Pub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/14664658.2022.2165277
A. Hammann
ABSTRACT For decades, historians of slavery have grappled with an interpretive constraint. Despite a conviction that the past is as complex as the present, we have operated, to a significant degree, on the simplifying premise that historical attitudes toward enslavement were either antislavery or proslavery—in modified form, immediatist/gradualist or perpetualist. These binary frames have undermined our efforts to write about, and in some ways to discern, attitudes that fell in the ambivalent middle. Through a case study of Henry Clay, one of the most influential politicians operating in this middle range, this article argues for the adoption of a new term, eventualism, that describes one of the most common expressions of ambivalence: declaring opposition to slavery while insisting that, for the sake of the Union, it be left alone and allowed to follow a natural course to extinction. By illustrating the benefits of a refined interpretive approach, immediatism-gradualism-eventualism-perpetualism, along with the benefits of certain interpretive principles that, if more widely adopted, will clarify and enhance inter-scholarly engagements, this article seeks to encourage and enable historians to continue the important work of explicating how and why many Americans, predominantly white Americans, espoused attitudes with significant internal tensions.
{"title":"Beyond antislavery and proslavery: a new term, eventualism, and a refined interpretive approach","authors":"A. Hammann","doi":"10.1080/14664658.2022.2165277","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14664658.2022.2165277","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT For decades, historians of slavery have grappled with an interpretive constraint. Despite a conviction that the past is as complex as the present, we have operated, to a significant degree, on the simplifying premise that historical attitudes toward enslavement were either antislavery or proslavery—in modified form, immediatist/gradualist or perpetualist. These binary frames have undermined our efforts to write about, and in some ways to discern, attitudes that fell in the ambivalent middle. Through a case study of Henry Clay, one of the most influential politicians operating in this middle range, this article argues for the adoption of a new term, eventualism, that describes one of the most common expressions of ambivalence: declaring opposition to slavery while insisting that, for the sake of the Union, it be left alone and allowed to follow a natural course to extinction. By illustrating the benefits of a refined interpretive approach, immediatism-gradualism-eventualism-perpetualism, along with the benefits of certain interpretive principles that, if more widely adopted, will clarify and enhance inter-scholarly engagements, this article seeks to encourage and enable historians to continue the important work of explicating how and why many Americans, predominantly white Americans, espoused attitudes with significant internal tensions.","PeriodicalId":41829,"journal":{"name":"American Nineteenth Century History","volume":"23 1","pages":"229 - 253"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48251126","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/14664658.2022.2161453
Evan Turiano
The reader is left wanting to see the comparison drawn out further. The result is that references to the 1822 uprising feel somewhat tacked on in order to make certain essays relevant to the volume, whereas their purpose is to demonstrate longer and interconnected legacies of resistance across time and place. Another reason to read the essays together is that the anthology lets interpretation of evidence that conflicts between authors stand with no explanation or contextualization of the differences, leaving the reader to critically compare accounts and derive their own conclusions. Sometimes these conflicting interpretations of a single detail can lead to vastly different takes on the uprising. For example, Bernard Powers claims Vesey may have been born on St. Thomas, and that his proximity to (and subsequent brief residence in) Haiti enabled him to make contacts with Haiti’s Black residents and absorb revolutionary values; in contrast, Spady asserts Vesey may have been Kormantse, hailing from the Ghanaian coast or further inland, and thus drew uponWest African politics and culture in his articulation and organization of collective rebellion. Spady cites evidence that Vesey was then taken to the Caribbean as a teenager and purchased by Joseph Vesey in St. Thomas before briefly residing in Haiti, then Charleston. Powers gives heavy weight to the Haitian influence on the 1822 uprising; Spady names it as one among many influences that might have inspired a few resistors. Readers are left to discern what to take from these interpretations. The editor or authors could have noted such contradictions by referencing the murky and fragmented nature of the archives, as Robert Paquette’s essay does, to demonstrate that the available evidence points to either of these birthplaces. In all, Fugitive Movements is a timely and necessary collection that adeptly interweaves historical scholarship and memory studies to advance understanding of the long legacy of Black resistance evident in the 1822 uprising and the Black freedom struggles that have endured to this day.
