September 2013 – Page 3 – Popular Politics in Early America

September 6, 2013

Week 1 Post : Lepore's Democracy

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Jill LePore attacks the relationship of America’s Democracy with its people over its history through the writings of various political activists and historians, most notably Thomas Jefferson, Noah Webster, Frederick Jackson Turner, and Sean Wilentz. She begins with an idealistic image presented to children regarding the positive impact of a Democracy in the United States. After all, it is important to establish an acceptance for the way the country operates into its citizens at a young age. Almost immediately after, however, LePore presents the arguments of Noah Webster and Thomas Jefferson ad they rivaled in their theories of who should hold control in the government.

Noah Webster was what one could call an elitist, while Thomas Jefferson argued for the masses of the people. LePore provides adequate evidence from both sides to shape their arguments, which both contain respectable logic. Webster was concerned that the “village idiot” had as much of a say in a Democratic government as a well-educated man, while Jefferson argued that that was exactly the moral way. These “monocrats” like Webster, however, lost influence and eventually became irrelevant as the Democratic government took hold in the early 19^thCentury. It is interesting, however, to think about how history would have shaped itself had the reverse occurred, and what we would consider man’s rights to be today. Would the masses come to accept an elitist regime or would they have rebelled themselves, resulting in a Democracy at a later date?

LePore also presents Frederck Jackson Turner’s theory of land as the root of American Democracy. The United States was different; for a vast majority of its history there was always land to expand, thus land was available to the common man with much more availability than in Europe. Americans have European roots, and in Europe land was power. Thus by following the same idea, there was much more power to be shared in America than their ancestors previously experienced. As can be seen all over the world, once new segments of the population begin to gain political power at an increasing rate, more of the population comes to desire their share as well. With Turner’s theory, Democracy was inevitable. The resources in North America were too vast for the population to sit in content with a lesser role than some of their peers, allowing a small segment of the population to rule over them.

Lastly, LePore presents Sean Wilentz’s demonstrations of how individuals can indirectly affect politics through their actions. Even without political power, in his primary example, a slave is able to influence later legislation by attempting to revolt. This then became a political move, because if it had not happened, policies would not have been changed when they did. The people, therefore, don’t have to have “official” political power to influence politics.

Wilentz’s ideas, along with Democracy’s flaws of greed and corruption, tease at the idea of imperfections in a Democratic government.

September 5, 2013

The Big Cheese

In “The Cheese and the Words”, Jeffrey L. Pasley, argued that the period of the early 1800s during the Jeffersonian era elicited the greatest example of democratic representation what with the unique culture and mass participation. The Cheese presented by a small contingency of Jefferson’s supporters was just the beginning of an era where people who had felt marginalized by society beforehand (not able to freely practice religion in some areas), expressed their admiration for their leader who always seemed to empathize with the common folk and further their cause, to the chagrin of the elitist Federalists. It is easy to see how Jefferson manipulated the political realm at the time to fit his interests, as he appealed to all the necessary political demographics by representing their ideas in Washington but also by using his “Mammoth” press to his advantage and making the Federalists appear to be the outliers hoping to criticize anything that came out of the Democratic-Republican camp. Politics at this point often boiled down to whoever could subtly, or outlandishly, satirize their opponent to the best appearance of their own faction.

As Price stated earlier about the American populace, “the rich and the poor have separate interpretations of the word ‘equality’, and how it ought to be applied to politically, socially, and of course, economically, in American government.” I think this has been an element of many societies for a long period of time but I believe that America was really united to a certain extent at this time, at least within party lines. Newspapers began to pop up throughout the country in about 1798 fostering an ability for, as Alexis de Tocqueville stated, “some means of talking every day without seeing one another and of acting together without meeting.” Newspapers were the perfect antidote to a problem fueled by the rural nature of much of America and created a much tighter community where a speech that had once reached maybe 100 people could now infiltrate many counties and possibly disseminated throughout a whole region, as many political newspapers, like Phinehas Allen’s Sun, soon learned. These works of literature educated people about topics and politicians they never heard about, and forced people to form an opinion. These new resources and the excitement provided by the “People’s President”, fostered an excitement in politics never before seen in the United States, as record voting numbers were represented in the polls. This new medium of expression did not only benefit white property-holding men, but also women and disenfranchised men (African-Americans, Native Americans), whose cause could be documented within special interest newspapers. Even though this segment of the population was denied the right to vote they still impacted politics, by “developing strong and partisan political interests and politics.” These newly powerful political actors were not lost on the later elections as the Federalists, who alienated too many “common people”, lost the presidency. Newspapers were the quintessential symbol of the birth of organized politics and democracy.

