In this Virginia History Blog, we look at two titles related to the culture of the Revolution and New Nation, “The Power of Objects” and “An Empire of Print”, then two about politics, constitution and nationalism, “A Sovereign People” in the 1790s, and “Diminishing the Bill of Rights” at a Supreme Court case in 1833.
Current releases related to Virginia history in other eras from Spring 2018 journals can be found in previous Virginia History Blogs at Colonial Virginia – Spring 2018, Revolutionary Virginia – Spring 2018, and Civil War Virginia – Spring 2018, and New South and Modern Virginia – Spring 2018.
Summer journal titles begin with the Colonial Virginia Era i , and Colonial Virginia Era ii.
The TVH webpage for Revolution, Constitution and New Nation Eras 1750-1824, features our top title picks taken from the bibliographies of three surveys of Virginia History’s 400 years: two that are widely used in Virginia college courses, and one to be published by the University of Virginia Press in 2019.
The Table of Contents divides Political and Economic Virginia, 1750-1824 into Revolution and Constitution Policy, and New Nation Policy. Topical history is treated under headings of Social History, Gender in Virginia, Religious Virginia and African American Virginian. Finally, two wars are featured under American Revolution and the War of 1812.
The Power of Objects
Jennifer Van Horn wrote The Power of Objects in Eighteenth Century America in 2017. It is available from the University of North Carolina Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Reviewed in the Journal of Southern History, Summer 2018.
In this book, Van Horn investigates the political lives of Americans by looking at their patterns of consumption. Personal economic behavior and consumer goods linked the individual to governmental policy and citizenship rights. What Americans bought, sold and traded reflected their sense of self and community, empire then nation.
Focusing on American port cities from the late colonial through the early national period, Van Horn first looks at engravings, portraits and gravestones. The urban colonial elites established “assemblages” or “networks of things” to contribute to a political sense of self. These self-images then evolved over the transforming era of revolution and nation building as reflected in the use of masks or their absence at social events, dressing furniture and even personal objects such as prostheses.
Buy “The Power of Objects” on Amazon here.
An Empire of Print
Steven Carl Smith wrote An Empire of Print: The New York Publishing Trade in the Early American Republic in 2017. It is available from the University of Pennsylania Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Reviewed in the Journal of American History, Summer 2018.
In this book, Smith surveys the publishing trade from the Revolution to 1830, and establishes that before the industrialization of the printing business in antebellum America, publishers expanded beyond their local and regional markets, and in so doing, they contributed to the establishment of the American nation.
The focus is on the industry from Maine to South Carolina and the infrastructure of middlemen printing for government contracts and engaged in wholesale book distribution, on bookshop owners and promoters of book fairs, and on those pirating and reprinting works from England.
American publishing attempted to establish a broad market for print culture to contribute to a new found national community, such as that of John Ward Fenno, a proprietor of New York city shop aspiring to establish a widespread national reach for a “Federalist reading public”.
Buy “An Empire of Print” on Amazon here.
A Sovereign People
Carol Berkin wrote A Sovereign People: The Crisis of the 1790s and the Birth of American Nationalism in 2017. It is available from Basic Books, on Kindle and online new and used. Reviewed in the Journal of American History, Summer 2018. TVH previously reviewed Berkin’s Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle of America’s Independence (2005).
Four political crises defined early American national politics in the 1790s: the Whisky Rebellion, the Citizen Genet Affair, the XYZ Affair, and the Alien and Sedition Acts. Berkin argues that the Federalists in each of these episodes both made America stronger and ultimately energized the Democratic-Republican opposition to sweep them from power in the “revolution of 1800”.
The Federalists were nation makers, developing an emerging loyalty to a new country and its government along with a shared identity in American citizenship. Federalists gained advantage during troubles with France with Genet and meddling diplomats XYZ (Hottinger, Bellamy, Hauteval). The partisan response of the “democratic clubs” was to appeal to the common grounds of the Constitution and rename themselves the Democratic-Republicans, testifying to the steady growth of nationalism under the Federalist guidance.
Buy “A Sovereign People” on Amazon here.
Diminishing the Bill of Rights
William Davenport Mercer wrote Diminishing the Bill of Rights: Barron v. Baltimore and the Foundations of American Liberty in 2017. It is available from the University of Oklahoma Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Reviewed in the Journal of American History, Summer 2018.
In Barron v. Baltimore, a ten-year case ending with a Supreme Court ruling in 1833, John Marshal seemed to produce an opinion that was an anomaly in his history of advancing federal authority and upholding private property rights. John Barron and John Craig were financially ruined when access to their wharf was blocked by sediment by a Baltimore drainage infrastructure diverting silt nearby. They sued for damages. The property owners won in lower court but the ruling was reversed in the Maryland Court of Appeals.
The Supreme Court upholding the Maryland superior court both diminished the scope of the Bill of Rights in regard to property rights, and contributed to limiting rights generally under federal law. To preserve the national system that he had worked to establish, John Marshall circumscribed this ruling in the face of political opposition by Georgia’s defiance in its dispossessing the Cherokees and South Carolina’s assertion of states rights nullification. States developed a free exercise of their police powers including slavery until the Thirteenth Amendment, and a century of subsequent racial discrimination until the Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence of the twentieth century.
Buy “Diminishing the Bill of Rights” on Amazon here.
Additional history related to Virginia during this time period can be found at the Table of Contents of TheVirginiaHistorian website on the page for Revolution, Constitution and New Nation Eras, 1750-1824. Titles are organized by topics related to Political and Economic Virginia, Social, Gender, Religious, African American Virginia, and Wars in Virginia during this time span.
General surveys of Virginia History can be found at Virginia History Surveys. Other Virginia history divided by topics and time periods can be found at the webpage Books and Reviews.
Note: Insights for these reviews include those available from articles in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, the William and Mary Quarterly, the Journal of the Civil War Era, the Journal of Southern History and the Journal of American History.