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By admin

The aim of this project is to analyze the importance of the infrastructural boom experienced during the antebellum period of American history (particularly the growth in the railroad industry) in creating the conditions that eventually lead to the Civil War. To this end, the three books investigated in this historiographical essay are linked by their focus on the railway industry and the problems its growth caused. However, each author takes a slightly different approach to the issue. Railroads: The Great American Adventure alludes to the surge in infrastructure (starting with canals and going through to the railroad) as being a catalyst for economic specialization in the South, leading them to focus on a more agrarian economic model which benefitted far more from the institution of slavery which in turn cascaded into heated disagreements between the North and the South that lead to the outbreak of Civil War in 1961. Richards’ book, The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War, whilst being focused on California and the gold rush, devotes a great deal of time to the attempts to make California a slave state and the heated battle between North and South to build a transcontinental railway on their own terms. Finally, Gordon takes a more all-inclusive angle in his book, Passage to Union, arguing that much like Senator William Henry Seward said in 1858, the railroad moved the Union to a greater sense of social unity as populations grew both in size and interconnectivity. This process pressed the conflicting mindsets of the North and South against one another closer than ever before, leading to a breaking point at which point the United States of America was forced to become an entirely free nation or an entirely slave-owning one[1].

The transcontinental railroad is a central theme in both Richards’ and Gordon’s books, as the gold mines were seen as an ideal location for slave labour, but there remained the issues of firstly, how best to traverse the country, and secondly, how to persuade the state to allow slaves and Southern influence into it (this would be especially difficult because there was a popular movement to allow no black people into the state at all)[2]. However, the Southern economy was not the only one standing to gain tremendously from the construction of the transcontinental railroad. The railroad boom was largely made possible by the federal tendencies of the Northern states, as their acceptance of national standardization of railway tracks allowed railway lines to be consolidated across state boarders, removing the tedious necessity of having to switch lines for every new state entered[3]. This stubborn support of States’ rights to legislate independently from one another held up the railroad boom and brought it almost to a halt. These staunchly held fundamental differences between the North and South should lead us to believe that the two halves of the Union had deep seeded rivalries and disagreements with one another, something more than simply an issue about railway expansion or about one state in particular. The virgin land of Texas was also a hot topic for debate regarding slavery and it is important to see the bigger picture when investigating the causes for war.

Whilst the notion of specialization may have been spearheaded by the railway industry as suggested in Ogburn’s book, it is imperative that we remember that by 1861 the specialization had gotten so polarizing that the two factions of the same country were driven to war. Whilst Railroads: The Great American Adventure is a good starting point, further reading suggests that one cannot simply study one factor in the complex matrix of circumstances that make up the conditions for war in order to understand why it happened. The political and economic advantages of constructing the transatlantic railroad were crucial towards fostering a bad relationship amongst Southern states and Northern ones as they fought their tiring legal battle to gain permission to lay the track through their preferred states with their own preferred materials. But again, specializations and divisions between North and South tended to have a snowballing effect wherein they would begin as harmlessly as one state specializing in industry and another in agriculture, and end with a heated debate over where slave owners should be allowed to own slaves and whether or not they can retrieve ex-slaves from free states.

In this argument, whilst Ogburn is useful to the discussion in terms of outlining the original driving force behind such a polarizing economic dichotomy, and Richards’ approach is an interesting case study in how the West (and new territories in general) caused such a rift between the federalist North and the confederate South, the only fair and logical method is Gordon’s. This is because it is the only one that really allows for a balance of economic, sociological, and political differences to all play their part in creating the conditions for the Civil War without devaluing the fact that although the railroad (or something else) could have acted as a catalyst, there was a vast (and growing) array of reasons as to why the North and South went to war in 1861.

Bibliography

Ogburn, Charlton, and James A. Sugar. 1977. Railroads: the great American adventure. Washington: The Society.

Gordon, Sarah. 1996. Passage to Union: how the railroads transformed American life, 1829-1929. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.

Richards, Leonard L. 2007. The California Gold Rush and the coming of the Civil War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

[1] Seward, William Henry, and Charles O’Connor. 1859. The irrepressible conflict a speech by William H. Seward : delivered at Rochester, Monday, Oct. 25, 1858. Albany: Evening journal.