September 5, 2013

Religion, newspapers, and cheese: political divides in Jeffersonian America

What significance could a lump of cheese have in revealing important political boundaries in early America? Quite a lot, according to Jeffrey Pasley, if one analyzes the origins, inspirations, and reactions to the colossal dairy creation. To Jefferson, the cheese represented the essence of America: independent, hard-working farmers fighting for a voice in government. To the Federalists, who mockingly named the creation the “Mammoth Cheese”, it was a humorous display of Jeffersonian backwardness and frivolity. Jefferson proudly held it in the East Room of the White House (non-coincidentally nicknamed the “Mammoth Room”) for public consumption for over a two-year period, and no dairy product has replicated its political impact yet.
The origin of the cheese, the western Massachusetts town of Cheshire, reveals much about a vocal faction of the Jeffersonian coalition. As Pasley points out, not only did these farmers resent the snobbish Federalists of urban New England, they also felt their Baptist beliefs were under attack by encroachments on their religious freedom. The vocal religious leader of the “cheesemongers” was priest John Leland (appropriately nicknamed the “Mammoth Priest”), who argued that Jefferson was a Christian hero “greater than Solomon”. This hyperbole is not as shocking as it is ironic; Jefferson was a devotee to Deist philosophy. However, it reveals how little Jefferson’s religious beliefs had to do with his celebrity amongst the cheesemongers; they instead admired Jefferson for his devotion to religious liberty and the yeoman ideal.
I first disagreed with Alex’s claim that the Federalist philosophy “wished nothing more than for the rich to maintain the upper hand in society and for the poorer peoples of meeker status to be barred from participating in national politics” after reading Webster’s argument in People Power. However, after examining the Federalist news response to the Cheshire Cheese, this sharp assertion appears much closer to the truth. The Federalist newsmen of the day, viewing themselves as Stewart or Colbert-esque satirists, had a clear antipathy for the cheesemongers, so far as to calling them “simpletons”, “vermin”, and “Jacobin encomium-mongers”. The latter insult was a clear reference to Jefferson’s support for the French Revolution, which many Federalists saw as a chaotic, orderless catastrophe. Nonetheless, the Cheshire cheesemongers took pride in their illustrious new nicknames. While the Federalists used the word “mammoth” as a term of barbarism and savagery, the Jeffersonians accepted it as a populist anthem: the idea that the “mammoth” populace will overwhelm the elites.
While I admire the populist dedication of the Cheshire dairy farmers to their hero Thomas Jefferson, I simply cannot argue that their situation was an accurate representation of American rural populism. The social and religious circumstances of the Cheshire township make them closer to a Republican interest group than a normal farming community. For example, the 1800 race for Massachusetts governor saw 175 votes go to the Republican candidate in Cheshire, with none going to the Federalist. While many farming areas may often have seen drastic victories for Republican candidates, there logically would be a measurable minority vote in favor of the Federalists. The lack of voting dissent in Cheshire weakens the argument that the Mammoth Cheese was the ‘American farmer’s’ response to Jefferson’s victory. For the evidence supplied, such a claim would overstate the cheese’s significance in the Jeffersonian age of popular politics.

September 4, 2013

Hodes' Use of Speculation

In her article for Rethinking History, Martha Hodes uses a combination of primary source material and her own speculation to tell the story of Eunice Richardson, a Civil War widow who later remarried a West Indian man of color. I enjoyed Hodes’ writing and appreciated the fact that the article’s arguments were rooted in primary source documents, namely from Eunice’s correspondences. However, I’m conflicted about Hodes’ use of speculation in her creation of the possible scenarios that would have led to Hodes’ courtship with her second husband, William Smiley (though Hodes was totally honest about when she was employing such speculation). In my time doing history in school, I have always been told that any argument I make must be rooted in hard evidence in primary source documents. Hodes clearly does not do this at certain points.
For example, on page five, Hodes discusses the possible ways Eunice and Smiley could have met in Massachusetts, concluding that the most likely place was a Congregationalist church in Pawtucket, based on the church’s reputation for being inclusive of non-whites and those of other Christian sects. However, I felt that Hodes glossed over the fact that neither Eunice nor Smiley were Congregationalists, which was the only hard evidence she had on the matter. Again, Hodes did not try and fool the reader into taking her speculation as absolute truth, but I’m unsure about how seriously one can take an argument that relies so heavily on speculation. Similarly, on pages six to seven, Hodes now having decided on Alabama as their most likely meeting place, speculates that Eunice’s trip to Vermont was part of a courtship custom of the time to test Smiley’s resolve as a suitor. Hodes admits she is speculating when she first mentions it, but then that one piece of speculation is used as an underpinning of her later arguments as if it is hard fact. I have some trouble with that kind of argument because it goes against so much of what I have learned about writing history.
However, after reading some classmates’ posts on this article, I gained more respect for Hodes’ work. In his blog, Ben Hartshorn says that “writing about Thomas Jefferson (who filed and recorded his prolific writing so well) would not require this sort of reconnaissance work.” He makes an interesting point. Someone like Thomas Jefferson produced countless writings of his own—not to mention, his status as a wealthy landowner in 18th century made his contemporaries more likely to pay attention to him and record his words—a poor widow like Eunice Stone did not have that benefit. So, as long as one is honest about what they are doing, it can be useful to engage in some speculation (backed up by primary source material and a knowledge of the times’ customs) to see the possibilities of an interesting life that unfortunately went undocumented. So, while Hodes’ methods can be a bit jarring at first, upon further consideration, I certainly can appreciate her motivations.

