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Andrew Jackson

Would the Dukes of Hazzard Be Vaccinated?

December 29, 2021
by Peter Feinman
Dukes of Hazzard and the General Lee

The Dukes of Hazzard was a very popular TV series that ran from 1979 to 1985. It was a cleaned-up version of an outlaw family in Georgia. By “outlaw” one should think of moonshine, racing fast cars (later NASCAR), and a general disdain for the law. It featured, besides the prerequisite babe in short shorts, a car called General Lee with a Confederate flag painted on the roof. Surprisingly, this top-rated show for seven seasons engendered no “cancel” culture outcry. America was different then. The outcry did not happen until after the Charleston church shooting in 2015 when the show was in reruns.

The Dukes’ good ole boy lifestyle may be said to be generally reflective of a distinctive folkway in American culture. It is a folkway that does not take kindly to being told what to do and resents the people who tell them, that is, the “dam Yankees.” The odds are the Dukes in real life would not and are not vaccinated. It would be interesting to speculate if they would be vaccinated if the TV show was still being produced and the outcry if they were.

Diverse America includes the Scotch-Irish, a people often overlooked given the racist standards of today. I wrote about this diversity back on August 28, 2018, in “Fellow Americans” versus “Tribal Rivalries”: Whither America?. The blog featured the work of David Hackett Fischer and Colin Woodard. Those sections are reposted below.

DAVID HACKETT FISCHER

On an academic level, I became more aware of the diversity of the United States through Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America by David Hackett Fischer. As the title indicates, the book divides the English or British into four distinct groups of folkways. He identified them as:

The Puritans who famously settled in Massachusetts and the surrounding areas
The Quakers who tended to be limited to one colony, Pennsylvania
The Cavaliers who started in Virginia but spread to other southern colonies
The Scotch-Irish who tended to be located in the border lands, the back country or fringe areas.

So rather than view the people from Great Britain monolithically, one should understand them as four distinct peoples or folkways.

These folkways brought their lifestyle with them when they emigrated to the colonies. Fischer lists various characteristics by which he defines each folkway in the area of Great Britain where they lived. Then he traces each characteristic or its equivalent to the life they created when they arrived here. In general terms, Fischer finds they each folkway transplanted their way of life from the old world to the new. Thus to claim that the English settled America obscures the reality of the situation – four different peoples [from there] settled here.

Fischer continues the story beyond the colonial era. He tracks the migrations of these peoples across the United States as it expanded westward. Most famously are the New Englanders who became Yorkers around the time of the Erie Canal. They kept moving west across the northern portion of the country. Their distinctive trait was doing something they already had done in the 1600s in New England – start a college.

He concludes by identifying the folkway to which the individual American presidents belonged. The early domination of the Cavaliers (Virginians) and New Englanders (Adams father and son) are obvious. Today we have no appreciation for the significance of the election of Andrews Jackson, the first of many Scotch-Irish presidents. Now he is just a dead white male; back then he was our first diverse president.

COLIN WOODARD

Recently, Colin Woodard, has continued this line of thought. He is the author of American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America. As the title suggests, his purview extends beyond the four folkways analyzed by Fischer. Woodard certainly is aware of Fischer’s work and he has expanded on to reflect the greater diversity which exists today. On July 30, in an opinion piece for the New York Times, “The Maps That Show That City vs. Country Is Not Our Political Fault Line: The key difference is among regional cultures tracing back to the nation’s colonization,” Woodard applied his template to the recent presidential election.

[O]ur true regional fissures can be traced back to the contrasting ideals of the distinct European colonial cultures that first took root on the eastern and southern rims of what is now the United States, and then spread across much of the continent in mutually exclusive settlement bands, laying down the institutions, symbols and cultural norms later arrivals would encounter and, by and large, assimilate into.

In other words, New York is still a commercial city (thank you Dutch) and Boston is still a college city thank you Puritans).

His analysis tracks 11 different groups.

Tracing our history, I’ve identified 11 nations, most corresponding to one of the rival European colonial projects and their respective settlement zones. I call them Yankeedom; New Netherland; the Midlands; Tidewater; Greater Appalachia; Deep South; El Norte; the Left Coast; the Far West; New France; and First Nation. These were the dominant cultures that Native Americans, African-Americans, immigrants and other vital actors in our national story confronted; each had its own ideals, assumptions and intents.

Through a series of colorful maps, Woodard then compares the vote percentages from 2016 to these cultural demographics. His explanation for the stark differences he finds in each of their choice of presidential candidates is:

Why the differences? I’ve long argued that United States politics resolves around the tension between advancing individual liberty and promoting the common good. The regional cultures we think of as “blue” today have traditions championing the building and maintenance of free communities, today’s “red” ones on maximizing individual freedom of action. Our presidential contests almost always present a clear choice between the two, and the regions act accordingly.

