Author: Dr. Shrout (Page 10 of 18)

By admin

Within the study of an American print culture historically dominated by a White elite, some scholars have looked for answers to the question of how 19^th century African Americans interacted with print media. Historians Morgan and Rushton, Richard Newman, and David Waldstreicher investigate this question through different lenses, together creating a dual-sided argument about the impact of this media: that it was used to oppress Blacks, but that it also was integral to Blacks’ subversion of the power structure and their efforts to fight back against their oppressors.

In “Visible Bodies: Power, Subordination and Identity in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World,” Historians Gwenda Morgan and Peter Rushton examine advertisements for runaway slaves and conclude that this form of print media furthered Black oppression. They base their investigation on Foucault’s theory that the systematic observation of one class of person by another is created by (and perpetuates) a power structure in which the observer has power over the observed. “Visibility is a trap,” wrote Foucault, and he who is seen but does not see “is the object of information, never a subject in communication.” Anchored by this theory, Morgan and Rushton approach advertisements for runaway slaves, servants, and criminals with the goal of demonstrating how the ads allowed the white, newspaper-reading elite to “see” slaves as human objects of information, and therefore withheld the power of being autonomous “subjects in communication” from Black Americans.[1]

In the course of arguing that the newspaper advertisements withheld Black autonomy, Morgan and Rushton consequently ignore Black autonomy. They describe how newspaper advertisements acted on Black Americans, instead of how Black Americans interacted with the print media. Casting the slaves as victims of surveillance, they simultaneously show how advertising reflected white society’s view of race. In newspaper advertisements, they write, “there were variations in the extent to which languages of ‘race’ and colour were used” and “these distinctions were generally lost on the British press.” For example, “Standard phrases such as ‘of a black complexion’ were used in British newspapers without the overtones of the racialized hierarchical language of the American colonies.” [2]

Morgan and Rushton’s focus on how the advertisements reflect White Society is also highlighted in their grouping of Black slaves and servants with convicts and criminals. That is, they repeatedly describe how bodily descriptions in advertisements spoke of runaway slaves in the same way as criminals and other plagues on society. “The poor, the criminal, the deserter from army or navy, the runaway slave or servant, were viewed and described precisely because they were not tame or obedient.” They conclude their essay by describing the further use of systematic classification in police systems and prisons, reminding readers that classification is used to control lower elements of society.[3]

Where Morgan and Rushton saw runaway slave advertisements as evidence of and a tool for the perpetuation of White dominance, historian David Waldstreicher sees another side. He explores Black autonomy in his article “Reading the Runaways: Self-Fashioning, Print Culture, and Confidence in Slavery in the Eighteenth Century Mid-Atlantic,” where he uses runaway advertisements “to analyze the acts of cultural hybridization black and racially mixed people committed for their own purposes,” and then, like Morgan and Rushton, evaluates “the owners’ use of print to counter the mobility of the unfree.”[4]

Waldstreicher add another level to Morgan and Rushton’s conclusions from their studies of runaway ads. For example, Morgan and Rushton answered the question, “to what extent did ordinary workers wear [wigs]?” with the evidence that “[Wigs] are frequently mentioned as an aspect of people’s appearance” in runaway advertisements and furthermore, wearing wigs “was one aspect of servants apeing their betters–an accusation often raised against them in popular representations of the time.”[5] We see here Morgan and Rushton observing servant behavior in the context of how White society defined and reacted to it. In contrast, Waldstreicher brings historians Shane White and Graham White into the argument, using their point that “runaway advertisements depict a great variety of hairstyles among slaves, ‘an expressive space that blacks were able to exploit.’” Waldstreicher continues, “Distinctive hair could be shaven or grown, and frustrated masters struggled to represent verbally the texture of the hair on the heads of mulattoes and mustees.” From this example, we see Waldstreicher using the same evidence as Morgan and Rushton, yet he argues that it demonstrates Blacks’ capitalizing on the expectations of masters by contravening how others defined them.[6]

