Introduction / Joel H. Silbey -- General themes. -- The political world of the antebellum presidents / Joel H. Silbey -- The expansionist impulse in antebellum America / Michael A. Morrison -- The rise of sectional tensions; parties, slavery and abolitionism / Nicole Etcheson -- The antebellum presidents and foreign policy / Jay Sexton -- The presidents. -- Martin Van Buren as party leader and at Jackson's right hand / M. Philip Lucas -- Van Buren and the economic collapse of the 1830s / Jonathan M. Atkins -- "Tippecanoe and Tyler too": William Henry Harrison and the rise of popular politics / William G. Shade -- President John Tyler, Henry Clay and the Whig Party / Edward Crapol -- James K. Polk and the Democratic Party / M.J. Heale -- Polk in office: domestic politics and policies / Paul Bergeron -- Polk as a war president / John Pinhiero -- Polk as a southern sectionalist / Michael Todd Landis -- Zachary Taylor in office: Clay, the Whig Party, and the sectional crisis / Michael J. Birkner -- Millard Fillmore, Whig politician and leader of his party / Damon Eubank -- President Fillmore and the taming of sectionalism / Elizabeth Varon -- Franklin Pierce, democratic partisan / Yonatan Eyal -- Franklin Pierce, the Kansas-Nebraska Bill and the political transformation of the mid-1850s / John F. Kim, Jr -- James Buchanan: the early political life of the old public functionary / Jean H. Baker -- James Buchanan, the slavocracy and the disruption of the Democratic Party / James Huston -- James Buchanan and the secession crisis / John Ashworth.