JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC最新文献

{"title":"Only the Clothes on Her Back: Clothing and the Hidden History of Power in the Nineteenth-Century United States by Laura F. Edwards (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/jer.2023.a898001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jer.2023.a898001","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Only the Clothes on Her Back: Clothing and the Hidden History of Power in the Nineteenth-Century United States by Laura F. Edwards Emily J. Arendt (bio) Keywords Clothing, Textiles, Property rights, Legal history Only the Clothes on Her Back: Clothing and the Hidden History of Power in the Nineteenth-Century United States. By Laura F. Edwards. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp. 433. Cloth, $34.95.) As material displays of identity, markers of class and status, or symbols of political persuasion, clothing's power to convey a variety of cultural messages has been of increasing interest to historians. Certainly, the economic significance of clothing and textiles for both trade and manufacturing in early America is widely recognized. Vastly underappreciated, however, is the place of law in those dynamics. As Laura Edwards demonstrates in her [End Page 357] newest work, both the social and economic value of textiles derived from the legal principles that attached to this form of property: \"the legal principles associated with textiles involved foundational cultural values and social customs that defined the good order of society\" (20). Everyone knew the value of clothing and textiles, generally knew who the owners of those items were in their communities, and recognized that court protections of those possessions were necessary to uphold public order. Clothing, cloth, linens, drapes, and even accessories like hats thus represented a unique type of property that allowed the people who produced them, traded them, and wore them to make claims to property, even if they lacked strong claims to other legal rights. For dependent persons, including married women, free Blacks, and enslaved peoples, textiles could be owned and traded, used as currency, credit, and capital. Proceeding in three parts containing thematic chapters while charting a chronological narrative, the book demonstrates how marginalized people could rely upon the legal principles that attached to textiles to both engage in the economy and access the governing institutions of the new nation, at least for a time. The legal principles attached to textiles, as shown in the book's first part, pre-dated the American Revolution and were minimally altered by the establishment of the U.S. federal system. In line with recent scholarship demonstrating the extent to which people on the margins were engaged in commercial exchange, Edwards elucidates how the legalities of textiles superseded the laws of coverture and slavery to allow people with no formal rights to enter the textile trades in the decades following the Revolution. Rebecca Coles, for instance, established a successful textile business in Virginia around the same time as the Revolution, producing fabric to be used not only by the household on the plantation, but for sale. That Coles might be considered a manufacturer defies the assumptions many of us hold regarding the power of a rights-based legal framework: How coul","PeriodicalId":45213,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135946468","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}

{"title":"John Brown, Filibuster: Republicans, Harpers Ferry, and the Use of Violence, 1855–1860","authors":"Danielle Burge","doi":"10.1353/jer.2023.a897985","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jer.2023.a897985","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Although John Brown has been labelled in many ways, historians have not explored his connection with filibustering. This essay considers John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry within that context, focusing specific attention on how Republicans turned Brown into a filibuster by comparing his actions to William Walker and Narciso López. In the immediate aftermath of Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, Republicans faced the charge that they had inspired Brown by their alleged embrace of abolitionism. Republicans countered this by linking Brown to filibustering, arguing that Democrats had only recently championed William Walker. Brown's expedition was unlawful, Republicans argued, but it was no different than Walker's invasion of Nicaragua or López's forays into Cuba. By making this argument, Republicans shifted the blame for Harpers Ferry upon Democrats. In distancing themselves from Brown, however, Republicans demonstrated that they were far from radicals who were secretly bent on subverting the institution of slavery. Indeed, their argument that John Brown was a filibuster helped Republicans legitimize themselves as defenders of law and order, men who firmly rejected the use of armed violence and who would work to make sure that men were prosecuted for leading armed rebellions, whether in the United States or abroad.","PeriodicalId":45213,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC","volume":"43 1","pages":"245 - 268"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42615951","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}

{"title":"Russian Colonization of Alaska: From Heyday to Sale, 1818–1867 by Andrei Valterovich Grinev (review)","authors":"Erik Hirschmann","doi":"10.1353/jer.2023.a897997","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jer.2023.a897997","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45213,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC","volume":"43 1","pages":"347 - 349"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49451280","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}

