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This chapter discusses the fall of the hustings and the rise of the platform after 1867. The first section notes the passing of Disreali's Second Reform Act, and the 1872 Act's abolishment of the ancient system of public nomination at the hustings. The second section documents the rise of the election meeting, the most important arena of untamed popular participation in politics. The third section describes the culture of election meetings. It notes that the primary purpose of an election meeting was to bring the candidate directly to the people. The last section examines the restructuring of electoral politics from 1883 to 1885. British electoral politics was transformed by measures passed by Gladstone's second ministry: the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act (1883), the Third Reform Act (1884), and the Redistribution Act (1885).

Despite losing control of their movement and enduring an invective-filled campaign, most liberal republicans remained in surprisingly good spirits after Grant's re-election in 1872. Political pressure had forced Grant to adopt some of the liberal republican positions during the 1872 campaign, such as continuing the funding of the Civil Service Commission, lowering some tariff rates, and passing the Amnesty Bill of 1872. Out of the ashes of defeat in 1872, the liberal republicans had achieved their objective of influencing the Republican Party in order to reform the nation and preserve its republican institutions.

This chapter examines the defeat of the Liberal Republicans in 1872, looking at opportunities and difficulties of third parties. The disadvantages of a third party took their toll on the Liberal Republicans, eventually leading to their defeat in November 1872. Internal divisions distracted them for the first crucial months of the campaign, when they had the initiative, and eventually robbed them of many of their original leaders. The Republicans learned how to enjoy the benefits of being an established, entrenched party by appropriating the Liberal Republicans' issues and bludgeoning them with money, power, and patronage. Despite orders and pleas from their national leaders, Democratic voters refused to support a long-time political enemy. As the November results came in, Greeley lamented to a friend that he was the worst beaten man that ever ran for high office.

This chapter focuses on the Liberal's defeat in 1874 and the disaffection of crucial sections of Liberal support. Nonconformists were opposed to the 1870 Education Act, the trade unions were hostile to the 1871 trade union legislation, and brewers and landlords were in uproar over the 1872 Licensing Act. In many ways this was closer to a later twentieth-century conception of politics as the reflection of the material interests of groups demanding favours from governments as the price of electoral support, than the more nuanced nature of mid-Victorian politics where the vote was not a bargaining chip but a badge of status, manhood, and independence. Disaffection rather than defections by organized labour accounted for the defeat of the Liberals, who actually managed to retain much of their strength in the Northern boroughs. It was not in the North, but in the southern shires and London that the Liberals lost the election.

Northern newspapers used the Klan to talk about the nature of citizenship, the expansion of the state, and their anxieties that the individual was subject to manipulation by an increasingly robust and centralized government and centralized newspaper press. The national conversation about the Klan largely occurred during two periods—the first from early 1868 through early 1869, the second from late 1870 through 1872—and the nature of the discussion differed dramatically between those two periods, revealing changing approaches to Klan violence. Throughout, it is striking how few articles on the Klan include descriptions and mentions of actual Klan attacks on freedpeople and their white allies. Rather, northern newspaper articles on the Klan became a way to reflect on broader issues. By the 1871 and 1872, northern newspapers had adopted a strikingly sympathetic posture to Ku-Klux, who they increasingly portrayed as victims of federal aggression rather than as perpetrators of attacks on freedpeople.

Klan denial remained remarkably persistent throughout and after the Klan period. As reams of testimony and massive stores of physical evidence of Klan violence poured into Washington, D.C., not only Democrats but sometimes even Republicans expressed regular doubt about its authenticity. Yet this was a period of great growth in professional journalism, and the reports newspapers were providing were of unprecedented quality and detail. Federal and state governments’ information-gathering mechanisms likewise expanded during this period, partly in order to deal with the challenge of proving the existence of the Klan. The image of the Klan as at once apparent and invisible, and the status of Klan accounts as detailed and rigorously documented yet also incredible, was a productive feature of Klan discourse. The very ambiguity of the Klan’s status played an important role in the reconciliation of North and South.

At the end of 1861, rain storms caused flooding in Los Angeles that wrought havoc over private and public property leaving behind plenty of financial and emotional distress. During the following summer, the flood waters gave way to drought. This chapter examines how these ecological events affected the social, political, cultural, and spatial equality that existed in Los Angeles from that time to the 1872 election. By 1872, a steady rise in immigration from the United States had tipped the demographic balance, supplementing the spatial advantages ensured by the skewed ward system. With the privilege of hindsight, there is temptation to view the 1872 election as a moment of local realignment after which Mexican Angelenos faced significant obstacles in negotiating their place in the city and in shaping the city's future.

The sixth chapter shows northern evangelicals preoccupied during Grant’s presidency with managing various cultural, social, and political forces centrifugally threatening the Union. Their larger vision for national Christian oneness continued to subsume the ex-slaves. This was evident in several ways: first, many looked to the cohesive, homogenizing power that evangelicalism promised to provide the large and growing republic; second, predisposed to see Reconstruction end, particularly following the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, northern evangelicals were convinced that they had one of their own in the White House and thus supported Grant during the 1872 election against Liberal Republicans; and third, they regarded him as an ally when it came to addressing the potential threat offered by Native Americans and Roman Catholics. By the end of Grant’s presidency, the Union appeared restored, the nation had just celebrated its centennial, prosperity and oneness seemed to abound, and Americans felt at peace.

This chapter deals with samba in the nineteenth century, when the word began to be used to designate a popular Afro-Brazilian amusement that included music, dance, and sung poetry. The first references to samba point to its existence in “provinces of the ‘North,’” such as in Pernambuco, Ceará, and Bahia (today, these states pertain to the Northeast region), and especially in rural areas. We find a growing number of sources starting in the 1870s that reference samba in Rio de Janeiro, which was then the capital of Brazil. Brazilian novels from the late nineteenth century are favored sources for understanding the path taken by samba prior to its association with Carnival and recorded music. During this period, samba replaced genres such as lundu, batuque, cateretê, and Brazilian fado as Brazilian folk music and dance par excellence.

Chapter Three begins to assess the impact of the temperance movement on public attitudes and regulation. It focuses on the new forms of drink regulation established between 1864 and 1872 with a particular concern for the Licensing Act 1872, the basis of much current alcohol regulation. It argues that the campaigns of the teetotal temperance movement were significant in instigating and legitimating the expansion of legal restrictions over the drinks trade. Furthermore, connections are identified between teetotal temperance ideas and the qualitative character of the system of alcohol regulation implemented in this period. The orthodox historical view that the temperance movement accomplished little is thus challenged.

This chapter examines black participation in state level elections from the late 1860s and concludes with the controversies surrounding the 1872 presidential election. During these elections, African Americans increasingly questioned their electoral loyalty to the Republican Party and discussed potential alternatives.

This chapter mainly focuses on the use of narco-analysis tests on accused/suspects during the investigation and its legality in the country. Although tests like narco-analysis do not have any legal validity, as the responses or confessions from a semi-conscious person are not admissible in court, these tests are still undertaken by the police during investigations. The tests are not 100 per cent accurate. The chapter discusses about the process of the narco-analysis test and discusses its legality under the provisions of the Constitution of India and various other legislations enforced in India, such as the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (CrPC) and Indian Evidence Act, 1872. Further, it critically assesses the narco-analysis test in terms of its adverse effects on one’s health, the accuracy of the test, violation of rights, and mental torture. The narco-analysis test may be a useful and viable tool for investigation and to find information in a potential case rather than using third-degree or custodial violence by the police, but it should also not violate the right of the accused as guaranteed by the Constitution.