elcaldwell – Popular Politics in Early America

November 21, 2013

Policy and Politics

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Planet Money, one of my favorite NPR productions, is a weekly podcast which looks at some of today’s economic issues. In one episode, they decided to figure out some of the policies on which economists from across the political spectrum tend to agree. Here’s the link to the blog post about it: http://www.npr.org/2012/10/17/163104599/planet-moneys-fake-presidential-candidate They even made a fake candidate to advocate these ideas, and a fake political ad. We do not see many of the positions that they advocate in mainstream politics, from either the Democrats or the Republicans, because they tend to be highly unpopular. Yet, they are the solutions on which economic experts agree.

In Brown’s “Epilogue,” he asks several important questions, which center around the issue of an educated population, informed enough to make important policy decisions to guide the nation. The most interesting question, centers around “the democratic idea that citizens informed on the merits of a particular issue should organize to elect officials to do their bidding, not to serve as guides and guardians” (206). Though I believe that idea to be a great ideal for society to aim for–the governance by bureaucrats who only do the bidding of the electorate–I also believe it to be an implausible goal. Elected officials often have to make decisions that they were not elected to make; not only that, but those officials rely on experts who spend their careers studying the issues in question. Can we really expect the citizenry of this nation to be educated and informed enough to make the decision, in aggregate, for the official? Are not they swayed, as the official is, by the testimony of experts?

Furthermore, I agree with Brown that talk radio, television and the hegemony of the commercial sector obfuscate the decisions from which the electorate chooses. Middle and working classes tend to use elites as heuristics for their decision making, agreeing with those who resonate with them most deeply, often on an instinctual level. As much as they might claim that they believe in certain policy decisions, they are most likely regurgitating an opinion foisted upon them by their favorite self-described comedian (read Rush Limbaugh). The Planet Money policy proposals will mostly never be achieved, because right and left wing ideologues are too busy criticizing and nit picking speeches, or trying to decide who won a presidential debate. The media is part of the commercial sector, and they are, as Brown argues, both serving and shaping consumer desires. Most politically conscious citizens do not want to discuss policy, they just want to be upset about what the other side did.

In the end, 300 million people informed well enough to make good policy decisions is not a feasible goal. Elites have always made and will always continue to control policy. As Brown concludes, and I agree, people must look for those “sterling qualities” of “learning, judgment and integrity” in their public officials, and hope that those officials can discern the best policy choices.

Alex argues that the media limits the electorate’s ability to become educated and informed on political issues. Unfortunately, I believe that this influence is an inevitable outcome of the commercial sector’s desire to influence and control the populace. Yet, we would likely fare no better under a more socialist system, since state controlled media doesn’t seem to work any better at informing people. Perhaps NPR is the model for the future, an entity funded mostly by the donations of the people. In the spirit of our nation, media by the people, for the people.

November 11, 2013

The (anti)feminist movement?

I have encountered a surprising number of people in my life who hold that they, belonging to a certain ethnic, national, cultural or religious group, have permission to make jokes that deride members of that group. This idea has a certain inherent logic to it: someone who belongs to a group probably lacks the malice or bigotry against their group that someone from the outside might have. Yet, I think that, more often than not, we have learned to internalize cultural bigotry against our own groups, and that a demeaning joke is demeaning no matter who delivers it.

I believe that the effective female advocates of the Female Moral Reform Society in Utica suffered because of their lack of prescience to see that an argument which pushed women into a separate sphere for purposes of sexual purity, would necessarily push them into a separate sphere in other ways. The joke-telling rule echoes the Society women’s mistake, in that both did not or do not see that crafting a certain vision of a group will create an identity for that group in the populace’s mind, and those identities are not easily shifted. Perhaps, however, some of the women of the FMRS intended that they should eventually be separated, once they enforced some level of social discipline on alcoholic or licentious behavior.

Ryan begins her piece with a discussion of contemporary historiography in an effort to illumine the political implications of her own writing in history. The time during which she wrote (1979), there were efforts to shows the suffering that women experienced at the hands of male-dominated societies, but there were also efforts to acknowledge women’s agency within the course of historical events. Then, others countered with criticism that to do so puts the responsibility for their treatment on women’s shoulders. Her examination seems like a perfect exposition of the truth: that disfranchised groups suffer from their disfranchisement, yet they can also find influence and power in surprising places, despite their oppression.