Instead of focusing exclusively on runaway advertisements, historian Richard Newman looks to other forms of literature and concludes that print media is not only evidence for Black autonomy, as Waldstreicher argued, but that it facilitated it. In his essay “Protest in Black and White: The Formation and Transformation of an African American Political Community during the Early Republic,” Newman guides his investigation with the argument that “If [Blacks] were denied the vote and routinely fell under public scrutiny, [they] attempted nevertheless to infiltrate public life in any manner possible–to claim city streets as their own, to protest disfranchisement in speeches and newspapers, to assume a public role in debates over race.” This argument serves as the second half to Morgan and Rushton’s thesis. Though Blacks were systematically oppressed in part via the publication of runaway ads, they used other forms of print media to fight back.[7]

Newman brings theorist Jürgen Habermas into the conversation by drawing on his concept of the public sphere, and he claims that African Americans were instrumental in defining the public sphere as a political realm. Like Waldstreicher, he investigates not just the White element of the interaction between print media and African American, but researches the actions of the African American community. He argues that although “the rules of party politics and the very sites of political venues blocked black expression,” Black Americans were not simply passive victims but proactively inserted themselves in the public sphere through the creation of pamphlets. He writes that the creation of political pamphlets was in and of itself a political statement to white audiences; it announced that blacks were determined to enter the public sphere.[8]

We see from the combined works of Morgan and Rushton, Waldstreicher, and Newman that depending on the angle of approach and the theory undergirding the investigation, one can argue that print media was used to oppress 19^th century African Americans, or that it was a tool that Blacks used to subvert the roles assigned to them and gain political autonomy.

[1] Foucault, Michel. “Panopticism.” In Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 214. New York: Pantheon Books, 1977.

[2] Morgan, Gwenda, and Peter Rushton. “Visible Bodies: Power, Subordination and Identity in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World.” Journal of Social History 39, no. 1 (2005): 42.

[3] Ibid, 41.

[4] Waldstreicher, David. “Reading the Runaways: Self-Fashioning, Print Culture, and Confidence in Slavery in the Eighteenth-Century Mid-Atlantic.” The William and Mary Quarterly 56, no. 2 (1999): 247.

[5] Morgan and Rushton, 45.

[6] Waldstreicher, 254.

[7] Newman, Richard. “Protest in Black and White The Formation and Transformation of an African American Political Community during the Early Republic.” In Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic, 181. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

[8] Ibid., 184.

By admin

The Crevasse

The Crevasse is a print designed to decorate a banknote. The print was produced from a steel engraving in the second half of the 19 century. The engraving depicts a scene of a dock with riverboats. On the left side of the image, black men load cargo onto the Robert E. Lee, a riverboat. At right, black men work to fill a crevasse, or they break in the levee. At the far right, a white man stands holding a rifle. The presence of the Robert E. Lee riverboat and the use of slave labor imply that the scene takes place in a southern river port. Given that the use of slave labor was controversial, I assumed that a northern bank would not have issued currency with this print; therefore, the commission for this particular engraving must have come from a southern bank.

The Crevasse is a print designed to decorate a banknote. The print was produced from a steel engraving in the second half of the 19^th century. The engraving depicts a scene of a dock with riverboats. On the left side of the image, black men load cargo onto the Robert E. Lee, a riverboat. At right, black men work to fill a crevasse, or they break in the levee. At the far right, a white man stands holding a rifle. The presence of the Robert E. Lee riverboat and the use of slave labor imply that the scene takes place in a southern river port. Given that the use of slave labor was controversial, I assumed that a northern bank would not have issued currency with this print; therefore, the commission for this particular engraving must have come from a southern bank.

Ambiguity creeps into the analysis though because I do not know the exact destination of the engraving nor do I know the intent of the receiving institution. The designer and engraver produced the print in New York, but the location of the group that commissioned the engraving is left unknown. While it shows a scene in what is likely a southern river port, the engraving may not have necessarily been used to produce currency in a location fitting the scene. If I am correct in assuming that a northern bank would not have issued this currency, then this print would have reflected some sense of pride in the issuer’s place. The image may have represented the issuer’s hometown or local port, or it would have at least reflected some pride in representing southern economy. However, it is possible that a northern institution would have issued these notes as a means of propaganda to show the evils propelling the southern economy.

