The right to vote: the contested history of democracy in the United States

Preface to the Revised Edition

Preface to the Original Edition

Introduction

Part I. The Road to Partial Democracy. 1. In the Beginning. The received legacy ; The Revolution and the vote ; The states and the nation

2. Democracy Ascendant. The course of things ; Sources of expansion ; Ideas and arguments

3. Backsliding and Sideslipping. Women, African Americans, and Native Americans ; Paupers, felons, and migrants ; Registration and immigration ; Democracy, the working class, and American exceptionalism ; A case in point : The war in Rhode Island

Part II. Narrowing the Portals. 4. Know-Nothings, Radicals, and Redeemers. Immigrants and Know-Nothings ; Race, war, and Reconstruction ; The strange odyssey of the Fifteenth Amendment ; The lesser effects of war ; The South redeemed

5. The Redemption of the North. Losing faith ; Purifying the electorate ; Two special cases ; Sovereignty and self-rule ; The new electoral universe

6. Women's Suffrage. From Seneca Falls to the Fifteenth Amendment ; Citizenship and taxes ; Regrouping ; Doldrums and democracy ; A mass movement ; The Nineteenth Amendment ; Aftermath

Part III. Toward Universal Suffrage - and Beyond. 7. The Quiet Years. Stasis and its sources ; Franklin Roosevelt and the death of Blackstone ; War and race ; "Our oldest national minority"

8. Breaking Barriers. Race and the Second Reconstruction ; Universal suffrage ; The value of the vote ; Two uneasy pieces ; Getting the electorate to the polls

9. The Story Unfinished. November 2000 ; What is to be done? ; Helping Americans vote ; Crime and punishment ; Suppression and fraud ; Boundaries of competence ; A constitutional right to vote ; November 2008

Conclusion : The Project of Democracy

Appendix, State suffrage laws, 1775-1920

List of tables

Appendix sources

Notes

Index.