ajpignone – Popular Politics in Early America

November 20, 2013

A New Take on Early Political History

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I think Ben’s last post and his points in class about “shaping” memory was a good transition into William Shade’s, “Commentary,” at the end of Beyond The Founders. Ben suggested that Douglass, as an outsider and through pen, was trying to shape and mend the memory of the Civil War. After the war, the history written about it was up in the air for the taking. As we read, Douglass viewed this as an opportunity to “never forget” what he believed was the main memories of the Civil War and Reconstruction. This opportunity and effort to shape and restore history on behalf of Douglass provides us with a good introduction into Shade’s comments on the types of histories, the historians themselves, and an insight into the newest political history wave showed throughout Beyond The Founders clippings of new approaches towards the political history of the Early Republic.

I began to read this commentary and was a little side-tracked by what Shade was talking about with these types of political history being thrown around. As a newcomer to this field as of recently, this information and conversation was foreign to me but by the end of this short commentary I began to understand why it is something of importance and deserves discussion. I did not know about the worry traditional historians have regarding the depleting field of political history, so I found it rather interesting that current historians and those of old are hoping and relying on the newest political historians to salvaged and restore political history. Shade discussions the differences in scholarship on political history from those deemed traditionalists, New Political Historians, and those recently labeled the New New Political Historians which leads into his comments on their subtle variances in language and methods of inquiry. As he delves into the newest political history being published he states, “Right now there is not enough published work to talk about a school of political history, but there is a feeling that something is going on” (394). Immediately, my focus was on what this feeling was and what were the newest historians doing that coined them “agents of change.”

As I continued to read, Shade was claiming that the new generation of political historians were writing and confronting the history of the early republic using different language and variants of topics and methods to study than the New Political Historians did forty years ago. From this I wanted to ask questions regarding why most of the literature identified from the newest political historians is on the early republic before 1820? Also, why these new historians returned to strikingly traditional methods in their analysis of early republic politics? Beyond The Founders represents quite different ways of doing history, but the excitement for the new studies for political historians is refreshing for historians of the past and present and also those like me who are newcomers. Shade left us with a promising notion as he states, “Above all, the energy and engagement of the newest political historians represented in this book provides hope for the revitalization of American political history” (404). As a history major, the ways in which these new historians are restoring old history and revitalizing the field seems pretty cool. I wonder what reasons these new historians have for going back to early republic politics and shining new light on old methods yet new variants in topics and interpretations. I guess we will find out.

November 17, 2013

An Outsider's Memory

Much of David W. Blight’s work, “For Something beyond the Battlefield”: Frederick Douglass and the Struggle for the Memory of the Civil War, discusses Douglass’ pledge to “never forget” and his effort to forge memory into action. Blight details Douglass’ five sources for his meaning behind the Civil War: “his belief that the war had been an ideological struggle and not merely the test of a generation’s loyalty and valor; his sense of refurbished nationalism made possible by emancipation, Union victory, and Radical Reconstruction; his confrontation with the resurgent racism and Lost Cause mythology of the postwar period; his critique of America’s peculiar dilemma of historical amnesia, and his personal psychological stake in preserving an Afro-American and abolitionist memory of the war.” Having done some reading on the Civil War and Frederick Douglass previously, I think Blight does a nice job outlining much of Douglass’ arguments and personal stances on the post-war memory, as well as, the difference in opinions by those who do not side with the abolitionist and teleological memory of the war. Furthermore, one thing that caught my eye and I believe established Blight’s work as credible and thorough was the amount of sources he used throughout the argument. He drew upon many different speeches and quotations from Douglass and sprinkled them well in his work. Along with detailing Douglass’ five sources and an overview of his memory of the war, he did a nice job supplementing that with important opinions of others during that period and historically famous arguments that agreed and also went against Douglass’ perspective of the Civil War. Overall, I thought this was good work and gave us some real good first hand opinions of the nineteenth century’s most prominent Afro-American intellectual and others who had an influence on post-war ideals.