As often before, women found influence in moral discussions occurring in Utica and elsewhere during the 1830s and 40s. The first item at issue was sexual promiscuity, and though Ryan attempts an empirical analysis, it feels incomplete. The only data with which Ryan works is a 1843 survey by the Utica Society which contains 11 acts of sexual offense, and marriage records in concert with birth records of children. As she seems to understand, this is a paltry substitute for actual data and concludes from this that the issue was likely not an increase in the amount of sexual promiscuity, but rather an erosion of the “community’s ability to monitor and regulate such behavior” (71). Lack of control then, instead of an actual problem, precipitated concern over morals.

David Sierra writes that “The revivalist Presbyterian church provided them with the framework to build their own associations and the pre-industrial economy made a population density more conducive to a more even distribution of influence”(74-5). Though I recognize the enormous significance of the church, I think that other elements were just as essential in the growth of the women’s organizations, such as McDowall’s Journal, the network of charitable middle class women already established, and the organization of women in nearby polities before Utica.

November 6, 2013

Cultural Consciousness

My paternal great grandfather emigrated from Ireland and I remember, as a child, hearing about the “NINA” signs in stores. As children, I think that we judge the truthfulness of a claim, not by the facts, but rather by the statement’s plausibility, and the credentials of the people making the claim. NINA signs certainly seem plausible; in my imagination, they paralleled the “Whites Only” signs of Jim Crow. As far as credibility, parents are about as credible as it gets–at least that’s the way it seems when you’re little. Only now, reading these articles, has my collective, cultural memory been challenged.

Richard Jensen marshals a compelling argument that the NINA signs were, in fact, a mostly imagined phenomenon. While they may have appeared in windows of private homes, especially in Britain, they were non-existent within the commercial world. He discusses the discrimination that the Irish perceived, contradicting it with examples of Irish economic success in America.

Kevin Kenny, though sounding a tone more sympathetic to the Irish than that of Jensen, seems to be in relative agreement. He acknowledges that “demand for unskilled male heavy labor and unskilled female domestic labor in the nineteenth century was simply too great for the Irish to have suffered much by way of anti-hiring discrimination, racial or otherwise.” In seeming agreement about labor, these two historians also write in concordance regarding political discrimination against the Irish, including nativist fears.

Essentially, I think, this discussion comes down to disagreements about what it felt like to be Irish or Irish-American during the nineteenth century. Did it feel discriminatory, or welcoming? The truth can likely be determined from evidence and thoughtful intuition: the Irish, despite being a poor and unskilled immigrant group, often succeeded in the labor market in America. Yet, cultural fears about their race, or their Catholicism persisted. They displayed economic mobility, but were discriminated against politically. The Irish likely felt unwelcome in America, even as they found employment, dominated some industries and gained political franchise. That feeling, not reality, seems to have created the NINA signs that exist in my imagination and the imaginations of millions of other Irish-Americans: sitting in shop windows, they remind us that our ancestors once felt unwelcome, even if that feeling didn’t come from a sign in the window, or a mass inability to find work.

I think that I echo Michael’s final line, where he writes “I think an effort to better connect how the discrimination in other aspects of the Irish experience contributed to the myth of economic discrimination would have added to Jenson’s work.” A focus on the experience of the Irish, and their own understanding of their cultural history, would be extremely useful in conjunction with this factual analysis of the ways the Irish were and were not discriminated against in the 19th century.

October 24, 2013

Second-class citizenship

Slavery has existed since the first civilizations, though the kidnapping of Africans and their brutal enslavement in the Americas has been the most brutal. Past civilizations have allowed people to sell themselves into slavery to pay back debts and slaves have often been allowed to earn there freedom over long periods of time (I do not have sources for these claims, except to say that I have learned of them during my previous education). Within the brutal system of American slavery, slaves had little or no legal protection, could be bought and sold as slaveholders pleased, work brutal hours in even more brutal conditions, and be punished for malfeasance through torture. I believe that part of what allowed these slaves to be brutalized, as never before in history, was the omnipresent racism that slaveholders both participated in and used as a tool for the subjugation of blacks. Patricia Reed, in “Margaret Morgan’s Story: A Threshold between Slavery and Freedom, 1820-1842, documents what I believe to be an inevitable consequence of this racism-supported slavery: the legal marginalization of free blacks.

