Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans

Rating:
Summary: Facts not Fiction
Review: An excellent historical analysis of post American Revolution cultural and character regional developments responsible for much of the future general nature -- religous, economic, and social -- of both male and female Americans. It gives what might be considered a "true" picture of early 19th century U.S. history, not one that has been "cleaned up" to protect ancestry. It is a profound, in-depth work of the true scholar and historian to be thoroughly enjoyed. One learns much from such historical preparation.

Rating:
Summary: Thought Provoking
Review: Appleby provides an excellent survey of the culture of the "first" generation of Americans and what influenced and shaped their interpretation of the American revolution that laid the groundwork for our governance and society today. Appleby notes that the first generation of Americans had to grapple with a yet unformed political and economic structure and much of their thinking and actions completed the formation of our national institutions and culture.

Many themes run through the work. First, Jefferson's election in 1801 was critical because it marked the beginning of the expansion of democracy and participatory politics to the masses and reaffirmed the predominance of state and local control over politics. Literacy and the wide consumption of newspapers and books, social and physical mobility,inventiveness, the embryo of industrialization, the proliferation of religious denominations, the blurring of social distinctions, and the formation of political and social organizations are just a few of the many themes she touches upon. These cultural tides, and others, broadened and made more inclusive participation in the structuring of economic, political, and religious decision making in both formal institutions and informal channels of influence.

Appleby also illuminates the growing isolation of the South from the rest of the country because of its rationalization of slavery -- an institution that was anathema to the ideals (if not the reality) of the nation's founding and ran counter to the democratization and upward mobility experienced by the rest of the nation. In hindsight we see the cultural beginnings of the schism between North and South -- here in cultural terms -- that explains how our nation could bring itself to such violent conflict in the Civil War years later.

These are just a few of the themes in Appleby's work -- and does it little justice. It would take me 20 pages of run-on sentences to describe many of the thought provoking elements in this book. So in short, I highly recommend it for those interested in the nation's founding.

Rating:
Summary: Buy this book!
Review: Appleby's thesis is that the generation of Americans born in 1776 through 1800 inherited an as yet unformed society whose outlines were based on the revolutionary conception of governance, but that it was that this first generation of post-war Americans who had to actually form the "more perfect union." She shows how this task was taken up by all kinds of Americans through all kinds of means, including evangelicalism, new mass communications vehicles like newspapers, and the formation of political and social clubs and societies. Empowered as they were by Jefferson's explosive policies, policies which eventually wrested the governance of the United States out of hands of the elitist, self-serving hands of the Federalists, the rising middle class cleared a space for themselves.

Appleby assumes the reader knows the basic history of this period, an assumption which enables her to not only cover a lot of ground fairly quickly, but also to treat her material thematically. This approach may leave some readers unhappy or confused, but for those with a basic grounding in the era, the method can provide startling insights into a much-written about period of American history. In addition, the reader is given by virture of this technique insight into the present era. Appleby's one overriding insight is that once the civic religion of America was set into motion by this post-revolutionary first generation, and we Americans have been making only minor adjustments to this national imaginary and our place within it ever since.

For fun, read as companion texts "The Education of Henry Adams" by Henry Adams and "Improvised Europeans" by Alex Zwerdling. These "un-common" Americans contrast nicely with the rising middle class population described here.

Rating:
Summary: good material, sometimes wordy
Review: Around page 20 I figured out I should skip the wordy Introduction. It would make a better Conclusion -- too abstract to follow if you don't already have some factual underpinnings.

On to the rest of the book. Chapter 2 is sort of an overview. Remaining chapters cover "Enterprise", "Careers", "Distinctions" (about social status), "Intimate Relations", "Reform" (religious and moral), and "A New National Identity". The material is undeniably interesting -- dueling newspaper editors (and dueling everyone else), downtrodden young people finding their way, cultural battles between north and south, Federalists vs. republicans, the inception of careers and jobs that had not existed before... and did you know that separate right and left shoes were an invention of this recent time period? Where Appleby stocks the book with primary material, it's engaging. Where she talks in generalities, there are way too many sentences that have to be read several times to sink in. "The intense politicization of public life from political and institutional controversies accustomed Americans to public disclosure." (p. 41) Is this circular, or what? I imagine the book is most difficult for those unfamiliar with the material, a little easier for those who have some background.

