Popular Politics in Early America – Page 12 – Just another My blog Sites site

September 11, 2013

The Noble Mob

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Pre-Revolutionary America was characterized by English control of the colonies, which fared well until the crown began to impose itself upon the colonists without their consent. The initial response to the various acts opposed by the colonists were to mob, using the threat of violence to make their opinions known and often find success, although at varying degrees. In analyzing colonial society at the time, it is no wonder that mob resistance was common practice for demonstrating opposition of policy; state militias often lacked much strength and armed men threatening violence was often more of an issue for local officials than their assigned duties regulated by a government across the Atlantic Ocean. These “mobs” were also not the pitchfork-carrying farmers that popular media so often portrays. They were organized with strategic moves, specific to their grievances, and did not frequently act on impulse. The treat of violence was often a greater tool than the violence itself.

It is also interesting to note that the British pastime of mob resistance was often a break in the order of society in order to protest what the “mobsters” considered an unjust break in the order of society. As an example, the Stamp Act was an imposition on the colonists that they saw as an unjust break in the order of society. As a result, they felt the right to create their own disturbances in society, in the form of a mob, in order to express their desire to re-establish what they believed to be a just society. It is under this progression of action that the chaos of the mob often developed as well. As one side imposed more, the other felt a right to escalate further, and a back-and-forth ensued that gradually increased the severity of the dispute. Surprisingly, this is a logical poker-like game. Each side raises the stakes further until the other one folds or a victor eventually emerges. Here we also see a contradiction in the traditional sense of the “mob.” It does not simply gather and begin burning homes, but rather plays strategic moves based on the actions of the opposition, with calculated risks taken in an attempt to best achieve their goals.

Although I agree with Ian Solcz’s assessment of the mob as a function of organization rather than a desire to create mass chaos, I disagree that it was “a last ditch effort to show their rulers the effects of unruly and unfair laws placed upon them.” Rather than a last ditch effort, it was another method for the colonists to demonstrate their political feelings towards the regulations placed upon them. Granted, it was more severe than a petition, but some occasions called for more significant action to be taken. These men had no say in the laws that were being imposed on them, and they had no choice but to make their voice heard. If it took armed threats, that that was what had to be done. Eventually, their actions were not convincing enough for their voices to be acted upon in Parliament, and so began the American Revolution.

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 11, 2013

The Legality of a Riot

Before reading Pauline Maier’s “Popular Uprisings and Civil Authority in Eighteenth-Century America” I was a little skeptical about mob legitimacy in this era. From today’s perspective, mob’s carry too many negative connotations to be considered good in any sense. Yet, Maier does a magnificent job of portraying how mob action was an accepted and necessary social tool of the era. She goes even further, by shockingly breaking down the negatively viewed ideas of mobs and rebuilding the term in a way that grants sympathy for those involved. Maier does this by providing explicit details that exemplifies how North American Colonial mobs were truly not violent and uncontrolled like their British counterparts. Instead, they were the efforts of an abused people who fell to mob action as a last hope in their efforts to secure their liberties as a people.

One statement from Maier’s work that struck me was Thomas Jefferson’s statement regarding mob usage. His statement was; “What country can preserve it’s (sic) liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance” (Maier 26). After mulling over the idea of mob action for a little, I realized that this statement is the epitome of what a mob was for Colonial British America. It was not an effort to create mayhem or chaos, which are ideas that are normally associated with mobs. Rather, it was the colonist’s last ditch effort to show their rulers the effects of unruly and unfair laws placed upon them. When impressment reached the point of potentially crippling a society or acts like the sugar act could destroy an entire colony’s economy, the colonists fell to mob action. This was not their first course of action though, as colonists from the poorest of the poor to even the magistrates followed all legal steps before turning to extralegal actions.