Wade argues that Pennsylvania laws were ineffective due to their weakness. I wonder, however, how strong those laws would have had to be in order to have prevented the encroachment of slavery and slave catchers upon border and other nearby states. For example, in the United States, which has inherited the English Common Law principle of the presumption of innocence, blacks were slaves until proven free. Why did southern states not require a proof of ownership before allowing blacks, like Morgan and her children, to be sold to slaveholders? That might have prevented their kidnapping and enslavement, but rather they lacked the adequate documentation of manumission, and therefore could not prove their freedom. I argue that to do so would have highlighted the initial kidnapping from Africa. Indeed, if it is unjust to kidnap a black family from Pennsylvania, why would it be more just to kidnap them from the African coast. To ask such a question would be to undermine the fundamental justification of slavery–that blacks were inhuman, and could therefore be enslaved at will.

Though abolitionists and northerners in or near border states were rendered ineffective by the laws and customs of nearby states, I was saddened to learn of the ways in which their own racism hindered their abilities to aid free blacks. For example, Reid mentions that “Pennsylvania state laws had stripped free blacks from bringing criminal charges against whites in court” (372). By granting blacks status as second-class citizens, rather than slaves, Pennsylvanians had acknowledged their belief that blacks did not deserve the full protections of the law. From there, it is a slippery slope to being unable to prevent their enslavement at the hands of unscrupulous slave catchers.

As an American in 2013, I argue that this phenomenon–bigotry with partial acceptance–is not over. In the Davidsonian, my freshman year, I argued that Davidson’s Presbyterian tradition was incompatible with homosexuality, and that we should therefore abandon the Presbyterian tradition. The responses I received were interesting, and I learned several things, but the one that stuck with me the most was that many people believed in accepting gays and lesbians, but that to engage in homosexual activities was still a sin. Not only do I disagree, but I believe that such splitting of hairs is not beneficial to any disfranchised group. To love someone, to include them and accept them, you cannot reject part of their identity. I believe that such rejection fuels homophobia today, and that such racism and exclusion of blacks from the courts and other political processes is what allowed Margaret Morgan and her children to be brutally re-enslaved so long ago.

October 22, 2013

People should not be afraid of their governments; governments should be afraid of their people.

For me, it was easy to assume that banning the trans-Atlantic slave trade was a moral act, fought for by the noble abolitionists as a first step toward ending slavery. My assumption, though perhaps part of the reason for such an act, was not comprehensive: in “Slave Revolts in Hemispheric Perspective” from “From Rebellion to Revolution” by Eugene Genovese, he suggests that the end of the trans-Atlantic slave trade was, partially, a tactical move on the part of slaveholders to avoid more slave revolts. He points out that slave populations in the American south were already significant and were growing, so slaveholders felt no need for imported slaves. Significantly, however, he points out that imported slaves were more likely to incite rebellion than those that had been suppressed for a l0ng time.

The presence of imported African slaves, however, is not the only reason that slaves might revolt, as Genovese makes clear in his overview of slave revolts and the causes. Though likely not, it feels comprehensive; he mentions causes such as the presence of skilled laborers, slave’s knowledge of firearms, large and concentrated slave populations, real or expected political alliances with other groups or states, religion (especially Islam), and enlightenment ideologies as factors that might foment revolt. Furthermore, he discusses the ways in which white populations might affect the possibility of a slave revolt: the white populations familiarity with firearms, and their access to local and federal militias; the size of the white population compared with the black one; political rhetoric at the elite level, and the discussion of it around the slaves; black expectations about the duration of their enslavement.

CT mentions that he believes that slaves’ ability to use firearms was an insignificant element in determining whether or not slaves would revolt. I believe he is correct–many of these causes by themselves are insignificant. Furthermore, he is also correct in a practical sense: a few single-shot muskets would not turn the tide of battle. I believe, however, that there is a certain psychological element that accompanies the use of firearms, and–though insignificant in the course of battle itself–I believe this would potentially have a large impact on whether or not slaves revolted. Especially, I think, in the American south, since I believe there is a psychological value to meeting your enemy on the field of battle with a parity of technology, and southerners were often heavily armed and trained in the use of firearms.

