Showing papers in "The Journal of American History in 1977"

Slaves as Fixed Capital: Slave Labor and Southern Economic Development

Abstract: ACCORDING to Eugene D. Genovese: "Slavery requires all hands to be occupied at all times."'1 The statement implies that the requirement is peculiar to slavery, differentiating it from other forms of labor organization. If Genovese is right, then slave-owners were subject to a constraint on their operations that may have affected their choice of economic activities and systems of production. The economic decisions of individual slaveholders, in turn, presumably influenced the character of the economies in which slavery figured. Thus, the requirement to keep slaves occupied at all times may have had wide ramifications, perhaps of an important nature. While these ideas are by no means novel, they have not yet been given their full due. This essay considers first the reasons why slavery required all hands to be occupied at all times. The analysis is general and rests on the assumption that slaveholders typically preferred more income to less, and less trouble to more, other things being equal, and that they had a rough idea of the relationship between actions and their results. The analysis does not assume that slaveholders were moved exclusively by economic considerations, nor that they adjusted perfectly to the conditions that confronted them. But economics lies at the heart of what can be called "Genovese's rule" and it is the focus of this paper. Second, the essay considers a few historical illustrations of the operation of "Genovese's rule." The primary concern of this essay, however, is the effect of the rule on the organization of southern slave plantations in the nineteenth century and the consequences of plantation organization for southern economic performance and development.

First images of America : the impact of the New World on the Old

Abstract: First Images of America is a broad and imaginative effort to come to terms with the relationship between Renaissance Europe and the variety of consequences resulting from the discovery of America. These manifold links and the congeries of questions surrounding them have never been treated with the scope concentrated here. Traditionally, scholars have found the subject a difficult 'fit' because they are reluctant to overemphasize the importance of America against the primary focus of activity within Europe. Discoveryhistory enjoyed popularity in this country at the beginning of the twentieth century when it was interpreted as an introductory stage to an emerging nationhood. This method of inquiry proved deterministic and single-minded to the next generation of researchers and the subject itself faded rapidly. Yet from other perspectives, questions of reciprocal influence remained active, and this monumental two-volume work provides a statement of current research focused across several disciplines. The book grew out of the conference arranged in early 1975 by the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Anyone who has tried a hand at organizing a conference can be envious of the vast range of themes and personalities which Fredi Chiappelli was able to assemble and from which he was able to extract articles with astonishing speed. The arrangement of articles progresses from theoretical and practical implications of the discovery of America on literature, government, theology, and art in the first volume to an object-oriented treatment of books, language, social conditions, and scientific endeavor in the second volume. The approach and consistency of the articles differs greatly, as must be expected from a publication with fifty-five contributors. It is difficult to uncover a subject left out. If anything, the problem is rather the opposite-that transitions are non-existent and readers must make their own comparisons. This is to suggest that synthesis might have been attempted between chapters or in an introduction/conclusion. As it stands, the opening essays by Charles Trinkaus and John Elliott are only related indirectly to the issues presented in the text. Trinkaus succinctly REVIEWS 115

Liberating women's history : theoretical and critical essays

Abstract: Papers furnishing a review and critique of past work in women's history are combined with selections delineating new approaches to the study of women in history and empirical studies considering ideological and class factors.

Federalism in the Progressive Era: A Structural Interpretation of Reform

Abstract: T HE Progressive era has long been recognized as one of substantial contribution to social legislation. Working through state and national legislatures, reformers rewrote child labor laws and safety and factory inspection statutes. They cast the society's response to industrial accident and death into the new form of workmen's compensation. They limited working hours for some women and, in a few cases, for men. In some states night work became illegal. By 1915 several states had passed minimum wage legislation. Of the major reform goals of the period, only compulsory health insurance failed to win enactment. The history of this avalanche of social legislation has been described as a struggle between social justice progressives and conservative state and national court systems;' as a conflict between ideas of voluntarism and compulsion and individual and collective responsibility;2 and as a political process involving interest groups, particularly business and labor.3 A structural approach, emerging from the work of historians of child labor reform, is as yet neither fully articulated nor tested. According to this model, legislative social reform suffered from a temporary incongruity between economic and political systems. While business increasingly operated in both national and regional markets, the political