One other complaint: The reader is often left to wonder how things got to be as Appleby describes. For instance: "Jefferson and his supporters democratized American politics... by implementing policies that enabled people to work out the terms of their lives with minimal interference from family, church, or state." What policies? Not one example is given; there's nothing for the reader to grip. I'm intrigued by the statement but I'm left hanging.

On the whole, it's a worthwhile bunch of material, and the style is sometimes engaging. Just be prepared to deal with the passages that are less engaging.

Rating:
Summary: Some Reservations
Review: I have some reservations about this book. 1) Its main new primary sources are the several hundred autobiographies that were written in the first decades of the new republic and which Appleby has read. I would suggest that these autobiographies have their own systematic bias. They represent the literate side of the United States, as opposed to the 30%-50% of American whites (and the overwhelming majority of slaves) who were either illiterate, had strictly limited literacy or had little contact with the world of print. Similarly these autobiographies privilege the middle class over the others, the story of the successful entrepreneur over the stories of the unsuccessful or only partially successful. It also privileges the religious over the non-religious. Given the fact that the early United States was an overwhelmingly rural country and that it only had a poor and parochial intelligentsia, it is not surprising that evangelical propaganda had a disproportionately large influence in American publishing. There was a market for accounts in which the subjects feared for their very souls and who wrestled with the demons of the world. There was much less of a market for people who had no qualms with sleeping with their fiancées and who thought Methodists should mind their own business. Yet at the turn of the century one-third of New England women conceived their first child outside of marriage, and the rate was probably higher elsewhere. At one point Appleby notes how little interest or affection her autobiographers showed for Andrew Jackson. Yet considering that Jackson was only three men to win a plurality of the vote for the presidency three times (Cleveland and FDR are the other two) this points out an important bias in her selection.

2) Appleby has a talent for interesting setpieces, such as the rise of duelling as a symbol for the political passions of the Jeffersonian era, or the dialectic of refinement and plainness while obscure biblical names went out of fashion, or the culture of drink or alcoholism. Yet her account of Americans considering their revolutionary tradition misses something. There is a discussion of the triumph of Jefferson and the failure of the Federalists, an account of party strife, and the limits of Northern Emancipation. Yet there is a certain passion missing about the meaning of democracy and liberty here. This is book which concentrates more on the successful entrepreneur than the unsuccessful working man. It discusses race and gender, but it does not really elucidate the dialectic between slave and citizen, and men and women that are crucial to understanding why such potent ideologies arose and their effect.

3) In order to appreciate this book's limits one should compare her work with other recent works of scholarship. One should contrast her appreciative account of Jeffersonian democracy with the subtle, ironical and methodically documented accounts of Alan Taylor which shows the limited gains by Maine farmers, or the political limits of the enemies of Mr. William Cooper. In contrast to her somewhat upbeat account of the industrialization and commercialization of the United States, one should look more closely at Christopher Clark's painstaking narrative of the rise of rural Capitalism in Western Massachusetts. One should contrast her brief comments on love and sexuality, with Nancy Cott's startling demonstration of the fragility of marriage. In contrast to her use of autobiographies one should look at Mechal Sobel's recent work which suggests the rise of a new personality in the United States, more individualistic, less communal. (The discredited concept of bourgeois revolution vindicated by psychoanalysis? We shall see.) And Appleby's account of the triumph of evangelicalism appears a bit complacent, a bit boosterish in its enthusiasm for the winning side in contrast to the recent work of Jon Butler and Christine Heyrman. In conclusion, one might say this book reminds one of Tocqueville. This is not meant as a compliment, since one reason for Tocqueville's abiding popularity and the almost total absence of serious criticism of him is that he provides a complex picture of modern society and its disconents in which questions of liberty and justice are ultimately irrelevant. When such questions arise they are not values in their own right, but problems which must be ably managed by the wise elite Tocqueville is part of. Of course Appleby cares very much about liberty and democracy. What is not so clear is whether she has thought through them enough.

