U.S. to 1877 – Fall 2013 – Page 6 – Just another My blog Sites site

November 18, 2013

Irish Identity, White Laborers, and the Rhetoric of Enslavement

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The readings for this Tuesday offered two enlightening perspectives about the relationship between free laborers and the system of slavery. It was interesting to compare the experience of white freemen in the North working for labor rights (as discussed in Roediger’s essay) and that of Irish Americans in their attempts at establishing a favorable identity within a slave society (discussed in Dee Dee Joyce’s article). I enjoyed Roediger’s eloquent style and Joyce’s clear and concise outlining of her argument.

Northern white laborers compared themselves to slaves in a rhetorical strategy in order to critique the “evolving capitalist social relations as a kind of slavery” (Roediger 342). This strategy was risky and complex; while they compared their plight to that of slaves, they also had to be careful to “distance themselves from blacks even as the comparisons were being made.” (Roediger 341). While it is easy to look back now and characterize their comparisons to slavery as hyperbolic and extreme, the risk that was assumed by likening oneself to a slave should not be understated. Roediger emphasized this point by saying that “comparing oneself to a slave or to any Black American could not be lightly undertaken in the antebellum United States” (344). I assumed that comparing themselves to slaves implied a certain degree of anti-slavery sentiment, but the reading revealed that this was not the case. Rather it was “a call to arms to end the inappropriate oppression of whites” (344). Because, you know, slavery is totally okay… just not for whites.

The Irish Americans in the South also played on the societal inferiority of blacks and slaves as they attempted to create their identity in their new home of the antebellum south. Like the white northern freemen, the Irish were extremely concerned about avoiding “the taint of blackness” as they attempted to succeed in the realm of free labor (Ignatiev quoted by Joyce, 188). While Joyce described quite a few racist acts by the Irish (minstrel shows, eradicating slave and free black from the realm of free labor, etc…) it is understandable (but not necessarily justified) that Irish Americans resorted to racism in light of their past. Will pointed this out extremely well when he said: “Shaped by a history of marginalization, Irish-Americans desperately longed for inclusion and a sense of superiority, and maintaining slavery offered the best way to attain these goals” (http://sites.davidson.edu/his141/white-laborers-fear/). This history of marginalization led them to be very pragmatic and calculating about their discrimination of blacks. I ultimately took away from this reading that it wasn’t necessarily racist impulse that fueled their anti-black actions, just an undeniable truth that either the Irish immigrants or the African Americans were going to be oppressed in the US, and the Irish did what was possible to make sure it wouldn’t be them.

November 18, 2013

Not Slavery, Not Pleasant

The word slavery carried a vast amount of weight throughout the 1800’s. In the years leading up to the civil war, 1830’s upward, slavery was the hot topic. The idea of “white slavery” is intriguing for that very reason. It seems unusual at a time when slaves were still considered less than human to a number of people that the northern workers would acquire such a title. Roediger notes, “in such a situation, it is not surprising that labor activists rather cautiously backed into making comparisons between white workers and slaves” (344). “White slavery” is almost contradictory. It is definitely a powerful argument, however, I believe there is a lack of humanity that cannot be ignored. In the early 1800’s white means human and black means slave and less or in- humane. While this cannot be applied generally all over the country, it was still believed. I disagree with the Vermont slogan that they were ‘“slaves in every sense of the word”’ (345). This may be moving, but I believe that it is not true. WIROBERTSON, on 11/18, states that, “Clearly, whites must have felt severe oppression in order to draw this comparison.” While I agree that they were oppressed, perhaps even severely, the racial prejudice of the time takes precedence over a wage war. Even the phrase “slavery of wages,” seems to draw too much on slavery as a possibility for whites in America.

Forgetting the word slavery, white workers of this time were right to argue for their cause. No group of people appeals for a change in such an extreme manner unless there is a problem. From unreasonable hours to low pay, white workers along with children, women, and the Irish all felt the pangs of an oppressive society. The Irish particularly entered the South and found a difficult path ahead of them. Dee Dee Joyce recounts, “ In Charleston, Irish labourers entered historically black labour fields out of pure economic necessity” (188). That is to say that the Irish were forced into a position similar to slavery with the social freedoms of whites. This may be where the sever slavery argument comes from. The vast difference lies in the ability for whites to advance to grow into economic success. Where as the blacks of the time were stuck in perpetual slavery or at the very least extreme prejudice and oppression. Slavery in the United States was based on race. Therefore, there was no equivalent to be acquired by the whites of the time. Even the Irish, that struggles, could not have come to slavery as an end.