Baldwin, Bald & Cousland Engraving

This source is similar to The Crevasse in that it is also a print made from a steel engraving. The print was produced in 1853, and it depicts two white children working a wheat field. The image shows a vast, flat rural horizon with bundles of wheat stacked throughout. Given the use of white child labor and the landscape, I assumed that the print was used to decorate a rural midwestern banknote. White child labor was typically used in rural midwestern areas as the high initial cost of buying slaves and the cost of maintaining living quarters and providing food proved unprofitable. The tracts of land were often small enough and the work relatively less intensive, so a family could effectively work the landscape employing free labor from the farmers’ children.

However, this analysis is flawed because it is impossible to determine the destination of the banknote; a similar problem arose with The Crevasse. The print was designed and produced in New York, but the location of the commissioning bank is left unknown. Here, the banknote could have reflected a pride in place if a rural midwestern bank commissioned it, as the bank would like to portray the underpinnings of the local economy. However, it is possible that an unrelated bank commissioned the print in which case the bank likely wanted a diverse selection of images to decorate notes of different values. In order to alleviate the concerns presented with analyzing banknote engravings for their appreciation of place, I would have to find the actual banknotes to show that the images were used in the area displayed.

Banknote Reporter’s ‘Latest Counterfeits’ Article

The “Latest Counterfeits” article was published on March 23, 1861. It was an article included in an edition of Hodge’s Bank Note Reporter, which was a weekly publication that provided information on the currencies in circulation. The publication reported the regional and national currencies, counterfeits and banks at risk of bankruptcy. This article listed currencies in the New England area whose legitimacy were spurious or had been definitively altered. It named the banks from which they came, the banks location, the denominations that were altered and the images displayed on the notes. This article was used to advance my argument that bank notes changed the idea of place because they gave Hodge the opportunity to define regional economies. In this article, Hodge restricts the “New England States” region as Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts. It cited five banknotes in total.

This analysis is flawed for a couple of reasons. The first being that Hodge’s judgment in determining relevant banknotes was likely biased. Hodge and his newspaper were based in New York, so this publication was more focused on the New England currencies that frequently circulated through New York. Therefore, he may not have been fully qualified to define regional economies as they were supported by several currencies of smaller bases that did not make their way to New York. In this case, he was not so much defining regional economies as he was reporting on the distant banks that influenced the New York economy. Moreover, he would have without a doubt missed several of these smaller currencies, limiting the usefulness of his newspaper everywhere but New York. While these considerations certainly create hesitation in employing this source to advance my narrative, the fact that Hodge’s Bank Note Reporter was published nationally with a specific focus on each region of the country leads me to believe that he had robust knowledge of each regional economy within the United States.

By Kurt Vidmer

For my final research project, I will be analyzing the role that trading routes and trading posts played in the exchange of information during the antebellum United States. Although I will research information from around the country, I will work to pay particular attention to trade in the Southern region of the United States. With trade playing a large role in the American economy in the antebellum period, trading routes and posts served as somewhat of unofficial mail and information services for merchants and consumers. As my research continues I wish to deeper divulge into the role of trade as means of communication.

The initial primary source that I chose to analyze is an 1837 map entitled “United States”, created by William C. Woodbridge. This map includes all states east of Missouri, while also including western territories. What makes this map particular relevant to my research project is that it includes trading posts and forts, along with cities, universities, missionary stations, and Indian villages. Because it shows trading posts and forts, I can use this map to begin locating where certain trading posts are located, and use this information to analyze trends that may exist as far as post locations. Also, because this map provides names of the shown trading posts and forts, I can begin to research the individual trading posts and the type of people and products that each post consisted of. My end goal is to be able to find inventory and product lists of merchandise that went through individual posts in an effort to see specifically what type of information was being past through these trading posts and routes.