{"title":"The Hudson River Valley Loyalists in British North America: Connection, Community, and Continuity","authors":"Kieran J. O’Keefe","doi":"10.1353/jer.2023.a897987","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jer.2023.a897987","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The American Revolutionary War brought tremendous pain and suffering to Loyalists in New York's Hudson River Valley. They endured violence, persecution, and dislocation. When the war ended, thousands of Loyalists chose to leave their homes for a new life in British North America (Canada). As a civil war, the Revolution attempted to dissolve existing community bonds. But the Hudson Valley Loyalists show that many relationships endured despite the conflict, and that instead these social webs remained central to how they found their way in the postwar British Empire. They settled near one another in exile, assisted each other when applying for postwar compensation, shared similar political philosophies in provincial politics, maintained contact with family in New York, and even intermarried. Individual relationships and community were central to how the Hudson Valley Loyalists rebuilt their lives after a violent civil war. In exile, they created a social web consisting of Loyalists, their children, American citizens, and Late Loyalists, that bound them for several generations.","PeriodicalId":45213,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC","volume":"43 1","pages":"301 - 322"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44618484","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}

{"title":"A Great and Rising Nation: Naval Exploration and Global Empire in the Early US Republic by Michael A. Verney (review)","authors":"Heesoo Cho","doi":"10.1353/jer.2023.a897995","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jer.2023.a897995","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45213,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC","volume":"43 1","pages":"342 - 344"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48722492","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}

{"title":"Peace and Friendship: An Alternative History of the American West by Stephen Aron (review)","authors":"Eran Zelnik","doi":"10.1353/jer.2023.a897998","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jer.2023.a897998","url":null,"abstract":"Athabascan tribes— often exerted formidable influence in hindering RAC initiatives. If the 1818–1867 era was the heyday of Rus sian Alaska, it is curious why Grinev makes statements like, “The whole period from 1818 to 1825 was a difficult time for Rus sian Amer i ca” (62), and “The financial difficulties that overtook the RAC at the beginning of the 1840s forced it to reform its own management structure in the colonies for greater savings” (145). In labeling one era of the Rus sian colonies as having the greatest vigor and prosperity, one might instead choose the 1790s– 1810s Baranov period. Despite its many challenges, the Baranov era saw the Rus sian colonies succeed eco nom ically and expand into southeast Alaska, northern California, and, for a brief time, Hawaii. Perhaps the most serious interpretive prob lem is Grinev’s use of the “politarism” theory to integrate Rus sian Alaska into Rus sian and global history. Developed by Soviet ethnographer Yuri Semenov, politarism is derived from Marxist concepts where the state is the supreme owner of resources and direct producers, and society lacks a strict judiciary to protect subjects and property from a corrupt elite. Grinev sees politarism as the fundamental weakness of Rus sian Amer i ca, and the “deciding reason” for the 1867 Alaska Purchase (264). Yet, in the same paragraph, Grinev acknowledges a “complex set of the most varied reasons” such as military, economic, and po liti cal concerns factoring into the decision to sell Alaska to the U.S. The blunt, deterministic tool of politarism often runs against and obscures the wellcrafted documentation and nuanced smaller conclusions pre sent throughout the book. Despite the above interpretive prob lems, this work is an impressive achievement in understanding the fascinating origins of Amer i ca’s fortyninth state.","PeriodicalId":45213,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC","volume":"43 1","pages":"349 - 352"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46321563","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}

{"title":"Almost Dead: Slavery and Social Rebirth in the Black Urban Atlantic, 1680–1807 by Michael Dickinson (review)","authors":"Sophie Hess","doi":"10.1353/jer.2023.a897991","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jer.2023.a897991","url":null,"abstract":"The published narratives of former bondspeople are some of the most comprehensive and detailed accounts of slavery in existence. These sources can also provoke thorny debates among scholars. Often written and published in collaboration with antislavery movements, these texts have sometimes been questioned for the ways that they might distort experiences of enslavement. In Almost Dead: Slavery and Social Rebirth in the Black Urban Atlantic, 1680–1807, Michael Dickinson skillfully confronts these critiques, arguing for historians to regard enslavement narratives as “worthwhile historical evidence,” which have received “disproportionate scrutiny” in comparison with white authors (7). Dickinson’s choice to center these narratives is power ful. What results is a deeply researched and personcentered narrative of individual and community survival amid forced migrations and resettlements throughout the Atlantic world. The book’s title subverts Orlando Patterson’s theory of social death, a tactic of control employed by enslavers through family separations, name changes, and other acts of alienation.1 While Patterson saw enslaved people as permanently damaged by this vio lence, Dickinson expands on the work of scholars like Stephanie Smallwood and Vincent Brown, who use social death as a point of departure. Although enslavement was doubtlessly an experience of rupture, these scholars have suggested that despite the threat of social death, enslaved people fought to adapt and maintain networks of care in order to survive. While others whose work touches upon rebirth have focused more closely on specific locations or spaces of bondage, Almost Dead characterizes rebirth as a geographic and temporal pro cess that developed as bondspeople were forced to migrate across oceanic routes and between port cities. Dickinson’s text centers movement. The book examines the Middle Passage, as well as journeys between Bridgetown, Kingston, and Philadelphia, considering these cities for their centrality to trade networks. Philadelphia, which Dickinson notes has been traditionally thought of by early Americanists as “a hub of black freedom,” also must be understood","PeriodicalId":45213,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC","volume":"43 1","pages":"332 - 334"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45652574","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}