I also appreciate Genovese’s placement of slave revolt within a broader context. As he writes, slave revolts “contributed toward the radical though still bourgeoisie movement for freedom, equality and democracy, while they foreshadowed the movement against capitalism itself” (2). It is logical that slavery would arise within a capitalistic mindset, as the owners of capital can avoid dealing with labor at all, and simply make labor part of their capital. Luckily, our consciences have pulled us beyond this abhorrent form of torture, and yet, make no mistake that every capitalists attempts to lower wages and shut out unions, reduce benefits and privatize education, are intended to push the working class back toward the dehumanization of slavery, in which the labor (barely) survives and the capitalists reap the benefits.

October 2, 2013

Ironic Hydra

I am excited to learn about more about ships and their role as political spaces since, in reading “The Many-Headed Hydra” by Linebaugh and Rediker, it became apparent to me that, in the cases they discussed, ships served dual roles: (1) to confine and control people, especially slaves and, (2) especially for the African community, to create a sense of cohesion among those who were enslaved and transported on ships. This cohesion served Africans in England well in their London community, according to Linebaugh and Rediker.
Not only cohesion but, as L&R argue, the confinement experienced by all of these groups, including Africans, led to consciousness of freedom, which was an essential element in inspiring the riots and activism of the working class in this period and later.

I found “The Many-Headed Hydra” to be a particularly interested reading. I appreciated the use of the hydra metaphor because, not only did I learn about its use in the past to describe the so-called ‘mob,’ but the authors’ sympathetic treatment of the working class within this piece adds irony to the metaphor.

I think that perspectives on race in “Hydra” is also a worthy topic. Considering the food riots of 1740 and the resistance to the ‘Intolerable Acts’ in colonial America leading up to the revolution, one must challenge the perception of racism and cultural bias as inherent and natural. As my favorite historian, the late Howard Zinn, suggested in his “People’s History of the United States,” perhaps it is possible that racism is a tool with which the wealthy divide the working classes into separate groups. Though perhaps difficult to prove such a hypothesis, the motives for such action are certainly present: nurturing racism solidifies the validity of race-based enslavement, creates hate between groups of people who might otherwise be unified, and distracts from other issues that might upset people.

L&R also document the cohesion with which workers from various industries and even social strata cohere in order to protest and act against what they see as oppression. In the protests before the revolutionary war, workers of both African and European ethnicity, as well as those who were enslaved and indentured and those who were free worked together to accomplish their goals. Similarly, during the 1768 riots in Ireland “tailors, shoemakers, carpenters” all banded together in activism for the advancement of the working class.

Regarding Slaughter and “The Whiskey Rebellion,” I both agree and disagree with Wade’s assessment. Though perhaps not the most inclusive conclusion, Slaughter’s argument that liberty versus order was the most significant paradigm of the Whiskey Rebellion was supported by some evidence. I think that Slaughter’s incredibly detailed description of the events allows and encourages the reader to make their own analysis, especially when considering the roots of the rebellion, leading all the way to independence movements in what is now Tennessee and Kentucky and Vermont.

September 25, 2013

The Lens of the American Revolution

I am fascinated by the so-called whiskey rebellion and the tax that it sprung from. For me, the most interesting part of learning about it is considering it within the context of the American Revolution. Slaughter seems entirely correct in his subtitle: “Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution.” The rhetoric regarding the exercise of excise taxes by the federal government, versus the rhetoric used by the founding fathers and later framers of the constitution, is a stark dichotomy. The elite of the period in which the whiskey rebellion took place seemed very willing to discount the ideological arguments of the frontiersmen concerning representation and fair treatment in favor of the practical consideration of money. Cynicism creeps into my perception here, as I wonder whether the ideological arguments made my the signatories to the declaration of independence were actually looking out for their own economic self-interest.

Furthermore, the revolution is apparently relevant in the founders concerns over the possibility that the confederacy and later the United States would crumble from east-west tension. In retrospect, it seems almost inconceivable that the United States would not have grown into the empire it became, but by reading this book I’ve realized that the elite of early America saw the existence of the new nation as highly tenuous, ready to shatter in a moment. “The Whiskey Rebellion” elucidates this fear even further, with the central government’s ability (not to mention right) to collect certain taxes in question.

