Ronald J. Zboray

Cultures of print : essays in the history of the book

How did people in early America understand the authority of print and how was this authority sustained and contested? These questions are at the heart of this set of pathbreaking essays in the history of the book by one of Americas leading practitioners in this interdisciplinary field. David D. Hall examines the interchange between popular and learned cultures and the practices of reading and writing. His writings deal with change and continuity, exploring the possibility of a reading revolution and arguing for the long duration of a Protestant vernacular tradition. A newly written essay on book culture in the early Chesapeake describes a system of scribal publication. The pieces reflect Halls belief that the better we understand the production and consumption of books, the closer we come to a social history of culture.

Gender Slurs in Boston's Partisan Press During the 1840s

During the height of the 1840 presidential campaign season, the Democratic editor, Charles Gordon Greene, printed in his Boston Morning Post the following lampoon of the September 10 Bunker Hill Whig Convention: “ ‘Madam, I am astonished that you do not wave your handkerchief; I thought that the women were all whigs,’ said a gentleman to a lady while the procession was passing by them on Thursday. ‘You are mistaken, sir,’ was the answer – ‘the whigs are all women.’ ” Greene efficiently slung this partisan mud at the 80,000 men and women who demonstrated their support for the Whigs at the gathering. The editor fastened upon the oppositions previous pronouncement that “ ‘ The Ladies are all Whigs ’ ” and inverted it to effeminize men who would vote for William Henry Harrison. “The Whigs are all women,” “Colonel” Greene now declared. On this page of one of Bostons most widely read dailies, the gender of both Whig men and women was questioned and distinctions between them became blurred in unflattering ways. Greene thus defiled both sexes with one swift printed gesture.

The Rise of Mutlicultural America: Economy and Print Culture, 1865-1915 (review)

of Rivals (and other works) have done much to restore admiration for Lincoln’s savvy as a politician and wisdom as a statesman. Be that as it may, readers should forgive the opening thesis statement because the book substantively adds a great deal to our understanding of Lincoln, social change, and American culture. Schwartz is the first to use public opinion polling data from 1950 through 2001 to get at what ordinary Americans thought and how they rated Lincoln in relation to Washington, Franklin Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy. This is important because previous studies of Lincoln in American memory have primarily relied upon published texts (biographies, plays, poems, and tracts) rather than the views of Everyman. The book is packed with arresting information and revisionism: turn of the century southerners were less hostile to Lincoln than we assumed because they sought national reconciliation; Republicans have managed to associate Lincoln with conservative views that he never espoused, such as making him an anti-statist libertarian; during the 1950s and ‘60s conservatives misquoted him in support of segregation; academics and others ascribed to Lincoln views about race that he did not hold (1960s-1980s); and “his imagined commitment to civil rights” now gets highlighted because of our own multicultural concern for social justice (142). Schwartz contends that Lincoln’s prestige has declined since 1960 despite the ceaseless publication of so many laudatory books about him—arguing that what matters is not how much we know about the man but how we feel about what we know, an elusive point to demonstrate, even with polling data. Schwartz is persuasive, however, that by the 1960s Americans could no longer agree on what Lincoln stood for above all: preserving the Union or freeing the slaves. Lincoln’s “real” views on race became especially contested, with many (notably blacks) becoming increasingly critical based upon modern criteria of “equality.” Ultimately, Schwartz makes a sound case that during the generations he covers the nation moved from “reverence” (meaning a kind of adulation) for Father Abraham to “respect” for the Great Emancipator. Cornell University Michael Kammen