The papers of Andrew Johnson

Abstract: Is there life after the presidency? That is the question with which Andrew Johnson wrestled after his return to Tennessee in March 1869 until his death in the summer of 1875. He answered that question with a resounding yes and revitalized his political ambitions. For his six post-presidential years, Johnson relentlessly pursued a vindication of earlier setbacks and embarrassments. He had hardly arrived back in Greenville before he began mapping his strategy to recapture public acclaim. Johnson eschewed the opportunity to compete for the governor s chair and opted instead to set his sights on the prospects of going back to the nation s capital, preferably as a U. S. senator. Johnson engaged in three separate campaigns, one in 1869, one in 1872, and the final one is 1874-75. In the first, he sought election to the U. S. Senate. At the very last minute the tide went against him in the legislature, and Johnson thereby lost a wonderful opportunity to return to Washington only a few months after the end of his presidency. In 1872, Tennessee stipulated that its new congressional seat would be an at-large one. This suited Johnson, who favored a statewide, rather than a district, race. When he could not secure the formal nomination of the state s Democratic part, he boldly declared himself an independent candidate. Although he knew full well that his actual chances of election over either a Republican or a Democratic rival were slim, Johnson stayed in the fray. Confederates exerted one the Democratic party, and he succeeded. The Republican contender emerged victorious, much as Johnson had calculated, and therefore in a somewhat perverse this strengthened Johnson s political clout for another day. The day came in 1874, when he launched his campaign for the U.S. Senate. Johnson labored mightily throughout the state in this cause: by the time the legislature convened, he was the major contender for the post. But Democratic party successes in the gubernatorial and legislative elections had encouraged a number of other hopefuls. Eventually, the legislature staged fifty-five ballots before Johnson carried the day in late January 1875. As fate would have it, President Grant summoned a special session if the U. S. Senate to meet in March, enabling Johnson to claim his seat well ahead of the normal schedule. The ex-president strode confidently into the Senate chamber, the scene of his impeachment embarrassment in 1868, and took the oath of office. Many well-wishers, as well as old foes, greeted the battle-scarred political veteran whose vindication had been achieved at last. After lingering in Washington after the close of the Senate session, Johnson returned to Tennessee, where he lived out the short remainder of his days. With the exception of serious financial reverses and a nearly fatal battle with cholera in 1873, Johnson s sole focus had been his political rehabilitation. Considering his return to the Senate, albeit brief, the argument could be made that he succeeded. But, considering the verdict of most historians, it remains debatable whether he achieved his aims. The Editor: Paul H. Bergeron is professor of history at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. "

What to Show the World: The Office of War Information and Hollywood, 1942–1945

Abstract: IHE uneasy relationship between propaganda and democracy proved especially troublesome during World War II. Interpreting the war as a worldwide crusade, liberals in the Office of War Information (OWI) won unprecedented control over the content of American motion pictures. An understanding of the interaction between OWI and Hollywood sheds light on both the objectives and methods of the nation's propaganda campaign and the content of wartime entertainment films. This episode, all but ignored by historians, offers insights into America's war ideology and the intersection of politics and mass culture in wartime. Moreover, it raises the question of whether the Roosevelt administration's propaganda strategy helped undermine some of its avowed war aims.' OWI, the chief government propaganda agency during World War II, was formed by an executive order on June 13, 1942, that consolidated several prewar information agencies. OWI's domestic branch handled the home front; its overseas branch supervised all United States foreign

The Cherokees in Transition: A Statistical Analysis of the Federal Cherokee Census of 1835

Abstract: A LTHOUGH scholars have long been aware of the detailed, familyby-family census of the Cherokee Nation taken by the federal government in 1835, no one has yet subjected that census to a detailed analysis. In part this was because of certain shortcomings in the census figures and in part because of a lack of comparative data for other tribes or even for the Cherokee Nation. These problems still remain, but in spite of them there are ways to derive valuable information from that census about the Cherokees: some of the data corroborates other historical evidence; some is corrective. This study indicates that Andrew Jackson and many other government officials responsible for the forced removal of the Cherokees were seriously misinformed about several important aspects of Cherokee life. For example, war department records prior to 1835 indicate that officials persistently underestimated the total number of Cherokees in the East, generally using a figure of 10,000 when the true figure was over 16,500 in 1835 and never below 12,000 after the first census taken in 1808-1809.1 Jackson habitually spoke of the Cherokee Nation-and other southern Indian nations-as though they consisted of only two classes of people, those he called "the real Indians" and those he called "the halfbreeds."'2 According to Lewis Cass,