Take a simple and well-known example not in the article: healthcare. The “individual freedom of action” or “don’t tread on me” faction despises being told what to do and having no choice about it. Whether a law is in their best interest is secondary to whether it is being imposed on them by condescending arrogant self-righteous elitists or not (the 2010 election). And why should the Democrats try reasoning with such people in the first place? As Junior Trump said, they are not even people. Oh wait. He was talking about the Democrats. How can there be “come let us reason together” when neither side can acknowledge the humanity of the other?

Woodward Map

 

 

Covid death rates 12/28/21 NYT (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/28/us/covid-deaths.html)

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOE KLEIN

Joe Klein joined the discussion in an essay October 17, 2021 in The New York Times entitled appropriately enough “The Four Americas: Why the past is never past” (print, the online version is Joe Klein Explains How the History of Four Centuries Ago Still Shapes American Culture and Politics on October 4.

He begins by noting that as he watched the COVID crisis enfold, he thought back to Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America. In his comment on the Scotch-Irish “wild caste of immigrants,” he links them to the January 6 insurrection and the Whiskey Rebellion fought by their ancestors against the Constitution.

However, Klein is troubled by the fact that America includes many other folkways besides ones identified by Fischer. For one thing, he does not appear to be aware of Woodard’s 11 groupings. He also does not seem to recognize the acculturation or assimilation which can occur once a person from one folkway grows up in the world of another folkway. On a slightly different note, think of the independent countries today where judges wear the trapping of British judges.

In any event, Klein is somewhat optimistic. He comments that each of these different groups “provided an essential strain of the American idea.” This concept puts him at odds with The New York Times 1619 Project which in practical terms is oblivious to these different white folkways and operates under the Woke racist idea that if you’ve seen one white person, you’ve seen them all. By contrast, Klein opines these tensions among the folkways “created a distinctive American spirit. That defines us, too.”

Individually and collectively, these analyses suggest there is little likelihood the Scotch-Irish folkway or those who grew up in that culture will ever voluntarily agree to be vaccinated. Perhaps a charismatic Scotch-Irish President like Andrew Jackson could persuade them that it is in their own best interest to be vaccinated. After all this folkway traditionally has disproportionately served in the military which requires obedience in a structured setup. But neither the former nor the present President are capable of providing such leadership.

Perhaps if future Hall-of-Famer and Superbowl-Winning quarterback Aaron Rogers had strongly advocated for vaccination instead of playing cutesy-wootsie hide-and-seek about his status, these people would have listened to him. But Rogers failed the country in his moment of truth and Joe Rogan did not die from COVID either. At this moment in time, there does not seem to be a charismatic leader in the Scotch-Irish tradition who can pierce the bravado of the folkway which would rather die than listen to reason from the Puritan elitists symbolized now to them by all people by Anthony Fauci.

SHEAR CHAOS: A Culture Wars Train Wreck for a History Organization

August 19, 2020
by Peter Feinman
SHEAR Conference 2020 (New Mexico Central Railroad train wreck, ca. 1912 reddit.com)

When a history organization makes the front page of the Arts Section of The New York Times, that is big news (“Clash of the Historians Over Andrew Jackson,” July 27, 2020, print). It wasn’t because of some exciting new archival discovery. It wasn’t because of some exciting new archaeological discovery. It wasn’t because of some exciting new book or article that provided new insight into an historical puzzle. Instead it was because of a good old-fashioned knock-down culture wars encounter. As the NYT put it:

[I]t set off a firestorm that led within 72 hours, to set off the ouster of the group’s president, as well as the publication of open letters denouncing the talk and counterletters protesting the ouster. It also caused debate over whether the distinguished academics society was experiencing an overdue reckoning with racism or abandoning its commitment to robust scholarly debate in the face of a Twitter mob.

When the history of the culture wars is written, this incident is likely to be an episode in it.

SHEAR

SHEAR is the Society for Historians of the Early Republic. It was formed in 1977 to provide a focused venue or scholars concentrating on the Early Republic. As the name suggests, the starting point for the time period was the aftermath of the American Revolution. The period that comes to mind is the First Party System, the time of Federalists and Republicans, of presidents from Virginia and Massachusetts. Gradually it became a society of the Second Party System as well, the time of the Whigs and the Democrats. There was no real fixed endpoint. SHEAR drifted into the Jacksonian years and the ante bellum period but not the Civil War. It really ended wherever the roughly 600 members decided their interests took them and that no other history organization claimed.

I am not a member of SHEAR. I have attended some of the annual conferences and written about them.

