America's Jubilee

Andrew Burstein. America's Jubilee: How A Generation Remembered Fifty Years of Independence.
Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.

Burstein first follows the path taken by the Marquis de Lafayette during his extensive tour of the United States in 1824 and 1825. This famous trip found the aged French hero of the Revolution greeted by adoring crowds, former colleagues and soldiers who had served under him, visiting politicians and legislators, being feted and honored, and also being reunited with Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. The meaning of this trip to Americans--a chance to see the last living general of the Revolution, and an opportunity to witness one of the last living links to that founding struggle on the eve of their nation's 50th year anniversary--would be amplified and reinforced in the months to come as the country prepared to celebrate its "Jubilee".

Burstein then "travels" around the United States of 1826 in a similar roving fashion, but does so mostly to examine the lives and reflections of a diverse group of Americans, some of whom were obscure in their own time, others--such as William Wirt--who were important people, names of consequence, in their own era but have since largely been forgotten.

The result is a book which is more episodic than deeply thematic, and which truly seems to be more a work of portraiture than deep analysis--but that is not a complaint. Burnstein's research takes him from New Orleans to Cincinnati to rural Massachusetts and into Canada. His selection of Americans is eclectic, and he has done excellent work bringing them alive and finding broader meaning and resonance in their disparate stories.

The way in which the narrative returns to the "famous" by finishing with the infamous passings of Jefferson and Adams on the very day of the Jubilee--and an extended consideration of the ways in which the two approached aging and their reconciliation--is effective. This book won't challenge any existing historical arguments, because it isn't really making one. But it brings a particular moment in American history alive, in a way which allows the reader to grasp the texture of life, the mental world of the second generation of Americans, with impressive clarity.

The Elusive Republic

Drew R. McCoy. The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America.
University of North Carolina Press, 1980.

One aspect of 18th and 19th century America which is somewhat foreign to modern readers is the concept of "political economy". The idea that politics and economics are two distinct spheres of activity and expertise is so deeply embedded in modern discourse, and so near-universally accepted at face value, it takes a bit of a conceptual leap for 21st century readers to appreciate that for early Americans, the distinction between the two simply didn't exist.

One important condition which dictated the earlier understanding of a political economy was the ideology of Republicanism and the demands it placed on citizens and office holders. The Republican ideology was concerned with the overall development of society, not merely the legal and constitutional order. In order to reconstruct that mentality, McCoy begins with a discussion of the concepts of social decay and corruptions, which obsessed Enlightenment-era thinkers and statesmen. These notions were bound up in natural science as understood at the time, and posited a natural life-cycle for nations and societies. So much of the Republican ideology was based on the desire to avoid corruption and also to delay the "aging" of a society towards old age and decadence.

Therefore, corruption wasn't only caused by bad actors or abuse of power; it was also the result of an unbalanced economy which failed to provide a rough equality for all citizens; an equality which, it was generally accepted, was best provided through widespread land ownership by independent farmers practicing self-sufficiency, home manufacture of necessities, and only a very limited involvement in the market for manufactured goods which were not "luxuries" as defined at the time.

The commercial revolution which early America experienced (along with the British) therefore challenged Republican notions, as it provided numerous opportunities for ordinary citizens to be tempted to engage in "corrupting" economic practices, even as it created the conditions for an increase in speculative business and a more diversified economy.

Throughout the Federalist years, the Jeffersonians perceived threats to the Republic from the Hamiltonian agenda, but once the election of 1800 gave them control over the national government, their own beliefs were constantly challenged by the ways in which the global economy refused to behave in ways republican theory said they should. Most notably, American independence did not translate to fully free trade for American exports, which hurt the US economy but also threatened to create an agricultural surplus which would deprive farmers of the necessary incentive for continued labor and diligence. Or, worse, would create the conditions favorable for large-scale manufacturing and the wage-earning poor who provided the labor for that.