[2] Richards, p. 37

[3] Gordon, p. 105

      

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By admin

Carolyn Raihala

HIS245 – Dr. Shrout

10 April 2015

Entering the Public Sphere through Cookbooks

To be published is to been made visible. This is not a subjugating visibility, such as a visibility in which the subject is rendered vulnerable, but a visibility in which the subject brings himself into the public sphere and participates in the conversation therein. Historians have extensively researched the ways in which subjugated classes of people have brought themselves into the public sphere. For example, after analyzing letters, pamphlets and speeches published by disenfranchised free blacks in the antebellum North, historian Richard Newman observed that print could allow “future generations a view of a neglected history” (in this case, that of free African Americans). In addition, because of the public nature of print and its position of high esteem in American culture, there was room for an otherwise silenced people to spread their views.[1]

The study of using print for one’s own liberation can be extended to the world of antebellum American women; their relationship with print shared similarities with that of free black Americans of their time. Historian Janet Theophano wrote that although women were discouraged from publication, many of them did. However, she noted, “publishing cookbooks may have been an exception.” In other words, the publication of cookbooks was the one acceptable form of media for women to publish. Therefore, contemporary historians looked to other documents that broke these rules, particularly works of fiction and poetry, in their investigations of gender politics in the antebellum period. However, a small group of researchers delved into the history of cookbooks, both published and private, in order to answer the question of how women in antebellum America may have appropriated this socially accepted channel of media to subvert their relegation to the private sphere and to record their side of history.

In Eat My Words: Reading Women’s Lives through the Cookbooks They Wrote, Scholar Janet Theophano claimed that by creating cookbooks, women could both “write themselves into being” and thereby make themselves visible, and voice concerns about political and social issues. By concealing advocacy for women’s social mobility with socially acceptable rhetoric, the cookbook writer was able to publish her controversial opinions. For example, in discussing “American Cookery” (the original American cookbook), Theophano noted that the author’s disdainful description of the fickleness of women’s fashion “may be seen as an opportunity to highlight the debate about the fledgling nation’s competing values for women.”[2] Furthermore, Theophano argued that writers of cookbooks, regardless of their advocacy for social reform, could achieve fame and influence over a wide readership, thus placing them in the public sphere.

Andrea K. Newlyn argued in “Challenging Contemporary Narrative Theory: The Alternative Textual Strategies of Nineteenth-Century Manuscript Cookbooks” that the writing in cookbooks and domestic how-to manuals (an offshoot from the cookbook genre) suggests the breakdown of the barrier between the male public sphere and the female private sphere. She wrote that according to these cookbooks, “women’s influence within the private domain extends beyond the boundaries of their supposedly ‘separate’ sphere to reform not only the individual home and family, but the larger community.”[3] The women writers did this by casting themselves in narratives as protagonists with the power to transform the chaos of a messy, disorganized home–and by implication, the nation–into an efficient, smoothly run machine. Newlyn also pointed to the inclusion of information about traditionally male topics, such as architecture, engineering, and science in the domestic how-to manual American Woman’s Home, as evidence that the “conceptual categories of gendered spheres… that supposedly structured nineteenth-century American society” were unstable.[4]

Unlike Newlyn and Theophano, other historians have studied the same cookbooks, only to have concluded that they contain evidence for the societal expectations for women. In “Early American Cookbooks as Cultural Artifacts,” historian Steven Tobias examined the books in order to trace the socio-historical transformations throughout the America’s history. Despite the broad sweep of this undertaking, he narrowed in on the antebellum time frame, claiming, “cookbooks reflected the clear socio-economic divide that was opening between the sexes in the eighteenth century.” Instead of analyzing the writing in the cookbooks, Tobias discussed the movement of cookbooks into the public sphere via publishing. Since “the criteria for establishing the domestic norm was increasingly becoming a function of the public sphere,” and cookbooks instructed housewives on establishing that norm, cookbooks grew in popularity.[5]

Other in-depth, book-length analysis of the relationship between cookbooks and gender focused primarily on the post-Civil War era of American history. In Manly Meals and Mom’s Home Cooking : Cookbooks and Gender in Modern America, historian Jessamyn Neuhaus briefly touched on the antebellum period. She spoke of the influence of “prescriptive domestic literature” (like cookbooks) in emphasizing women’s work in the home. However, she dug deeper and mentions an argument like Newlyn’s: that the authors of the cookbooks did hold the “woman’s sphere” to be important because of its influences on the productivity and stability of the market economy.[6] However, this is the extent of Neuhaus’s discussion of the burgeoning cookbook publication in the early 1800’s, and the rest of the book focuses on the portrayal of gender roles in cookbooks after the Civil War.

Despite a the dearth of research that investigated how women used cookbooks in the antebellum era, the existing literature argued that, like free black Americans of the same time period, housewives used print to spread controversial sociopolitical messages to a wide readership, and achieve positions of influence through publication. When investigating the written work of the cookbooks, Newlyn identifies evidence of the breakdown between the private, female social sphere and the public, male social sphere.

[1] 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.

[2] Theophano, Janet. Eat My Words: Reading Women’s Lives through the Cookbooks They Wrote. New York, N.Y.: Palgrave, 2002. 234.

[3] Newlyn, Janet. “Challenging Contemporary Narrative Theory: The Alternative Textual Strategies of Nineteenth-Century Manuscript Cookbooks” p. 37

[4] Ibid.

[5] Tobias, Steven M. “Early American Cookbooks as Cultural Artifacts.” Papers On Language & Literature 34, no. 1 (Winter98 1998): 3. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed April 10, 2015).