The General Public and the Early Republic Historians (SHEAR Conference) August 23, 2016

“The Year without Summer” (1816): When Republicans Recognized Climate Change Existed (SHEAR CONFERENCE) August 24, 2016

Teaching Slavery: A SHEAR Perspective September 12, 2016

Universities and the Legacy of Slavery (SHEAR Session) September 22, 2016

The American Revolution: An Academic Perspective October 31, 2019.

I very well might have attended this year’s conference in geographically accessible Philadelphia if it had been held. Obviously, it too was a victim of the coronavirus.

SHEAR ONLINE CONFERENCE

With the cancellation of the in-person conference, SHEAR then had some decisions to make.

1. One Online Session

The first decision was to have one and only one online session. This decision can be questioned. Other conferences have been cancelled and/or rescheduled as virtual events without such a drastic reduction. Conferences can be held over multiple days and involve multiple sessions. SHEAR originally preferred to have multiple sessions. The now-former president of SHEAR expressed this hope:

When the 2020 program was postponed until July 2021, we wished to sponsor a few events to demonstrate that we remain a vital and important organization, even in this troubled time.

How did “a few events,” became one? The new president who normally takes office when the in-person conference concludes added some information.

At the time, we brainstormed about offering a few virtual events over the conference weekend, including the much-loved Second-Book Writers’ Workshop, and a graduate student meet-and-greet (both of which were, thanks to their organizers, great successes). We also asked the chairs of the 2020 Program Committee to recommend panels accepted for the conference that might not feel fresh a year from now. President Egerton approached the organizers of several such panels, but among them, only Professor Daniel Feller agreed to present his panel virtually.

So it was not the original intention to have one and only session. In effect, it was the SHEAR membership (panel organizers) that drove the decision. Given only one positive response, another option would have been to have no online sessions at all.

2. Which One?

At this point if SHEAR wanted to have an online session, it had only one possibility. That one topic seemed most appropriate. The now-former president of SHEAR explained:

The accepted panel on Donald Trump’s efforts to identify with Andrew Jackson struck some members of the program committee as a most timely panel, and one which may not be as relevant after the November elections. This was a stand-alone panel, and not the opening plenary, which remains scheduled for July 2021.

The new president added some information.

Although I was not privy to the specifics of this or any other proposed panel, I endorsed the plan to present it to the membership because I thought it was a timely topic and something that you, the membership, would appreciate. This was a mistake.

Exactly why is was a mistake in the mind of the new president is not clarified. Was it a mistake to have only one session? Was it a mistake to have this session? Was it a mistake to have this session with this presenter? Was it a mistake to have this session in this format? Should this person resign s one person suggested? It would help to know what the new president thinks the mistake in deciding to have this session was.

THE SESSION: JACKSON IN THE AGE OF TRUMP

The abstract for the session was:

Daniel Feller, Professor of History, Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, and Editor/Director of The Papers of Andrew Jackson at the University of Tennessee will present his [pre-circulated] paper, “Jackson in the Age of Trump,” which focuses on Donald Trump’s embrace of Andrew Jackson as his presidential model and how this has made Jackson a centerpiece for debate. Jackson has become, on both sides of the current political divide, in effect a stand-in for the American historical legacy. One side celebrates him as the progenitor of full-throated nationalism and insurgent populism, while the other condemns him as the archetype of American xenophobia, bigotry, and racism.

Neither of these portraits has much connection to the real presidential Jackson. Both reduce him to caricature not only by stripping off subtlety and nuance, but often by propagation of naked error. While Trump celebrates Jackson for purportedly raising tariffs and rattling sabers, critics decry him for originating Indian genocide, conducting public policy as personal vendetta in the Bank and nullification controversies, and propounding a uniquely vicious and virulent racism.

In short, we are now waging a public debate about Jackson—and, through him, about American history and character at large—premised upon a set of facts that are drastically oversimplified and even demonstrably untrue. Politicians and pundits have taken the lead in this distortion of the record, but historians have been acquiescent and sometimes directly complicit. Yet if we believe that the manipulation of history for presentist ends—even ones we agree with—is misguided and potentially dangerous, we should make it our business to speak out in defense of the integrity of our discipline, regardless of our present political sympathies.

This description does not match the words of the former president noted above: “The accepted panel on Donald Trump’s efforts to identify with Andrew Jackson.” Quite the contrary, the abstract posits a double dosage of Jackson misinterpretations by both sides of the culture wars.

The scope of the abstract is fairly ambitious…especially for one paper! Given the range of topics within the overall abstract, it would have made more sense to divide it into manageable parts. Each individual would have addressed one aspect of how Jackson has been used and abused by both sides of the culture war and what SHEAR should do about it. That is not what happened.

