MIDDLINGCLASSES IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC: THE RESPECTABILITY DYNAMIC (I still need another
day for this, esp. to incorporate the respectability dynamic with reform)
Oct.
23-26
The rough, the respectable, and the proto-aristocratic. Read documents
UNIT 4: SECTIONAL IDENTITIES, MARKET REV., AND RESPECTABLE REFORM (2012)
Oct.
29
The South, slavery, and African-American cultures. Rd. Martin 286-301.
30
African-American cultures and the entrenchment of racism.
31
The West, the Northeast and urban centers: Transportation and Industrial Revolutions
Nov.
1
From pre-industrial to industrial.
2
Jacksonian trade unionism and producerist middlingclasses. Rd. Martin, 282-86.
5
6
7
8
9
The 1st phase of the Second Great Awakening: Methodists and Mormons. Rd. Martin, 251-55.
The 2nd phase of the Second Great Awakening: reform and American Civil Religion
The broad scope of Jacksonian reform. Rd. Martin 250-53
The broad scope of Jacksonian reform (cont.)
John H. W. Hawkins and temperance. Rd. Martin 253-59.
12
13
14
15
16
NO SCHOOL-P/T CONFERENCES
Abolitionism. Rd. Martin 259-64
Abolitionism (cont.)
Women's roles and rights. Rd. Martin 264-68.
Years of portent: 1844-45
19
Catch-up
20
EXAM: Sectional developments, the Market Revolution, and respectable reform
21-23
THANKSGIVING VACATION
IDs (*= ID TERMS FOR SEMESTER USE AND FINAL)
paternalism
*semi-autonomous slave cultures
Br’er Rabbit
African-American Christianity
*Denmark Vesey
Erie Canal
small producer tradition
*industrial capitalist dislocation
Eli Whitney
Samuel Slater
Boston Manufacturing Company
Lowell girls
*John H. W. Hawkins
Baltimore journeyman coopers
Simeon Courtly
*Timothy Dwight’s “pioneers”
AMEZ
Mormons
“Arminianized orthodoxy”
perfectionism
millennialism
Charles Finney
American civil religion
Dorothea Dix
Six Sermons
Washington Temperance Society
American Colonization Society
Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World
The Liberator
New England Anti-Slavery Society
Nat Turner
American Anti-Slavery Association
Tappan brothers
Oberlin College
Amistad
Prigg vs. Pennsylvania
Elijah Lovejoy
*pro-slavery ideology
nativism
Boston and Baltimore convent riots
Mormon Extermination Order in MO (1838)
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Declaration of Sentiments
“The Great Disappointment"
Commonwealth vs. Hunt
Lowell Female Labor Reform Association
Philadelphia nativist riots
*autobiography of Frederick Douglass
*MECS
”54 40’ or Fight”
UNIT 4: SECTIONAL IDENTITIES, MARKET REV., AND RESPECTABLE REFORM (2012)
Themes for Unit 4
Socioeconomic sectionalism: race-based cash crops, pre-industrial artisan production, and industrial capitalism
Religion in American culture: mainstream Methodism, outsider Mormonism, and the dynamics of respectability
Non-dependency and reform: paternalism (plantations and factories), temperance, and abolition
New expressions of American exceptionalism: civil religion, millennialism, and (more) expansionism
I. Plantation economics, planters, and slavery in the South
A. Cash crops and cotton
1. profitability necessitates exploitable, controllable labor force
2. wearing out soil necessitates expansion
3. overseas markets ties South to Europe
4. economy grows but never develops
B. Distinctiveness of southern culture
1. liberal republicanism in the South
a. equality of opportunity for whites: chance to rise to slave-holding status
b. emphasis on protection of minority rights in politics
2. centrality of race in Southern culture: free = non-slave = white
3. emphasis on honor for establishing social cohesion among elite
C. Social hierarchy dominated by planters
1. planters enjoy unlimited power; expected to practice paternalism but no restraints or limits
2. white yeomen farmers: kinship and racial ties to planter aristocracy
3. poor white “peckerwoods”: ambiguities of social subordination and race superiority
4. free blacks in the South live in limbo
D. Slave cultures
1. white attitudes toward slavery
a. initially, an unfortunate reality: TJ’s first draft of “Declaration of Independence”
b. increasingly, a system capable of delivering good for all: paternalism again
2. process of enslavement: Middle Passage
3. slave life: work and family in semi-autonomous social spaces
a. house domestics, field hands, skilled artisans
b. limits of white supervision and control
4. coping mechanisms of slaves
a. separate culture, based on negative referent (white culture)
(1) Br’er Rabbit and the trickster tales elevate the powerless
(2) African-American Christianity (slaves and free blacks) inverts power
b. spectrum of accommodation, resistance, and rebellion