November 18, 2013

MPIAH, David R. Roediger: The Language of Liberty

Sherwood Callaway

HIS 141, Blog Post 9

The “coffin handbill” that Roediger describes acknowledges an incongruity between the spirit of ’76 and the persistence of slavery—something that my classmates and I have been hung up on since the pre-revolutionary period.

The journeyman tailors who wrote this handbill use the language of slavery to describe their condition, although there are certain fundamental differences between workers and slaves that they do not acknowledge. The tailors are afforded a wage, while the slaves are not. The tailors are free not to work, should they wish, while the slaves are not. Furthermore, the tailors are not bound and whipped and abused like slaves. So why make the comparison?

These are not the parallels that the journeyman tailors are trying to make, when they said “freemen of the North are now on a level with the slaves of the South” (319). These “freemen” sought to demonstrate the deprivation of their freedom, above all else. Roediger writes: “They were cast as slaves not because they were “hirelings” but because the state had deprived them of the freedoms necessary for defending their rights” (319). In order to manipulate peoples’ liberal sensibilities, this document acknowledges the incongruity between the spirit of ’76 and the persistence of slavery. America was founded to protect our freedoms, right?

The level of comfort with which the tailors treat this incongruity is new and astounding, but it doesn’t necessarily imply that slavery was out of fashion. The tailors were not so inclined to make a full comparison between themselves and slaves, because they weren’t abolitionists; they probably didn’t have a problem slavery, and were definitely used to it being around. The journeyman tailors, like other wage laborers, used only half the analogy and ignored the rest.

Of course, it didn’t take much longer for people to fill in that other half. The language of wage labor movements questioned the ethics of forced labor, and “chattel slavery stood as the ultimate expression of the denial of liberty” (319).

November 18, 2013

The Irish Confederacy

White European immigrants became very prominent when the United States was on the brink of a civil war. The major immigrant groups were the Germans and Irish, most notably the Irish. One thing very ironic that occurred was that the Irish, as seen by the Charleston Irish, chose to fight on the side of the Confederacy. Those on the side of the Confederacy seemed to be polar opposites in their views and lifestyles than the Irish. So then why is it that the Irish find a safe haven in the South or as Joyce puts it a sense of identity?

The Irish were used to social exclusion and isolation as they faced the same situation everywhere they had been due to a number of factors. Therefore, they knew that social inclusion mattered just as much in their new homeland as it did in Ireland (Joyce 186). In a search of social inclusion the Irish found their identity in the South through: fraternal organizations, doctrines of the Southern Catholic Church, and the characters and songs of the theatre (Joyce 185). The South was a very pro-slavery region and the Irish, one could argue, were victims of wage slavery as Roediger brings up in his essay. The Irish originally settled in the North but made their way down South due to an economic crisis in the North and new job opportunities in the South as the Western frontier expanded. From this exodus the white laborer slowly began to take place of the slave. As victims of wage slavery the Irish were looking for a greater sense of freedom and equality and therefore, argued against wage slavery. These arguments against wage slavery typically brought about pro-slavery implications (Roediger 348). This is true, because these laborers feared that by emancipating slaves the free blacks would be competition or superior to the current wageworkers.

As the Irish continued to find their identity in the South as seen by the Charleston Irish laborers, they steadily became more pro-slavery. This was a shift from the anti-slavery abolitionist mindset of the North where they originally settled. Although the Irish were agitated by free and slave labor in the South as it increased competition, they eventually fought for an identity by reworking their pro-slavery ideologies. As they found this sense of identity in the South they were ready to fight alongside the Confederacy.

Logically this makes sense, the South was the first place the Irish truly found a sense of identity and felt at home, and the Charleston Irish exemplify this. Coming from areas where they were socially excluded they fought for an identity and found their social inclusion in the South. Therefore, they felt a sense of loyalty towards the South and were ready to defend their newfound home and the views that came with it.

November 18, 2013

Irish-Americans, Southern Style

I found Joyce’s essay on Irish-Americans in the South very interesting, mostly because I haven’t given the subject much thought before. People tend to associate Irish immigrants with urban working class in the North, but I hadn’t considered their presence here before. It reads fairly smoothly, and I appreciated how clearly the author laid out the points in the beginning.