In Wayne E. Lee’s “Crowds and Soldiers in Revolutionary North Carolina” the legal procedures that colonists tried before arriving at mob action are laid out in a clear cut manner. In elaborating on the Enfeild Riots, Lee does a great job of depicting how the colonists took every legal step from a petition, to speaking with the attorney general, and finally to the raising their notion with the Assembly before arriving at mob action (Lee 24). By reading these steps, it only legitimized the “legality” of the colonist’s actions. In my opinion, the colonists followed every step of the law and it was their fault they had to resort to this action, but their government which forced them into this desperation. Their only hope was preserving their liberties under an oppressive government, which any American citizen can sympathize with no matter their class in society.

After reading through Ben Hartshorn’s post regarding mob action I would have to agree with him on every point but one. He states that “the shape and rules of mob violence had not changed very much” in comparison to the mobs of England, Germany, and Scotland (Benjamin Hartshorn Philadelphia, PA). In this juncture, I would say based on both Maier’s and Lee’s pieces that we can see a clear cut difference between the mobs of the colonies and those of Western Europe. The clearest and most distinct difference rests with the organization and lack of violence between the groups. It is stated in Maier’s piece how the English at times were excessively violent and destroyed numerous pieces of property that had no relation to their target. Following that, Maier mentions how the colonists rarely destroyed anything that was not their target and rarely, if ever, turned to violence that was not ultimately necessary, which helped them avoid significant deaths. If anything, this difference alludes to the superior organization of the colonists compared to western Europeans when it comes to their extralegal activities. With this in mind, I would have to respectfully disagree with my friend on the similarities between the mobs of North America and Western Europe.

September 11, 2013

Riots Tell the Whole Story

Wayne Lee’s look into riots in pre-revolutionary North Carolina, in “Crowds and Soldiers in Revolutionary North Carolina”, is an excellent example of popular politics. Lee is able to use specific examples of rioting and mob violence to demonstrate a greater understanding for the world in which these North Carolinians lived. Lee begins by telling the reader the background and European makeup of the colony. Then he discusses what riots and mobs were like in England, Scotland, and Germany. This allows Lee to make the argument, after discussing specific North Carolina riots, that the shape and rules of mob violence had not changed very much. As Lee is going through the specific North Carolina riots though, the reader is able to extract information about this world that would not be found in ordinary history textbooks on formal politics.

During the Enfield Riots discussion, I was able to learn about how land was granted and distributed through the Privy Council in England to individual Lords who then sold or rented the land. They hired men to act as the landlords in their stead. The relationship between the squatters and Francis Corbin was also very interesting. Corbin’s dishonesty and corruption allowed his victims to act as if they had the law on their side. When they captured Corbin and walked him seventy miles, they made him sign formal documents to reimburse the people and correct his mistakes. They acted with a sense of legality and formality that I would not have expected from rural farmers in North Carolina in the 1750s. This helps Lee make the argument that North Carolina rioters behaved very similarly to Englanders. Yet, while making this point, I was able to learn more about how the average man lived, operated, and thought in North Carolina.

Furthermore, in the Sugar Creek War section there are many insights into the daily life of these men. Punishments such as being tied at the neck and heels and whipping were discussed. The North Carolina men who whipped their persecutors are described as innovative by Lee as whipping was not used during English or Scottish riots. It is interesting then, that Lee discusses how whipping was typically associated with slavery. Together, these ideas are an example of the growth of a unique American culture. Through Lee’s insights on the North Carolina riots, we are able to accumulate more knowledge of their society as a whole.

As Ian Solcz discussed in his blog, newspapers played a significant role in popular American politics. Similarly to riots, newspapers allow us now to understand more about the culture and society of early America. As Ian says, “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” (Solcz, Rochester, NY). Newspapers and stories about riots are two of the more effective ways that one can garner facts about how average Americans lived. Newspapers are effective because they are better preserved and widely distributed. Riot tales are effective because they are interesting stories. Moreover though, riots were one of the most common ways that average Americans could make noise and affect society as a whole. Therefore, by researching riots, one can learn a lot about the people. Overall, while Lee was making interesting points about riots, he was also able to use his research and findings to further the readers understanding of popular and common life in early North Carolina.

September 6, 2013

Week 1 Post : Lepore's Democracy

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?