Mark G. Schmeller.
Schmeller, Mark G., 1967- author.
2016
E302.1 .S36 2016eb
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Title Invisible sovereign : imagining public opinion from the Revolution to Reconstruction / Mark G. Schmeller.
Author Schmeller, Mark G., 1967- author.
ISBN 9781421418704
1421418703
9781421418711 (electronic book)
Published Baltimore, MD : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016.
Language English
Description 1 online resource (252 pages) : illustrations.
Call Number E302.1 .S36 2016eb
Dewey Decimal Classification 303.3/80973
Summary "Even today, with sophisticated surveys and computer-produced margins of error, we have trouble gauging the elusive voice we call 'public opinion,' but no one questions its importance in a democracy. In this insightful new study, Mark G. Schmeller sets out to recreate or approximate the nature of public opinion between independence and the aftermath of Civil War and also examine what leading Americans thought about it. Where could one detect it? How might attitudes toward it, in the abstract and concrete, have changed in this eventful period? 'As Americans contested the meaning of this essentially contestable concept,' Schmeller explains, 'they expanded and contracted the horizons of political possibility and renegotiated the terms of political legitimacy.' He argues that what began life as something close to exceptionally American republican thought (and in a sense unchanging) became something far more malleable and subject to manipulation by means of stump-speech rhetoric, partisan newspapers, trumpeting of the importance of the self in the nineteenth century, etc. Crossing into so many discrete fields of historical research, this project has much potential as a synthesizing meta-narrative"-- Provided by publisher.
Bibliography, etc. Note Includes bibliographical references and index.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
Source of Description Description based on print version record.
Series New studies in American intellectual and cultural history.
Available in Other Form Invisible sovereign : imagining public opinion from the Revolution to Reconstruction.
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Introduction : public opinion and the American political imagination
The moral economy of opinion
The political economy of opinion
Partisan manufactories of public sentiment
The importance of having opinion
The fatal force of public opinion
Irrepressible conflicts, impending crises
Conclusion : corn-pone opinion
Essay on sources.

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