(1) paternalism and Sambo
(2) subtle resistance
(3) rebellion: Denmark Vesey conspiracy
II. The West and the transportation revolution
A. Distinctive opportunities and challenges
1. wilderness creates frontier culture; necessity of imposing order on chaos
2. Indians pose a constant tension
3. settlement involves both rugged individualism and communal migration
4. excellent soil presents agricultural opportunity (later manufacturing opportunity)
B. Transportation innovations
1. turnpikes
2. canals: the Erie Canal
3. railroads: the Baltimore and Ohio railroad
C. Issues of expansion
1. South wants land open to slaveholders
2. yeofolk seek non-dependency through ownership of small farms
3. Transportation Revolution ties West to Northeast
III. The Northeast and cities: from pre-industrial artisans to industrial capitalism in the Market Revolution
A. Geographical and demographic factors in the Northeast
1. poor soil and large families force folks to look for alternative employment
2. immigration swells urban populations
3. Fall Line in New England provides plenty of water power for industrial innovation
B. Pre-industrial artisan practices and traditions
1. definition: productive work done by groups involving both mental and physical skill
for sale directly to consumers
2. types of workers: apprentices, journeymen, masters (CHAIRMAKERS, TAILORS)
3. producerist traditions: the “small producer tradition”
a. natural work rhythms and shared workplaces
b. mutuality within craft societies → common identity through skilled labor
c. relatively equal power relations -> shared decision-making on hours, pay, etc.
d. productive non-dependence: “pride-in-skill,” “competence,” and “stint”
e. artisan republicanism forbids elevating self over good of community
f. traditional economic morality guarantees producerist ideals of “liveable” share
of profits; no taking advantage of other’s misfortune or ignorance
4. producerist culture: strengths and weaknesses
C. Industrialization and mechanical innovations
1. definition: machines replace human or animal labor to increase production
2. challenges to pre-industrial ways: increased division of labor (CHAIRMAKERS)
a. de-skilling, as machines replace parts of skilled labor process
b. gradual bastardization of craft and industrial dislocation/alienation of workers
3. changes in ownership of means of production and changes in workplaces
a. outwork (TAILORS)
b. manufactories
c. factories
D. Financial innovation and the rise of industrial capitalism
1. questions: how to pay for industrialization and how to distribute profits generated by it?
2. one possibility: use emerging system of banks and credit and legal innovation of
"incorporation" to introduce emerging economic system of capitalism
a. definition: investment of surplus wealth to profit through increased production/control
b. one of a number of options for organizing industrial production
c. types: entrepreneurial and corporate
3. industrial capitalism: use of accumulated capital to buy machines ("means of production")
a. increases productivity
b. allows owners to control pace and length of workday, workplace conditions, and
distribution of profits
4. context of the rise of industrial capitalism: the Market Revolution
a. farmers and artisans make things for others, not themselves
b. products are made not for individual customers but for "market"
c. consumerism threatens producerism as source of self-identity and status
d. elevation of entrepreneurship and middlemen
e. the Market Revolution and the cult of domesticity
5. implications for pre-industrial, producerist artisan culture and liberal republicanism
a. changes in ownership of means of production transform power relations
b. demise of mutuality: from masters to owners; from journeymen to workers
c. government supports industrial capitalism through laws and court rulings
d. industrial capitalist dislocation: former j-men fear dependence and owner power
e. necessity of making capitalism moral, respectable, and republican
E. The industrial capitalist revolution in the United States
1. Early examples of inventors, entrepreneurs, and their champions (1790-93)
a. Samuel Slater and Moses Brown in Providence RI
b. Eli Whitney and the cotton gin
c. fulfillment of Alexander Hamilton’s “Report on Manufacturers”
2. the development of the Boston Manufacturing Company (1811-14)
a. F. C. Lowell, P. Moody, and international industrial espionage
b. establishment of factory town in Lowell, MA
c. experience of the workingwomen of Lowell
(1) Yankee farm girls: opportunity and paternalism
(2) desire for investor/owner profits and competition demand more prod.
