The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It is a 1948 book by Richard Hofstadter, an account of the ideology of previous Presidents of the United States and other political figures.
Contents
Hofstadter wrote the book with the support of a fellowship from his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., which was "awarded to projects containing the promise of trustworthy scholarship combined with literary distinction of the kind that means some breadth of appeal."
Hofstadter's introduction argues that the major political traditions in the United States, despite contentious battles, have all "shared a belief in the rights of property, the philosophy of economic individualism, the value of competition ... [T]hey have accepted the economic virtues of a capitalist culture as necessary qualities of man."
The book describes the Emancipation Proclamation as having "had all the moral grandeur of a bill of lading" and "declar[ing] free all slaves ... precisely where its effect could not reach." This is not the view held by at least one more recent scholar of the Emancipation Proclamation.