Dominion of Memories

Susan Dunn. Dominion of Memories: Jefferson, Madison, & the Decline of Virginia. New York: Basic Books, 2007.

In this short and readable volume, Dunn recounts the sad, and largely self-inflicted, decline of Virginia in the first several decades of American independence. This decline was multifaceted--economic, political, cultural, and demographic.

The largest and most powerful of the thirteen colonies, Virginia and Virginians naturally assumed a leadership role early in the American Revolution, and it would not cede that status for several decades. One Virginian would lead the Continental Army, and another would write the Declaration of Independence. Later, yet another Virginian would lead the effort to craft a new Constitution, and George Washington would return to public service as the first President of the Country once that Constitution was ratified--thus beginning a near-lock on the leadership of the new country. Most students of American history are familiar with the "Virginia dynasty" which ruled the White House for 32 of the first 36 years under the new government--even as yet another Virginian was defining the previously-vague status of the Supreme Court.

That is all fairly well-known to any casual student of American history. What is somewhat less well-known, and much less edifying, is the subsequent decline of Virginia in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The land, particularly in the older eastern regions, became depleted from over-farming, excessive tobacco cultivation, and inefficient agricultural practices. The relative population declined as other states grew in population faster, and as more and more Virginians fled their unproductive farmlands for opportunities to the west and to the south. The economy faltered as the continued reliance on agriculture bypassed the growing commercial and industrial possibilities of the dynamic economy.

Virginia's political leadership exacerbated the situation at nearly every turn; choosing to resist making the sort of structural changes which would have encouraged entrepreneurial development, and resisting any active governmental support for infrastructure or education. Ultimately, a limited public-private system for supporting internal improvements was adopted, but it was far too meager and suspect to political interests to be effective. And the resistance to funding public schools kept Virginians far less educated and literate than the citizens of the more dynamic, growing northern and western states which were supplanting her once-dominant role in national affairs.

The subtext to much of this reactionary stubbornness was slavery, the defense of which (in the opinion of the eastern slave-holding elite, who held disproportionate power under the undemocratic state Constitution) merited constant sacrifice of state expenditures on measures which might facilitate the rise of a capable middle class which could challenge for suffrage and more. Not to mention an increasingly state's rights position regarding the Federal government.

Much of this backwardness was inflicted on the state and its people by the second generation of Virginia politicians; men like John Randolf of Roanoke and Abel Upshur. However, Dunn is more interested in how the ultimately self-defeating justifications of these reactionary theorists for trapping Virginia in a static deference to an imagined idyllic past were grounded in some--not all, but some--of the writings and arguments of two of the Old Dominion's finest Founders; Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

Jefferson and Madison had their differences, even though they were allies for most of their public careers, but they shared a tendency to vacillate between being optimistic, forward-thinking nationalists, and pessimistic, backward-looking Virginia provincialism. The role the two men played in creating the Union that later states-rights politicians would try to destroy was often betrayed by their failure to reckon with the damaged and corrosive effects that their flirtations with nullification, limited government, and the protection of slavery would work on their beloved native state.
Dunn finishes the book with an epilogue bringing the story into contemporary times, arguing that it is not too late for Virginia--and America--to choose between the two conflicting visions Jefferson and Madison embodied and articulated.

Interpretations of American History, Volume 1

Gerald N. Grob and George Athan Billias, eds. Interpretations of American History, Volume 1 to 1877, Patterns and Perspectives. New York: The Free Press, 1967

This is the first of two volumes of what is somewhat of a classic of American historiography--a brief summary and sampling of shifting interpretations of some key eras and topics in American history. Written for college undergraduates, this collection is actually a decent introduction or survey for anybody wanting to get a quick overview of some key arguments in the literature.

There are nine chapters; each with an introduction by the editors followed by three selections from the historiography discussed. The first, an "Introduction", discusses general approaches historians have taken in explaining American institutions and historical development. Each chapter after that covers a particular chronological era in American history, beginning with the Puritan settling of New England (there is not a comparable chapter on the founding of the Chesapeake colonies, or any other for that matter). There is a lot of selectivity involved, but given that the editors wished to cover such a large time frame in one book that could not have been otherwise.

One welcome feature of this series--while the first volume goes through 1877, the second volume actually begins in 1865; the final chapter from volume 1 on Reconstruction is repeated in the second volume as the first volume. This repetition reflects an awareness that the Reconstruction era was both a coda to the Civil War and a precursor to events in the Gilded Age.

The chronological approach has limitations, however. This approach obviously precludes any consideration of thematic histories or other issues which transcend particular, widely-accepted 'eras' in American history. There is no chapter on slavery, for example, or on gender. There are no general discussions of economic history, transportation, or any other facet of national development in the nearly three century period this volume encompasses. Then again, this approach does realistically reflect the way in which general and undergraduate students will experience American history.

Although it was published nearly five decades ago, this book is still a handy reference and a reliable guide to some of the most contentious and fundamental arguments in American historiography.

The Victorian Internet

Tom Standage. The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers. New York: Berkley Books, 1998.

