Political partisanship in the American middle colonies, 1700-1776

the long version

In this impressive study of the origins of the American party system, Benjamin H. Newcomb applies the "new" political history -- especially quantitative methodology -- to political activity in the colonies of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania from 1700 to the beginning of the Revolution. Close analysis of a great array of sources leads him to conclude that political partisanship was much stronger, more extensive, and more enduring in the middle fifty years of the eighteenth century than historians have heretofore believed. Newcomb supports his case primarily through exploration of statistical data derived from legislative roll-call votes, biographical information on legislators, censuses, poll lists, wills, and other public documents. He clearly presents the quantitative information in a series of thirty-four brief tables throughout the text, and he explains the details of his methods in three appendixes. He finds that middle-colony politics was not conducted by factions or by a few oligarchs dominating a deferential electorate, but by real parties that were forerunners of, and shared many attributes with, nineteenth-century mass political parties. - Jacket flap.