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

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.

Nathan P. Kalmoe is Associate Professor of Political Communication at Louisiana State University. He is author of Neither Liberal nor Conservative: Ideological Innocence in the American Public (with Donald Kinder) and over a dozen academic articles about public opinion and political communication. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and other popular outlets. Kalmoe was recognized with the Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Scholar Award and is proud to be an award-winner teacher (Tiger Athletic Foundation Teaching Award).