It also struck me how the Irish felt the need to gain sure footing in the social world because of prior experiences in the North and previously in Ireland. Joyce said that they “took constrained actions to place themselves in positions of best advantage within existing social networks” (193). Additionally, as wirobertson said, “Irish-Americans desperately longed for inclusion and a sense of superiority,” and they found this inclustion through their support of slavery. To me, this seems like a classic part of the melting pot idea. They retained much of their Irish culture, but made a conscious, directed effort to fit smoothly into the “existing social network” of Charleston (Joyce 193).

Additionally, the role of the Catholic church was fascinating. I hadn’t previously thought of the Catholic church as a particularly influential force in the South, but it certainly had an impact on the attitude of the Irish with regard to slavery. Joyce said, “Southern Church leaders validated and gave divine sanction to the slave system and provided their constituents with an explanation of Southern social relations” (190). To this group of people, the church was a way to connect with people like them, and it also helped ease the transition into a new culture. If the church had taken a less accepting stance with regard to slavery, I doubt that the Irish-Americans would have been received as easily in the South. However, they were able to relate to other white Southerners on this cause and create a sense of cultural identification across different cultural backgrounds.

November 18, 2013

White Laborers’ Fear

David Roediger recounted the rise of slavery comparison in the rhetoric of dissatisfied white workers during the 1830s and 1840s. The anxiety experienced by oppressed white laborers shared a close linkage with the increasing attention paid to abolition in this time period. Interestingly, the same laborers who fought against what they considered “White Slavery” (Roediger) argued for enslaving blacks. Only fear can explain such a striking hypocrisy.

In their attempts to gain more rights, white laborers compared their situation to Southern slavery, and even went as far as to claim their situation was worse than slavery (349). Embedded in their rhetoric were the paternalistic views of slavery employed by Southern slaveholders. As Roediger pointed out, “Chattel slavery stood as the ultimate expression of denial of liberty” (343). Clearly, whites must have felt severe oppression in order to draw this comparison.

White laborers demands for freedom from a system they likened to slavery notably did not extend to actual slaves. Their proslavery view stemmed from a fear of replacing or being replaced by African-American slaves. Abolition threatened the job market for poor white workers. In addition, it challenged the inherent sense of superiority felt by whites. As ALKAROUT mentioned in her post on 9/18, colonial whites “forged … a sense of racial pride” to unite planters and common men against slaves. Roediger addressed “the continuing desire not to be considered anything like an African-American” (344-345). Fear of equality with blacks was a longstanding concern for lower class whites, explaining their hypocritical proslavery stance.

Dee Dee Joyce observed the same fears and proslavery responses among Irish-Americans in the South. The Irish wholeheartedly served the Confederacy during the civil war. This support for the Confederacy does not indicate Irish support for the practice of slavery itself, but rather the protection of their identity and inclusion in society. Shaped by a history of marginalization, Irish-Americans desperately longed for inclusion and a sense of superiority, and maintaining slavery offered the best way to attain these goals.

Both works revealed an interesting perspective on both workers’ rights and abolition. In addition, they both demonstrated the complex ties every social group had to the institution of slavery.

November 14, 2013

Wilentz, Ch. 17: Blurred Lines

Sherwood Callaway

HIS 141, Blog Post 8

I found it interesting that the Whigs and Democrats were such political enemies during the buildup to the election of 1844, because the primary views of either party seem to be somewhat compatible. If I’m allowed to oversimplify here: the Whigs are against having a powerful executive figure, and the Democrats are in favor of empowering the common people. I can imagine a platform in which both of these principles are endorsed, and I think the political players of the 1840s could too. I think this apparent similarity made the political environment super convoluted and dynamic.

We’ve got the Whigs all shaken up, because of sectionalism. No one knows what to do with John Tyler suddenly in the White House. Henry Clay is trying to consolidate Whig support behind his typical legislative agenda. Calhoun is beginning to embrace Jacksonian democracy. Tyler considers dissolving his Whig ties completely, in favor of the Democrats. Meanwhile, within the Democratic party, we’ve got sectionalism as well— “radicals, hunkers, and calhounites.” (276). The name of this chapter, “Whig Debacle, Democratic Confusion” is definitely appropriate.

Because of this dynamism and ambiguity, the election of 1844 was more about the subtleties of the political spectrum than the major ideologies—we can’t really make generalizations about this one, like we have in the past.

This emphasis on the subtleties of the political spectrum, I think, is best represented by rampancy of realignment during the buildup to the election. Realigning one’s views to suit the voting public is an element of every election, but Wilentz seems to pay special attention to it with regards to this particular election.