After thoroughly analyzing this map, I noticed some very interesting trends in relation to trading post locations. By far, Georgia, and specifically southern Georgia had the most trading posts and forts set up. Fort Scott, Fort Gaines, Fort Early, and Fort Hawkins were all located in Georgia. An expected characteristic that all of these trading forts had in common were that they were all located on rivers. There were also two trading forts located in Alabama, with Fort Jackson and Fort Stodard. These two were also located upon rivers. This helps to confirm my initial hypothesis that rivers would play a large role in the spread of communication and merchandise from post to post. Due to the fact that the majority of canals were formed in the north, due in large part because of the Great Lakes, natural bodies of water were vital for transportation in the southern United States.

However, there were also some characteristics about this map that surprised me. First off, there were hardly any trading posts located in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. This is confusing to me because I assumed that there would be many trading posts aligned along the southeastern coast to play a role with the trade from Europe. Yet as shown in the map, there were many more trading fort locations located in much closer proximity to the Gulf than the Atlantic. Also, even though the map says that it contains information about Indian Village locations, there are very few locations noted on the map, and none of which are in close proximity to any of the trading posts. This leads me to believe that Woodbridge did not have very accurate data on Indian locations because this map was published before the “Trail of Tears”, so it is almost certain that there were Cherokee villages located in Georgia and the Western Carolinas, yet the map does not indicate any such locations. It is my estimation that trading forts would have some relation to Indian Villages in attempt to maintain and control trade during this period, so in my future research, I will attempt to clear up this issue.

Overall, this map was a good starting point for me to begin locating trading posts and forts in America, and specifically to Southern United States. I will continue to press my research to find more specific and detailed locations, as well as information about the types of products being transported and traded.

Bibliography

Woodridge, William C. Geographical & statistical map of the United States. Hartford: 1837.

By Sherwood

Railroads gave humans the power to overcome spatial and temporal obstacles that had troubled them in the past. The world and the passage of time as nineteenth-century Americans perceived them became smaller and faster, respectively, with the introduction of rail transport. Historians Charles W. J. Withers, William Cronon and Richard White illustrate how railroads warped the dimensions nineteenth-century Americans had previously existed within.

In “Place and the ‘Spatial Turn’ in Geography and in History,” Charles W. J. Withers theorizes about the vernacular used to describe geography. In particular, he investigates the usage of the term “place.” Withers compares place to space, acknowledging that they share “geographical ubiquity and metaphysical imprecision.”[1] However, he argues that place emerges from the interactions between people and space and therefore carries greater meaning. Furthermore, Withers speculates that the “the ‘collapse’ of geographical space given technical advances” and the “idea that the modern world has become more homogenized” suggest that geographical distinctiveness may be “a thing of the past.”[2] For example, journeys that had previously been arduous were made trivial by railroads. Similarly, the Internet has accelerated the pace of globalization and razed barriers between cultures. Only the relationship between geography and history— this notion of place— remains to distinguish spaces from one another, which otherwise have become less distant and more similar. Withers ultimately dismisses the faults of place, including its “persistence and seeming imprecision,” and advocates that historians recognize the authority of the term.[3]

In “Rails and Water,” William Cronon uses the example of nineteenth-century Chicago to demonstrate the role of railroads and waterways in the development of cities. He acknowledges the importance of natural advantages to achieving rapid growth, but echoes Withers by arguing that inhabitants ultimately define their surrounding environments: “resources, waterways, and climactic zones loom so large… that one can almost forget that people have something to do with the building of cities.”[4] Humans manipulate and repurpose the physical landscape into harbors, canals and roads. Cronon uses the phrase “second nature” to describe these improvements.[5] He goes on to describe the significance of Chicago as a market for grain, through which the farmers in the midwest could sell to consumers in the northeast. Built in 1848, the first railroad in the region transported over half the city’s wheat by 1852.[6] Rail transport defied difficult geography, operated independently of inclement weather and seemingly “accelerated [time].”[7] The ability to accomplish more in twenty-four hours made each day dramatically more valuable. Additionally, Cronon argues that the standard of efficiency established by railroads “raised people’s expectations about the regularity and reliability of transportation services.”[8]

