One vote…the decision of a single individual, can change the direction of the country. It can move an entire nation further into the dark or it can move it in the direction of curing inequities that evolved through decades of history. We live in a period of economic and political unrest and we believe it to be worse than at any time in our history…but it may not be! America’s two hundred plus years of existence has been one of turmoil, dissension, and war. It has been a time of alternating economic growth and stagnation. Each decade has found stalwarts and dissenters convinced that they, alone, have the best solution for the country’s ills. A surprising number of events that altered the country’s direction resulted from the vote of a single individual either in support of a change or opposed to it. Names such as James Bayard, Edmund Ross, and Joseph Bradley are unknown, but during their lifetimes, they altered the fabric or our nation as significantly as Americans whose names are more famous. This book, By One Vote, tells these stories. The events are factual; the dramatizations surrounding them are the studied imagination of the author.