Rating:
Summary: Some Reservations
Review: I have some reservations about this book. 1) Its main new primary sources are the several hundred autobiographies that were written in the first decades of the new republic and which Appleby has read. I would suggest that these autobiographies have their own systematic bias. They represent the literate side of the United States, as opposed to the 30%-50% of American whites (and the overwhelming majority of slaves) who were either illiterate, had strictly limited literacy or had little contact with the world of print. Similarly these autobiographies privilege the middle class over the others, the story of the successful entrepreneur over the stories of the unsuccessful or only partially successful. It also privileges the religious over the non-religious. Given the fact that the early United States was an overwhelmingly rural country and that it only had a poor and parochial intelligentsia, it is not surprising that evangelical propaganda had a disproportionately large influence in American publishing. There was a market for accounts in which the subjects feared for their very souls and who wrestled with the demons of the world. There was much less of a market for people who had no qualms with sleeping with their fiancées and who thought Methodists should mind their own business. Yet at the turn of the century one-third of New England women conceived their first child outside of marriage, and the rate was probably higher elsewhere. At one point Appleby notes how little interest or affection her autobiographers showed for Andrew Jackson. Yet considering that Jackson was only three men to win a plurality of the vote for the presidency three times (Cleveland and FDR are the other two) this points out an important bias in her selection.

2) Appleby has a talent for interesting setpieces, such as the rise of duelling as a symbol for the political passions of the Jeffersonian era, or the dialectic of refinement and plainness while obscure biblical names went out of fashion, or the culture of drink or alcoholism. Yet her account of Americans considering their revolutionary tradition misses something. There is a discussion of the triumph of Jefferson and the failure of the Federalists, an account of party strife, and the limits of Northern Emancipation. Yet there is a certain passion missing about the meaning of democracy and liberty here. This is book which concentrates more on the successful entrepreneur than the unsuccessful working man. It discusses race and gender, but it does not really elucidate the dialectic between slave and citizen, and men and women that are crucial to understanding why such potent ideologies arose and their effect.

3) In order to appreciate this book's limits one should compare her work with other recent works of scholarship. One should contrast her appreciative account of Jeffersonian democracy with the subtle, ironical and methodically documented accounts of Alan Taylor which shows the limited gains by Maine farmers, or the political limits of the enemies of Mr. William Cooper. In contrast to her somewhat upbeat account of the industrialization and commercialization of the United States, one should look more closely at Christopher Clark's painstaking narrative of the rise of rural Capitalism in Western Massachusetts. One should contrast her brief comments on love and sexuality, with Nancy Cott's startling demonstration of the fragility of marriage. In contrast to her use of autobiographies one should look at Mechal Sobel's recent work which suggests the rise of a new personality in the United States, more individualistic, less communal. (The discredited concept of bourgeois revolution vindicated by psychoanalysis? We shall see.) And Appleby's account of the triumph of evangelicalism appears a bit complacent, a bit boosterish in its enthusiasm for the winning side in contrast to the recent work of Jon Butler and Christine Heyrman. In conclusion, one might say this book reminds one of Tocqueville. This is not meant as a compliment, since one reason for Tocqueville's abiding popularity and the almost total absence of serious criticism of him is that he provides a complex picture of modern society and its disconents in which questions of liberty and justice are ultimately irrelevant. When such questions arise they are not values in their own right, but problems which must be ably managed by the wise elite Tocqueville is part of. Of course Appleby cares very much about liberty and democracy. What is not so clear is whether she has thought through them enough.