In “Transcontinental Railroads: Compressing Time and Space,” Richard White describes the general development of American railroads during the mid to late nineteenth century, including the effect of the Civil War on the industry, the evolving relationship between nature and technology, the everyday dangers faced by workers and the process of standardizing track gauges. The latter issue plagued rail transport during this era: “in 1860 there were 31,286 miles of American railroads, but they could hardly be thought of as a system or even a collection of systems.”[9] White also elaborates on Cronon’s notion of “railroad time,” explaining how nineteenth-century Americans understood space in terms of time. These dimensions are perceived simultaneously and inseparably. “When passengers found that they could get to distant places more quickly,” White writes, “they translated reduced time into contracting space.”[10] Contrary to what one may think, seconds, minutes, hours and days comprised the units of measurement used to define distances, rather than inches, feet, yards and miles. For example, the wheat farmers described in Cronon’s “Rails and Water” likely concerned themselves less with the actual distance traveled than the time spent in transit. The successful sale of their product depended more so on their speed to market. White describes the “annihilation of time and space” that resulted from the introduction of railroads— a complex and delicate subject— with relative ease.[11]

Withers theorizes in depth and corroborates his argument with references to relevant scholarly works. Cronon describes the expansion of railroads from an economic perspective. White synthesizes their ideas. His explanation of how railroads changed perceptions of space and time is predicated on Withers’ notion of “place” and the historical narrative lain out by Cronon. Although White commands less authority than either of his contemporaries, he effectively combines them by using concise and colloquial language. Together, these articles suggest that the introduction of rail transport produced a twilight zone, in which the dimensions nineteenth-century Americans had previously existed within no longer applied.

[1] Charles W. J. Withers, “Place and the ‘Spatial Turn’ in Geography and in History,” Journal of the History of Ideas 70 (2009): 638.

[2] Withers, 637-8.

[3] Withers, 658.

[4] William Cronon, “Rails and Water,” in Nature’s Metropolis. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1992), 55.

[5] Cronon, 56.

[6] Cronon, 67.

[7] Cronon, 75-6.

[8] Cronon, 78.

[9] Richard White, “Transcontinental Railroads: Compressing Time and Space,” The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, http://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/development-west/essays/transcontinental-railroads-compressing-time-and-space

[10] White.

[11] White.

Bibliography

Withers, Charles W. J. “Place and the ‘Spatial Turn’ in Geography and in History.” Journal of the History of Ideas 70 (2009).

Cronon, William. “Rails and Water,” in Nature’s Metropolis. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1992.

White, Richard. “Transcontinental Railroads: Compressing Time and Space.” The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Accessed March 3, 2015. http://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/development-west/essays/transcontinental-railroads-compressing-time-and-space

By Alec

By Kurt Vidmer

Throughout the nineteenth century in the United States, the idea of space and time began to change with the innovation of transportation systems. The new transportation systems consisted of increased canal construction, better maintained stage roads, and most importantly railroad expansion. With these innovations in transportation systems, it because much more accessible and efficient for American citizens to travel across the country. Due to the increased accessibility of resources enabling travel, the idea of “space” and “place” began to form a new definition, as various regions became much more open to the country.

As we read in class, Withers describes Tuan’s idea of “space” and “place” as “space as an arena for action and movement, place as about stopping, resting, becoming, and be- coming involved”[3]. When analyzing the impact of the advancements in transportation technology in the nineteenth century, we can see these advancements had great impact on both “space” and “place”. However, these increases in transportation opportunities and efficiency not only allowed for farther exploration and settlement, but also played a large role in the advancement of information exchange throughout this time period.