[6] Neuhaus, Jessamyn. Manly Meals and Mom’s Home Cooking: Cookbooks and Gender in Modern America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. 16.

      

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By Alec

Alec Custer

HIS 245

4/10/15

Invitations to Intimacy:

Writing about Romantic Correspondence in Early America

In eighteenth-century America, when public displays of romantic affection were still considered boorish and taboo, love letters offered both men and women a space to more freely express and develop romantic intimacy. This narrow mode of romantic expression stems, according to historian Karen Lystra, from an understanding of love at the time as “rooted in the concept of an ideal self … meant to be completely revealed to one person only.” (7). To this end, historical writing on early American romantic correspondence has tended to focus on the ways in which love letters straddled and bridged the public self – one concerned with social status and appearances – with the more transparent and unfettered private self. Despite this unifying theme, over the last three decades historians have approached the fairly nascent study of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American love letters with varying interpretations of their significance. Specifically, I argue that while earlier writings on the topic primarily examined love letters within the relatively narrow context of courtship and as a common element of American romantic relationships, more recent works have broadened their focus to interpret love letters as a tool used by American men and women to establish and negotiate social networks and power.

If more recent writings have sought to argue the specific significance of love letters, then earlier investigations may be viewed as performing the preliminary step of establishing them as important documents a priori, and thus worthy of academic attention. Ellen K. Rothman’s 1984 book Hands and Hearts: A History of Courtship in America tracks the customs and methods of courtship in America from the colonial era up through the 1920’s, with an epilogue that cursorily covers the decades between then and the book’s publication. Rothman establishes early on the key role that written correspondence played in the courtship process for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American youth, writing that such letters “provide a remarkably full record of the ideas and experiences surrounding the transition to marriage … [and] are more than the artifacts of a relationship; in many cases they were, for a time, the relationship itself.” (9). Throughout the rest of her book – particularly the first two parts, which cover courtship through the end of the nineteenth-century, after which the popularity of personal writing began to decline – Rothman further substantiates this claim, using correspondence between hundreds of couples as her base texts.

However, Rothman herself admits that her work deals mostly with “the content of courtship correspondence” (9). In practice, this means that she focuses on questions of discrepancy between male and female writings, trends in content, and so on, yet skirts around the broader social importance of these letters within the lives of their authors and their cohorts. Karen Lystra adopts a technique similar to Rothman’s in her own book from the same decade, Searching the Heart: Women, Men, and Romantic Love in Nineteenth-Century America. Here, Lystra uses her own collection of romantic writings to challenge the stereotype of Victorian relationships as ones marked by “male-female emotional segregation and distance” (11), and instead offers that love letters gave couples a chance to lay bare sentiments and vulnerabilities that had no place in the public sphere. Lystra argues throughout her book that this exercise, which “often succeeded in building unique, emotional bonds between lovers that emphasized their individuality, their distinctiveness, and their separateness” (9), thoroughly strengthened American individualism. Her claim is a bold one that implicates the lives of many Americans, but her focus remains largely relegated, like Rothman’s, to the experiences of couples themselves, rather than examine the significance of love letters within a much larger ecosystem.

Fortunately, several 21^st century historians have since expanded upon the groundwork laid by Rothman and Lystra in order to investigate the more nuanced significances of early American love letters. In her 2001 article “The Cornerstone of a Copious Work: Love and Power in Eighteenth-Century Courtship”, Nicole Eustace posits that romantic correspondence was, by definition, a negotiation of social roles: “declarations of sentiment were inseparable from assertions of status; love and power were intimately connected” (518). Eustace directly places Rothman among the “many historians” who have located differences between male and female writings, but “seldom linked such differences to issues of gendered power” (518-519). Accordingly, Eustace focuses much less on the content of love letters, and more on why Americans wrote them in the first place, and to what end. She ultimately concludes that for men, courtship was an opportunity to gain and exert considerable social influence, while women experienced the near opposite, trading in any power they may have held for marital love and stability (537). Both sides, she claims, obscured the “copious work” of re-negotiating power and social standing through love letters filled with romantic declarations (537). Bryan Waterman’s analysis of the love letters from the Revolutionary-era poet Elizabeth Whitman to her fellow writer and occasional lover Joel Barlow, though certainly narrower in scope than any of the other works mentioned here, continues Eustace’s widening of the study of romantic letter-writing. His article “Coquetry and Correspondence in Revolutionary-Era Connecticut” (2011) pays particular attention to the tendency of 18^th-century writers to keep their friends “in the loop” about any romantic correspondence they were currently engaged in, and would even use companions, not postmen, as couriers for their letters (550). Letter-writers also did plenty of ‘name-dropping’, often finding ways to tie in and compare the romantic situations and social standing of their friends with their own (552). Through these observations, Waterman thus offers an interpretation of love letters as networking tools, both for their authors and for the historians who study them.

