The Presidency and the American State

Leadership and Decision Making in the Adams, Grant, and Taft Administrations

Stephen J. Rockwell

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9780813950075
• eBook ISBN: 9780813950099
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

Although many associate Franklin D. Roosevelt with the inauguration of the robust, dominant American presidency, the roots of his executive leadership style go much deeper. Examining the presidencies of John Quincy Adams, Ulysses S. Grant, and William Howard Taft, Stephen Rockwell traces emerging connections between presidential action and a robust state over the course of the nineteenth century and the Progressive Era.

By analyzing these three undervalued presidents' savvy deployment of state authority and their use of administrative leadership, legislative initiatives, direct executive action, and public communication, Rockwell makes a compelling case that the nineteenth-century presidency was significantly more developed and interventionist than previously thought. As he shows for a significant number of policy arenas, the actions of Adams, Grant, and Taft touched the lives of millions of Americans and laid the foundations of what would become the American century.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Choices within the State, 1776–1930: Process, Principled Innovation, and Synthesis
• 2. President John Quincy Adams and the American State in the 1820s
• 3. Presidential Decision Making and the Administrative State: Process and Procedure in the 1820s
• 4. President Grant and the American State after the Civil War
• 5. Presidential Decision Making and the Evolving State: Grant, Reconstruction, and Indian Affairs
• 6. President Taft and the 125-Year-Old American State
• 7. Taft the Builder
• Conclusion: The Non-Development of the American Presidency and the New Scholarship of the American State
• Bibliographical Essay: The American State and the Understudied Presidency
• Notes
• Index