My first primary source demonstrates how the railroad enabled people to travel across a much more vast array of places, and how this availability increased the opportunity for information exchange throughout this time period. This source is a page from a scrapbook of railroad tickets that belonged to Jeptha H. Wade. This scrapbook was taken directly from the “Jeptha H. Wade Family Papers”, which consist of letters, scrapbooks, and memorabilia from the life of Jeptha H. Wade.

Jeptha H. Wade himself played a large role in the increase in information technology during the mid-nineteenth century, as he was a leading industrialist for the formation of telegraphs[1]. Living most of his life in Michigan and Ohio, Wade was at the center of the expansion movement. As he worked his way into the telegraph business, he formed the Cleveland and Cincinnati Telegraph Company in 1849. This Company became famous when they successfully implemented a telegraph line connecting to these two main cities, a line that would later be expanded to reach other large cities in the Midwest.

The ticket page in the scrapbook that I chose consists of tickets from four different cities in the year 1867. The cities included are Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, and Milwaukee. This particular page stands out to me for two main reasons. First, it is very indicative of Jeptha H. Wade’s geographic location where his company was based out of and his initial work was done. Also, it allows us to assume that these train ticket were from him commuting to and from his offices in Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati. The second reason this page sticks out to me is because it also displays western railroad expansion in the mid-nineteenth century. Seeing that Wade was traveling to Wisconsin in 1867 leads us to assume that this was in an effort to further expand his telegraph lines west. This paints a very clear picture of the effort that was being taken to expand westward during this period.

The Milwaukee ticket also lines up with another of my primary source documents, which is a map of American Railroads, Canals, and Stage Roads from the year 1846 [2]. In this map, Milwaukee is at the very western edge of the where railroads were accessible to American travelers. Although the Jeptha H. Wade’s Milwaukee ticket is over twenty years older than this map, it makes sense that it was a necessity for the railroad expansion to a city to precede the precede the telegraph expansion to a city. With all of the required equipment, workers, and planning needed to install a telegraph line; I believe it is safe to assume that an efficient and functional railroad was required to undertake such a process.

As the ticket collection continues, there gradually is an increase in the how far west the ticket go. Some examples of documented western travels include tickets from both Minneapolis and Arkansas. This serves as a great example of how the railroads opened the country up far more for travelers.

Jeptha H. Wade’s collection of railroad tickets allow us to see first hand the changing in “space” and “place” in the mid-nineteenth century America. Not only did the railroads make it more accessible for people to travel farther differences, it also enabled information exchange to expand to these given reasons. Because of the advancements in transportation opportunities, Jeptha H. Wade was able to successfully install telegraph lines to open up communication to these new regions. The availability of efficient communication to a region enables the region to transition from a “space” to a “place”. The railroads enable the region to become Tuan’s definition of a space, and communication, such as telegraphs enable the space to become Tuan’s definition of a place.

Bibliography

[1] Jeptha Homer Wade Family Papers, 1856-1890, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio

By Avery

My final project will look at the founding of Davidson College through the lens of the Concord Presbytery. The Synod of the Carolinas, itself newly instated, founded the Concord Presbytery in 1795. The Concord Presbytery’s jurisdiction included all of the state of North Carolina west of the Yadkin River[1]. In the late 18^th and early 19^th century, the Presbyterian Church made education a top concern. Church leaders supported educational pursuits across class lines, and measured literacy by a person’s ability “to repeat the Shorter Catechism.[2]”

On March 12, 1835, two years before the school’s founding date, the Presbytery’s meeting minutes mention the school soon to be known as Davidson for the first time. (Full disclosure here: I have not read through the entire history of Concord Presbytery minutes. I am relying on the archives curated by the Davidson College Library.) These minutes state several reasons for pursuing the establishment of a college, as well as the Presbytery members’ hoped-for outcomes of the project. A picture of Davidson as both traditional and progressive emerges from the Concord Presbytery’s discussions.