With that being said, however, I want to focus on a point that Blight just barely mentioned but stopped me from reading and made me think about a little bit. This challenge to Douglass’ meaning of memory is interesting and probably raises some intriguing questions about those in this time period who had substantial influence and power but had no stake in the actual fighting that was occurring. Blight explains how Douglass’ action was more of an inner struggle than a physical test claiming, “Perhaps his remoteness from the carnage enabled him to sustain an ideological conception of the war throughout his life.” A sentence that was masked but much of the bulk of this work was the claim that stuck out most in my eyes. I believe he is right, what if Douglass’ opinion is mainly shaped from an outsiders perspective? Would his argument be more credible or influential if he fought in the war and actually experienced the memory he is trying to preserve? Would his memory of the Civil War be different if he served behind the lines? I think these all are valid questions as we consider Douglass’ memory as somewhat of an outsider’s viewpoint. As Holmes states, “the true hero—the deepest memory—of the Civil War was the soldier on either side, thoughtless of ideology, which faced the ‘experience of battle…” I think this is an interesting point and certainly deserves some attention regardless of personal stance.

I think it is important to remember those that were transformed by personal experience during the Civil War. As an intellectual, Douglass’ viewpoint cannot comprehend the soldier’s war experience and how those men remember the war. It is a question for thought as Douglass’ memory could be argued to be a “quest to save the freedom of his people and the meaning of his own life.” Like some of us mentioned in our posts last week (Mike and others), the feminist movement and Douglass’ argument can be seen similarly as sometimes they did not reach to a wider audience at the time and their voice wasn’t heard as much due to their relatively narrow views and opinions (ex. Success of the WCTU).

November 13, 2013

Public v. Private

I was mainly going to analyze and critique Ellen Dubois’ argument in her work, The Radicalism of the Women Suffrage Movement: Notes toward the Reconstruction of Nineteenth-Century Feminism, however; after reading some of these previous blog posts I felt the need to at the least comment on what I read. As someone who does not have much historical knowledge or background of the Feminist movement or really anything revolving Feminism in general, I figured much of the people in class (all boys) would use the blog post to comment on author’s argument’s credibility or even possibly a critique of the more historiographical approach by author Jonathon Earie, yet I was surprisingly mistaken. To keep it brief, I will comment on Mike Lamo’s post and some of the comments he himself makes and others that he disapproves of. I 100% agree with Mike when he argues that women such as Abigail Adams should not go over looked in their earlier efforts to promote the women’s voice. The works we read do not detail the first essential step in the women’s movement but grow the audience and take vital steps for the movement’s advancement. Furthermore, I agree with Mike that the dynamic discussed in Henry where the woman needed to establish herself in the private sphere first before the public sphere needs to be flushed out because I am not sold on that view.

Now to my critique of Ellen Dubois, like I stated earlier, I have no previous background to the Feminist movement and believe this limited knowledge keeps me from appropriately commenting on the points made in either scholarship read, so instead I will analyze the credibility of Dubois’ argument. Her approach revolves around the claim that the demand for the vote was the most radical program for women’s emancipation possible in the nineteenth century. She states, “My hypothesis is that the significance of the woman suffrage movement rested precisely on the fact that it bypassed women’s oppression within the family, or private sphere, and demanded instead her admission to citizenship, and through it admission to the public arena” (63). I believe Dubois’ argument and agree with what she says because she does a nice job at laying out previous contributions to the field as well as effectively explains her points and provides a legitimate outside example with the contrast to the more popular Women’s Christian Temperance Union.

My first concern was why the women’s movement saw a drastic turn to the public sphere. She right on cue, details the emergence of a sharp distinction between the family and society in the nineteenth century. Detailing the new two forms of social organization, Dubois explains the revolutionary possibility of a new way to relate to society not defined by their position within the family (64). She then provides historical background to the familial relations at the time with writing on the subservient household women and then adds that Suffragists accepted this role but refused to concede that it prohibited them from participation in the public sphere. Dubois then brings in previous established authors such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton to add to her argument, only continuing to reinforce her view in my opinion.

After she states that enfranchisement was the key demand of 19^th century feminists, she provides anti-suffrage voices and begins to solidify her argument in my mind. Providing the anti-suffrage voice, Dubois I believe, nicely disproves the family focused view and introduces why the movement remained a minority. By detailing the success of the WCTU and their ability to capture a wider audience of women, Dubois’ argument gained some strength in my opinion and made her view distinct from others previous. She finally solidifies her argument in my mind by concluding with, “Yet, the very fact that the WCTU had to come to terms with suffrage and eventually supported it indicates that the woman suffrage movement had succeeded in becoming the defining focus of 19^th century feminism, with respect to which all organized female protest had to orient itself” (69). In all, after reading Dubois and not having any previous knowledge, I do believe she provides a historically backed claim that shows some different thinking then previous familial heavy authors.

