historical consciousness in the early republic: the origins of state historical societies, museums,...
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North Carolina Office of Archives and History
Historical Consciousness in the Early Republic: The Origins of State Historical Societies,Museums, and Collections, 1791-1862 by H. G. JonesReview by: Alexander MooreThe North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 73, No. 4 (OCTOBER 1996), pp. 498-499Published by: North Carolina Office of Archives and HistoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23521478 .
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498 Book Reviews
Three items in the volume deserve special mention. The first, the longest item
included, is a proposal from Jeremy Bentham to produce a law code for America based
on his theories of universal knowledge. The second, Henry Lee's account of Gen. James
Wilkinson's court marshall as a co-conspirator with Burr, calls upon Madison to remem
ber and be careful of the rights of the accused, for "when the nation accuses, the defendant
ought to be encouraged, not discouraged." The final item is Madison's explanation of his
veto of a bill that would have granted public land in the Mississippi Territory to the Bap tist Church. He acted because he believed that "the practical distinction between Religion & Civil Govt was essential to both."
Once again, the editors of the Madison Papers are to be congratulated for their continu
ing excellent work.
Peter V. Bergstrom
Normal, Illinois
Peter V. Bergstrom
Historical Consciousness in the Early Republic: The Origins of State Historical Societies, Museums, and Collections, 1791-1862. Edited by H. G.Jones. (Chapel Hill: The North Caroliniana Society and the North Carolina Collection, 1995. Endpapers, frontispiece, preface, illustrations, index.
Pp. x, 262. $15.00, plus shipping. Order from the Society of American Archivists, 600 South
Federal, Suite 504, Chicago, IL 60605.)
Any staff member of any of the historical societies named in this book will be im
mersed in déjà vu. When an executive director reads that Christopher Columbus
Baldwin, librarian of the American Antiquarian Society, planted trees in the society's
yard in 1834 "to afford a comfortable shade for my successor," he or she will sense an
unseen hand on the other trash can handle. Every program director will sympathize
with John Howland, president of the Rhode Island Historical Society in the 1830s, as he
sweated out both the financial return and intellectual content of a lecture series.
Ten essays comprise the main part of this work. They were presented at Chapel Hill
in May 1994 at "For History's Sake: State Historical Collections in the Early Republic," a
conference commemorating the 150th anniversary of the founding of the North Carolina
Collection at Chapel Hill. Taken together, they provide thumbnail sketches of the found
ing and early organization of most of the nation's pre-Civil War historical societies.
This review is too brief to name all of the essayists and their topics, but representa
tive samples are Louis Leonard Tucker on the Massachusetts Historical Society (1791),
the first in the nation; Susan Stitt on the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (1825); and Charles F. Bryan on the Virginia Historical Society (1831). They are good narra tive histories, identifying the founders and exploring some of the founders' motives.
Leslie Fishel's essay on the State Historical Society of Wisconsin discusses the labors of Lyman C. Draper.
The latter part of Historical Consciousness is devoted to publishing the proceedings of the 150th celebration of the North Carolina Collection. This part is payment of an honest debt of gratitude to the North Caroliniana Society for sponsoring the conference. H. G.
Jones wisely points out in the preface that many of the founders of these societies did
THE NORTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL REVIEW
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Book Reviews 499
not profess to be historians but servants of them. Clio's servants have many tasks, and
Historical Consciousness celebrates one group of them.
Alexander Moore
South Carolina Historical Society
Alexander Moore
Slaver/, Capitalism, and Politics in the Antebellum Republic. Vol. 1: Commerce and Compromise, 1820-1850. By John Ashworth. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Preface, acknowl
edgments, introduction, conclusion, appendix, index. Pp. xii, 520. $19.95, paper; $64.95, cloth.)
John Ashworth's work is the first of a two-volume monograph on slavery and capitalism as they relate to the development of the Second Party System and the origins of the
Civil War in nineteenth-century America. Commerce and Compromise, 1820-1850 is
best classified as a revisionist study: its uniqueness lies in Ashworth's redefinition or expan sion of such familiar Marxist terms as class, class consciousness, and class conflict. For
example, Ashworth defines enslaved African Americans as a class. The constant
threat of individual as well as collective black resistance in the South forced southern
planters/statesmen to defend the existence and the extension of the institution westward.
In essence, slavery became a positive alternative to northern wage labor. Though often
at odds with the common definitions of such general terms, Ashworth's redefinitions are
necessary to understand the impact of the political tension created in such issues as
the 1820 Missouri debate, the Nullification crisis, and the Free-Soil movement. The Civil
War, Ashworth concludes, was an inevitable conflict between the agrarian South and
the capitalist North.
Ashworth maintains that the Civil War was a bourgeois revolution driven by class con
flict between those who supported wage labor and those who defended slave labor. As a
consequence, much of the sectional conflict in the nineteenth century is the difference
between capitalist and slave mode of production. While the book does not necessarily
challenge the traditional Marxist interpretation of this period, it does provide a different
and exciting insight into the crucial role of enslaved African Americans as active parti
cipants in historical change. This study is highly recommended reading for Old South
and African American scholars seeking to understand the relationship between Ameri
can slave resistance, northern wage labor ideology, and the development of nineteenth
century capitalism.
Thaddeus Smith
Middle Tennessee State University
Thaddeus Smith
In the Master's Eye: Representations of Women, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Antebellum Southern
Literature. By Susan J. Tracy. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995. Acknowledg
ments, introduction, conclusion, appendix, notes, bibliography, index. Pp. ix, 307. $42.50.)
Arguing that literature represents one of many ways in which "people in power institu
tionalize their ideas," Susan J. Tracy examines antebellum southern literature to demon
strate that "the proslavery argument concerns gender and class relations as well as race
relations." Tracy explores both the characteristics and roles of female, black, and lower
class white characters in "historical romance" novels written by George Tucker, James
Ewell Heath, William Alexander Caruthers, John Pendleton Kennedy, Nathaniel Beverly
VOLUME LXXIII • NUMBER 4 • OCTOBER 1996
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