{"title":"The Antebellum Origins of the Modern Constitution: Slavery and the Spirit of the American Founding","authors":"Evan Turiano","doi":"10.1080/14664658.2022.2161453","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14664658.2022.2161453","url":null,"abstract":"The reader is left wanting to see the comparison drawn out further. The result is that references to the 1822 uprising feel somewhat tacked on in order to make certain essays relevant to the volume, whereas their purpose is to demonstrate longer and interconnected legacies of resistance across time and place. Another reason to read the essays together is that the anthology lets interpretation of evidence that conflicts between authors stand with no explanation or contextualization of the differences, leaving the reader to critically compare accounts and derive their own conclusions. Sometimes these conflicting interpretations of a single detail can lead to vastly different takes on the uprising. For example, Bernard Powers claims Vesey may have been born on St. Thomas, and that his proximity to (and subsequent brief residence in) Haiti enabled him to make contacts with Haiti’s Black residents and absorb revolutionary values; in contrast, Spady asserts Vesey may have been Kormantse, hailing from the Ghanaian coast or further inland, and thus drew uponWest African politics and culture in his articulation and organization of collective rebellion. Spady cites evidence that Vesey was then taken to the Caribbean as a teenager and purchased by Joseph Vesey in St. Thomas before briefly residing in Haiti, then Charleston. Powers gives heavy weight to the Haitian influence on the 1822 uprising; Spady names it as one among many influences that might have inspired a few resistors. Readers are left to discern what to take from these interpretations. The editor or authors could have noted such contradictions by referencing the murky and fragmented nature of the archives, as Robert Paquette’s essay does, to demonstrate that the available evidence points to either of these birthplaces. In all, Fugitive Movements is a timely and necessary collection that adeptly interweaves historical scholarship and memory studies to advance understanding of the long legacy of Black resistance evident in the 1822 uprising and the Black freedom struggles that have endured to this day.","PeriodicalId":41829,"journal":{"name":"American Nineteenth Century History","volume":"23 1","pages":"315 - 317"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41604683","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/14664658.2022.2167296
Matthew Hill
ABSTRACT Prior to the passage in 1862 of the Homestead Act, much of the West was settled by squatters—settlers with no legal claim to the land they lived and worked on but who claimed it as their own. They often used democratically elected claims associations to facilitate their expansion into the West, and while they were not directly connected to the U.S. state, also cannot be thought of as completely separate from it. Like filibusters and conspirators, they sought to advance what they perceived as American interests, although they were not officially sanctioned to do so by the federal government.
{"title":"“They are not surpassed … by an equal number of citizens of any equal country in the world”: squatter society in the American West","authors":"Matthew Hill","doi":"10.1080/14664658.2022.2167296","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14664658.2022.2167296","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Prior to the passage in 1862 of the Homestead Act, much of the West was settled by squatters—settlers with no legal claim to the land they lived and worked on but who claimed it as their own. They often used democratically elected claims associations to facilitate their expansion into the West, and while they were not directly connected to the U.S. state, also cannot be thought of as completely separate from it. Like filibusters and conspirators, they sought to advance what they perceived as American interests, although they were not officially sanctioned to do so by the federal government.","PeriodicalId":41829,"journal":{"name":"American Nineteenth Century History","volume":"23 1","pages":"271 - 283"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47385931","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/14664658.2022.2161564
Kathryn B. Mckee
{"title":"The Princess of Albemarle: Amélie Rives, Author and Celebrity at the Fin de Siècle","authors":"Kathryn B. Mckee","doi":"10.1080/14664658.2022.2161564","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14664658.2022.2161564","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41829,"journal":{"name":"American Nineteenth Century History","volume":"23 1","pages":"326 - 327"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44238407","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/14664658.2022.2161520
Jared Asser
{"title":"My Work Among the Freedmen: The Civil War and Reconstruction Letters of Harriet M. Buss","authors":"Jared Asser","doi":"10.1080/14664658.2022.2161520","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14664658.2022.2161520","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41829,"journal":{"name":"American Nineteenth Century History","volume":"23 1","pages":"322 - 323"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42605458","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/14664658.2022.2161470
Rachael Pasierowska
Railroad communities of these two cities. All in all, Broyld’s work furthers Black diasporic studies and the historiography of nineteenth-century African American history. His extensive usage of primary sources unearths the lives of African Americans and offers greater insight into their experiences in these two cities. The U.S.-Canadian border was not a rigid line of division but a fluid entity which enabled Blacks to manipulate borders and exercise greater autonomy to ameliorate their lives. Borderland Blacks sheds light on the ways in which transnational identities and relationships were maintained and upheld in the hopes of collective liberation for Blacks. Broyld’s research also underscores the need for further investigation into the international dynamics of the Underground Railroad and the freedom networks beyond Canada.