(a) the speed-up
(b) the stretch-out
(c) incentives for abusive overseers
(3) 1834 strike and 10-hour movement: typical of indust. capitalist dislocation
3. Jacksonian trade unionism: reflective of developing class tensions and dynamics
a. producerist ethics: traditional economic morality and non-dependency
b. protective, republican, non-socialist: John H W Hawkins and the Baltimore hatters
c. religion and respectability: the Baltimore coopers
F . Industrial capitalism and the dynamics of middlingclass respectability (REVIEW)
1. American realities in the early republic
a. no caste system; no traditional birth hierarchy; suspicion of unearned privilege
b. relative equality of opportunity and equality of condition
c. American class system to be developed within context of liberal republicanism
(1) liberal: freedom from unnatural restrictions
(2) republicanism: communal good more important than indiv. advancement
(3) fundamental dynamics: centrality of non-dependence and opportunity;
necessity of virtue; reality of relative privilege
(4) threats to achieving liberal republicanism: lack of limits, established
inequality, and rampant, ambitious individualism
2. 19th century classifications of class
a. degraded lower classes forced into dependent status
b. parasitic upper classes privileged through power and constructed superiority
c. producerist middlingclass ideal types, based on both productive restraint of
passion and access to power (or lack thereof)
(1) the rough (or spontaneous)
(2) the proto-aristocratic (or fashionable)
(3) the respectable (or uptight)
d. combos (rough/respectable; rough/proto-aristocratic; respectable/proto-aristocratic)
e. phenomena of negative referent (axes of antipathy)
(1) axis of order (respectable-proto-aristocratic vs. rough)
(2) axis of justice (rough/respectable vs proto-aristocracy)
f. (respectable) axis of affinity: Timothy Dwight and his “anti-pioneer” farmers
IV. Second Great Awakening: "Nation with the Soul of a Church”
A. Context of 1st phase (1790-1820s): countercultural (reaction against deistic Fathers) unleashing of populist
evangelical energy (validating, empowering, confident, egalitarian)
1. disestablishment => "market economy" for religion, needing purveyors, product, and audience
2. purveyors: unpolished, “hard-core” itinerants, women, black preachers presenting “product”
a. egalitarian recognition of God’s love for all brings validation and empowerment
b. authenticity of presenters in taking risks to bring message to commoners
3. product: embrace of emotion, supernaturalism, and racial/gender equality: Cane Ridge
4. audience: combo of opportunity/anxiety => acute sense of responsibility and question of meaning
5. example: rise of American Methodism
a. theological innovation of Arminianism
b. phenomenal growth of adherents
c. democratization and divisions
(1) Methodist Episcopal contradictions: bishops, lay leaders, and anti-privilege
(2) AMEZ and Stillwellite schism reveal racial, gender and class tensions
(3) Methodist Protestants and the triumph of respectability
6. heterodox expressions of SGA: the Mormons
a. founded by occultist Joseph Smith as an answer to denominational confusion
b. quickly raises suspicions due to theological, cultural, and socioeconomic differences
(1) Jesus had visited America; promised lost Israelites (Indians) He would return
(2) communitarian economics and political bloc voting cause “Gentiles” to fear
(3) polygamy and Smith’s despotic rule indicate violations of respectability rules
c. persecutions culminate in Mormon Extermination Order and Smith’s death in 1844
d. remainder of Mormons follow Brigham Young to Utah in 1847
B. 2nd phase (1820-1840s): channeling of populist evangelical energy (moralistic, activist) into reform
1. Enlightened Calvinism ("Arminianized orthodoxy"), like liberal republicanism, links two
oppositional belief systems to create a new hybrid based on idea of self-limited God
a. Puritan legacies of Calvinism
(1) covenant theology persists but without threat of judgment: Manifest Destiny
(2) absolute sovereignty of God (predestination) needs modification
b. modified by Arminian impulses: free will, as God limits Himself
c. influence of Enlightenment rationality
(1) “Nature’s God “ provides laws of nature; no need for miracles or supernaturalism
(2) Nature exhibits wisdom, power, and benevolence of God; no more mystery
(3) necessity to “prove” God’s existence and character: the design argument
2. Protestant hegemony in a disestablished milieu creates contradictory dynamics
a. Enl. Calvinism rationalizes faith and preserves covenant theology, but replaces grace w/
contractual legalism, removes limits, and lets "laws" of nature create morally neutral areas
b. Arminianism and disestablishment privilege free will and individualism, but change
sense of divine omnipotence and weaken congregational discipline and obligations
c. perfectionism and immediate repentance heightens moral requirements, but makes possible
myopic preoccupation with symbolic sins and the sins of others
d. millennialism stimulates moral fervor, but fosters intolerance and false expectations
e. emphasizes self-discipline, behavioral rules, and rationalized faith (incl. white supremacy)
a. but excludes “primitive” and emotional supernaturalism of the “rough"
b. and embraces “high church” affectations of the respectable/proto-aristocratic
3. separation of African-American Christianity
a. racist separations at end of 1st phase: John St. (NY) and Methodists in SC
b. AMEZ grants northern blacks institutional power
c. D. Vesey and N. Turner spark southern fear of religiously-inspired slave uprisings
d. white response: C. C. Jones and “The Mission to the Slaveholders”
4. Charles Finney, Arminianized Calvinism, and the transition to 2nd phase reform efforts
a. Finney’s archetypical conversion experience
b. New Lebanon Conference (1828) brings revival Calvinists and Arminians together
c. result: Methodist-style revivals based on proper methods and legal arguments for conversion
d. women allowed to pray in “promiscuous assemblies” (1831)
(1) after gradual removal from official positions of leadership at end of 1st phase
(2) start of re- assertion of quasi-public power in Sunday Schools, prayer groups, etc.