The initial portion of Feller’s presentation was on a book on Jackson by Walter Mead. Through Steve Bannon, this two-dimensional book portrait of Jackson was conveyed to Trump. At this point I thought about writing a blog on Jackson and Hamilton, Mead and Chernow, Bannon and Manuel-Miranda, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and Hamilton, Trump and Obama. That probably would have made for a better session than the food fight that followed.

But the presentation didn’t stop there. My favorite response to the presentation is by the person who three times insistently asked online about Jackson and slavery. What are the odds that the president who thinks Canada burned the White House during the War of 1812, the flu pandemic in 1917 ended World War II, and who only recently learned that Lincoln was a Republican, was familiar with Jackson’s position on slavery? This question is an example of how the session spun out of control. Instead of being descriptive about what happened in last decade it became a fight over Jackson himself. I really didn’t tune in to hear people go on and on about his use of the word “pet.”

As reported by the NYT, a firestorm erupted after the session. A president stepped down. The new one apologized. The plenary speaker retired. His replacement intends to start a diverse advisory committee for people of multiple races, ethnicities, genders, and sexual preferences who share an antipathy towards Jackson perhaps with a token admirer. [I admit I could be wrong on this.] The organization that provides the free internet communication for SHEAR now is requesting a name change from H-SHEAR to something else. The notice of the change stressed the importance of moderated messages with identification of the message sender. This advisory may have contributed to the decision for the name change:

The Society for Historians of the Early American Republic’s virtual plenary was the most exciting thing to happen on Academic Zoom since COVID. Read about the controversy.

As for SHEAR, it intends to have “a second, follow-up virtual panel in the coming weeks” to salvage the situation though “salvage” is not the word used. Here are some thoughts for sessions.

1. Andrews Jackson and the Culture Wars (2000-2020)

This topic apparently was the basis for the session in the first place.

1. How have people used Jackson positively in support of their current political agendas?
2. How have people used Jackson negatively in support of their current political agendas?
3. How can SHEAR contribute to a full understanding of Jackson beyond caricature and cliché?

2. Trail of Tears: What Should Jackson Have Done?

This topic generates a great deal of passionate reaction. One of the comments in the plenary was:

As a historian of Indian removal, I can assure Feller that we know it wasn’t all Jackson’s fault; historians have for over a century traced the roots of removal policy to Jefferson’s administration, or even further, to the nation’s founding documents. More recent historiography on removal has amply demonstrated how a host of other actors – from territorial governors to missionaries to land speculators – helped build the policy that Feller seems to want us to reconstruct from Jackson’s papers alone.

Here we have the possibility of an excellent session that would be of value to the American public during these culture wars by going beyond the simple-minded vituperation he receives today.

1. What was the historical context in which the Trail of Tears occurred?
2. What could have been done instead? [No kumbaya suggestions, please, real world only.]
3. What does the recent Supreme Court decision mean for understanding the Trail of Tears?

3. The Scotch-Irish and the English Weren’t Both Just Whites Then

Our racist classification system obscures the reality of life two centuries ago. Today the Scotch-Irish and the English are just white people. That combination would have made no sense in Great Britain. These two folkways brought their tensions with them to America. Jackson’s victory at New Orleans wasn’t only as an American versus Great Britain but as a Scotch-Irishman versus the English. This topic wasn’t addressed in the session. One comment alluded to it.

Is there a danger among historians — most of us liberals when it comes to racial and gender issues — of underestimating AJ’s appeal to the “working man”: just as Americans today underestimate Trump’s appeal to a similar demographic? Thereby driving that demographic into the arms of the radical right?

English elites then loved to put down the Scotch-Irish as backwards and inferior much as elites-bicoastal elites-politically-correct-people love to mock them and their kin today. As it turns out people don’t like to be relentlessly denigrated. A session on how America’s first flyover people gained the White House would be beneficial.

4. The Torch Has Been Passed to a New Generation: The Need for Heroes

During the session, Feller mentioned Jackson as a military hero for America, the first one since Washington. People needed heroes. People need larger-than-life people who fulfill that role. It’s not enough to have Hollywood super-duper heroes on the screen. They are needed in real life as we have been reminded during Covid-19 and the nightly banging of pots. Jackson filled that role for many people. Two founding father heroes died simultaneously in 1826 on the fiftieth anniversary of the experiment they had created, the journey they had started. Who would replace them? Would the next generation measure up? Would the journey continue? I don’t recall hearing much of a discussion at the SHEAR session about this topic and Jackson’s role in it.