The Search for a Usable Indian: An Aspect of the Defense of Colonial New England

Abstract: THE enduring characterization that pits white man against Indian has a satisfying simplicity that has too often obscured a more complex reality. In particular, the widespread assumption that such stereotyped rivalries were a prompt and inevitable consequence of a meeting of the races has distorted our understanding of the formative years of English settlement in North America. It is true that a few early instances of a happier cooperation remain part of the folklore of colonization as testimony to an Indian hospitality that often ripened into active friendship. Yet the descent from coexistence to the incessant hostilities of frontier warfare and western expansion is seemingly all but instantaneous, the product of a few decades of settlement or of half a century at most. Explanations of this change have ranged from contemporary belief in the innate barbarism of the Indians to recent accounts of the equally innate racism, rapacity, and self-righteousness of the whites and more impersonal analyses suggesting a conflict of dissimilar cultures. The changing image of the Indian in literature, from hospitable primitive to treacherous savage, has often been taken as an index of changing white attitudes and actions.1 Antagonisms between the races did undoubtedly form and harden in these years. Yet they did not become absolute, and the harsh rhetoric of white conquest should not be taken as conclusive evidence

The papers of General Nathanael Greene

Abstract: This new volume of The Papers of General Nathanael Greene continues the best and most-detailed study of the Revolutionary War in the South More than 800 letters and orders chart the progress of Greene's army in South Carolina, from the battle of Eutaw Springs--the bloodiest battle of the Revolution--to the British pullback to Charleston In July 1781, the British controlled large parts of South Carolina and Georgia, had a post in North Carolina, and maintained an army in Virginia By early December, they held only the areas around Charleston and Savannah The ability of Greene's beleaguered army to force this British retreat is the focus of this volume, which also documents Greene's attempts to rebuild the lower south's political and social fabric In addition, this volume provides information on the siege of Yorktown, for although Greene was not directly involved, he received numerous reports from those on the scene in Virginia

The Culbertson Economic Mission and Anglo-American Tensions in the Middle East, 1944–1945

Abstract: THE United States government sent a special economic mission, headed by an attorney-economist, William S. Culbertson, to North Africa and the Middle East in the fall of 1944 to survey postwar prospects for American business.1 Although historians of World War II have generally overlooked the Culbertson Mission,2 it merits scrutiny for several reasons. First, the field investigation conducted by the mission together with its major report on the Middle East illustrate some fundamental economic notions that conditioned American postwar planning. The faith of Culbertson and his colleagues in the efficacy of 'free enterprise" as a regulator of the international economy and their rejection of state trading were in harmony with the views of Secretary of State Cordell Hull and reminiscent of ideas about the benevolence of commerce, dating from the American Enlightenment of the late-eighteenth century. Second, the mission's report analyzed obstacles that would have to be surmounted before American business could fully utilize opportunities in the postwar Middle East. Third, unlike so many study reports, the Culbertson findings were not relegated to forgotten bureaucratic pigeonholes; instead, they were taken seriously by those charting postwar American economic policies. Fourth, the report documented Anglo-American differences arising during World War II in the Middle East. And, finally, Culbertson and his colleagues revealed a vision of expanded official American participation in the affairs of the Middle East. Integrated into their vision of the United

Businessmen and the Political Economy: The Railroad Rate Controversy of 1905

Abstract: A T A Denver Chamber of Commerce dinner in May 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt announced that the pending railroad legislation should include "the policy of extending the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission, of giving them the power to fix rates and to have rates that they fix go into effect practically immediately."' At nearly the same time, James J. Hill, president of the Great Northern Railway system and customarily a supporter of the Republican party, stated flatly: "I can not imagine a greater misfortune than to attempt to fix [future] rates by law . . . to give any power to a commission . . . to fix future rates . . . would arrest the progress of the commerce of the whole country."' Meanwhile, before a Senate committee, fruit growers from California and lumber manufacturers from Mississippi testified heatedly in support of such legislation, while Pittsburgh coal merchants and Pacific coast lumber manufacturers spoke sharply against any legislation of that sort. In Congress, the railroad rate issue teamed midwestern Republican senators with southern Democrats in a bitter fight against eastern Republicans. About a political situation as complex as this appears to have been, it is not accurate to label the resulting legislation-the Hepburn Act-simply as a progressive reform, nor for that matter, exclusively as a conservative triumph. Revisionist interpretations of the Progressive era have sought, with limited success, to explain the role of businessmen in the major legislative achievements between 1900 and 1917. Gabriel Kolko, Robert Wiebe, and James Weinstein have written accounts in which business interests appear as the moving force behind legislation that had traditionally been viewed as the work of well-intentioned progressive