For example, John Tyler was completely alienated from the Whig party, for which had supposed to be VP, and to which former president Harrison had been aligned with. This was in large part because of Henry Clay’s aggressive legislative maneuvers. When Clay attempted to recharter the bank, for example, Jacksonian Tyler shut down the initiative. Afterward, Tyler offered to support “some sort of national fiscal institution so long as it passed constitutional muster”, but ended up vetoing that as well (273). Taylor ultimately began to gravitate to the Democratic party, which seemed to best represent his ideals, over the annexation of Texas.

Another example: John C. Calhoun finally decided to expand beyond his southern, landed, slaveholding constituency. In order to win the presidency, he realized he would have to appeal to “the Jacksonian’s popular base outside of the South” (275). Presumably, this meant the urban working poor. Calhoun appeared a true Jacksonian when he blocked Clay’s “proposed constitutional amendment that would permit Congress to override presidential vetoes”—in doing so, he simultaneously protected the executive power (which Jackson had repeatedly expanded, especially during the Bank war) and “denounced efforts by Congress “to substitute the will of a majority of the people” (257). Suddenly, Calhoun appeared to be more than just the defender of a southern planter aristocracy, but a true democrat as well.

These are just two examples of political shifts during the period prior to 1844. Shifts like these make it hard to generalize the nature of the election.

November 13, 2013

The Anti-Climactic Flip-Flop

Chris Masone
His 141
Blog Post

In our discussion in class on Tuesday, we raised the point that when President Harrison died in office a month after his inaugural address, both parties were seemingly in shock and, for a moment, the country experienced a brief constitutional crisis over presidential succession. Even more surprising, in the Whig moment of triumph after defeating incumbent Martin Van Buren, the party suddenly collapsed. To add insult to injury, Harrison’s vice president, John Tyler, suddenly turned against the Whigs and vetoed Clay’s bank bill along with other Whig-backed measures. The political climate, much to the joy of the Jacksonian Democrats, had abruptly flipped and now the Whigs were once again struggling to maintain power. Even though the Whig party was in shambles, the democrats had not yet fully recovered from Van Buren’s defeat. Rather, they may have been worse off than before due to new divisions over banking, internal improvements, and the complicated issues of slavery and interpreting the constitution. The Democratic Party was split into multiple sub-parties, like the Hunkers, the Locofocos, the Barnburners, the loyal Jacksonians, and most surprisingly the Democratic Calhounites.

Although I discussed briefly John C. Calhoun in my last blog post, I would like to revisit him because of his interesting career and his strong platform. Because he hated Andrew Jackson and Jacksonian Democracy Calhoun did not know which party to conform to. While the Whig party was anti-Jackson and pro-banking, Calhoun chose against running for president in 1824 under the Whig ticket. After the flip-flop after Harrison’s death, Calhoun switched sides and sided with the democrats. As Wilentz describes on page 279, “The most surprising development within the Democracy was a growing enthusiasm, among some of the most radical northeastern hard-money advocates, for, of all people, John C. Calhoun.” As Sarah put it, “specifically [Wilentz’s] vilification of John C. Calhoun,” is interesting to note because, “It is clear that Calhoun was not Wilentz’s ideal political representative.” Just from Wilentz’s diction, it is obvious that he was surprised at Calhoun’s sudden support from radical democrats. Wilentz’s bias against Calhoun from the last section bleeds into this chapter, as Sarah noted. I think that Wilentz’s, as I would put it, political favoritism shows as he clearly does not like the idea of Calhoun running for the Democrats after attacking previous democratic presidents like Jackson and Van Buren.

Wilentz’s bias makes it difficult to take an objective view of Calhoun in chapters 17 and 18. His account of Calhoun’s ideas and policies feels sardonic, for example on page 280, “Calhoun’s brilliant essential perception- that in modern societies, aggregations of whole interests and classes, and not individuals, had become the basic unites of politics- was offset by his favoring some interests over others.” In this quote, he seems to be patronizing the ideas in Calhoun’s summary view of politics, “Disquisition on Government.” Wilentz seems angry that the deepening divisions among the various sub-parties of the Democracy were complicating the chances of a clear democratic candidate for the next presidential election.