September 4, 2013

The Different Ways to Tell a History

After reading the introduction to Beyond the Founders and discussing it in class on Tuesday, I was very interested to see how the rest of our readings would approach writing about history. Martha Hodes’ “Four Episodes in Re-creating a Life” and Jeffrey L. Pasley’s “The Cheese and the Words: Popular Political Culture and Participatory Democracy in the Early American Republic” both wrote about early American history effectively, but with vastly different methodologies.

Martha Hodes’ exploration into the vaguely narrated life of Eunice Richardson was a bold piece that attempted to fill in some historical blanks. While some of her pieced in evidence seemed far-fetched (such as, “Miss Clara is the same madcap as ever, Eunice wrote of her young daughter in 1864, invoking the common Caymanian manner of address. Had Eunice just received a letter from the sea captain, asking after the children, the unwittingly echoed that West Indian turn of phrase in a letter to her mother?”), the thought process and research that she put into the piece are interesting, creative, and thorough. She followed the story as far as she could, as she traveled throughout the country and visiting the same towns and buildings that Eunice once knew. While it’s hard to say one way or another if Hodes’ thesis has sufficient support, this type of historical writing and research interests me very much. Hodes used creativity in her piece that I have rarely seen before in a history class. Writing about Thomas Jefferson (who filed and recorded his prolific writing so well) would not require this sort of reconnaissance work. Yet, as we talked about in class and AJ Pignone wrote extensively about in his blog, the best way to get a full history of a time period is through a careful combination of the major players and those who were more silenced. As AJ says, “history doesn’t come in squares and circles, it takes many different shapes and sizes, so why should we look at the early republic any differently?” (AJ Pignone, Olney, MD). “Four Episodes” is certainly a different shape and is critical to retelling and interpreting history in the best, most accurate way.

Jeffrey Pasley’s article about the famous (or infamous, as Federalist sympathizers would say) mammoth cheese from Chesire, Massachusetts told the story of early American politics in a way that hardly mentioned the founders. Pasley made some very interesting points about how common people worked to have a political voice. Whether it was through cheese, bread, newspapers, parades, toasts, or votes, Pasley discussed how American factions operated and thrived before organized political parties. I found Pasley’s points about newspapers very remarkable as he writes, “After 1800, no serious political activist thought that anything could be accomplished without newspaper support in as many places as possible, and at times they equated the maintenance of a newspaper with the actual existence of a party, faction, or movement” (41). There was then good information and research showing how newspapers (such as The Sun) influenced and shaped local and national politics. His statements on newspapers stress that they were just as influential and important to politics as Jefferson and Washington were. This is another example of how different shapes and pieces of the puzzle are necessary to get the full history of something. While certainly not as widely read as a biography about Benjamin Franklin would be, articles like Hodes’ and Pasley’s are crucial to the historical tale.

September 4, 2013

Beyond the Founders

In previous experiences with early American politics and, for that matter American history in general, I have found that most of the information I have read or learned about can be classified as squares or circles. Ideas that take a specific shape, detail a specific viewpoint or bias, or attack an issue from one angle. This in my opinion, is very common in historical writing for historians, as we discussed in class today, have numerous reasons for omitting or specifying certain subjects. I choose to address this in my blog tonight after reconsidering Wade’s claim at the end of class. He explained how historians of old focused on what I like to call squares and circles, one-sided representations of early American politics. Whether it be biographies of political elites, party voting, or top down leadership; history was presented in fragments, and seen as simple to understand when looking at such topics. Wade asserted that no, politics actually took multiple shapes. It wasnt just squares and circles, it was a complex combination and circumstance of numerous different aspects of political, social and economic change.