Herbert Hoover, The Ideology of Voluntarism and War Organization During the Great War

Abstract: T X-HE theme of voluntarism pervades the literature on national mobilization during the Great War. The Wilson administration, according to this canon, achieved planning without bureaucracy, regulation without coercion, cooperation without dictation. To be sure, state agencies had had to plan, administrators to coordinate, enlightened statesmen to lead. But their administration had rested less upon manipulation and dictation than upon education, cooperation among civilian volunteers, widespread consultation among private groups, and a general spirit of patriotism. In this way the United States avoided the degree of state intervention, centralized administration, and persistent postwar bureaucracy evident in England and the rest of Europe. The challenge of mobilization, in sum, simply proved once again the exceptional nature of American institutions. 1 There is some truth to this view. The structure of voluntarism as a system of thought reflects in fundamental ways the structure of American mobilization as a particular system of war organization. The

Scientific History as a Teaching Method: The Formative Years

Abstract: TOWARD the end of the nineteenth century, at a time when history departments and graduate programs were being organized in the leading American colleges and universities, and American historians were founding their first professional associations and journals, something called "scientific history" emerged in the United States. This is a development so familiar to the student of historiography that it seems to require little further discussion. But successfully labelling a phenomenon is by no means equivalent to satisfactorily explaining it, and scientific history, though widely talked about, has yet to be fully understood. The most authoritative analysis to date is to be found in John Higham's History.' Higham explores the philosophy of the scientific historians, their writings, and their place in the historical profession as well as in the larger stream of American culture. He discredits the long-standing myth that the scientific historians thought themselves capable of com-

Representation and the Isolation of South Carolina, 1776–1860

Abstract: HISTORIANS have long recognized that the American Revolution significantly affected American thinking about representation. Perhaps more important, since the break with England necessitated the creation of new governments, these new thoughts helped mold new institutions. In South Carolina, however, the Revolution altered neither the assumptions nor the practices of representation. This divergence between South Carolina and the rest of the nation became increasingly greater during the nineteenth century and played a major role in the state's alienation from the rest of the country in the period before the Civil War. During the years of crisis before 1776, South Carolinians, like other Americans, repeatedly argued that England could not tax them. It "is repugnant to the rights of the people," explained the revolutionary General Committee of South Carolina "that any taxes should be imposed on them, unless with their own consent given personally or by their representatives."'1 But from the time of the first opposition to the Stamp Act of 1765, parliament and its supporters insisted on the right to legislate for the colonists in all cases whatever, even in matters of taxation. Some English pamphleteers, such as Soame Jenyns of the Board of Trade, even went so far as to argue that the power to tax was not dependent on consent, but most writers simply contended that the colonies in fact were represented in parliament and that they consented to all the taxes imposed.2 Although argument over whether or not parliament represented the colonies proved relatively unimportant in the larger conflict with England, and although the dispute ended a few years after the Stamp

The Historian and the Federal Government

Abstract: OR specialists in United States history, nothing has more influence upon research than the policies of the federal government-policies that also affect teaching and employment. The way in which the government documents its operations, maintains records of lasting significance, protects them against destruction, insures equal access to all scholars at the earliest possible date, and provides finding aids is of primary concern to our profession. Appropriations for the National Archives, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, and other facilities can shape the course of writing in many fields. Publication of source materials is a practice as old as the republic. Recently, the allocation of federal funds has supported advanced research, teaching abroad, graduate training, and the preservation of manuscript collections. Although there is no book-length account of the influence of governmental policies on historical writing from the early nineteenth century to the present, several individuals have dealt with parts of the subject. John Higham, Walter Rundell, Lester J. Cappon-among others-have noted the government's contribution to an emergent profession, have described the wide range of federal historical activities, and have stressed the interests shared with archivists and editors.1 The purpose of this essay is neither to retrace the trail blazed by earlier authors nor to break new ground in unexplored areas, but rather to discuss some of today's important questions and to see how the Organization of American Historians and the American Historical Association have responded to them. It will consider the renewed drive for an independent National Archives, the changing focus of the National Historical Publications Commission, the continuing controversy over presidential libraries, the future course of the