{"title":"Paternalism to Partnership: The Administration of Indian Affairs, 1786–2021 by David H. DeJong (review)","authors":"Ryan Hall","doi":"10.1353/jer.2023.a897999","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jer.2023.a897999","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45213,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC","volume":"43 1","pages":"352 - 355"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41926871","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}

{"title":"Nothingarians: The Fear of the Unchurched in Early National America","authors":"T. Kidd","doi":"10.1353/jer.2023.a897986","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jer.2023.a897986","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The term nothingarian suggests an under-studied presence in the history of the early republic: the religiously unaffiliated. Scholars routinely mention the term nothingarian, but few have examined its origins, uses, or significance in American history. Although it seems to have originated much earlier, as a term for members of the little-known Gortonist sect in Rhode Island, \"nothingarian\" would come to connote the irreligious, ambivalent, or unaffiliated person, one whom pollsters of religion today might call a \"none,\" or a person of no organized religion. The fear of nothingarians was especially acute in the early republic because of the widespread disestablishment of official denominations, rapid spread of settlement on the frontier, and deep uncertainties about American national cohesion after independence. Many observers in early national America feared that disestablishment and religious choice would lead not to massive numbers of conversions, but to masses of indifferent, skeptical, or unaffiliated people. The term nothingarian is important because it was widely used (if poorly defined), and because it reflected widespread fears about preserving religious affiliation and building a new American nation in the absence of state churches or a national establishment.","PeriodicalId":45213,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC","volume":"43 1","pages":"269 - 299"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49099074","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}

{"title":"Female Genius: Eliza Harriot and George Washington at the Dawn of the Constitution by Mary Sarah Bilder (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/jer.2023.a897988","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jer.2023.a897988","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Female Genius: Eliza Harriot and George Washington at the Dawn of the Constitution by Mary Sarah Bilder Kimberly A. Hamlin (bio) Keywords George Washington, Eliza Harriot, U.S. Constitution, Education, Female genius Female Genius: Eliza Harriot and George Washington at the Dawn of the Constitution. By Mary Sarah Bilder. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2022. Pp. 360. Cloth, $29.50.) In May of 1787, a British woman named Eliza Harriot O'Connor delivered a lecture on \"the Power of Eloquence\" in Philadelphia. This occasion likely marked the first time a woman spoke publicly in the United States. The event was attended by future president George Washington and, quite possibly, several other prominent men who were in town to attend the Constitutional Convention. Washington pronounced the lecture \"tolerable.\" For years, this curious episode puzzled and enchanted Mary Sarah Bilder, whose book Female Genius: Eliza Harriot and George Washington at the Dawn of the Constitution reflects her efforts to understand the larger significance of what transpired that evening. Bilder aims to \"flip the outside in and the inside out\" by looking at the people excluded from the Constitutional Convention but whose lives nevertheless helped shape what was discussed within (4). A self-described \"constitutionalist,\" Bilder documents the world of possibilities that existed for women, and to a lesser extent for African Americans and people of color, during the tumultuous years in which the Constitution—a term that first meant a system of government—came instead to refer to a single document. According to Bilder, Eliza Harriot's lectures establish that many alternatives to white male rule existed within what ultimately became a document that enshrined it. The key to unlocking this alternative universe of female citizenship is the late-eighteenth-century debates about female intellect and [End Page 323] education because, all sides agreed, education provided the first step on the path to political representation and maybe even voting and officeholding. Eliza Harriot (Bilder refers to her by her first two names) lived and lectured during the heyday of discussions about \"female genius,\" a period that culminated in the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). A major contribution of Female Genius is the rich intellectual, transatlantic history of this potentially revolutionary ideal. Each of the book's six chapters present a lively intellectual history of the Age of the Constitution—from the brief vogue for female debating societies to Irish revolutionary societies. The book also contains terrific explanatory material, including 38 images, a helpful timeline, and supplementary notes on the research process. Another strength of the book is the three-dimensional world that Bilder constructs for Eliza Harriot, especially given the paucity of sources. Relying on genealogical sources, census records, digitized histori","PeriodicalId":45213,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC","volume":"284 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135984072","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}