The American Ballot Box in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

“The lore of the ballot box is unforgettable. Benselas rendering of it provides an excellent lesson in precision of description and, most important, it provides a picture we have unavailable in any other book I know of.” Civil War History

“Richard Bensel’s meticulous and perceptive investigation of how voters behaved on election day during the Civil War era is a very important book whose findings will offer little encouragement to ‘rational choice’ theorists or to policymakers currently engaged in democratic nation-building.” Michael Perman, University of Illinois at Chicago

“This study is fascinating and readable.” Political Science Quarterly, Howard W. Allen, Southern Illinois University, Cardbondale

“When historians and political scientists systematically began to explore the nineteenth-century voting universe about four or five decades ago, The American Ballot Box would have been extremely useful. That assertion in no way diminishes its contribution now, and the likelihood is that it will rekindle debates over such issues as the degree of fraud in those high-turnout elections and, at minimum, bring an expanded awareness to analysis of nineteenth-century elections…the value of a book that answers and raises so many questions cannot be underestimated. Would that this book was available many years ago; its appearance now is most welcome.” Ron Formisano, Register of the Kentucky Historical Society

“this is a provocative book, sure to have important consequences for how scholars interpret nineteenth-century politics.”
American Historical Review, Mark Voss-Hubbard

“This important and provocative book should be in the library of everyone interested in nineteenth-century American politics.” – Speculum Thomas E. Jeffrey, Rutgers University