Though tied together by their common acknowledgment of love letters as outlets for self-expression and divulgence not permitted in public, historical writing about early American romantic correspondence has experienced a noteworthy shift in focus from the role of these documents within the relationships they muse upon to well beyond them. In other words, more recent analyses by historians such as Eustace and Waterman suggest that these letters, while intended as an escape from the public eye, were nevertheless inextricably tied to social status and power. Waterman’s 2011 article invokes the recently popularized parlance of social network analysis and signals, perhaps inadvertently, the direction in which I anticipate the field is now moving. By performing various types of quantitative and network analysis to a sizable collection of letters, I hope to begin to remediate the lack of “hard” examination of early American love letters in a way that confirms (or denies) trends and arguments offered by the historians mentioned here, while also raising entirely new conclusions about these documents and their historical significance.

Works Cited

Eustace, Nicole. “’The Cornerstone Of a Copious Work’: Love and Power in Eighteenth-Century Courtship.” Journal of Social History 34.3 (2001): 517. America: History & Life. Web. 9 Apr. 2015.

Lystra, Karen. Searching The Heart: Women, Men, and Romantic Love in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Print.

Rothman, Ellen K. Hands And Hearts: A History of Courtship in America. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1984. Print.

Waterman, Bryan. “Coquetry And Correspondence in Revolutionary-Era Connecticut: Reading Elizabeth Whitman’s Letters.” Early American Literature 46.3 (2011): 541-563. America: History & Life. Web. 9 Apr. 2015.

      

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By Sherwood

A popular subject for historians, the growth of railroads in America enjoys abundant scholarship. Unfortunately, most authors describe this process using sweeping generalizations. They rarely pay special attention to the railroads of a specific region. However, “Railroads in the Old South” by Aaron W. Marrs, “Planting a Capitalist South” by Tom Downey and “Major Cambell Wallace” by William Ketchersid represent deviations from the norm, comprising a small corpus of material on trains in the antebellum South. Together, they preserve the endangered histories of these unique railroads. Finally, “A New Look at Antebellum Southern Railroad Development” by James A. Ward delivers on its titular promise, acknowledging the historiographical state of the field and suggesting an alternative narrative.

“Railroads in the Old South” by Aaron W. Marrs provides an authoritative and comprehensive exposition on the subject. First, he describes the adoption process. Advocates, called “Boosters,” claimed railroads were “superior to alternative forms of transportation, would improve commerce in the South, and would bind the country together to preserve both the union and slavery.”^[1] However, early railroad companies struggled to effectively implement this new technology. Marrs argues the equestrian imagery with which they frequently branded themselves demonstrates their profound unfamiliarity with trains.^[2]

Laying the tracks, which involved driving spikes and fastening iron rails to wooden ties, represented another major challenge for these firms, concerning labor. As Tom Downey briefly mentioned, in the South, slaves built the railroads. But early railroad companies were still hard pressed to acquire the labor they needed. Marrs argues competing with plantation owners almost always resulted in shortage. He also adds that by performing nearly every role in railroad construction, slaves “demonstrated to white Southerners the reliability of slave labor in non-agricultural pursuits,” thereby changing their role in society.^[3]

Marrs concludes his book by describing how Southern communities responded to the introduction of railroads. Some celebrated their arrival and appreciated the convenience they afforded. Others vehemently defended their cultural expectations. For example, Sabbatarians sought to prevent railroads from operating on Sundays, which offended their religious principles.^[4] In every case, this new technology shattered premodern perspectives and required some getting used to.

In “Planting a Capitalist South,” Tom Downey describes how railroads benefited South Carolina economically. Specifically, they connected producers with consumers, fostered private enterprise and strengthened tangentially-related industries. Farmers “sent cotton bales to Charleston by rail… while returning trains reciprocated with a steady bounty of goods and merchandise to satiate consumer appetites in interior districts.”^[5] By promoting interregional commerce, railroads significantly reduced the severity of surplus and deficiency experienced in isolated areas. Most importantly, they facilitated the rise of “King Cotton” by “erecting a quick, convenient, and reliable means of transport.”^[6]

Railroads also introduced the “modern business corporation” to the region, which aside from a “handful of Charleston-based banking institutions,” was inexperienced with large scale business operations.^[7] Their construction coincided with the Market Revolution, when entrepreneurs adopted advanced accounting techniques and complex corporate structures. Downey argues they brought private enterprise to the forefront of the Southern consciousness, which previously focused primarily on agriculture. For example, risk-taking entrepreneurs established railroad companies. Despite demanding “unprecedented capital requirements,” these firms frequently suffered from mismanagement and occasionally collapsed dramatically, making investors wary about such ventures.^[8] The business could be quite lucrative in other cases.