November 6, 2013

Self-inflicted prejudice

“No Irish Need Apply”: A Myth of Victimization by Richard Jensen may be the first work I have read this semester that I completely agree with. Jensen’s explains his thesis claiming, “This paper will explain how the myth originated and will explore its long-lasting value to the Irish community as a protective device” (406). Jensen’s work does a nice job explaining the background behind the slogan as well as giving multiple possible explanations for the significance of the myth without factual historical evidence. His work delves into the Irish myth of victimization using the popular slogan “No Irish Need Apply.” He explains that the Irish American community harbors a deeply held belief that it was the victim of systematic job discrimination in America, and that the discrimination was done publicly in highly humiliating fashion through signs that announced “Help Wanted: No Irish Need Apply” (405). Without historical evidence many historians viewed this slogan as a metaphor for Irish troubles; however, the Irish insist that the signs did exist and seem to prove their discrimination.

The “NINA” slogan seemingly originated out of England after the 1798 Irish rebellion and came over to America with the migration. The myth in America seemed to focus on the public “NINA” signs hanging up in shops and restaurants that deliberately marginalized and humiliated Irish male job applicants. However, with that being said, “No historian, archivist, or museum curator has ever located one; no photograph or drawing exists” (405). Along with no historical evidence of the signs, no other ethnic group complained about being singled out by comparable signs as well as there was no known employment discrimination ever documented. I found this is to be very strange especially after Jensen noted some very famous Americans that said they had heard about the signs growing up. Something had to be going on and Jensen offers some rather valid options. The one I was most interested in was the one he mentions last.

With no physical evidence or documentation of the myth Jensen offers the explanation that myth fostered among the Irish a misconception that other Americans were prejudiced against them, and were deliberately holding back their economic progress. This perceived prejudice gave the Irish a “chip on the shoulder” mentality and directly added to their encouragement of the myth. No other European Catholic group shared this chip on their shoulder; likely the strong group ethos that encouraged Irish to always work together, and resist individualistic attempts to break away attributed to the popular myth. The Irish must have been held back by something because they had a statistically lower rate of upward social mobility than average in the 1850-1880 period; but was it internal or external (412)? Jensen argues that there is something else going on that is fostering this self-proclaimed discrimination by the Irish stating, “the Irish chip-on-the-shoulder attitude may have generated a high level of group solidarity in both politics and the job market, which could have had a significant impact on the occupational experience of the Irish” (411). Records show that many Irish worked together in large groups such as labor gangs and construction crews adding to the theory of group solidarity driving the myth. Touching on CT’s previous post, it is important to note the atmosphere of the region at the time and realize that many different cultures and backgrounds could have easily lead to the congregation of Irish immigrants in the some workplaces and communities and held them back from political and social mobility.

In my opinion, self-denial was the king and self-infliction was what led the Irish to popularize this myth. Pete Hamill provides Jensen with a tremendous example of this collective Irish spirit, “This was part of the most sickening aspect of Irish-American life in those days: the assumption that if you rose above an acceptable level of mediocrity, you were guilty of the sin of pride” (417). Their own slogan only pushed them down into lesser jobs. The slogan was in the mind’s eye, and gained steam and significance from the popular song from 1862. With no evidence, the Irish, in my view, become self-proclaimed victims. Discrimination by others may have been relatively irrelevant compared to the effect the Irish slogan had on reinforcing political, social and religious solidarity amongst its own people. It was more of a warning to stick to the neighborhood than it was a prejudice act by Others. I agree with Jensen’s final analysis and believe the slogan identified an enemy to blame for the Irish inability to move socially upward besides their own faults and community ideals.

October 16, 2013

A Culture of Persistence

Theda Perdue’s “Cherokee Women” is one of the few academic works that assesses how women were affected by European imperialists and explorers in a more traditional society. A well-regarded work that tells a story that is relatively unknown to most; “Cherokee Women” details a drastically different view of the role and impact of Cherokee women in their society during colonial and European expansion. I personally liked this book because unlike some of the other pieces we have read this semester, this work clearly had its depth of research but distanced itself from some of our other reads by presenting it in a manner that makes it manageable to the average history reader. Like Ian stated in his previous post, this was somewhat of an eye-opening read for me because it illustrated such a different type of female than the usual colonial and European perspective we run into so often. The submissive or obedient women is often the picture painted by colonial and European history, a picture I obviously went into this book imagining and a picture I surely did not see. Unlike the patriarchal society we are often accustomed too and often find in our history texts involving this time frame, Perdue describes Cherokee females as holders of power and influence in their traditional matrix of societal power.

