| This dissertation examines Georgia politics and parties from the 1820s through secession. Chapters I and II discuss antebellum Georgia society and chart state party development through the landmark 1840 election. The peculiar nature of the Georgia Whig party is particularly emphasized. Chapter III completes the discussion of economic issues and considers the political impact of Texas annexation. The Mexican War and the emerging controversy over slavery in the territories are the main subjects of Chapter IV Chapters V and VI offer an overview which summarizes and explains the institutional operations and social bases of Georgia's Jacksonian party system. The narrative resumes in Chapter VII with the crisis of 1850 and the destruction of the Georgia Whig party. Chapter VIII details the escalation of the sectional conflict between the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the defeat of the Lecompton constitution. Chapter IX explores the dynamics of Georgia's secession from the Union in January 1861. The dissertation draws upon a wide variety of sources, ranging from manuscripts and newspapers to voting statistics, census figures, and a database of antebellum Georgia legislators.;The major argument, among many others, is that although the Georgia Jacksonian parties rested largely upon local and state roots, national issues truly defined party alignments. The importance of understanding the Georgia parties as Southern parties is also a significant theme. The nullification crisis transformed old factional alignments into a new party system. Democrats and State Rights men battled through the 1830s, clashing sharply on some economic issues, before the State Rights party joined the national Whigs in 1840 and fully integrated state parties into the national party system. The parties debated national banks and tariffs during the early 1840s, but after 1844 the question of how best to protect slavery overshadowed all other political concerns. The crisis of 1850 shattered Georgia Whiggery and led to a decade of Democratic dominance. The fight between Georgia's wing of the national Democracy and the disorganized state Opposition continued down to 1861, when white Georgians sacrificed one precious institution, the Union, to save another, slavery. |
