Introduction to the Project

The mid-nineteenth century is often viewed as the high point of American political engagement. Yet our understanding of that period has been incomplete, in part the result of an insufficient integration of social history with political history. Until now, conventional scholarship has been unable to fully interpret the influences operating or citizen participation in politics because the firm evidentiary base of individual-level political information was missing. The interpretive leap forward sparked by this project will change that unsatisfactory situation. Borrowing from a perspective emerging in contemporary political science -"the social logic of politics" - that emphasizes the significance of context for individual electoral decisions, this project will use sophisticated digital tools and surviving viva voce poll books to produce evidence-bassed answers to important unresolved questions about the socially contingent nature of our past political world. 'Unlocking the Social Logic of Past Politics' will be the first-ever study of cities using comprehensive individual-level political information. It adds value by studying two intriguingly different nineteenth century American cities -Alexandria, Virginia and Newport, Kentucky- which shared 3 common political form: all votes it all elections were cast by voice (viva voce). Poll books provided an official whiten record of the spoken declaration of every voter. Using those poll books along with censuses and other individual information (tax records, city directories, religious and organizational memberships) the project will reveal the networks and neighborhoods that under-pinned residents social and political lives. The analyses emerging from this wealth of data will inform political history, social history, urban history, political science, and sociology. With a rare interdisciplinary combination of data, methods, and theory, the project's collaborative team will use the unparalleled bank of information on individuals in the two cities to produce a stream of publications, conference presentations, co-authored articles, and an interpretive monograph.