Framing Essay 3/29/09

Chris LeBlanc
History 1970 Framing Essay
3/29/09

I'm still out of town, and didn't realize I had to pick up a fourth essay until after I was already out of the country. Since I couldn't track down the Gienapp article online, my framing essay will deal with the three other articles. I also was supposed to write a conclusion for this week, however my flight gets into Boston at 6 PM. I hope these ideas help to produce a fruitful conversation in seminar.

This week, the class implications in each article were fairly explicit. Our first challenge is usually to look at a book or collection of essays and try to tease out how they could be useful in a discussion revolving around class; however, this week we can somewhat skip that first step . Whether we look at Bushma's article about the rise of gentility, Osborn's article about early American alcoholism, or Johnson's article about the agency of slaves, we should be concerned with questioning the legitimacy of these arguments through both logic and comparisons to things we have already read.

First, we can look at Bushman's article about the rise of gentility in America. Bushman argues that genteel culture was produced and cultivated while aristocracy was simultaneously exalted. Here, we can draw a parallel to the argument made by Morgan in American Slavery, American Freedom in that both point out a similar trend. In both cases, the American people say one thing, and do another. Also, although Morgan's book dealt primarily with issues of slavery, it is the same practice of farcical egalitarianism which allowed for gentility to be produced and accepted. Although Bushman never calls this trend "paradoxical" like Morgan did, we can discuss how it is both similar and different to the argument made in American Slavery, American Freedom, and also have a discussion similar to the one we had several weeks ago about which word would best suit what happened. Secondly, we should cal into question the argument that Bushman makes in the section about "Gentility and Commerce". When Bushman states that "Without the mass production of genteel goods, ordinary people with limited incomes could not have afforded the accoutrements of refinement" (Bushman, 406), we should turn to the description that Terry Bouton gave of America during this epoch. Bouton argued that poverty was very widespread, and that even those who were firmly middle class were suffering from financial problems. Osborn also argues this in his essay about alcoholism in Early America, and states that even many successful people were driven to despair by their lack of capital. So, keeping this in mind, should we accept the idea that ordinary people were actually able to purchase "the accoutrements of refinement"? There is little to no numerical or even tangible evidence in this section, and we should use Osborn's article to call this contention into question.

Now, after using it already for purposes of comparison, let us look at Osborn's article about alcoholism in early America. This piece backed up its argument with a lot of data, and it is interesting to see the connection between the diagnosis and treatment of alcoholism, and one's class/gender/race. It seems as if the class implications of this article are fairly straightforward; if you were a pauper or another member of the low society you were more likely to be diagnosed with intemperance, while a more respectable person could often be said to have "delirium tremens". However, I think the more important thing to look at and discuss is the "chicken or the egg"-like problem of alcoholism and economic failure. Many doctors attributed one's "delirium tremens" to a sudden economic loss; however, others argued that men were poor and incapable as a result of their drinking habits. Of course, this argument also carried class implications, and men of an innately lower social status would more likely be blamed for their misfortune. However, what if all of the men who had previously been drunk six out of seven days a week had decided to stop drinking? What kind of work could this have done on class relations? Also, how did alcoholism effect people's ability to organize against an imperious government? Would there be less alcoholism in a place like Cumberland Country than others? Again, we can look to Bouton's Taming Democracy to help draw some conclusions about this issue. Furthermore, how much did alcohol cost, and who was producing most of it? The gentry seemed to have the market cornered on most luxury items; how did the lower class have so much access to alcohol, and was it possibly in the gentry's interest to ensure that they did?

Finally, the third piece we read for this week was "On Agency" by Walter Johnson. This was by far the most dense, coded, and theoretical article out of the three. It dealt very little with actual history, but more with the production of history. Johnson pointed out the rhetorical quality of the statement "we should give the slave's back their agency", and also showed that the work it did in the 1960's and 70's was very different and more important than what it does now. I think our discussion of Johnson's article can revolve mostly around his general thesis, and we can discuss what we think of his critique of "liberal agency", and how this perspective could effect a discussion about a book like Morgan's American Slavery, American Freedom.

I have left it til' the conclusion to attempt to tie these three articles together. Although common ideas were easy to find, it is fairly difficult to see how they would all enhance each other in a discussion about class. It seems like a central theme running through the heart of each of the three articles' theses is a power move being executed by the gentry. First, in Bushman's article, we see how the gentry created and fortified itself amongst an American people who were ideologically diametrical to aristocracy. Second, in Osborn's article, we see the gentry possibly using alcoholism as a tool to blame the poor for their poverty while simultaneously pampering the rich in tough economic conditions. Finally, Johnson state's that academia has gotten itself into a mess, and is now hiding being a self-righteous wall which allows for politically correct writing that doesn't do any work to further our understanding of slavery in early America. All of these arguments seem to suggest a conspiracy among the gentry to keep the lower classes down, and exemplify how they did so.

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