Finally, Downey adds that railroads benefited other industries in South Carolina. For example, railroad companies bought large tracts of land and significantly increased the value of adjacent property. Timber, iron and labor were necessary to construct the rails, the latter of which slaveowners eagerly supplied. In sum, Downey’s economic perspective explains that almost everyone in the South benefitted from this particular innovation in transportation.

In “Major Cambell Wallace,” William Ketchersid enumerates the contributions of Wallace, president of the East Tennessee & Georgia line, while also shedding light on this particular railroad’s troubled past. In 1852, Wallace commandeered the company and immediately began building a route between Knoxville, TN and Dalton, GA and a “bridge over the Tennessee River at Loudon.”^[9] The latter demanded significant resources, including civil engineers and architects. Bridge-building became a major industry alongside railroads. Ketchersid explains that Wallace accomplished both his goals, doubled profits and paid handsome dividends. He also coordinated connections with the Chattanooga and Western & Atlantic lines thereby making the entire region more accessible.

Despite these improvements, the East Tennessee & Georgia remains a dramatic example of what went wrong for early railroad companies. Established in the late 1830s as the Hiwassee Railroad Company, renamed and refinanced in 1847, the railroad took almost twenty years to become profitable. The technological innovation also disrupted existing industries, prompting backlash. For example, one steamboat companies complained about the East Tennessee & Georgia’s competition. In response, Wallace boldly asserted his company could operate more efficiently and for less.^[10] Also, transferring to the Chattanooga and Western & Atlantic lines required passengers to disembark one train and then board the other, in addition to moving their cargo, since track gauges were unstandardized. Ketchersid’s article argues that Wallace rescued the most significant railroad in the region and in doing so provides an excellent view of the challenges that early railroad companies faced.

Whereas these previous works were largely concordant, “A New Look at Antebellum Southern Railroad Development” by James A. Ward diverges, thereby making antebellum Southern railroads a significantly more interesting and dynamic topic. Ward’s argument takes into consideration the historiographical state of the field. He explains the majority of writings have “dealt primarily with the failure of the southern roads to supply adequately the Confederate field armies,” from which historians concluded that “the region’s rail transport was decided inferior to systems in other parts of the nation.”^[11] The argument is decidedly narrow, Ward retorts. The South actually “pioneered large-scale railroading in the United States” during the 1830s, yet somehow “emerged three decades later substandard by comparison with other regions.”^[12] By undermining widely accepted views, this article punctuates the historiographical discussion of antebellum Southern railroads with a resounding question mark. The inconclusive ending only heightens the importance of further historical work on the subject.

^[1] Aaron W. Marrs, Railroads in the Old South: Pursuing Progress in a Slave Society (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 12.

^[2] Marrs, 31.

^[3] Marrs, 55.

^[4] Marrs, 164.

^[5] Tom Downey, “The Great Avenue of Intercourse and Common Channel of Commerce,” in Planting a Capitalist South: Masters, Merchants and Manufacturers in the Southern Interior, 1790 – 1860. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006), 93.

^[6] Downey, 98-9.

^[7] Downey, 93, 102.

^[8] Downey, 94.

^[9] William L. Ketchersid, “Major Cambell Wallace: Southern Railroad Leader.” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 67 (2008): 92.

^[10] Ketchersid, 92.

^[11] James A. Ward, “A New Look at Antebellum Southern Railroad Development.” The Journal of Southern History 39 (1973): 409.

^[12] Ward, 410.

Bibliography

Marrs, Aaron W. Railroads in the Old South: Pursuing Progress in a Slave Society. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.

Downey, Tom. “The Great Avenue of Intercourse and Common Channel of Commerce.” In Planting a Capitalist South: Masters, Merchants and Manufacturers in the Southern Interior, 1790 – 1860, 92-116. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006.

Ketchersid, William L. “Major Cambell Wallace: Southern Railroad Leader.” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 67 (2008): 90-105.

Ward, James A. “A New Look at Antebellum Southern Railroad Development.” The Journal of Southern History 39 (1973): 409-420.

      

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By Kurt Vidmer

When analyzing the role of trading posts and routes in Antebellum America, it is impossible not to pay particular attention to the fur trade that took place in the newly acquired western territory. With this new, and largely unknown area of land now under American control, trading posts and routes served as communication outlets to the far away lands. Also, these posts helped to maintain order in the new territory; the trading posts and military forts were some of the only authoritative establishments in the west. My historiography will analyze three books in which relate to the theme of trade serving as a means of communication in Antebellum America. The books are, The Frontier in American History, The American Fur Trade of the Far West, and Undaunted Courage. Although these books all have separate themes and messages, they all portray trade as the catalyst for westward expansion and settlement.

