Hydra – Popular Politics in Early America

October 2, 2013

It's all about Class

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In The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, and the Atlantic Working Class in the Eighteenth Century by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, they argue that the nature of mobs and revolts in the eighteenth century altered and did not consist solely of homogeneous groups, but rather of many classes, races, and vocations all advocating for a single cause. They note the presence of several nationalities in mobs during the pre-Revolutionary phase in the American colonies and sets them up in opposition to “the symbols of Royal Majesty and civil authority and ruling-class power” portraying the irony in whites plotting against whites.

Linebaugh and Rediker claim that modern historians have neglected to tell the story of these multi-faceted mobs but it is important to address what united these diverse groups: class. Yes, it may be surprising to find black slaves and white sailors working in unison to protest the affluent ‘white peoples’ of New York, it is more clarifying to note how they both fall into lower socioeconomic classes and they fought against these ‘whites’, for the most part, because they were wealthy and race was an obvious complement. These groups felt quite disfranchised and violated by the same culprits, just in different ways. The black slaves protested their servitude and the harsh conditions under which they lived while the white sailors protested the impressment which was being practiced rampantly in the streets of the colonies by the British administrators. These trying circumstances necessitated the unification of these varying groups in order for them to achieve their goals but I don’t believe it was any kind of progressive effort to integrate racial groups. Mobs are desperate and do what they can to achieve their own ends. In my view, class trumps race or any other political category when administrating a revolt.

The Hydra is used as a classical metaphor to describe how the working class would subvert the power of the wealthy. It is interesting to see how the use of such classical texts served to “assist the scientific revolution through the revival of neo-Platonism” but also “supported the doctrine of European progress in social development.” The working class used its newfound power and newly receptive audience to such revolutionary principles to fuel its cause and gain supporters to the revolutionary cause. These philosophies engendered by the Renaissance were, of course, instrumental in fostering the revolutionary sentiments in the colonies where they saw the inherent injustices in taxing peoples unrepresented by government and a need for some semblance of democracy.

In last week’s post, Ian made reference to the justification of factions, saying, “generally, they are a good thing, as they represent the ideas of different groups of people, which all come together to vote on the country’s directive.” I agree with this assertion which essentially addresses the argument Linebaugh and Rediker are making that the rebellions in colonial America, endorsed by so many diverse groups, were beneficial in that they voiced many peoples’ concerns. This was the necessary beginning of American freedoms to express your opinions without fear of backlash, but also of having a government and society tolerant to many philosophies.

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.

October 2, 2013

The Whiskey Rebellion as a Head of the Hydra

After reading Part III of Slaughter’s The Whiskey Rebellion, despite his eloquent narration of arguably every event leading up to and culminating in the Whiskey Rebellion, I was left largely unsatisfied by the conclusions he made, or for that matter failed to make, with regards to the event he considers an overlooked turning point of American culture. While successfully revealing the complexity of the rebellion through his analysis of the conflict through the eyes of both the frontiersmen of the West and policymakers of the East, Slaughter ends his book weakly. As discussed in class, he ultimately rests the book on a hesitant claim that the “liberty-order paradigm” is the most effective method of summarizing the Whiskey Rebellion. In addition, on pages 182-183 Slaughter writes off a list of how events that led up to the Whiskey Rebellion could have transpired differently and potentially eliminated conflict. However, amidst his string of “what if” musings, Slaughters misses an opportunity to answers questions about why the “string of tragic ironies and coincidences” did occur (183). For example, what might have been the motivations behind summoning the indicted distillers to Philadelphia? Or, why did the Mingo Creek militia feel the need to capture the federal marshal summoning the distillers to court? Slaughter, in his attempt to forge an extraordinarily thorough commentary on the Whiskey Rebellion, misses the mark in several facets and leaves many interesting historical questions unanswered.

Fortunately, after reading Linebaugh and Rediker’s article “The Many Headed Hydra,” I found a handful of broader questions about the motivations and implications of eighteenth century uprisings, like the Whiskey Rebellion, have been answered. In a convincing piece, Linebaugh and Rediker demonstrate that revolutionary motivation and discourse had been fostered since the 1740s with the Knowles Riot (225). More importantly for discussing the Whiskey Rebellion, however, is their Linebaugh and Rediker’s assertion of a “many-sided struggle against confinement” as an organizing theme in popular revolt of the eighteenth century (244). This argument is further supported in The Whiskey Rebellion through the paradigms that Slaughter generously provides in his book. In illustrating the Whiskey Rebellion as a conflict of East versus West, upper class versus lower class, Federalist versus Antifederalist, and the like we see that the rebellion was in many ways a struggle from many sides. Moreover, it is well documented throughout Slaughter’s book that the frontiersmen felt their rights were being encroached upon with the excise tax on whiskey, fostering a feeling of confinement. Linebaugh and Rediker’s conclusions are further reinforced when taking into account the ethnic tensions of the Whiskey Rebellion as frontiersmen often constituted diverse groups of both white Americans and immigrants, emphasizing the multi-ethnic movements that pervaded rebellion in the eighteenth century (225).

With this in mind, I would challenge AJ’s claim that Washington and Hamilton could have averted crisis had they set aside their personal grudges with the West. Could doing this have settled some tensions? Undoubtedly it could have. On the other hand, as portrayed in Linebaugh and Rediker, revolts like the Whiskey Rebellion were many-sided affairs. Slaughter’s book supports this as his reluctance to definitively choose a “best” framework in which to view the Whiskey Rebellion emphasizes the complexity of the layered tensions in the affair. While a struggle of liberty versus order may have ceased with the retreat of Washington or Hamilton, frontiersmen would still have held their grievances, and several other paradigms of conflict would have remained unresolved. While the obstinacy of Washington and Hamilton definitely facilitated the materialization of the Whiskey Rebellion, the struggle to mend relations with the central government had endured for so long that the confinement felt by the frontiersmen would likely have come to its tipping point regardless of the actions taken by the President and his Secretary of the Treasury.