Rating:
Summary: stimulating but unreliable interpretation of religious histo
Review: The book is heavily anecdotal, based on her reading of some 200 autobiographies written during the period. She covers topics such as enterprise, careers, distinctions, intimate relations and reform, but the theme is the new national identities that emerged, one Northern and the other Southern, during the period. Three primary forces that shaped the Northern identity, economic enterprise, political participation and religious revival, also caused a reaction in the South that no less shaped it, but it ways that left it bewildered, defensive and conservative. Readers not already thoroughly conversant with the period will miss any discussion of the emergence of party politics, though she notes the personal vilification and "unchecked vituperation of public controversies" that resulted from the proliferation of new voices and new publications. The elements behind the rise of Jacksonian radical politics is absent, as is any treatment of the economic factors that encouraged the enterprise and careers she celebrates.
More troubling is her misreading of the religious situation during the period. She notes "the religious revivalists successfully challenged the religious hegemony of the Anglican and Congregational churches," but that hegemony was regional, not national to begin with, and neither the Congregational church, challenged at home by Unitarians and in the western territories by Presbyterians, nor the Anglican church, still attempting to recover from its moribund situation following the war, carried the weight she implies. Moreover, the Presbyterians, Baptists and Methodists had been ceded the field; the proselytizing zeal of the Quakers had long passed, the Dutch and German Reformed churches had never been anything by regional, more concerned with language and culture than with creed and salvation. Apart from the wonderfully vivid accounts of the Cane Ridge revival, I read much of the record of revivals as activities or campaigns that were generated by ministers in established churches attempting to attract new members to church rolls depleted by western migration, rather than an unprecedented religious fervor that swept the country. She does note that women were the vast majority of those affected by the revival and reform movements and credits the Second Great Awakening with bringing blacks, free and slave, into the Protestant church, but neglects any discussion of the significant impact of the African Methodist Episcopal church, for example, in building black communities and opportunity. My conclusion: interesting and stimulating, but unreliable in its interpretation of the major forces of the period.

Rating:
Summary: An interesting assortment of information
Review: The book's contents are an assortment of anecdotal information about individuals, comments by foreign travelers in the early United States, historical facts, and the author's analysis and interpretations. It is not a complete history. It is a commentary on the social/economic/ political/religious development in the United States during the country's first half century. It was a time when people had been set loose from the law's and restrictions of England. The constitution's guarantee of freedom of religion and other freedoms caused a splintering of the church into various denominations, and a person could become a preacher simply by declaring himself as such. Likewise, people with a minimum of training (if any) could hang out shingles as doctors, attorneys, and teachers. Various entrepreneurs flourished, some successful, some not, as people struck out on their own to seek their fortunes. Schools developed as people sought education to improve their positions, and publishing boomed (partly because of the education, partly because the newly affluent bought books, and partly because of the freedom people had to publish their opinions). The author covers many aspects of the era including the split between north and south, the prejudices against African-Americans, the rise of the Baptist church, the rise of the temperance movement, and westward expansion of the nation. Many other aspects are only brushed over, such as the bloody conflicts with native Americans on the frontiers. The book barely touches on the maritime activities that brought the United States into the forefront of maritime nations (see Charles Tyng's autobiography, "Before the Wind," for an interesting account of that), and only briefly mentions the War of 1812 which occurred during that period. It is not an easy reading book as the author seems wrapped up in rhetoric and sometimes writes with an echo, i.e., repeating information or points previously made. The overly long introduction can leave a reader glassy-eyed.

Rating:
Summary: Like the Revolution's Ideas, Promises More Than It Delivers
Review: This is a detailed and interesting compilation of bits and pieces of information about an over-looked but important period in American history. Unfortunately, its thematically-organized chapters become repetitive by the end, and its sentences sink beneath the weight of academic jargon until one is convinced one has read the same sentence three times. At the same time, amid the repetitious treatment of some subjects, interesting topics, such as the prevalence of duelling during the period, surface briefly then are never explored in depth.

More attentive editing might have helped. Beyond the structural issues, confusion arises from what appear to by typos, such as the appearances by Lewis and Louis Tappan, only one of whom can be found in the index, leaving the reader to wonder whether these are the same or different persons. If the premise were not an exploration of a relatively unfamiliar period, such lapses might be forgiven. But these oversights, when combined with an overly generous assumption regarding the reader's base of knowledge about the major historical events of the period, and an onslaught of unfamiliar, similar sounding names, can be bewildering.

Finally, while it is admirable that the author attempted to explore differences in the experiences of southerners, women, and African-Americans, it would have been more enjoyable had she found a way to introduce such discussions other than inserting an awkward transition in every chapter along the lines of "For women, on the other hand . . . "