e. perfectionism and millennialism: the Rochester story
f. "voluntary" but not optional reform becomes mandatory
C. Concurrent rise of American Civil Religion
1. deification of political leaders
2. secularized covenant theology =>religious foundations of Manifest Destiny and Amer. missionary
efforts, equating American culture with Kingdom of God
a. democracy for the non-dependent only
b. capitalist opportunities, as opposed to traditional economics or feudal colonialism
c. bastardized Protestantism which sanctifies Western culture and respectability
3. allows for a certain ecumenicism and assimilation for non-Protestants: Rabbi Isaac Wise
4. "voluntary" but not optional reform becomes mandatory here, too
V. Jacksonian reform
A. Why is it necessary?
1. importance of living up to ideals of emerging American Dream
2. exceptionalism demands that industrial capitalist change and slaveholding must be made
compatible to traditional republican virtues of non-dependence and communal well-being
B. What contributes to its peculiar constructions?
1. Romantic optimism related to unleashing of human potential
2. SGA influence balances unleashing potential with concern for rules and order
C. Types and examples of reform
1. humanitarian benevolence/social control
a. Dorothea Dix and mental asylums (benevolence)
b. Magdalene Society and anti-prostitution efforts (social control?)
2. empowering the dispossessed (no longer to be seen as “naturally” dependent)
a. abolitionism
b. women's rights
3. re-establishment of cultural core of republican values
a. education
b. trade unionism and ten-hour movement
c. temperance
D. Conflicts within reform
1. top-down or bottom-up?
2. legislation or "suasion?"
E. Temperance as representative of reform conflicts
1. Alcohol as problem
2. Lyman Beecher, Six Sermons, and ATU condemn alcohol as immoral and anti-republican
a. use of dry, scientific lectures to scare the young and non-drinkers into abstinence
b. “conscientious elites” vs. rough: demonization of the drunk
3. Washington Temperance Society--"The Second Declaration of Independence"
a. gendered ambivalence: manly camaraderie and free expression of emotion
b. spiritual dimensions: Methodist-style testimonies and the religion of respectability
c. “salt of the earth” vs. proto-aristocratic: demonization of the “grog-sellers”
d. John H. W. Hawkins as representative SGA reformer (temperance and otherwise)
VI. Anti-slavery as focal point of Jacksonian reform
A. Initial efforts
1. colonization and response: American Colonization Society (1817)
2. free blacks and efforts to deal with discrimination
B. militant abolition (1829-31)
1. David Walker and “An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World”
a. producerist argument re national wealth produced by slave labor
b. apocalyptic millennialism
c. responsibilities of free blacks to foment slave rebellion
2. W. L. Garrison and The Liberator
a. perfectionist immediatism: New England Anti-Slavery Society (1831)
b. support by free blacks sustains him as he brings issue to forefront
3. Nat Turner and rebellion-as-Judgment
a. context of VA abolition discussion
b. 55 whites killed; 100+ slaves killed
c. no more discussion of abolition in the South
C. further developments in abolitionist organization
1. American Anti-Slavery Society (1833)
a. financed by rich evangelical Tappan brothers
(1) also sponsor Charles Finney's revivals
(2) help finance radical Oberlin College and the Liberty Party
b. use women as public speakers
2. British abolition (1833)
3. Frederick Douglass and runaway slave experience lectures
a. explodes constructed white myth: rough, non-respectable African-Americans
b. exposes slaveholders as proto-aristocratic pariahs, with no limits to power
D. Second Seminole War (1835-36): largest slave uprising in US history ends with Seminoles leaving FL
E. Amistad incident brings focus (1839-41)
1. story of Cinque and Mende ending up in Connecticut
2. Van Buren refuses to support blacks; fears loss of support of Southern Democrats
3. evangelical abolitionists (Tappan Bros.) underwrite effort to return Mende to Africa
4. John Quincy Adams helps defend blacks; wins case
5. incident helps to unify abolitionist movement
a. increasing public attention focused on abolition as the reform