Presbytery leaders state accessibility as a clear goal of their proposed college. The minutes extol the “importance of a more general diffusion of useful knowledge” and envision their college as providing an education “accessible to all classes of the community.” This theme merits note both for its aspirations and its exclusions. While the noble of the Presbytery to seek diversity in socioeconomic status, their understanding of who landed in the “accessible” pool was limited to white males. Females are explicitly excluded when the Presbytery minutes state the “importance of securing the means of Education to young men.” African-American men are implicitly excluded; one must look to the manifestation of the Presbytery’s vision, early experiences at Davidson College, to illuminate the experience of African-American men specifically. During the first few years, the only African-Americans on Davidson’s campus were local enslaved persons employed by the College[3]. Robert Morrison (mentioned in the Presbytery meeting minutes as “R. H. Morrison”) himself owned a man and woman who continued to work for him through his tenure as the first president of Davidson College[4]. Thus, Presbytery leaders’ conception of “a more general diffusion” halted at openness to all class levels.

Given the above, current students at Davidson College often call Davidson’s initial set-up conservative. On one level, they are correct. Davidson’s visionaries worked within the traditional American understanding of who mattered in the population. However, in terms of pedagogy, the Concord Presbytery founded Davidson College in line with a progressive movement spreading across the country: the Manual Labor School movement. Manual Labor Schools integrated physical labor, like gardening, into classical curriculum. The Manual Labor School movement gained traction in the late 1820s, with most new schools popping up between 1825 and 1835[5]. Early 19^th century American public discourse became preoccupied with the idea that a sedentary lifestyle or too much intellectualism caused a multitude of physical ills[6]. Thus followed the rise of the public gymnasium and a new focus on intentional daily exercise[7].

Many educators expressed the need for students’ to offset mental activity with physical. Their reasoning was twofold: 1) an attempt to promote physical health, and 2) a belief that both physical and mental exercise was necessary for developing personal virtue[8]. With their combined curriculum, Manual Labor Schools promised to more deeply instill morality in their pupils. Additionally, proponents saw Manual Labor Schools as a solution to the frivolous exercise promoted by gymnasiums; Manual Labor School pupils would engage in productive labor, building up community infrastructure[9].

Leaders of the Concord Presbytery were impressed with the Manual Labor School’s pedagogical design. The minutes declare the need to “[train] up youth to virtuous and industrious habits with well cultivated minds” and specifically mention the “Manual labor system” as the best means to do so. The March minutes end with the Presbytery appointing a committee “correspond with the different Manual Labor Schools in our country” to see information about the best design for a Manual Labor School. Davidson College was founded with aim of uniting the body and mind to cultivate strongly-rooted Presbyterian morality in young men.

Works Cited

Blodgett, Jan. 2015. “Always Part of the Fabric: A Supplement, 1837-1865.” Accessed March 22. http://sites.davidson.edu/archives/digital-collections/always-part-of-fabric-supplement-3.

Craig, D. I, and James I Vance. 1907. A History of the Development of the Presbyterian Church in North Carolina, and of the Synodical Home Missions, Together with Evangelistic Addresses by James I. Vance and Others. Richmond, Va.: Whittet & Shepperson, Printers.

Rice, Stephen P. 2004. Minding the Machine Languages of Class in Early Industrial America. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press.

[1] Craig, D. I, and James I Vance. 1907. A History of the Development of the Presbyterian Church in North Carolina, and of the Synodical Home Missions, Together with Evangelistic Addresses by James I. Vance and Others. Richmond, Va.: Whittet & Shepperson, Printers, 14.

[2] Ibid, 18.

[3] Blodgett, Jan. 2015. “Always Part of the Fabric: A Supplement, 1837-1865.” Accessed March 22. http://sites.davidson.edu/archives/digital-collections/always-part-of-fabric-supplement-3.

[4] Ibid

[5] Rice, Stephen P. 2004. Minding the Machine Languages of Class in Early Industrial America. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 70.

[6] Ibid, 73.

[7] Ibid, 74.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid, 76.