First, before I get into my opinions of Perdue’s interpretations of Cherokee female society and its significance to our understanding of our nation’s history and unique cultural and gender studies, I want to quickly comment on the interesting choice in cover art for the book. Even though most of her work is documenting the experienced changes in Cherokee women through their contact with colonial expansion and eventual removal, Purdue does also tell a story about the Cherokee people and their continued valued in culture and tradition. I found the cover art to be interesting and clever because she chooses to portray a woman from each of the seven Cherokee clans to mark her central claim, that Cherokee women are the people and are the culture. Moving forward, my first instinct after reading this work was to compare it to the only other work I have read regarding and detailed matrilineal societies and the strong role of women in a traditional culture. My first experience was with the early civilizations in Western Africa that placed a high emphasis on their matrilineal culture and a higher emphasis on the special powers of the women that make it work. I like Ian’s quote and its general blanketing of Perdue’s explanation of Cherokee women’s power, it reads “I have this to say that the women rules the roost and wears the breeches and sometimes will beat their husbands within an inch of their lives.” Each gender provided different roles within societies structure that needed to be filled, neither was subservient to the other, rather a tribe coming together and balancing roles throughout its people.

Perdue strongly argues that “the story of most Cherokee women is not cultural transformation…but remarkable cultural persistence.” If historians were to look at “other indices of cultural change, including production, reproduction, religion, and perceptions of self, as well as political and economic institutions,” then a very different portrait is painted of these Cherokee women during and after contact with the new world and that is one of cultural persistence. Obviously, she cannot deny the profound negative effects that contact with Europeans had on women and nicely articulates the diminished influence women had in terms of trade, possessions and political status due to this contact. I want my last point to focus on her pretty convincing argument about cultural persistence. Despite the negative impacts of encroachment by whites, may it be takeover of institutions or relocation to the west, “a distinct culture survived removal, rebuilding, civil war, reconstruction, allotment and Oklahoma statehood.” She quietly touches on the continuing influence of the role of the women towards the end of the 20th century to prove her point on the persistence of this different culture. She ends quite persuasively in my opinion, and states the fate of Cherokee women has been one of “persistence and change, conservatism and adaptation, tragedy and survival.” I believe that this is a nice look into matrilineal roles and there control of trade and social functions, how this was changed as war and economics adapted and how they affected certain European and Indian relations and dominant European viewpoints.

October 1, 2013

Honestly, come on Hamilton

As class evolved today, the questions began to center around the validity of Thomas Slaughter’s work and a more slightly hidden question of what role should the Government had played back in its beginning stages; a question that everyone in the country at that time was asking, especially Alexander Hamilton and George Washington alike. Slaughter’s, Whiskey Rebellion, makes it very apparent that this question was very much on the minds of our Founding Fathers as the country first hit adversity and details how many of them decided to deal with it.

As discussed at length today in class after Ian’s initial comment, we all agreed that Slaughter did use this work to explore his personal observations, but rather meticulously fills the pages with historical facts supported with numerous primary or secondary sources. Agreeing with Ian, this often makes the read pretty boring and unclear at times, however, inevitably leaves you possibly questioning the ideas of the Founding Fathers and their decisions at the time.

The extremely comprehensive book thoroughly covers the “famous Non-Rebellion” that took place in outskirts of Western Pennsylvania in 1794, its resulting in President George Washington actually taking the field of battle for the first and last time under the new Federal forces, and everything that lead up to its initial tensions; properly giving attention to the reasons for rebellion, Alexander Hamilton’s master plan to retire the national debt, and the drama surrounding the “east v. west” dilemma. More importantly, Slaughter takes the energy to explain to his audience all of the groundwork of this national argument; the same groundwork that drove our discussion in class today regarding the more detailed reasons and explanations as to why some citizens believed the tax to be fairly acceptable and necessary and why others thought it was abusive and targeting.