b. Prigg vs. Pennsylvania (1842) protects fugitive slaves/free blacks
F. anti-abolitionist response
1. political foot-dragging everywhere, esp. in Senate
2. riots in the North
a. combo of rough/proto-aristocratic elements beat abolitionists: Garrison’s near lynching
b. Elijah Lovejoy murdered in Illinois (1837)
c. Prudence Crandall harassed in New England
3. pro-slavery ideology: slavery as positive force: starts with Dew’s “Review of the Debate” (1832)
a. paternalistic racism: “respectable” reasons for why “rough” blacks must be reigned in
b. JC Calhoun’s speech to the Senate, 1837
(1) strong always exploit weak; working people exist to make the rich richer
(2) North achieves this through industrial capitalism and rejects producerism
(3) hypocrisy of “free labor;” agrees w/ JHWH and unions re “wage slavery”
(4) South is honest AND moral; slavery offers cradle-to-grave security for workers
c. cotton profit benefits all (white) Americans; agrees with D. Walker that slaves provide it
d. Biblical arguments: slaveholding patriarchs, Paul’s letter to Philemon, story of Ham
e. Hammond: slavery allows white southerners to create finest example of civilization ever
4. Southern intellectual blockade: censorship of abolitionist literature and Gag Rule in Senate (1836)
G. nativism (dark side of reform) and other allegedly respectable prejudices
1. abolitionism raises question of who can access republican opportunity and responsibility
2. class distinctions based on race theory, respectability, and religion especially demean Irish
a. notions of race hierarchy put defeated Celts below triumphant Anglo-Saxons
b. rough stereotypes of the "wild Irish" indulging elemental desires and lack of limits
c. anti-Catholic prejudice: “beyond-limits” Pope represents both tyranny and dependency
d. Boston and Baltimore convent riots
3. employment competition in the urban centers: Philadelphia nativist riots, 1844
4. related prejudice: anti-Mormonism and the Extermination Order in MO (1838)
VII. Women and reform
A. Traditions of gendered expectations
1. various definitions of feminine and masculine characteristics
2. challenges to patriarchy from SGA and reform efforts: Finney and “promiscuous prayer,” 1831
B. Role in abolitionism
1. Oberlin admits women and blacks
2. Lydia Maria Child "converts" Wendell Phillips and Charles Sumner
3. American Anti-Slavery Society signs women as agents in 1836
C. Women's rights movement
1. Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth C. Stanton at World's Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840
2. Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 and the Declaration of Sentiments
3. Sojourner Truth brings combo of abolition and women’s rights full circle: “Ain’t I a woman?”
VIII. Years of portent: 1844-45
A. Introduction
1. depression finally over; good times return
2. where does American opportunity exist and who is entitled to access it?
3. three related questions
a. how do politicians deal with expansion, geographically and culturally?
b. to whom is liberal republican promise opened? (what ARE “unnatural” restrictions?)
c. how is the Kingdom of God on Earth to be realized?
B. Examples of significant developments
1. SGA and hopes for realization of millennial purposes: Millerite "Great Disappointment" (10/44)
2. fate of republican reform
a. conflicts over industrial capitalism
(1) revival of trade unionism: Commonwealth vs. Hunt (MA) protects unions (1842)
(2) Philadelphia nativist riots: religion, respectability, and employment competition
(3) Lowell deteriorates: Lowell Female Labor Reform Assoc. and Irish workers
b. conflicts over anti-slavery: religious resolution fails; on to political solutions
(1) F. Douglass's autobiography condemns slavery; repudiates white supremacy
(a) slavery brutalizes all; denies opportunities for respectable success
(b) masters are by definition beyond-the-limits proto-aristocrats
(2) Protestants splinter over slavery: Bishop James Andrew and MECS schism,
3. in terms of politics, the election of 1844 is critical (and only option left)
a. Whigs are fragmented; nominate Clay who equivocates on Texas
b. Dems pick Polk’s expansionism: Oregon ("54 40 or Fight") and Texas (no Nueces border)
c. Liberty Party enables Polk’s win; changes emphasis from sin to threat to republicanism