By Sherwood

Rail transport during the nineteenth century is generally understood on the macroscopic scale. In contrast, my web application closely analyzes a microcosm of the industry. The individual narratives of railway companies and routes in east Tennessee and north Georgia are crucial to achieve the level of detail that will hopefully distinguish my project from other historians’ work on the subject. Investigating these narratives involves untangling and isolating them from the macroscopic perspective, but unfortunately, details regarding the ownership, construction and operation of railroads are difficult to find. Why? One reason may be that railway owners apparently took little interest in documenting their business operations. The records of those who did have probably perished since. Furthermore, the railway network that emerged during this period actually consisted of hundreds of smaller lines, so keeping track of them would challenge even the most talented archivist. These narratives are mostly forgotten, but not altogether lost.

Contemporary travel writing offers much in the absence of official documentation. In particular, Hill & Swayze’s Confederate States Rail-Road & Steam-Boat Guide provides valuable information about the railroads of east Tennessee and north Georgia. Boasting “timetables, fares, connections and distances on all the railroads of he confederate states,” Hill & Swayze’s has proved necessary for charting routes with accuracy. [1] It introduces the possibility of treating each station as its own waypoint, rather than connecting the origin and destination directly. Additionally, a “complete guide to the principal hotels” contained within Hill & Swayze’s hints at the existence of a considerably sized travel industry within the region.[2]

Historian and author Thomas D. Clark contextualizes Hill & Swayze’s in his multivolume book, Travels in the Old South. Having collected the journals of travelers who visited the American south during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Clark describes the evolution of the genre. First, he argues that the Age of Exploration invigorated travel writing. British missionaries and government officials authored the vast majority of travel guides during the colonial era. With rare exception, they visited only one or two colonies, likely due to insufficient transportation infrastructure. Most concerned themselves with the “soil, climate, …fauna and other resources” of the New World, but waterways, the predecessors of railroads, drew particular interest as the most efficient means of transporting people and goods.[3] Clark then describes how over the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, tourism became increasingly popular. Either drawn by the “prospect of land investment” and social experimentation abroad or driven by economic and social pressure at home, foreigners flocked to the American south.[4] Hill & Swayze’s reveals a network of transportation and lodging that resulted from this influx. The directory of hotels contained within Hill & Swayze’s likely served to disguise advertisements, demonstrating that businesses predicated on travel were profitable enough to permeate both the advertising and printing industries. Finally, Travels in the Old South explains that more advanced technology, including the steam engine, enabled travelers to go much further than their predecessors. A typical tour spanned from the eastern seaboard to the Ohio River valley and beyond. Hill & Swayze’s demonstrates the extent to which infrastructure in the American south had improved by the nineteenth century, compared with that of the previous two hundred years. For example, the precisely calculated departure times and sheer number of stations listed on railroad timetables indicate the efficiency and ubiquity, respectively, of trains. While sailing required skilled crewmembers, a sturdy ship and amenable weather, traveling by rail was a fast, dependable and relatively inexpensive means of mass transit.

An unlikely culprit may be primarily responsible for burying the individual narratives of specific railway companies and routes: historians themselves. They are guilty of having traditionally understood the process of railway expansion through an oversimplified archetype, arguing that the free market drove expansion— entrepreneurs contributed private capital, formed railroad companies and laid tracks that suited popular demand. Furthermore, historians have observed the social, economic and cultural ramifications of this transportation revolution almost exclusively on the national level. While these generalizations accurately describe most nineteenth-century railroads, contemporary travel writing, like Hill & Swayze’s, better captures the complexity and variability of the industry.

[1] J. C. Swayze, Hill & Swayze’s Confederate States Rail-Road & Steam-Boat Guide (Griffin, GA: Hill & Swayze, 1863), 1.

[2] J. C. Swayze, 2.

[3] Thomas D. Clark, Travels in the Old South: A Bibliography, vol. 2 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956), 33.

[4] Thomas D. Clark. 33.

Bibliography

Swayze, J. C. Hill & Swayze’s Confederate States Rail-Road & Steam-Boat Guide. Griffin: Hill & Swayze, 1863.

Clark, Thomas D. Travels in the Old South: A Bibliography, vol. 2. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956.