5. The Jacksonian Age of Art, Geology, Literature, Religion

There should be more to a SHEAR conference than politics, gender, and race. The Jacksonian Age witnessed a new and unique confluence of art, geology, literature, and religion before they became divided into separate “ologies” each with their own organizations, journals, and conferences. At the 2016 conference, I asked Daniel Walker Howe about the absence of the Hudson River School in his book What Hath God Wrought covering 1815 to 1848. There should be a place for culture at SHEAR.

SHEAR has the opportunity to rise to the occasion. True, it is a volunteer organization of people scattered mostly at various colleges throughout the land. It has no particular skill or experience that I am aware of in taking a leadership position in the national conversation during a culture war. That’s not what it was commissioned to do when it was founded in 1977 after the Bicentennial. That is what America needs it to do as we approach our 250th.

Should Andrew Jackson Have Banned Catholics?

February 15, 2017
by Peter Feinman

Field of Dreams in the City on a Hill

For centuries the City on a Hill has been buffeted by the tides of religious strife threatening to undo the realm that the eyes of the world are upon. We all remember the dread experienced by the Puritans when confronted by the quaking Quakers. These fearsome advocates of all that is unholy challenged the Visible Saints to stand guard to protect what God had rendered. And what about the Baptists, the Methodists, and Lord only knows what other religious monstrosity would invade our defenseless shores? It’s a wonder the City on a Hill even survived the religious onslaught to come.

Worst of all were the Catholics. Wave after wave of Catholics washed up to undo the work of the Elect of God. The demise of the America can be traced to the failure of Andrew Jackson to stop the encroachment of Catholics when he had the chance. Now we all pay the price for his ineptitude starting right here in New York.

Samuel F. B. Morse was upset, very upset. The Hudson Valley was being overrun by the wrong kind of people. Everything he hoped to accomplish was being threatened by the new immigrants who were overwhelming the natives (who now included Dutch and Germans as well as English) of good stock. Here is how the painter and future inventor of the telegraph described the situation in Foreign Conspiracy against the Liberties of the United States (1835) based on a series of articles he had written for the New York Observer:

Foreign immigrants are flocking to our shores in increased numbers, two thirds at least are Roman Catholics, and of the most ignorant classes, and thus pauperism and crime are alarmingly increased. . . . The great body of emigrants to this country are the hard-working, mentally neglected poor of Catholic countries in Europe, who have left a land where they were enslaved, for one of freedom. . . .They are not fitted to act with the judgment in the political affairs of their new country, like native citizens, educated from their infancy in the principles and habits of our institutions. Most of them are too ignorant to act at all for themselves, and expect to be guided wholly by others [the priests].

Morse’s ire against a supposed great papal conspiracy was, if not a majority opinion at the time, very popular. And we recognize the idiom he used as well:

If Popery is tolerant, let us see Italy, Austria, and Spain open their doors to the teachers of the Protestant faith. The conspirators against our liberties . . . are now organized in every part of the country; they are all subordinates, standing in regular steps of slave and master . . . the great master-slave Metternich, who commands and obeys his illustrious Master, the Emperor [of Austria-Hungary]. . . . It is a war, and all true patriots must wake to the cry of danger. They must up and gird themselves for battle. It is no false alarm. Our liberties are in danger. The Philistines are upon us.

Morse’s song is still sung today. His words have been updated to our words: “If Popery is tolerant (today we would say “If Islam is a religion of peace”), let us see Italy, Austria, and Spain (today we would say “Syria, Iran, and Libya and four others”), open their doors to the teachers of the Protestant faith (today we would say “if they want to build a mosque”).

Morse was not finished: “Where Popery has put darkness, we must put light. Where Popery has planted its crosses, its colleges, its churches, its chapels, its nunneries, Protestant patriotism must put side by side college for college, seminary for seminary, church for church.” Morse called for naturalization laws to prevent the lifeboat of the world from capsizing: “Our naturalization laws were never intended to convert this land into the almshouse of Europe.” Morse didn’t want Europe’s tired, its poor and its enslaved masses incapable of being free-he didn’t want the Catholics and he certainly didn’t want the Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and Jews of Eastern and Central Europe whose odyssey to American shores had yet to begin in earnest in the mid-1830s. Don’t send your wretched refuse to me. Instead, he wrote that,

we must have the [naturalization] law so amended that no FOREIGNER WHO MAY COME INTO THIS COUNTRY, AFTER THE PASSAGE OF THE NEW LAW, SHALL EVER BE ALLOWED EXERCISE THE ELECTIVE FRANCHISE. This alone meets evil in its fullest extent.

At the time Morse and others were writing such things there was a great concern in the land that the Mississippi Valley, not yet the heartland, and America in general were under siege. The papal minions were fanning out across the country spreading their pagan ways among God-fearing Protestants and they had to be stopped. America had to be saved from the clutches of this global religious conspiracy of people not capable of freedom and liberty and slaves to their overseas master.”