Over the years, through the Madison administration and beyond, the Jeffersonian vision changed to adopt to new situations. Thomas Jefferson himself never moved beyond his agrarian ideal more than absolutely necessary (as he understood it); more problematic was his refusal to reckon with slavery and its cost to his republican ideal. James Madison, on the other hand, was able to consider different ways in which society would need to adjust in order to maintain republican principles even as changing conditions, the inevitable peopling of the vast but finite lands to the west, and the equally inevitable growth of the manufacturing sector, all worked in tandem to change the world in ways that the republicans of the Revolutionary era had considered crucial and necessary.

The Wages of Whiteness

David R. Roediger. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class
Verso, 1991, 2007 (Second Edition)

Roediger addresses one glaring shortcoming of a purely materialist interpretation of nineteenth-century working class racism from a Marxist perspective. This study examines the shortcomings of regarding such racism as being primarily either a reaction to perceived job competition or an ideological device used to divide the working class on behalf of the rising capitalist class. Roediger argues that the former ignores the degree to which "whiteness" was a key element of white labor's image of itself, and the latter for denying the agency with which the white working class often defined itself explicitly as "white."

It is the latter point which is more important here. Roediger acknowledges that there was certainly a "pre-history" of whiteness as a self-conscious identity prior to the antebellum period, but the colonial era was also marked by a great deal of deference and social hierarchy along with the degradation of indentured servitude to mitigate against "whiteness" becoming a fully-developed, positively-asserted identity. Borrowing from W.E.B. DuBois, Roediger argues that the Revolution asked questions of older assumptions about social and economic relations even as it provided a new language for citizens to frame themselves within. Nothing new there, except that DuBois argued strongly that too often Americans try to separate race and class as distinct categories. Roediger seeks to show that DuBois was right--they were intimately intertwined in America and cannot be easily separated.

The real rise of the self-consciously "white" working class took place in the antebellum period, as white workers found their own status as independent artisans being degraded and denied. Blacks--defined in the public square as being truly degraded due to their inability to throw off the chains of slavery, were unfit for Republican citizenship--and lower-class whites soon found them a useful "other" to measure themselves against. In the crudest possible terms, working class whites could become poor and destitute, but they could never be black. Their whiteness, then, became a key part of their identity.

Nobody in antebellum America more desperately cherished this lifeline from "wage slavery" than the Irish, who suffered from discrimination and economic marginalization at the hands of "native" whites to a much greater degree than any other European immigrant group. The Irish ultimately chose whiteness over solidarity with the free blacks they often lived in close proximity with. As Roediger notes, the notion of job competition is probably highly overstated, as in reality the Irish had very little trouble pushing blacks aside for the menial labor jobs they were competing for. It wasn't the competition they were fighting against, it was the notion that they were doing "nigger work". One way to combat that was to exclude blacks altogether.

The Civil War undermined the antebellum commitment to overt white supremacy among the white working class, but ultimately old habits of thought and the failure of the Republican Party to craft a new coalition of northern whites and southern blacks doomed the possibilities of Reconstruction race relations and beyond.

Liberty and Power

Harry L. Watson. Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America. (Updated edition)
Hill and Wang, 1990 and 2006.

This updated edition of Watson's influential synthesis history of the politics of Jacksonian era traces the roots of the Second Party System to social anxieties generated by the rise of the Market Revolution, within the context of the republican tradition bequeathed to the Early Republic by the Revolution. Republicanism, as understood by early Americans, posited a fundamental--even existential--conflict between "liberty" and "power" in which the latter was an implacable foe of the former.

As the afterword to this updated edition acknowledges, this simple formulation contains some premises which subsequently merited reconsideration. There has been much debate on the degree to which republicanism was a genuinely felt and coherent ideology in the early Republic. The concept of the Market Revolution has been challenged both by those who believe that America was already a fundamentally capitalist society from the colonial period forward, and those who argue that there was no "revolution" but rather a gradual, continuous evolution which either predated, postdated, or overlapped the generally accepted periodization.