Standage published this brief popular history of the rise and fall of the telegraph with an obvious focus on the parallels between the "Victorian internet" and the modern internet which was still a novelty for most of the public in the late 90s. As a science and technology journalist, he was most interested in how then-contemporary events mirrored an earlier communications revolution that first created a 'wired' world. His interest, then, was somewhat cautionary; although he doesn't belabor the point, he clearly wishes to warn technophiles not to go overboard with expectations about what changes the internet could--and likely would--bring forth.

That is not to say that this is bad history; Standage is a fine writer with a journalist's eye for telling detail and interest-grabbing anecdotes, but he also knows enough to ground both the beginning and the end of telegraphy's 'golden age' in prior and subsequent developments. This is still a story of change over time, grounded in facts derived from primary sources.

Therefore, while there might be little deep historical analysis, the essential narrative here is clear and concise; for readers who just need a brief outline of the basics of the history of what was once the communications wonder of the world, this somewhat dated but still enjoyable book will serve admirably.

Mapping the Nation

Susan Schulten. Mapping the Nation: History and Cartography in Nineteenth-Century America. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012.

Schulten's short book is tied to an online supplement, http://www.mappingthenation.com/, and given that the subject of the book is the rise of historical mapping and thematic cartography in nineteenth-century America, it is best appreciated by frequent reference to the many visually arresting maps on the website. If this was a cost-saving measure, it was a wise one as it would have greatly increased the price of the book to include full-color reproductions of all the images included.

The book is divided into two parts, "Mapping the Past" and "Mapping the Present." Part one recounts the rise of the concept of the "historical atlas" not just as a way to document the past of maps but a way for a new nation to create a historical "national" past. The collection of older maps, then, became a way to validate the territorial pretenses of the United States.

Part two recounts the rise of thematic mapping, and its role in creating a national perspective for Americans and their government. The rise of statistical study to produce raw data and new ways to quantify reality, the development of lithography which allowed for the fast and affordable reproduction of maps for a broad audience, and various national crises (including the issue of slavery, the Civil War, epidemic disease outbreaks, Westward expansion and the fate of American Indians) promoted the rise of new, map-oriented experts who sought to create maps that both illustrated reality and served as tools of inquiry.

A little-appreciated aspect of American history which is well served by the author. Highly recommended.

The Internal Enemy

Alan Taylor. The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013.

Alan Taylor's last two books--The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies, and The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution, were both excellent examples of borderland history. Given that this book is set in Virginia, at the heart of the early American Republic, it may seem that his latest work has moved on from that emphasis. But the "Virginia" of the title is really, in many ways, the Chesapeake watershed, and the larger time frame of the title actually frames the much more condensed period when the core of this books' action takes place--the War of 1812. Taylor recounts the history of the British military policy of accepting--and eventually seeking out and encouraging--runaway slaves as military strategy. First tried on a limited scale towards the end of the Revolution, the policy was revived during the War of 1812. The policy had enormous repercussions both for enslaved people and for white Virginians far out of proportion to the actual number of slaves who did manage to escape. This is, in other words, a different kind of "borderland history"--one where the frontier was waterborne, but also where the zone of interaction involved not only competing sovereign entities but also conflicting notions of freedom.

Taylor makes clear the extent to which slaves in the Chesapeake region had intimate knowledge of the regional terrain, as well as nocturnal freedom of movement within their larger neighborhoods that their white owners and neighbors neither fully understood nor controlled. Slaves, forced to work under supervision and duress during the daytime, took advantage of nighttime darkness to carry out visits to neighboring farms and plantations to maintain family ties and other relationships, as well as to carry out social and religious functions and obtain extra foodstuffs and other supplies through theft, pilfering, and other covert means.

Because of this--as well as the fact that many slaves were employed as fishermen, pilots, and sailors--runaway slaves had real military value to the British forces patrolling the Chesapeake. The British sought not only to maintain a blockade, but also to engage in constant raiding in order to acquire needed supplies as well as demoralize and punish Virginian Republicans. Regarding the latter--the British commanders were able to obtain detailed information about the political loyalties of individual Americans, and therefore could choose to punish Republicans for presumably supporting the war effort while sparing Federalists who presumably opposed it. This divide-and-conquer strategy sought to pacify the local population, many of whom were distressed at the failure of the Federal government to provide protection, and thereby undermine American resolve.

This strategy heavily relied on the help of runaway slaves for information, scouting, and providing guidance through tangled waterways and hidden pathways through the countryside. But while the British initially only wanted a handful of individual slaves, particularly pilots, the slaves themselves had other ideas. Family ties were very important to slaves, and given that the declining economy in Virginia had hastened the breakup of slave families through sales of individual slaves further west and south, many slaves realized that if they did not rescue their family members right away, their families could be split apart for good.

So the impetus to escape as family units rather than as individuals was not only strong, it was urgent. The British eventually made a positive of the situation, embracing the idea that all runaways became free once they reached the 'sovereign territory' of a British warship as both a moral good and excellent propaganda to use against the hypocritical Americans, who claimed to fight for freedom while doing everything in their power to keep their slaves from achieving freedom for themselves.

