Description
Book SynopsisHistorians have paid surprisingly little attention to state-level political leaders and judges. Edward Kent (180277) was both. He served three terms as a state legislator, two as mayor of Bangor, two as governor, and two as a judge of the state supreme court. He represented Maine in the negotiations that resolved the long-running northeastern border dispute between the United States and Great Britain and served for four years as the American consul in Rio de Janeiro. The foremost Whig in Maine state politics and later a Republican judge, Kent articulated classic Whig political views and carried them forward into his Whig-Republican jurisprudence. In examining Kent''s career as Maine''s quintessential Whig, An Exemplary Whig reveals his characteristically conservative Whig outlook, including an aversion toward disorder and a deep respect for law, for existing institutions, and for the wisdom of experience. Kent brought his conservative disposition into the Republican Party. He had no us
Trade ReviewIn this engaging biography of Edward Kent, a leading citizen of Bangor, Maine, David Gold reveals the quotidian texture of American public culture in the nineteenth century. Kent’s significance lies in his achievement of a life devoted to what the novelist George Eliot called the 'unmemorable acts' that contribute to 'the growing good of the world.' -- Andrew Cayton, Miami University
The partisan divisions of the Jacksonian era, the rise of the Republican Party in the 1850s, and the nature of the nineteenth-century legal system continue to puzzle American historians. What has long been deemed necessary are state and biographical studies that explore these themes in a local context. David Gold has produced such a work by this well-researched, learned, and intelligent examination of the political and legal career of Whig Edward Kent of Maine. Our field would be well served by more books based on Gold's model. -- Mitchell Snay, Denison University
David Gold has provided an exemplary study of an exemplary Whig, readable, insightful, and unusual in its attention to a lawyer and politician who achieved state rather than national prominence. He makes a notable contribution to our understanding of the 19th-century American Whig temperament. -- Michael Les Benedict, Emeritus, Ohio State University
Through David Gold’s writing Edward Kent emerges from the frontier of nineteenth-century Maine to teach us much about politics, law, and society in a transformative time in American history. -- Daniel D. Blinka, Marquette University
Gold effectively chronicles Governor Kent through adept mining of manuscript collections and, along with Robert J. Cook’s Civil War Senator: William Pitt Fessenden and the Fight to Save the American Republic (2011), illuminates nineteenth-century Maine politics. More work like Gold’s—investigating prototypical New England Democrats such as Levi Woodbury, Isaac Hill, and Isaac Toucey, for example—would greatly enrich our understanding of the antebellum political system. * Journal of American History *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Note on Citations Introduction Chapter 1. Education in Federalism Chapter 2. National Republican Legislator Chapter 3. Mayor of Bangor Chapter 4. Hell-Bent for Kent Chapter 5. “The True End of Government” Chapter 6. Running the Line Chapter 7. Negotiating the Northeastern Boundary Chapter 8. For Taylor and the Union Chapter 9. Consul in Rio Chapter 10. The Unholy Traffic Chapter 11. The Demise of the Whigs Chapter 12. The Rise of the Republicans Chapter 13. A Republican on the Bench Chapter 14. The Jurisprudence of Common Sense Chapter 15. The Last Whig Bibliography Index About the Author
