The Journal of American History

Issues

December 1997
Volume 84, No. 3

Presidental Address
The Meanings of Citizenship
In the 1997 presidential address of the Organization of American Historians, Linda K. Kerber opens a new perspective on the multiple and unequal meanings of citizenship in the history of the United States. She nudges historians away from their traditional emphasis on the rights of citizens and toward an interest in citizenship as a legal status, a source of obligations, and an ideal kept alive only by active commitment. Kerber calls for an expanded engagement in public life that will give meaning to promises of equal citizenship.
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Political Engagement and Disengagement in Antebellum America: A Round Table
Was there a golden age of participatory democracy in the United States in the 1840s and 1850s? More eligible Americans then took part in politics than before or since. But how deep was their engagement in politics? Flow can historians capture the meaning of that engagement? The contributors to our round table "Political Engagement and Disengagement in Antebellum America" explore these questions.
Limits of Political Engagement in Antebellum America: A New Look at the Golden Age of Participatory Democracy
In the antebellum eta, some historians assert, "politics seemed to enter into everything." Elected officials and voters listened to one another, citizens made informed judgments on candidates and issues, and election-day turnouts were high. Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin challenge that view. They argue that political engagement varied from deep commitment to skepticism and, occasionally, hostility. Making fresh use of partisan newspapers, they point to inattention between elections, poor attendance at nominating conventions and some rallies, elite domination of parties, and popular distrust of politicians as evidence that many Americans preferred that politics--and government--not enter into everything.
Humbug? Bah! Altschuler and Blumin and the Riddle of the Antebellum Electorate
Was the appeal of antebellum politics based on humbug? Harry L. Watson says no, invoking historiographical and historical concerns. Since the rise of social history, political historians have justified their work by the conviction that political rhetoric and voting behavior reveal the beliefs or ordinary citizens. If antebellum voters were cynical and amused spectators of political humbug, as Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin suggest, such a defense of political history falls. Watson argues that voters found important meanings in the messages of politicians. Perhaps antebellum politicians had something in common with P. T. Barnum, but would anybody start a civil war over the outcome of a circus?
Politics, Paradigms, and Public Culture
American historians have begun a great debate over what politics is. Is it just party activity--programs, campaigns, elections, voting? Or should the concept include other forms of public participation? This dialogue goes beyond the specifics of nineteenth-century elections; it asks how a democracy operates. Jean H. Baker reviews some ways in which political historians have looked, and might look, at politics. She urges her colleagues to be more inclusive in thinking and teaching about political history. Doing so may provide the elusive bridge between political and social history.
A Challenge to the Story of Popular Politics
Norma Basch explores how the arguments of Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin affect historical narratives that pivot on a robust antebellum political culture. In those widely accepted accounts, the antebellum era is the high point between the deferential politics of the early republic and today's political disillusionment, a signpost of the world we have lost. She speculates on whether Altschuler and Blumin have merely taken the drama out of the story of the rise and fall of political participation or emptied it of all meaning. If they have emptied it of meaning, what kind of story, she asks, might take its place?
Politics, Society, and the Narrative of American Democracy
by Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin
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Articles
"How About Some Meat?": The Office of Price Administration, Consumption Politics, and State Building from the Bottom Up, 1941-1946
What does the price of a pound of meat have to do with the growth of the federal government? Meg Jacobs shows how the regulation of meat and other commodities during World War II led to an explosion of state supervision of the economy. The Office of Price Administration, set up to control inflation, mobilized consumers at the local level to enforce compliance, building the state from the bottom up. Expanding what we define as political to include everyday issues such as meat prices, Jacobs presents consumption politics as a key to twentieth-century state development.
Stick It in L.A.! Community Control and Nuclear Power in California's Central Valley
Thomas R. Wellock probes a major recent change, the resurgence of local politics. He uncovers a surprising coalition of agribusinessmen and environmentalists who, in 1978 in rural California, halted plans for a nuclear power plant to serve Los Angeles. Wellock explores both the conditions for such a triumph of direct democracy and its limits. Institutionally, local control advanced by way of new environmental laws and a revitalized referendum system. Ideologically, plant opponents played on resentment of outsiders and issued mythic appeals for community preservation. After the battle was won, the "community" disappeared along with its myths. For good and ill, localities can stalemate state and national programs without forging permanent bonds.
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Review Essay
Mastery and Drift
In an essay review of the Encyclopedia of the United States in the Twentieth Century, Jackson Lears discusses a new way of periodizing twentieth-century United States history. Many readers may already use it in survey courses, but it emerges with particular clarity in the Encyclopedia: the successive integration, consolidation, and fragmentation of a corporate, managerial ethos. Borrowing terms Walter Lippmann used to promote that ethos, tears asks whether the current period of fragmentation represents a fall from mastery to drift. Perhaps, he suggests, the drift from midcentury ideas of mastery offers Americans fresh opportunities to question market discipline and entreprenurial myths.
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Exhibition Reviews
"Much Depends on Dinner: Culinary Customs in Early New York," by William Woys Weaver "Woman's War: Southern Women, Civil War, and the Confederate Legacy," by Susan Prendergast Schoelwer "Creating History: The Valentine Family and Museum," by Kym S. Rice "The Furniture City," by Nancy L. Hanson Lower East Side Tenement Museum, by Charles Hardy III "Flight of Memory: Long Island's Aeronautical Past," by Sally Yerkovich "Time Capsules: History Goes Underground," by Edward T. Linenthal
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Book Reviews
A complete listing of book reviews is available here.
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Movie Reviews
Violence, by James Ralph Crime and Punishment in America, by Jeffrey S. Adler Thomas Jefferson, by Cynthia A. Kierner New York Underground, by Clay McShane Around The World in 72 Days, by Linda W. Rosenzweig Edison's Miracle of Light, by Andre Millard Hawaii's Last Queen, by Patricia Grimshaw TR, by Serge Ricard The Wright Stuff, by Dominick A. Pisano The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century, by Allan R. Millett Rosewood, by Raymond Arsenault Tell the Truth and Run, by Nancy L. Roberts The Battle over Citizen Kane, by Karal Ann Marling Ghosts of Mississippi, by Harvard Sitkoff Who Shot President Kennedy?, by Michael L. Kurtz Mr. Justice Brennan, by Ronald Kahn Apollo 13, by Tom D. Crouch When We Were Kings, by Jack E. Davis Powers of the President: Foreign Policy--Nixon and Ford, by Wesley M. Bagby Troublesome Creek, by David P. Danbom The People vs. Larry Flynt, by Kathryn H. Fuller The Morehouse Men, by Raymond Wolters
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Letters to the Editor Announcements Recent Scholarship
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On the cover: This poster reflects OPA's increasing reliance on housewives' militancy. With fist clenched and teeth gritted, this housewife waged war successfully on the domestic front. See "'How About Some Meat?': The Office of Price Administration, Consumption Politics, and State Building from the Bottom Up, 1941-1946," by Meg Jacobs. Courtesy Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History, Division of Political History.