Eventually, the British commanders in the area would create a special corps of marines from these runaways, a military unit which fought with great effectiveness and contributed greatly to British success in the region--culminating in the sack of Washington, DC.

The larger story Taylor tells is how these events fueled the pathological fears of slave revolts which were a constant subtext to Virginia's slave-holding culture, and which eventually doomed emancipation in the state and led more and more white Virginians to silence and abandon earlier qualms about the institution in favor of a more hardline pro-slavery stance, or at least a cynical accommodation to its continued necessity. Only a few thousand slaves managed to escape to the British during this time, but the psychological blow to white Virginians sense of security--as well as to the comforting myths of slaves as docile, content, and weak--was immense.

Charles Fenton Mercer and the Trial of National Conservatism

Douglas R. Egerton. Charles Fenton Mercer and the Trial of National Conservatism. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1989.

This is the only full-length biography of 19th century Virginia politician Charles Fenton Mercer. Born in 1778, Mercer was a younger generation Federalist-turned-Whig who represented Loudoun County in the House of Delegates and then a northern Virginia district including Loudoun and surrounding counties in the US House of Representatives from 1817 through 1839. He was an important political figure at the time, and Egerton notes that he had an impressive legislative record given that he spent most of his career as a member of a minority party who was usually at odds with majority sentiment in his home state.

Egerton argues that Mercer was an exemplary Whig, perhaps truer to the core principles of the party than more famous figures such as Henry Clay. This was partly due to his ideological and political integrity, and partly to the fact that he represented a "safe" district and could afford to go against the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian majority. His understanding of what would become the American System was nuanced and refined--he saw internal improvements, central banking, a protective tariff, public education, and the colonization of free African-Americans not as disparate economic or reform agendas but as complementary aspects of a comprehensive system.

This system, Egerton argues, was fundamentally conservative. He argues that the modern reinterpretation of the Whigs as optimistic proto-liberals is deeply flawed, and he uses this study of the life and career of this deeply pessimistic, even fatalistic, man to make that argument. Largely, he succeeds--Mercer's statist conservatism accommodated democracy and the "common man" in rhetoric but not in substance. Egerton notes that Mercer's interest in education was as a form of social control of the lower classes--Mercer sensed the social changes that industrialization would bring, and he feared them. Likewise, African colonization of free blacks was not in any way an exercise in nascent abolitionism (no matter what Mercer's often vicious Southern critics often charged), but rather an attempt to rather crudely purge the black "lower class" from American society.

Mercer's political career is noteworthy in Virginia history for his role in the creation of the Fund for Internal Improvements and the Board of Public Works, and nationally for the creation of the American Colonization Society. He fought many losing battles, and seemingly died feeling himself a failure, but in this book Egerton largely succeeds in extracting a larger story about the way in which American conservatism survived the collapse of Federalism and adjusted to the democratic realities of the first half of the nineteenth century.

The Rise of American Democracy

Sean Wilentz. The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005.

Wilentz has written a history of the development and evolution of the American ideal of democracy over the course of several decades that simultaneously covers a lot of ground while in same ways remaining narrow in focus. The time span is implied in the subtitle--From the rise of Thomas Jefferson the election and inauguration of Abraham Lincoln.

After a brief consideration of the Federalist period immediately after ratification of the Constitution, the focus shifts to the Jefferson administration and how the Jeffersonian Republicans coped with their own ideological assumptions--forged in political battles with the Federalists and the conservative hierarchies they represented--as well as with the lingering "country" and "city" democracies which had been stirred up by the Revolution and which continued to flare up from time to time in response to political shifts. The book traces this democratic heritage through the decline of the Federalists, the split between "Democratic" and "National" Republicans, and onto the rise of the Jacksonian Democracy. 

Jackson looms large in this book, which in some ways appears to be Wilentz’s attempt to defend and update Schlesinger’s Age of Jackson for the 21^st century. Although Wilentz is sympathetic to the racial (and, to a much lesser degree, gender) inequities inherent in Jacksonian Democracy, he spends a lot more time defending Jackson’s legacy than in critiquing it, and Old Hickory and his political heirs (Martin Van Buren could not complain too much about his treatment here) generally get the benefit of the doubt in any political battle or ideological conflict.

That said, Wilentz does give the Whigs a more sympathetic hearing than he afforded the Federalists, and acknowledges that the Jacksonians managed to neither fully encompass the democratic yearnings of their era nor address the logical inconsistencies in some of their actions and beliefs.

Hovering over all of this was the institution of slavery and the questions it raised about the meaning and the limits of American democracy. Those contradictions and challenges would ultimately destroy the Whig party completely and split the Democracy in two.

If not already clear, it should be noted that the way in which this hefty study is narrow in focus is this—Wilentz has written an unapologetically political history of the period, which means that it is top-down in focus and pays little mind to the broader tapestry of social and cultural history. While perhaps unfashionable, this is appropriate given Wilentz’s assertion that 19^th century Americans located the center of their social and cultural arguments within the political realm. Politics were central to questions of what it meant to be American. It was a different world than the one we live in, and we can only begin to understand it if we try to see it as contemporaries did.