The Frontier in American History primarily focuses on the settlement of the American Frontier, dating back to the pilgrims at Plymouth. It begins by exploring the frontier in New England, and gradually stretches west as the book progresses. Throughout the book, it maintains a theme that the American are always expanding their land grasp, and with this, the frontiers become settled, and ultimately disappear. The book quotes John Calhoun, when he says in 1817, “We are great, and rapidly-I was about to say fearfully-growing!”(Turner). This quotes puts into perspective how the growing American population leads to advanced settlement at almost fearful rates. This book speaks about trading posts as strategically placed locations that both control and empower groups of people. An example of this can be shown through the sale of firearms. Although selling firearms makes the inhabitant consumers dependent upon the post for these supplies, they also empower the people to feed and protect themselves by providing these goods to the citizens. This book does a nice and concise job of tracking American expansion, and clearly touches upon trading posts role as leading resources for this expansion.

The American Fur Trade of the Far West is an informative book about the background and implications of fur trading in the western territory. It works to give an overview of the reasons and importance of fur trading in the region. Also, this book thoroughly divulges into the roles that the different trading companies played in the trading culture. This book covers all aspects of western trade, from the original small-scale hunters/trappers to the booming industry. While discussing and analyzing the trade in this region, westward expansion is a reoccurring theme, and a clear picture is painted that the fur trade enterprise was the initial motivation for this migration westward, and that the trading routes and posts established made it possible for others to settle westward.

Undaunted Courage is a classic and well-known story of the Lewis and Clark expedition. This book gives background history on both Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, paying particular attention to Lewis’s longtime relationship with Thomas Jefferson. It goes through Jefferson’s ambitions to learn about the land gained from the Louisiana Purchase, and the prep work that went in to the expedition. While planning for the trip, all known trading posts were strategically located and worked into the plans for the expedition, and military forts were also important assets to the members of the expedition. These posts and forts provided the expedition with both material resources, as well as occasional labor. The only previous knowledge of the area came from traders, mainly French who had been in the area, so communication with them was key, yet sparse. The book goes on to track the progress of the expedition, and all encounters with Native American tribes. Trading with these tribes became an invaluable resource for Lewis and Clark, not only for material goods, but also for information about he new land and people. Whiskey, beads, and firearms were the most sought after items of the Native Americans. This book does an outstanding job of making a clear and vivid picture of the experiences of the expedition.

While all three of these books focus on westward expansion and trade throughout the region, they all do so in different ways and touch on different things. The Frontier in American History analyses expansion as almost a social movement that Americans always engage in. The American Fur Trade of the Far West is a much more detail oriented book that by far is the most specific when it comes to trade and trading companies, as there are a few instances where trade records are shown to highlight items. Undaunted Courage is more of a biography type of book gives a wide scope of information. Although it is specifically about expedition, many other items, such as trade are spoken about to large extends.

Some common themes throughout the three books were the necessity of trade to create expansion. Trade requires information, and the information gathered by traders was often the first information known about a specific area or group of people. Also, they speak of how trade was a means for life and power, as many resources that were essential to life were only obtainable through trade. Another common theme throughout the books were how trading posts were strategically located along waterways, near villages, or other places where they could be most efficient.

Although all three books successfully inform the readers about trading routes and posts as means of communication, a more specific, map oriented work would be most successful to properly demonstrate the role of trading posts and routes.

Work Cited

Ambrose, Stephen E. Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West.

Chittenden, Hiram Martin. The American fur trade of the far West: a history of the pioneer trading posts and early fur companies of the Missouri valley and the Rocky mountains and the overland commerce with Santa Fe... Vol. 1. FP Harper, 1902.

Turner, Frederick Jackson. The Frontier in American history. Courier Corporation, 2010.

      

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By Cordelia

Regarding the opinions of the British and the colonists on their conflict of the late eighteenth century, there exists a general consensus that each side blamed the other. However, this common precept is actually a falsity, at least as according to Troy Bickham in his book, Making Headlines, as he wrote about the sheer number of print materials of the time period and how that caused an extreme diversity in shared opinions on both sides of the Atlantic. Yet, the scale to which the press and the specific framing of the press truly impacted the events of the American Revolution is unknown, aside from some specific examples. Using Bickman, as well as Philip Davidson’s Propaganda and the American Revolution 1763-1783, O.M. Dickerson’s article, “British Control of American Newspapers on the Eve of the Revolution,” and Robert M. Entman’s “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm,” one can begin to understand the importance of not just what a person of this pivotal time period said, but how and where he or she said it.

Philip Davidson defined propaganda as an attempt to control the actions of people indirectly by controlling their attitudes.[1] This definition is further divided into subcategories of intentional and unintentional, with intentional propagandists consciously and systematically acting in pursuit of a goal and unintentional propagandists who control attitudes through unintentional suggestion in an effort to maintain a societal status quo.[2] In Davidson’s opinion, propaganda, especially in a revolution, is inevitable but the members of the subcategories can vary based on the conflict. In this specific revolution, however, the Anti-British patriots would be considered the intentional propagandists and the British would be considered the unintentional as they were the ones who attempted to preserve a former social system. However, to this argument, Troy Bickman disagreed.