As a side note, Wilentz introduces the Dorr War in the same chapter. After discussing what happened with Thomas Dorr and Rhode Island’s government under the colonial charter of 1663, Wilentz concludes “the Dorr War was an exceptional case in the history of American democratization before the Civil War.” I believe the juxtaposition of the Dorr War with the fragmentation of the Democratic Party into sub-parties like the democratic Calhounites in this chapter could be an attack on the Whig Party. I believe that Wilentz attempts to argue that because of the Whig’s interference with Jacksonian Democracy, the Whigs were eventually responsible, or at least played a large role in, the civil war.

November 13, 2013

The Road to the Civil War

Thursday’s reading from Sean Wilentz’s The Rise of American Democracy covered a wide variety of topics from the years leading up to the American Civil War. I particularly enjoyed Wilentz’s description of the radical divisions within the Democratic Party that formed over conflicting issues. Wilentz writes, “across the Northeast and West, equivalents of the Radical-Conservative fights split the state Democratic parties, chiefly on banking issues” (Wilentz, 278) into a number of subgroups including Loco-Focos, Barnburners and Hunkers. What amazed me is how these different subgroups could exist within the realms of the same political party while espousing completely different political views. While the Barnburners were committed to abolition (and willing to undermine the democrat party to achieve abolition), the Hunkers largely downplayed the cruelty that many others saw in slavery. I believe that these fundamental disagreements within political parties was one of many key factors in setting the stage for the Civil War, the ultimate manifestation of years of deep-seeded American political differences.

Wilentz also discussed the disarray of the Whig Party under John Tyler. Whether it was due to Tyler and political rival Henry Clay “tear[ing] each other apart” (Wilentz, 274) or due to the emergence of John C. Calhoun (who planed to capture the Presidency through manipulation of the Democrat Party), the Whigs were clearly falling apart. I found SAFUNDERBURG’s post concerning the reemergence of the Modern Whig Party in Pennsylvania particularly insightful in describing the surprising revival of this notorious political party. I still find it amazing, as a foreigner, whose country pays little acknowledgement to its past political histories, that the Whig Party could be revived. This would not happen in Canada, as people in my home country are not as passionate about the politics of the past or history of our country nearly as much as I’ve found people are in America. I’d be surprised if most people I knew could name the political parties active during Canada’s birth, while in America it is almost considered common knowledge to know your country’s ancestry.

I also enjoyed Wilentz’s description of the actions put forward by the Liberty Party and other antislavery movements. Wilentz’s description of the Liberty Party’s goal to “divorce slavery and government akin to the Jacksonians’ divorce of banking and government” (Wilentz, 288) was an analogy that I found interesting. Jackson’s desire to eliminate the federal bank was an attempt to stop rich northerners from claiming total control over America’s finances, while slavery was an issue concerning rich southern plantation owners. Both concern two different geographical areas of the United States, yet the two are both extremely important issues of American politics.

November 13, 2013

Destined to Rule

The reading for this week was for the most part focused on the idea of Manifest Destiny and how the United States began to annex other lands into their country. Starting with the death of President Harrison (which is the most absurd thing I have ever heard of) the United States mission to move in on other lands became what seemed like the most important thing to the presidents. After Texas expressed their want to become a part of the United States, along with the fact that the British stood a chance to take control of the Republic, new President John Tyler jumped on the chance to annex, which he just barely got done before Polk was sworn into the Presidency.

With another new president the United States was told that there were four major goals to be completed: “the settlement of the Oregon question, the reduction of the protectionist tariff of 1842, reestablishment of the independent treasury, and the acquisition of California.” (306) It only makes sense that half of our countries goals were to gain more land since it was our destiny to expand. Polk sent in men to go to the Mexican border, basically in an attempt to start war and take over California. Although it may not have been constitutional, Polk started the war and then got approval from the congress. His rival, Calhoun, did not take kindly to this abuse of power as he was an opponent of the war and said the Polk “had unconstitutionally engineered the country into war.” (310)

As any other story of pre-civil war America, slavery had to find its way into this situation. The idea of whether the newly admitted lands would be slave or free territories started dividing the Whig party as sectionalism became more important that ideology. I think this is similar to what my classmate SpEdwards was saying in the beginning of his post as he spoke on how Polk thought the new lands would unify the country, but instead it gave the North and South more reason to divide. As we bring up often in class, I feel that the Wilmot Proviso was one of the early precursors of the Civil war that we had coming. The parties split and Calhoun “saw the proviso as a golden opportunity to unite southerners across party lines” (319) and it didn’t take the north long to align the same way. Hence the divide that we later see fighting against one another in the civil war over the same issue, abolition.