Unlike Ian, I was not very surprised by the differences of loyalty leading up to the American Revolution versus the whiskey rebellion. To me, the rebellion seems like much more of a grassroots movement, boiling over from popular sentiment and spilling over into violent action, than was the American Revolution, which seems to me to have been a somewhat popular, but predominantly elite action taken to secure the rights and property of the owning class within colonial America from the elites of the British Empire. Additionally, from what I have learned recently, it seems like frontier settlers felt more aggrieved by the actions (or in-actions of the federal and state governments) than did colonists leading up to the American Revolution. Partially, I believe this to be the result of frontiersman believing that the new government would be more representative and receptive to their needs than the British government. Partially, however, I think that the frontiersmen felt cornered–stuck between the demand for taxes from the east, the threat of Indians to the west, and the difficulty of developing economically because of their lack of access to the Mississippi River, the last issue of which being particularly upsetting to many, because they felt that it was congress’ intention to limit their economic growth by not negotiating with Spain on that issue.

September 11, 2013

Not So Riotous Riots

This week, “Uprisings and Civil Authority in Eighteen-Century America,” by Pauline Maier and “Crowds and soldiers in revolutionary North Carolina” by Wayne Lee worked together to paint a detailed picture in my mind of how violence functioned in early and pre-revolution America.

Ian Solcz correctly observed in his blog posting that both authors create sympathy for the rioters themselves, rather than those victims of riots. I think that they do this by attempting to move past weighted and often carelessly used terms like “riot” or “mob” in order to describe the actions of the mob specifically, and how it fit within the context in which they were working. As Lee points out, too often do historians describe in detail the events preceding an outbreak of violence, and then leave the violence itself with the frustratingly vague description of “riot” or “violence.”

The context in which both Maier and Lee place the rioters is, I believe, both more specific and intended to inspire sympathy. Lee specifically discusses how rioting was a method used to address problems that had been addressed through more formal, institutional means, that left those parties involved dissatisfied. They used the riot to address the specific issue in a manner that they found acceptable, with as little violence as possible, and then went on their way.

I argue, however, that these riotous citizens, though certainly more peaceful than, say, the rioters of Los Angeles after the Rodney King verdict, were sending a clear message of their willingness to resort to violence. Though mild, the authors do mention occasions when they did use violence against people as part of their methodology. Furthermore, I question whether their actions are as praiseworthy as they might seem. What were the alternatives that citizens might have used, if they refused to follow a course of violence?

Some may say that violence itself was the language of difficult disputes in early America, and that could certainly be a possibility. As one of the authors (I forget which) makes clear, the mob itself could just as easily be the sheriff’s posse carrying out colonial justice in the absence of a military or formal police presence. Yet, the elite seemed surprisingly restrained in their use of force to address these riots. As Maier described, the governing officials often attempted to address the sources of a mob’s unhappiness, rather than their behavior itself. Not only is that response laudable, but surprising, since we might assume that a riotous society would be more inclined to violence from all individuals.

These observations raise the question of whether these officials were acting in self-interest, out of a desire to avoid being tossed into the sea or tarred and feathered, or if they simply and benevolently rose above the melee to address the root issues. The cynic in me says the former, and logical evidence seems to line up behind that side. For instance, elites are quick to use force to address mob violence today, when they have a professional and often militarized police force and, in extreme cases, the military, to draw upon. In cases Lee mentioned, militia members partook in the riots. It seems an intelligent strategic move on the part of elites to make their concessions seem voluntary and benevolent, rather than to allow the mob to realize their absolute power in a system where the state shared the power of violence with the people.

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.

August 29, 2013

Eli Caldwell Post 1

“People Power,” a book review from the New Yorker by Jill Lepore, asks a few very good questions: Who should participate in a democracy? What caused American democracy or how did it grow? How have historians in the past mistaken the causes of American democracy? How can historians balance those parts of history which deal with elites with those parts which are mostly populist or grassroots?

As volumes could be written in an attempt to answer any of these questions, this brief article does not answer them but uses others arguments to illustrate different positions on some of these important questions. Lepore uses the different positions between Thomas Jefferson, who believed in democratic participation by white males, and Noah Webster, who seemed to believe that the masses were not fit to govern and that aristocrisy was always the mode of true governance, even in so-called democracies.

Lepore also examines the example of a slave called Madison Washington, who played a role in politics by allowing congressman Joshua Giddings to take meaningful action in congress as an example of the balance that can be struck in examining politics as the business of elites and the masses, side by side. This examination seems to suggest that to examine one or the other would be myopic, and to combine both would be more honest when Lepore says “Giddings was able to do what he did because Washington did what he did.”

People Power pulls in sources such as books written by historians, articles and reviews from various magazines including the Atlantic and the New Republic, and a letter from Webster to Jefferson.