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Professor Zinman Publishes New Book
September 25, 2024
James Madison receives a lot of scholarly attention for being an architect of the Constitution and a politician in the early American republic. He was elected president in 1808 as an heir apparent to Thomas Jefferson, but his efforts to win a second term faced a lot of challenges. Now Donald Zinman has produced the first ever book on the presidential election of 1812, which was the first American contest conducted in the midst of a war. Madison had vulnerabilities, but he also held the advantages of incumbency, boosted by wartime jingoism. Anti-war and Federalist opponents of the president were unable to execute on potential opportunities to defeat Madison. The election campaign of 1812 revealed that some of the same lessons of American politics were just as applicable then as they are today.