These are not insignificant questions, but Watson concludes that while research subsequent to the 1990 publication of his work has often raised important and thought-provoking challenges to his guiding assumptions, the essentials of his argument are still valid. Therefore, his argument needs to be accepted within that framework.

The end of the War of 1812 removed two existential threats to American sovereignty--the British presence in the West; and their support for the Indian nations who lived there. This freedom allowed Americans to turn their attention towards the settlement and development of the trans-Allegheny west, but it also removed the pressures which had subtly reinforced the tendency to distrust and fear partisan divisions within society. The specter of "corruption" and "interest" which orthodox republicanism accepted as fatal to republican societies would begin to flourish seemingly everywhere in the rush to move west and participate in an increasingly diverse national economy where local economic production was increasingly directed towards distant markets.

The ongoing collapse of traditional community ties of reciprocity and mutual regard created a mood of anxiety and fear which manifested itself in different ways depending on circumstance, time, and place. In this regard, Watson considers such phenomena as Anti-Masonry, labor agitation, and the Second Great Awakening as being related to the same stresses and challenges which the Second Party System ultimately evolved to manage.

Because in the end, Watson argues that we should listen to Americans of the Jacksonian era when they tell us what they were trying to accomplish. We should be skeptical of arguments which discount the policies and beliefs over which Democrats and Whigs fought over as being unworthy of the effort and energy expended merely because the interests in question weren't always clearly defined; or that there were deeper processes at work which they were not fully aware of underlying the dynamic of their political system. Rather, Watson argues that while often the rhetoric and practices of the Second Party System don't always sync up with direct linkages to immediately obvious social pressures, a deeper analysis finds a consistent pattern in which not only did party politics address the ways in which these underlying anxieties were articulated, but also the political leadership were self-consciously seeking to ally the stresses of society not by denying or suppressing them, but by channeling them into engagement with a national, two-party system.

The glaring exception, of course, was slavery--one issue which was starkly geographical and for which the two-party system could not ultimately defuse. But despite that moral failing--and despite the fact that the Second Party System itself would not survive the ultimate national reckoning with that sin--the basic parameters of politics which was established in the Jacksonian age would survive, and continue to shape the American political system.

William Cooper's Town

Alan Taylor. William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic. Vintage Books, 1995.

Before it became the home of the Baseball Hall of Fame, before it became known as the place where Abner Doubleday almost certainly did not invent baseball itself, Cooperstown, NY was known as the place James Fenimore Cooper immortalized in some of his novels; most notably in his early work The Pioneers. Best known now for introducing the seminal American character of Natty Bumppo, the novel was originally something of a wish-fulfillment reclamation of a lost patrimony by the son of the town's founder and namesake--William Cooper.

William Cooper was a man who worked his way up from a humble beginning as a wheelwright in late colonial society towards being a landlord of means in the new Republic. He did so through measures which were often bold, occasionally reckless, and all too often at odds with the wishes and best interests of his patrons--members of the old elite whom Cooper wanted to impress and eventually count himself among. Cooper proved quite adept--and very lucky--at taking advantage of the disruptions to established social and economic norms in the wake of the upheaval of the Revolution. Soon, he found himself in possession of thousands of acres of upstate New York land, and the status as landlord and patron to a new community.

Cooper never attained the gentility to go with his wealth that he desired, but neither did he embrace the politics of Republicanism that his humble origins and his own life story might have naturally inclined him towards. Rather, Cooper became a staunch Federalist and never wavered from this affiliation, even in the wake of the decline of Federalism in the years after Jefferson's election as President, as Republicans took power at all levels of state government in New York.

His downfall would come not only from the decline of Federalism but from ongoing economic and demographic changes which both challenged his control of his original holdings in the Cooperstown area, and overwhelmed his ability to maintain payments on his ever-growing debts. Cooper, dazzled by his own early success, sought to replicate it elsewhere in New York, to no avail. He over-extended himself, and tangled his estate even further into a web of debts, dubious property claims, and conflicting obligations.

