Books by Joel H. Silbey

A Companion to the Antebellum Presidents presents a series of original essays exploring our historical understanding of the role and legacy of the eight U.S. presidents who served in the significant period between 1837 and the start of the Civil War in 1861.

?[This book] makes an important and unusual contribution to historical interpretation of political conflict in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. It turns out that, based upon a more complete analysis of Congressional voting than has heretofore been accomplished, sectional bifurcations of national political conflict did not occur in the Congressional setting as early as historians like Avery Craven thought.?-American Academy of Political and Social Science. Annals

This is a detailed analysis and description of a unique era in American political history, one in which political parties were the dominant dynamic force at work structuring and directing the political world.