The Line of Duty

?In clear and concise prose, Shields provides a unique study of selected members of the House of Representatives, 1836-60. Although the author discusses party regulars, her focus is upon mavericks, or party-affiliated nonconformists. Using voting records and the columns of the Congressional Globe as well as additional sources, Shields identifies 84 political mavericks. They include well-known men--John Quincy Adams, Alexander H. Stephens, Joshua Giddings, and David Wilmot-- as well as less familiar figures.... Shields demonstrates that, more often than not, mavericks were southerners and Democrats rather than northerners, Whigs, or Republicans. The author feels that their values of individualism and self-assertiveness, in part the results of an acceptance of 18th-century concepts of elitism, compelled these mavericks to react against the centralizing tendencies evident in antebellum political and social culture. Tables, appendixes, and bibliography complement the texrt.?-Choice