He never resolved those issues, but rather passed them on in a will that was more generous and lucrative towards his heirs on paper than it was in reality. The Cooper children soon discovered that their inheritance was mortgaged to the hilt, and over the next decade and a half (roughly) creditors took it all away. Neither Cooper nor most of his offspring lived to see the final decimation of his once-impressive holdings, but his youngest son James did.

James Cooper (he added the "Fenimore" in his 30's not long before embarking on his wildly successful writing career--the only profession he ever succeeded at) sought to recast the history of his father and his hometown in ways which both restored the family fortune but also restored the ideal of social harmony and deference to betters which both he and his father believed in, despite the relentless tide of democratic leveling the country was going through. Read that way, The Pioneers is an idealized history of the early American republic which pointed the way towards a peaceful, stable, harmonious future which only existed in the dreams of Federalists like William Cooper and in the bestselling books written by his son.

The Democratic Party and the Negro

Lawrence Grossman. The Democratic Party and the Negro: Northern and National Politics, 1868-1892. University of Illinois Press, 1976.

The years between the end of the Johnson Administration and the second election of Grover Cleveland was a time of experimentation and attempted realignment by African-Americans within the two party electoral system. The Republican Party began the era with the solid support of the Black electorate, while the Democratic Party was largely defined by the unabashed white supremacy of the southern wing. However, important shifts in policy and regional party affiliations. For awhile, some Black political leaders were able to advocate a more independent stance by African-American voters as a significant minority--largely in north--were willing to consider switching parties to the Democratic column.

This was possible in the wake of the "new departure", a Democratic policy of explicit acceptance of the new constitutional order imposed by Reconstruction, backed by the implicit understanding that a staunch commitment to state's rights meant that enforcement of formal legal protections could be quietly dropped. Yet, as cynical as this policy was (and ultimately successful), for much of the period covered by this book it allowed for both African-American voters to rethink political alliances, and for Northern Democrats to opt to reject, and sometimes even overtly challenge, racist political rhetoric and policies.

While never more than a minority movement in the North, and proportionately even less important in the South, black political leaders found that they had real leverage within the northern Democracy, possibly peaking during the first Cleveland administration.

However, the corollary of the "new departure"--that northern Democrats would prioritize state's rights over civil rights--eventually triumphed. The political strength that African-Americans had seemingly discovered proved largely ephemeral; the end result of splitting the black vote allowed racists within the Democratic Party to reassert their hegemony over northern Democrats as fading Republican commitment to civil rights acceded to the developing social Darwinist ideology of racial hierarchy, as well as as a bipartisan agreement to leave Southern race relations in the hands of state authorities.

The Market Revolution

Charles Sellers. The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846.

Oxford University Press, 1991.

Sellers's book was a major reevaluation of the period when first published a quarter-century ago; it's still an important survey of the period. Sellers covers a lot of ground--each chapter is somewhat thematic in approach, even as they very slowly move the chronology forward--but largely keeps focused on a single, broadly-defined arena. He argues that this era saw the negotiation of power between capitalism and democracy in the early phase the growth of the market economy unleashed in the wake of the conclusion of the War of 1812. Carries out in the fields of politics, religion, and social change, the overriding conflict involved the tension between the imperatives of the forces of the market versus the political fact of an increasingly empowered electorate which included many groups which were either leery of the market or sought to tame it or redirect it in accordance with their values and interests. 

Sellers locates much of this tension in the conflict between two very different religious impulses: arminianism and antinomianism. The distinction between the two reflected two different moral economies (my phrase, not Sellers') which ultimately needed to accommodate each other in the new democratic capitalist orthodoxy--one which, at the conclusion of this period, still contained the fatal contradiction of slavery. The tension over slavery would be push the polity to the breaking point in the wake of James Polk's recklessly successful efforts to annex new lands for expansion while ignoring the niceties of sectional balance.