Bickman argued that the press, with it being the work of bribery, personal connections, and unaffiliated authorship, tended to be an accurate reflection of public opinion but that, in fact, concretely dividing the examples of the press from the period into strict Anti-American and Anti-Ministry categories would be misleading.[3] In fact, the openness of the press allowed for a forum through which many opinions could be expressed and mainland Britons, whose friends, family, and business interests all lay in the colonies, were never out of touch with American news, and in fact, experienced most of the conflict through newspapers and pamphlets.[4] Bickman’s argument differed from Davidson’s in this regard – more open categorization – but also in the way that Davidson relied strictly on propaganda to explain differences between the American and the British presses. Bickman, however, concentrates solely on British reactions to American events and thereby relied on personal reactions found in the press. However, both of these arguments are connected in an unexpected way: framing.

Robert M. Entman defined framing as selecting some aspects of a reality and communicating them in a text in such a way as to promote a particular interpretation.[5] Although the examples he used in his article are those of more modern political debates, his ideas still apply to the revolutionary era. In fact, this concept of skewing information in order to perpetuate an ideology is exactly what Davidson argued both the British and the Colonial Patriots did through the press, whether intentional or not. Entman’s statement that described four locations at which framing takes place (communicator, text, receiver and culture) is also mirrored in Dickerson’s article that stated that the press was, in effect, purposeless without an audience[6][7].

Dickerson, in fact, made further connections to the other readings. According to his article, propaganda was much more rampant in British papers than Davidson seemed to imply. In actuality, it was guaranteed that if a province had a royal governor, there was at least one newspaper under his control[8]. This seemingly harmless facet of information quickly expands into a broader conspiracy in which the British government paid popular newspaper publisher John Mein to print attacks on the non-importation committee and other patriot acts in and around Boston. Although, in the long run this appeared to have minor effect, it prevented organized colonial non-importation and repeal of the Townshend Acts[9]. Although Dickerson did acknowledge that much of his theory couldn’t be proven to be wholly accurate, evidence does exist to recognize that this facet of colonial printing did, indeed, occur.

If Dickerson’s findings stand, as he asserted they do, his article, in effect, rebuts Davidson’s statements regarding the Brits and the propaganda that he claimed was unintentional. However, the motivation of the “suggestion” is arguably not as important as the scale of the impact of the words, themselves, and therefore Davidson’s argument on the massive impact propaganda has in periods of conflict remain valid. Entman implied the same but on a larger scale than just revolutions: propaganda, biases, and framing impact all press during all time periods. Perhaps most importantly though, in regards to press and propaganda, is the audience’s reaction, as Dickerson implied and which Bickman explored. The British reception to the American Revolution not only sheds light on many aspects of American history, but on British history as well, especially in regards to the history of the press and who or what controls what is printed[10]. In this sense, all authors agree upon the idea that the fighting of a revolution is done not just on the battlefield, but on paper. Who has access to the press and the implications of such access is, by and large, one of the most important aspects of the American Revolution.

¹ Davidson, Philip. Propaganda and the American Revolution, 1763-1783. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1941, xiii.

[2] Ibid, xiv.

[3] Bickman, Troy O. Making Headlines: The American Revolution as Seen through the British Press. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2009,15.

[4] Ibid, 8.

[5] Entman, Robert M. “Framing: Toward Clarification Of A Fractured Paradigm.” Journal of Communication 43, no. 4 (1993): 51-58, 52.

[6] Ibid, 52.

[7] Dickerson, O. M. “British Control of American Newspapers on the Eve of the Revolution.” The New England Quarterly 24, no. 4 (1951): 453-68, 460.

[8] Ibid, 454.

[9] Ibid, 462.

[10] Bickman, 7.

Bibliography

Bickham, Troy O. Making Headlines: The American Revolution as Seen through the British Press. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2009.

Davidson, Philip. Propaganda and the American Revolution, 1763-1783. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1941.

Dickerson, O. M. “British Control of American Newspapers on the Eve of the Revolution.” The New England Quarterly 24, no. 4 (1951): 453-68.

Entman, Robert M. “Framing: Toward Clarification Of A Fractured Paradigm.” Journal of Communication 43, no. 4 (1993): 51-58.

      

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By Avery

The earliest work I looked at was written by Reverend D. I. Craig and published in 1907. Craig’s Development of the Presbyterian Church in North Carolina focuses on the history of Carolinian synods, Church governing bodies. Craig tracks synod development through a discussion of changing boundary lines. The synods take on a personality of their own in his work; he often lists the members of a given synod without any explanation of individual motivations. Craig leads with a decidedly top-down approach, leaving the reader with a sense of inevitability.