I believe the authors of Beyond the Founders do a great job of highlighting this claim in their introduction and assert that we can’t sum up early American politics with a few summaries of the political elites when the shear nature of “political” was changing itself. We can’t exclude everyone that Jefferson doesnt consider “all men” after the revolution when the identity of the citizen and the idea of politics were being formed and subsequently constantly reevaluated. History and politics did not stop at the party system and when we explain it as if it did, we are misinterpreting the period as a whole and continue to isolate and disconnect African Americans, women, and Indians. As the authors cite in the intro, Gordon Wood states, “This fascination with the great and not-so-great men of the era has tended to further fragment our understanding of the period. We often see the early republic solely in terms of its individual political leaders… But such biographies of leading political figures contribute little to a comprehensive understanding of the early republic.” A squares and circles understanding lends us to miss all sorts of impacts and influences that others had on the early republic.

A fully integrated political history will paint a more complex and mutually connected early republic. One that sees the very nature of politics changing under its feet. Becoming a practice that can be expressed by many differents kinds of people in many different forms. Beyond the Founders explains that to fully grasp early American politics, you must be willing to shed your high school history textbooks and open your eyes to the emergence of popular politics and the presence of new political influences outside the realms of the political elite. To finish, I really like the last few words of the introduction and believe it ties together much of what I wanted to address here; “The founders, in sum, are only the beginning. Beyond the founders lies a complex and important story about how recognizably American political institutions and practices actually emerged from the top down, from the bottom up, and perhaps especially from the middle out in every direction. It is a story about leaders and followers together, about Americans simultaneously unified and divided by partisanship, by gender, by race, by class, by region, by nationalism, and by localism.” History doesnt come in squares and circles, it takes many different shapes and sizes, so why should we look at the early republic any differently?

September 3, 2013

Solcz Blog 2

I whole heartedly agree with the editors of “Beyond the Founders” interpretation of the importance of the newspaper in early 19^th century politics. Particularly, I support the belief that the newspapers “represented and embodied” the ideals of each political party (41). In an era where communication across a state could take days to accomplish, there was a great schism in terms of shared ideas amongst party members. Even more so, those who supported these parties but, were not actively involved in them struggled further to acquire knowledge about all the various policies and ideas of the group. Due to this phenomenon, the newspaper provided both party members and followers access to the crucial details of their party’s ideals, policies, etc. Without the papers, the various drunken banquet toasts that were so important in terms of the stance of different parties would have been lost in the night’s events, rather than becoming a rallying point for members.

Today, it is social media that is replacing the newspaper as the entity that embodies and represents all the public needs to know about a political group. For me, twitter is my go to for any political information that I need, as I follow various groups and people that represent the ideologies I believe in. I am not alone in this usage either, as in a link I posted with this blog, it outlines how a number of political parties use twitter, Facebook, and many other forms of social media to spread their messages and garnish support for any upcoming elections of people or policy. The newspaper may be outdated in terms of its effectiveness in present day but, its usage lives on within the vast networks of connections we have through social media.

Though I initially disagreed with Noah Webster’s points on an aristocracy and the problems of giving people power, after reading Eli’s position on the argument I have swayed my position a bit. Eli’s statement regarding Webster being a product of his time was the catalyst that sparked my transition. Webster made his comments not long after the American Revolution, which thereby meant not long after the Americans ceased to be British. It would be unreasonable to believe that American ideology was suddenly so different from the British perspective regarding the ruling of a country. Many probably still believed that the rule of their land should be placed in the hands of an elite group, but a group that represented their interests. In today’s world, I know I do not want any man walking down the street having control of our country’s directive. It takes a specific type of person with a unique mind to have the ability to rule such a diverse land, something few people within this country possess. With this in mind, I concur with Eli’s position on Webster not being so radical even in today’s political arena.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/345532/description/Social_Media_Sway