“War must be fought” is Morse’s title for chapter 9.

As already noted, Morse by no means was alone in his views about the threat to America. The Know-Nothing Party arose in large part out of anti-Catholic bigotry, and it had non-trivial support in its day. But it also had its detractors, and against these Morse also took aim. Writing in 1835, Morse characterized the media for saying his chosen war was “the fruits of an intolerant, bigoted, fanatical spirit, and the revival of ancient prejudices,” but he would have none of it: “We have fallen on strange times, indeed, when subjects of the deepest political importance to the country may not be mooted in the political journals of the day without meeting the indiscriminating hostility and denunciations of such journals.”

In the decades to follow, another wave of Catholics swept across America irrevocably changing the realm until the field of dreams was no more and all was nightmare. Consider these reports from Iowa.

The report of one of the Methodist Upper Iowa districts at the 1883 Conference contained the following concern about events in its district:

Upon the river borders Catholicism and German rationalism press upon us.  Rum and Rome and Rationalism practically coalesce while Protestantism, pressed into the minority, instinctively “rises and retires.”

In the Upper Conference, as Methodist districts were known, the battle against foreign elements resumed with gusto in 1885.  The Conference resolved to support the Evangelical Protestant Association in its efforts to evangelize the foreign population amidst the large cities of the country:

Whereas, the growth of Romanism and its efforts to obtain power, demand that active exertions be made to preserve our institutions from its insidious attacks; and

Whereas, the most successful method of awakening the power of Romanism is the conversion of its followers …

 Resolved 1st.  That we cordially endorse this evangelistic agency and pray that it may become more and more efficient in reaching the foreign Romanish population in our land.

The missionary activity stressed by the Upper Iowa Conference in 1887 was domestic not foreign in scope.

Throughout a wide area on either side of the Mississippi river, a foreign immigration has been steadily driving out our native population and has so weakened our Churches as to make it impossible in some cases and difficult in many, to maintain our existence.

The threat of Romanism and infidelity loomed large on the Midwestern plains.

According to the 1890 census, Iowa was divided between 40% pietist (Protestant) and 29% liturgical (Catholic) with 31% nonmembers, a clearcut sign that the battle waged to protect America was being lost.

The battle against Catholicism at the local level in the Upper Iowa Conference region can be tracked in the annual report of the districts.  For example, in 1892, Decorah reported an heroic effort against the depletion of its eastern borders: it was fighting the good fight to hold the territory for Protestant Christianity.  Dubuque Methodists declared than even in the midst of a Roman Catholic population, it was not dead.  This conflict was no idle matter to the people who had settled the prairies only a few decades before only now to find themselves fighting for their cultural and religious life in the land they regarded as home.

The 1899 Conference report from the Davenport district asks the question:

Am I in the United States of America, or Scandinavia, or the Emerald Isle, or Germany?

Now these alien immigrants from Scandinavia and Germany among elsewhere continued to overrun the land threatening the Methodist and therefore American way of life.

The Decorah district in 1902 reported a disturbing trend in the once-Methodist lands:

the stranger has got possession of the gates, and the native American Methodist farmer seems, and feels himself to be, a stranger in the new surroundings.  Germans, Scandinavians, Bohemians and Irish are buying the farms all the more easily, because the American early settlers have reached years when they wish the rest they have earned and the advantages of town life and have the means to gratify the desire.  The new occupants bring with them Romanism, Lutheranism, or hatred of all churches, and whatever the form it is in the antagonism to Methodism.  Notwithstanding, we are still optimistic, because we believe in God, the gospel go-ahead-itiveness, which last is a synonym for Methodism.

The Pope had designs on Iowa as Decorah reported.

The principal embarrassment to our work, as all well know, is the outgoing of our original New England and Middle States’ people and the incoming, principally of people from the countries of Europe and alien to our Methodistic type of Evangelical religion.  Those people who are Protestant are of the state-church type of Lutheran sacramentarians.  The major part of them are however, papists.  Rome evidently has designs on fair Iowa.

First the City on the Hill had been swept away by the incoming flood of Irish Catholics. Then the field of dreams had been plowed under due to the incoming flood of German Catholics. How much more indignity could the American people endure?

Little did they know that Italian Catholics were about to arrive. “Why have you come, Joe DiMaggio?” sang the anthem of the beleaguered Americans. Those Italian Catholics will never sing to “My Way.” They will only sing to their way. Can anyone even imagine at Yankee Stadium, the great stadium to America’s national pastime at the city at the center of the universe, that Italian Catholics could sing the praises of New York New York?

