H-SHEAR FORUM ON DANIEL WALKER HOWE'S _WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT_

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******	TODAY: Daniel Walker Howe Replies	******

Wow! To have seven prominent specialists critique one's work, each
from their own point of view, over a period of seven weeks, is
certainly an amazing prospect. I have had to keep reminding myself to
feel flattered rather than intimidated. But I do want to thank Peter
Knupfer, Caleb McDaniel, and all the H-SHEAR book review team for
their work in putting this roundtable together, as well as all the
colleagues who took out (considerable) time to read, digest, and
comment on my hefty volume.

In contracting to write a volume for the Oxford History of the United
States, I undertook to address both my professional colleagues and
(for the first time in my career) the general literate public. Most of
the reviews so far have dealt with the latter audience. This
roundtable has accordingly provided an appropriate occasion to find
out how well I met my first obligation.

The seven H-SHEAR commentators consisted of specialists on economics,
politics, communications, women, Native Americans, slavery/race, and
religion/reform. No specialist on the U.S.-Mexican War was
commissioned, which tends to confirm my impression that the episode,
so momentous in its consequences, is woefully understudied. Having
devoted somewhat more than a chapter to it this time around, I hope to
return to writing about that conflict in the future.

The roundtable raises the question whether large-scale synthetic
history is legitimate or even possible today. Obviously I think it is,
though I know that some colleagues remain unconvinced. To me it seems
that occasionally it is desirable to step back from our own
monographic specialties (in my case intellectual and religious
history) and try to make what sense we can of the big picture. We
provide even more ambitious overviews in our teaching whenever we give
survey courses, which cover much longer time spans than the mere
thirty-three years covered in _What Hath God Wrought_. And it was very
stimulating to learn about so many kinds of history different from the
ones I've studied before.

Whether our work is synthetic or thematic, it also seems to me
important that we should try occasionally to reach a larger audience
than each other and our students. How ironic if, when historians have
been trying for decades to get beyond kings and generals and
politicians, and write about the general public, we should neglect to
write FOR the general public!
In an effort to endow large-scale synthetic history with human
interest and specificity, I structured _What Hath God Wrought_ as a
collection of stories rather than as a sustained argument on behalf of
a thesis. But as the seven commentators point out, I do have a point
of view and the stories I tell add up to an interpretation. In
disagreeing with Charles Sellers's "market revolution" thesis I
present an alternative view: that economic change was more consensual
and less confrontational than he believed, and more beneficial than
detrimental to those it affected. And of course I made conscious
decisions about what to include and which episodes to emphasize.

Were I myself to criticize _What Hath God Wrought_, it would be for
neglect of art history. I hoped to include American painting in
particular. Oxford Press would have allowed me more illustrations;
what fun to have included the Hudson River School of artists and link
them to the Transcendentalist writers! But, patient as the Press was
for many years, eventually I ran out of time and had to go with what I
had done.

The seven roundtable participants have taken their assignment so
seriously that they deserve to be addressed individually. I shall take
up their commentaries in the order that they appeared.

(1) James Huston offers a highly informed comment on the economic
history in my book. Much to my relief, he accepts the account I give
of economic developments in general, and my refutation of Charles
Sellers' "market revolution" thesis in particular. What I feared might
seem too much a polemic against a prevailing orthodoxy, Huston accepts
as a matter of course.  He finds my economic history sound though
somewhat "bland." But then Profesor Huston knows the subject very
thoroughly. Maybe readers who don't already know as much about it will
find some spice in the treatment.

In one respect I do wish to offer a rebuttal to James Huston.
"Economic conditions helped promote [American] optimism," he writes,
"this capacity of believing that a bountiful and peaceful future could
be achieved by letting loose millions of poor people and giving them
power; that economic condition was the egalitarian content of
commercialization." Then, Huston adds: "Howe probably would not accept
the above proposition, as he sees evangelical religion being the
driving force in nineteenth-century America."

But of course, I do accept the above proposition, and had hoped that
would appear in the book. Just because religion was important to the
Americans of this era doesn't mean commercial motives weren't
important too. One of the conspicuous features of that society was how
these two coexisted so often. This has been a favorite topic for
writers from Max Weber to Walter Russell Mead's _God and Gold_ (2007).
Commerce and religion were not competitors in a zero-sum game.

(2) Michael Morrison comments on my treatment of political history
with insight and appreciation.  I retain an old-fashioned sense that
in a general history, politics should provide the skeleton of the
narrative, which we flesh out with economic, social, and cultural
history. Why do I accord such primacy to politics? Because politics is
about power--the acquisition and exercise of power. Power matters.
Those who wield power often shape events.