September 3, 2013

Repost: The Rise of Democracy

I think one of the most interesting things I took from Jill Lepore’s People Power was the point on democracy’s transformation from “unutterably bad to unassailably good” in the minds of Americans and people around the world. I took two things from this, as a historian it hit home the lesson of contextualizing sources in the proper time period because Jefferson and Jackson were fighting against traditional norms and their plans to expand democracy to “everyone” had no historical precedent. From our society and the values we’ve been given I think many people would say, oh yes, that’s normal, everyone wants democracy. But what Jefferson did and Jackson did were not the same. Imagine if you will, someone today arguing for the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in America. What would your response to that be? What would the people’s response to that be? While I’ll leave the debate concerning the causes of democracy’s eventual triumph to Mr. Webster and his colleagues, I think triumph itself, given the challenges it faced, shows how strange this time period in America was and sheds a different light on the men and women who helped push the limits of democracy that we should take into account when reading primary sources written by these men and women. The second point was that I found Noah Webster fascinating. While I take issue with some of his points, I believe honest men can arise in equal measure from the aristocracy and his so called “knaves and fools,” his points on democracy becoming an “unquestionable truth” ring more true today than they did then. On a personal level, I feel that quest to improve the American government has stalled a bit in our present age because of an unwillingness to question and probe its faults because we have been bound by tradition of our democracy. If there’s a lesson to be learned from Tomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, it’s that sometimes breaking tradition can lead to something better.

September 2, 2013

American Politics Infographic

Check out this handy infographic of changes in American political parties: here.

September 2, 2013

Eli Caldwell Post (Edit)

Having just read “Four Episodes in Re-creating a Life” by Martha Hodes, I can say that it is a fascinating piece. I see more of an episode of “This American Life” in it than I do a historical analysis. It is compelling to watch the author struggle though the historical documents and knowledge with which she can work. Hodes creates the historical story from letters that Eunice and others wrote, knowledge of the customs of the area with regard to churches and shipping, as well as a great deal of conjecture shaped by political and cultural knowledge. The story that Hodes wants to believe at the end is intriguing: a married woman, torn between her husband and a black, East Indies sea captain. Her husband joins the Confederate Army as she becomes more enamored of the captain and, fleeing the South and her husband (in fear of birthing a black child), moves to Lowell and then Vermont, where the charming captain courts her from a distance via correspondence after her husband has died. Her brother, a Union soldier frowns upon this and destroys some of the correspondence.

This compelling narrative seems the stuff of historical fiction, and it might very well be. It may be the most likely narrative, and yet my desire for this interesting story to be true nurtures my skepticism and doubt that it actually is true. Most of all, I enjoyed the author’s use of cultural and contextual knowledge to try to draw conclusions about Eunice’s behavior or belief: information about the churches she might have attended, the culture of Mobile before the civil war and how it might have scared her as a Northerner, her brother’s possible desire to protect his own future and reputation in Lowell.

In response to some of my fellows’ writings from last week, I must defend Daniel Webster. Many of you criticized Webster’s beliefs, while still acknowledging that he was a product of his own time, and perhaps not as radical then as we view him today. While I take issue with Webster’s conclusions, I agree with many of his perceptions. “Give the people the power, and they are all tyrants as much as Kings. They are even more tyrannical; as they are less restrained by a sense of propriety of by principles of honor; more under the control of violent passions, exasperated by envy and hatred of the rich; stimulated to action by numbers; and subject to no responsibility.” Not only do I agree with this statement, but I believe that the founders (dubious company though they may be) and many people today would agree with this. A fear of the so-called “tyranny of the majority” is, I believe, the reason that the Supreme court, the filibuster, the impediments to constitutional amendment, and the intentional gridlock of our political system are so important.

Furthermore, I think that Webster had a prescient and historically accurate perception of the aristocracy’s role in governance: “If there ever was a government, which under the name of a republic or a democracy, was generally guided by eminent wisdom, virtue and talents, it was a government of mixed kind, in which an aristocratic branch existed independent of popular suffrage.” Now, you may argue, the United States is a glaring counter example. I disagree. Webster wanted to politically enshrine the aristocracy in our system, failing to realize that it is unecessary–the economic power of those aristocrats allows them to take their own political power and buy a government in which a top marginal income tax rate of 39% is socialism. I disagree with Webster’s belief that this has a positive effect, and yet I wholeheartedly echo his perception that aristocrats have always been the government.

Regarding Thomas Jefferson and the story of the cheese delivered to him, I found the learning that I did regarding the politics of the time far more interesting than the anecdote itself. I had no idea that politics were so intensely local, without a national party but rather individual citizens working to advance their own ideologies. I was particularly intrigued by the role of newspapers, not as impartial sources of information, but as tools of ideological propaganda and, sometimes, tools of advancement for individuals in the community.

I believe that that type of politics may have been better than the highly edited version we have today. A modern, top-down system of politics certainly seems efficient, and represents some citizens, but the partisan, messy politics of early America seem more bottom-up. In such a system, ideas of every individual are more thoughtful, and, if the product of their local newspaper, at least not the product of a media conglomerate corporation broadcasting from New York City.