Craig clearly reveals himself as Presbyterian as he hold the title “Reverend” and includes various sermons from Presbyterian ministers at the end of his book. For Craig, the Presbyterian story did feel inevitable, part of a divine plan. When Craig writes laments the mid-nineteenth century as a time when “other denominations came in and possessed much of the land which naturally and rightfully belonged to the Presbyterians[1],” it becomes clear that he writes to celebrate the accomplishments of Presbyterianism in settling America, not to provide an objective description of its development.

Craig’s approach represents an “ethno-ethnohistory” as anthropologists call it; his book tells the story of a culture from inside that culture. Craig sees Presbyterians as set apart and superior to everyone else and his historical documentation is a testament to that truth. The nature of Craig’s affections colors his description of Davidson College. He writes that Davidson College “stands as a monument to the everlasting honor, praise and wisdom of our fathers, and is the pride and joy of all Presbyterians[2].” Thus, the reader gains a vision of the College as the culmination of divinely-ordained Presbyterian progress.

Contrastingly, Stephen Rice’s discussion of the manual labor movement places Davidson’s founding on a much more secular trajectory. For Rice, Davidson College, as a manual labor school, was part of national movements critical to shaping a new class structure in America. Rice focuses on the rise of the middle class in the nineteenth century. Rice’s main argument is that newly middle class Americans used mechanical discourse to emphasize cooperation among different levels of employees, asserting a space for themselves that avoided conflict with the upper class[3]. The mechanical focus of public discourse turned greater attention to the human body, the mechanical half of the mind/body combination that made up personhood. Rice sees the manual labor school as a culmination of increased public perception of the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle as well as a manifestation of the popular sentiment that mental and bodily exertion must be balanced[4]. Thus the reader comes away with a very different understanding of Davidson College. The College is not a beacon of light in the unruly southern wilderness, as Craig paints it; instead it is part of broad shifts in Americans’ understanding of themselves. The college is very much a part of national trends, not set apart from them.

Writing in 2004, Rice employs a much different approach to history than Craig’s insular concerns. Rice weaves seemingly isolated sectors into his version of a new American myth that celebrates the place of middle-income Americans. Craig subscribes to an American myth that posits Presbyterianism as the greatest thing that happened to America, no matter what your class level. Whereas Rice blends many facets of American life in a single outcome, antebellum class stratification, Craig sees American life emanating outward from a single point, Presbyterianism. Rice’s approach runs the risk identifying false marriages between or among various parts of American life, but Craig’s approach ignores the broader American context to a fault.

Jan Blodgett and Ralph Levering’s history of the town of Davidson applies a third historical approach to the time of the College’s founding. Blodgett and Levering capture the early years at Davidson by providing a richly detailed narrative. Their approach focuses on historical actors and actresses, adding in the explanations of individual motivation that are lacking in both Craig and Rice’s texts. Blodgett and Levering also take great care in illustrating the experience of marginalized people at the time. The authors include a section on race relations in the early years of the college[5] and take space to describe the enslaved family[6] that worked for the Robert Morrison (Davidson’s first president).

Additionally, Blodgett and Levering utilize historical voices found in primary source documents in their retelling of Davidson’s history. This technique gets the reader closer to experiencing the town’s history as an historical actor may have experienced it. Blodgett and Levering wrote the book as an ode to “the many Davidsonians over the years who have cared deeply about the well-being of their community,” and the authors’ accomplished their goal; the reader senses the personalities that surrounded Davidson College in its early days. In this interpretation, Davidson Collage emerges as the coalescence of a great multitude of local relationships. Blodgett and Levering’s approach lacks some of the national context that Rice provides, but it expertly demonstrates the contributions of locals, which is exactly what the authors intended when they limited their focus to the Davidson community.

Overall, these three texts give three very different pictures of Davidson College as an institution: a divinely-ordained monument to Presbyterian progress, the consequence of popular perceptions of mechanics and the body, or the mingling and melding of individual motivations into a learning community. A better history of the college’s founding would blend Rice’s approach with Blodgett and Levering’s. Despite its purported prominence in the region, the College has not been the subject of such a comprehensive study that would relate the motivations of the specific Davidson community with more general regional or national trends. From the inside out: How is it that Robert Morrison and his cohorts came to be interested in the manual labor school curriculum? And from the outside in: How was the manual labor curriculum adapted specifically for Davidson College? Current literature, while identifying important national trends and illuminating important historical actors, still leaves the design of Davidson College shrouded in mystery.

Works Cited

Blodgett, Jan, and Ralph B Levering. 2012. One Town, Many Voices: A History of Davidson, North Carolina. Davidson, NC: Davidson Historical Society.

Craig, D. I. 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. 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, 22.

[2] Ibid, 23.

[3] Rice, Stephen P. 2004. Minding the Machine Languages of Class in Early Industrial America. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 4.

[4] Ibid, 73.

[5] Blodgett, Jan, and Ralph B Levering. 2012. One Town, Many Voices: A History of Davidson, North Carolina. Davidson, NC: Davidson Historical Society, 21.

[6] Ibid, 6-7.