{"title":"A House Built by Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House","authors":"Rachael Pasierowska","doi":"10.1080/14664658.2022.2161470","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14664658.2022.2161470","url":null,"abstract":"Railroad communities of these two cities. All in all, Broyld’s work furthers Black diasporic studies and the historiography of nineteenth-century African American history. His extensive usage of primary sources unearths the lives of African Americans and offers greater insight into their experiences in these two cities. The U.S.-Canadian border was not a rigid line of division but a fluid entity which enabled Blacks to manipulate borders and exercise greater autonomy to ameliorate their lives. Borderland Blacks sheds light on the ways in which transnational identities and relationships were maintained and upheld in the hopes of collective liberation for Blacks. Broyld’s research also underscores the need for further investigation into the international dynamics of the Underground Railroad and the freedom networks beyond Canada.","PeriodicalId":41829,"journal":{"name":"American Nineteenth Century History","volume":"23 1","pages":"319 - 320"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48099587","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/14664658.2022.2161452
Kelly L Schmidt
{"title":"Fugitive Movements: Commemorating the Denmark Vesey Affair and Black Radical Antislavery in the Atlantic World","authors":"Kelly L Schmidt","doi":"10.1080/14664658.2022.2161452","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14664658.2022.2161452","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41829,"journal":{"name":"American Nineteenth Century History","volume":"23 1","pages":"314 - 315"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47375624","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/14664658.2022.2165291
Natalie A. Zacek, M. Mason
{"title":"Letter from the editors","authors":"Natalie A. Zacek, M. Mason","doi":"10.1080/14664658.2022.2165291","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14664658.2022.2165291","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41829,"journal":{"name":"American Nineteenth Century History","volume":"23 1","pages":"227 - 227"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41468549","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/14664658.2022.2161444
S. Grant
{"title":"The sense of the margin","authors":"S. Grant","doi":"10.1080/14664658.2022.2161444","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14664658.2022.2161444","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41829,"journal":{"name":"American Nineteenth Century History","volume":"23 1","pages":"303 - 308"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45224433","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/14664658.2022.2161492
A. Efford
White presents an engaging and convincing case that the surprisingly amenable relationship forged between President Lincoln and African American visitors to his White House is worthy of the sustained attention it receives across the book. White’s study relies on a variety of sources, such as diaries, letters, manuscripts, memoirs, and newspapers. Through these sources, White extracts a fuller picture of Lincoln’s relationship with the African American community and gains a deeper insight into both the level of Lincoln’s commitment to the cause of emancipation and his desire to improve their place in society. White’s deft approach to his sources is particularly apparent in his analysis of Lincoln’s conversation with Frederick Douglass about the unequal treatment and wages of Black and white soldiers during the Civil War as well as in his use of a passionate speech given by Lincoln at the culmination of the war wherein he explained that “If a person shared in the responsibility of citizenship by fighting for the nation, then he deserved to exercise the privileges of citizenship as well” (p. 185). These evident positives aside, White’s persistent use of the term “slave” to describe enslaved African Americans and Africans merited greater explanation. Over the past several years, many historians have dropped the noun “slave” and replaced it with “enslaved” to highlight their humanity and the injustice of their status. White never addresses the reasons for his use of the term “slave,” but doing so might have helped make his aims and purpose clearer. Despite this concern, A House Built by Slaves (or enslaved African Americans) remains highly recommendable. Its short chapters, many around ten pages, make this an extremely accessible title for the undergraduate classroom. And the book has a beautiful and effective collection of photos. Indeed, White was especially prudent to include among his images only one photo of Lincoln and to make it one where the foreground of the image is shared between him and Sojourner Truth. By not including individual prints of the president, White avoids shifting the focus away from the key characters in his story – the African American visitors to the White House – and instead evocatively buttresses the signal achievement of his book, which shows to a degree others have not how the White House became a space for Black Americans to both speak and be heard.
{"title":"Civil War Settlers: Scandinavians, Citizenship, and American Empire, 1848–1870","authors":"A. Efford","doi":"10.1080/14664658.2022.2161492","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14664658.2022.2161492","url":null,"abstract":"White presents an engaging and convincing case that the surprisingly amenable relationship forged between President Lincoln and African American visitors to his White House is worthy of the sustained attention it receives across the book. White’s study relies on a variety of sources, such as diaries, letters, manuscripts, memoirs, and newspapers. Through these sources, White extracts a fuller picture of Lincoln’s relationship with the African American community and gains a deeper insight into both the level of Lincoln’s commitment to the cause of emancipation and his desire to improve their place in society. White’s deft approach to his sources is particularly apparent in his analysis of Lincoln’s conversation with Frederick Douglass about the unequal treatment and wages of Black and white soldiers during the Civil War as well as in his use of a passionate speech given by Lincoln at the culmination of the war wherein he explained that “If a person shared in the responsibility of citizenship by fighting for the nation, then he deserved to exercise the privileges of citizenship as well” (p. 185). These evident positives aside, White’s persistent use of the term “slave” to describe enslaved African Americans and Africans merited greater explanation. Over the past several years, many historians have dropped the noun “slave” and replaced it with “enslaved” to highlight their humanity and the injustice of their status. White never addresses the reasons for his use of the term “slave,” but doing so might have helped make his aims and purpose clearer. Despite this concern, A House Built by Slaves (or enslaved African Americans) remains highly recommendable. Its short chapters, many around ten pages, make this an extremely accessible title for the undergraduate classroom. And the book has a beautiful and effective collection of photos. Indeed, White was especially prudent to include among his images only one photo of Lincoln and to make it one where the foreground of the image is shared between him and Sojourner Truth. By not including individual prints of the president, White avoids shifting the focus away from the key characters in his story – the African American visitors to the White House – and instead evocatively buttresses the signal achievement of his book, which shows to a degree others have not how the White House became a space for Black Americans to both speak and be heard.","PeriodicalId":41829,"journal":{"name":"American Nineteenth Century History","volume":"23 1","pages":"320 - 322"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47155691","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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