Woe is us. Even as I write these words the Irish American Heritage Museum is hosting a Governor Martin Glynn Symposium on February 18 in honor of New York’s 40th Governor and its first Irish American Roman Catholic Governor. What’s next? A Catholic President? Catholics on the Supreme Court? Papal Law becoming the law of the land, our Constitution in tatters, people eating pizza?! American is undone all because Andrew Jackson lacked the right stuff to do what is necessary to protect the country from the threat from abroad. We should all be on our knees in prayer giving thanks that our President today will not make the same mistake Andrew Jackson did when he allowed those religious aliens to settle in our country and establish foreign rule even in Middle America!

 

Portions of this post appeared in “The Methodist Upper Iowa Conference: From Wilderness Settlement to Middle-American Melting Pot,” Methodist History 2009 47/4:226-241 and “The Immigrant Experience in American History: Who Is an American?” American Interest, June 27, 2012, http://www.the-american-interest.com/byline/peter-feinman/.

The Presidential Election of 1824: Lessons for Today

September 9, 2016
by Peter Feinman
Look How Much We Have Progressed!

This post is the second on the SHEAR conference July 21-24, 2016, in New Haven, on the weekend sessions I was able to attend. The first post was on

The Public and the Early Republic

The Year without Summer (1816)

and generated the following two important responses:

Marla Miller (panelist and co-author Imperiled Promise): Thanks for this coverage of the session! Readers interested in learning more about Imperiled Promise and the reception of its various observations and recommendations should watch for the upcoming special issue of The Public Historian, which will include an essay by me and Anne Whisnant on that complex subject.

Rick Shenkman (Publisher, History News Network): Thanks Peter! I read the three reports on SHEAR and the NPS and learned from them.

The subject of this post is 1824 RECONSIDERED: A ROUNDTABLE ON DONALD RATCLIFFE, THE ONE-PARTY PRESIDENTIAL CONTEST: ADAMS, JACKSON AND 1824’S FIVE-HORSE RACE. The final post(s) will be on the  slavery sessions, one that was part of the original program and the one that was added at the conclusion of the conference.

Donald Ratcliffe, University of Oxford

Ratcliffe opened the session about his book by declaring that the election in 1824 evolved from a beauty contest to one of fractious competition. He cited the impact of the Missouri Compromise, the New England and Southern support for the maintenance of existing tariff connections, and ethnic conflicts as contributing factors.

Ratcliffe sought to correct the images of John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. He is interested in who they were at the time of the election and not who they became in the popular mind after each of their presidencies. Jackson was portrayed as a national hero who could restore the glory of the country [Make America Great Again?] He was a Scotch-Irish American who gave a bloody nose to the English in New Orleans [this suggests that the technicality of a treaty already having ended the war was irrelevant to America’s reaction and thus New York’s victorious Battle of Plattsburg on 9/11 has been diminished ever since!].

Jackson didn’t initiate a democratic transformation. It was already underway at least for adult white males.

Ratcliffe questioned the traditional perceptions that Jackson won the popular vote and that the election was stolen from him in the House of Representatives. He contrasted the vote totals in the 18 states with popularly-elected electors and the 6 states with state-elected electors. New York with approximately 1/7 of the national population was an election powerhouse. It voted about 40% for Adams and nearly 0% for Jackson.

For Ratcliffe, Adams was the candidate with a more national appeal who supported national projects or internal improvements. The absence of political parties in the Constitution contributed to the breakdown of the two-party system in 1824. In that sense, an election of involving numerous candidates as played out in 1824 independent of the two-party system was more reflective of the way elections were supposed to be conducted as envisioned by the Constitutional framers.

His opening comments in the session were not intended as a detailed review of his book but as means of setting the stage for the four remaining presentations.

Thomas Coens, University of Tennessee

Coens was in general agreement with Ratcliffe [which caused no surprise in the audience].  The voting totals in the 1824 election were suspect if not outright invalid. Jackson’s plurality in vote totals was an invalid myth. Adams was the winner and the candidate with a national appeal.

Coens honed in on the issue of democratization. He saw unprecedented interest in a presidential election in 1824. Coens cited democratic methods operating since the 1790s with public meetings and delegate convention techniques. Their proliferation now was not their initiation. They did cause more interest as people embraced the idea of deciding for themselves.

Sharon Ann Murphy, Providence College

Murphy identified herself as not being a political historian. I guess based on the op-ed piece in the New York Times “The End of Political History?” by Frederick Logevall and Kenneth Osgood (8/29/16), she represents the wave of the present. The future for political sessions like this one in SHEAR is an interesting topic of discussion in its own right.