Clearly, this book isn’t meant for the average history goer, the details provided by Slaughter are meant for historical scholarship. As we unpacked in class, Slaughter illustrates why this whiskey tax issue actually began to be interpreted many different ways; from a “Class Warfare” Marxist argument which divided the country along geographic and political lines to East v. West to finally liberty v. order and many more along the way. Deeply delving into his explanations and clarifying, for example that the wealthy, elite land owners on the urban, east coast appeared not to have a problem with the Tax or Hamilton’s idea of taxing this commodity in order to solve national debt. Then goes on to explain, on the other hand, that the poor, frontier farmers in the West found the Tax overbearing and targeting because it demanded them to solve an issue they felt had nothing to do with them, essentially became a luxury tax on spirits on the frontier and once again exemplified the issues of the national government not protecting the frontier’s best interests and safety.

In the end, after countless recollections of poor frontier experiences and urban elite sentiment, Slaughter in my opinion, as I stated in class, provides me with enough solid evidence to prove that superstar Hamilton could have avoided this encounter if he had been just a bit more diplomatic and sensible about the current situation of the country and surrounding post-revolutionary spirit. If he could have put aside his personal grudge with the Western settlers, Hamilton and inevitably Washington would have avoided this potential crisis. Really, after all that led up to the rebellion, only a few frontiersmen went to jail, essentially all to establish the right of the new Federal Government to levy taxes on its own people (an example of the many parallels Slaughter makes to British authority years earlier). At the end, Slaughter wraps up by telling us this was a battle between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists, liberty and order, elite and poor and the Federalists won out.

September 24, 2013

The West Is Where You Want To Go

First, I want to comment on Thomas P. Slaughter’s work, The Whiskey Rebellion, and pick up on what Ian stated in his post this evening. I agree with Ian and do tend to find, at least part two, to be very dense and hard to follow at times. Slaughter has done an incredible job and has packed tons and tons of historical research and insight into these pages, however, with that being said Ian makes a valid point that the onslaught of information makes it hard for the reader to follow what is going on. The information is very interesting yet difficult to consistently tie back to the overall picture of his message, so with regards to that claim, I do agree with Ian. What I want to add to that is the awesome picture that Slaughter paints by overloading us with information. I had yet to read something so extensive regarding the Frontier and the lead up to the Whiskey Rebellion. Even though it is so dense, Slaughter does give us amazing snap shots of Frontier life pre-Whiskey Rebellion. I always thought that the revolution and freedom was fought and won in the East but Slaughter’s work leads me to second guess myself and rethink my stance. His information on the expansion of the West and those who were fighting for its freedom illustrates just the true Americanism and heroism of those sticking it out on the West.

What really caught my eye was the quote Slaughter puts on the first page of part two to begin the section, by Robert Penn Warren it reads,

For West is where we all plan to go some day. It is where you go when the land gives out and the old-field pines encroach. It is where you go when you get the letter saying: Flee, all is discovered. It is where you go when you look down at the blade in your hand and see the blood on it. It is where you go when you are told that you are a bubble on the tide of empire. It is where you go when you hear that that’s gold in them-thar hills. It is where you go to grow up with the country. It is where you go to spend your old age. Or it is just where you go.

From Warren’s work, All the King’s Men, this quote just caught my interest and intrigue because it views the West as almost the promise land; where everyone wants to go. This quote, along with the section of the book itself and the heated debate we had in class today is why I want to spend my last remarks asking why the newly created national government, headed by Hamilton’s policy, wanted to levy a tax primarily focused on frontiersmen? I understand the issue with the national debt and the need to promote American prosperity; however, I do not understand why it needed to be at the expense of the frontiersmen. The Whiskey excise needed to help pay back the debt was immediately controversial amongst many on the Western front. An excise clearly seen as a target on westerners, whiskey was often a popular medium of exchange and essentially the excise became an income tax that elites in the East didn’t have to pay. I don’t understand why after we just left Great Britain that we would do the same thing to our on people that forced us to revolt. The main complaint to the tax was that it was taxation without representation, exactly what they’d just fought the Revolutionary War to stop. Many of these westerners were veterans and in their view they were fighting for freedom, resisting the newly emerging central state. Along with larger distillers recognizing the advantage the excise and Hamilton gave them, westerners continually felt the government was ignoring their security and economic welfare. Adding the whiskey excise to other existing grievances only increased tensions on the frontier. To conclude, I wonder why our government would willingly take more and more from those who have less and less yet fight for our freedom on our fronts.

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?