On the subject at hand, Murphy’s objection was that the book didn’t focus on the personalities of the candidates. She opined that they do matter contrary to the book.

Murphy wondered what would have happened if DeWitt Clinton of New York had become involved in the presidential race.

She agreed that Adams really did win more votes and that there was no corrupt bargain in the House to throw the election to him. However those facts does not mean the metanarrative was wrong. Did the people believe that is what happened? Was Jackson able to leverage the false view of his defeat in the election of 1824 into victory in 1828? Did the memory of the 1824 election haunt Clay for the remainder of his career as a permanent stain? The story of 1824 can’t be limited to the results of 1824 alone since it was part of the continuing story.

Note: She didn’t mention if she thought Jackson knew the popular image of the 1824 election was false and just exploited it to his own advantage or whether he really believed it as well.

Jeffrey L. Pasley, University of Missouri

Pasley suggested that the election of 1796 set up subsequent election of 1824. Both involved John Adamses and both winners were one-term presidents. Both Adams were succeeded by two-term presidents of greater renown in Jefferson and Jackson. Both Adams blamed others for their fates. He echoed Ratcliffe’s view that the 1796 and 1824 elections worked the way the founders established the presidential election system to be but that both produced weak presidents.

The Florida conquest was popular nationally. It reflected well on Adams, Monroe, and Jackson but not Clay who opposed it.

Pasley thought the accuracy (or lack of) for local results might have obscured the national story. Politics are not only local. He reminded everyone during this presidential election year that analyzing CNN appearances of candidates is insufficient to predict results.

He asked why the coverup story was so readily accepted. He posed the choice of the discovery of the road not taken in contrast to the realization that it is a dead end.

Harry L. Watson, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Watson noted the convergence of positions by the panelists. He stated that political parties had little structural organization at the time of the election. There had been an increase in voting during the 1820s already. He wondered how Adams gained national support and observed the enduring significance of popular loyalties.

Ratcliffe Response

He stated that he never claimed that Adams was the popular choice…nor was Jackson. There were too many candidates. Popular meetings were not limited to either the 1824 election or to Jackson. Adams held one in Ohio.

Panel Exchange

Pasley: People didn’t like the electoral process of 1824 even though it was constitutional. The process hadn’t been an issue when there effectively was only one choice as with the elections of George Washington. In effect, there was a cultural redefinition of the Constitution.

Ratcliffe: Jackson’s denunciation of the stolen election was intended to appeal to new voters in 1828. He wondered why New England even supported Adams since it hated him. He noted the migration of New Englanders to New York and Ohio and the resulting conflict with settlers from South in Ohio. He claimed Adams would have won Illinois if the vote was on a statewide basis instead of a district one. Jackson won two of three districts but they were the small one whereas Adams won the big district.

Coens: This election was the tipping point for democratization.

Ratcliffe: Jackson was seen as a military person and not a politician. He was the hero who would restore the glory of America. [One might add the widely-successful triumphal tour of American Revolution hero Lafayette in 1824and the abundance of places named after him.]

In the Q&A portion, questions/comments were made about

  1. The need to not think backwards from 1828 to understand 1824.
  2. Van Buren’s letter to create a new Democratic Party with no slavery.
  3. Voters who stayed home in anticipation of the failure of the Electoral College.

I inquired about the role of religion in the 1824 election, in particular the impact of the rise of Methodism outside coastal New England and Southern communities.

I also asked what SHEAR’s plans were to commemorate the bi-centennial of the election of 1824 given the disarray/collapse of the current two-party system.

Returning to the op-ed piece on the end of political, diplomatic, and military history in favor of identity history, I wonder how many sessions at SHEAR are devoted to the dinosaur subjects of dead (or retired) white men. Perhaps in the future there will be no need for a panelist like Murphy to begin a presentation by announcing that she is not a political historian since the issue will be moot. For that matter, the very existence of history conferences themselves may be at stake. Since the SHEAR conference, there was an article in the current issue of Perspectives on History by Julia Brookins entitled “Survey Finds Fewer Students Enrolling in College History Courses.” The article was the latest in a series of articles over the past few years chronicling the downwards spiral of history in academia. I refer readers to a humorous op-ed piece in Sunday Review section of the NYT on September 4 entitled “A Back to School Education.” A father bewails the situation with his soon-to-reach-college-age daughter:

To make things worse, last week she wanted to be a historian. At first I laughed, but when I realized she was serious, I was furious. “History?! You must be joking. What exactly are you going to do with that? Write a thesis about unemployed historians in the 18th century? Is that what I ‘m doing all this for?”

Maybe for the bicentennial of 1824 we should have a presidential election where candidates are entitled to their own facts and a public that doesn’t know better or how to think. Come to think of it, why wait?