But Morison's observations are not narrowly political. He recognizes
the centrality of "improvement" as a theme in my work. Improvement was
not only public (as in railroads, canals, and turnpikes) but also
personal (as in education, religion, and good manners). The spirit of
improvement fostered social reform.  Disadvantaged groups like women
and African Americans staked out one of their claims to inclusion by
showing that they were capable of self-improvement.

(3) David Henkin's assigned topic is communications, but his sensitive
and extraordinarily sophisticated commentary ranges widely. It was
gratifying to learn that he finds my interpretation "on the whole more
persuasive" than those of Sellers and Sean Wilentz. I agree with
Henkin that my interpretation does still share much in common with
that of Sellers, for whom I have high professional respect and on whom
I relied heavily in my account of the coming of the war with Mexico.

Like Morrison, Henkin picks up on the importance of "improvement," and
declares that my book "is really more about improvement, in its
multiple senses, than it is about communications." I accept that.
Indeed, I considered calling my book "The Age of Improvement," but the
title had already been used for Asa Briggs's book about England from
1783 to 1867.

I wish I had used Professor Henkin's wonderful book _City Reading:
Written Words and Public Spaces in Antebellum New York_ (1998) for
examples of "communications revolution." I don't know how I can have
missed it. His chapter on the rise of the daily paper would have been
particularly apt, but others too would have enriched my treatment
enormously. They would also have facilitated my dealing more
explicitly with just how revolutionary the changes in communications
were.

While on this subject, I should mention another wonderful book I wish
I had used: Mary Kelley's _Learning to Stand and Speak: Women,
Education, and Public Life in America's Republic_ (2006).

(4) Mary Ryan comments on my treatment of women and gender issues. I
was somewhat surprised that she devotes more attention to Margaret
Eaton than to the Women's Rights Convention of 1848, which I highlight
as the "Finalé" of my book. She finds that I have been "more attentive
to women and gender than most authors of big synthetic history books,"
yet this has "the ironic effect of calling attention to the remaining
lacunae in big-picture history."

Professor Ryan's essay, thoughtful and thought-provoking, questions
the whole project of writing synthetic history. I admit the difficulty
(and ultimately, the impossibility) of coordinating all human
activities into a single theme.

Professor Ryan complains that I overemphasize middle-class women and
ignore working-class women. She may have missed the passage where, in
describing working conditions for women and girls in textile mills, I
invoke the experience of my mother, who became a "doffer" in a mill at
the age of twelve (p. 546).

I do, however, conclude from what I have learned about women's history
(much of it from Ryan herself!) that early women's rights was more a
middle-class than a working-class movement, and that changes in middle-
class life laid the groundwork for changing attitudes toward the
rights women should have.

Mary Ryan legitimately takes exception to my statement that
"nineteenth-century feminists, when they invoked the Enlightenment
language of natural rights, typically interpreted it in the light of
the Second Great Awakening of religion." I concede the statement to be
misleading; I made it because I define Unitarians and Quakers as part
of the awakening, but most people don't. There is a lot in the book
about Unitarians and Quakers and their role in fostering rights for
women; less about the role of freethinkers because I think them less
influential at the time.

(5) James Taylor Carson comments on my treatment of Native Americans.
He finds it to be up-to-date with the scholarship and sensitive to
cultural issues, and I thank him for his understanding of what I was
trying to do. His comments on the difference between the situation of
the Native Americans and that of the African Americans are astute. As
Carson notes, I treat the Native Americans primarily as separate
societies rather than as a minority group within U.S. society. As of
1848, when my account ends, that remained the situation for most of
them.

(6) Manisha Sinha's comments on how I treat slavery and race are, for
the most part, negative. I feel obliged to respond to some of them.

African Americans in the antebellum period were subjected to unique
oppression as slaves and persecuted even when free. Despite their
distinctive history, I have been struck by the extent to which they
shared with other Americans common hopes (e.g., for a family farm),
faith (e.g., in Christianity), and fears (e.g., of separation from
loved ones). From time to time my account points out these analogies.
Professor Sinha takes great exception to this, and insists on the
separation between white and black culture. For example, she complains
that I miss out on the "the distinct nature of African American
Christianity, with its Old Testament emphasis on Exodus, its
identification with Israel as the chosen people of God, and its belief
that divine vengeance would prove to be the instrument of racial
liberation." I should have thought my accounts of Denmark Vesey and
Nat Turner addressed these themes.

Professor Sinha complains that I still use "the outdated
interpretation of paternalism when writing about plantation slavery,"
even though she admits that I do so to describe "the masters' self-
perception" rather than "the lived reality of the master-slave
relationship."

Finally, Professor Sinha complains that my treatment of President
Polk's aggressive war against Mexico "is somewhat superficial on the
politics of slavery." She evidently believes Polk wanted to acquire
California to open the area up to slavery; I infer from the historical
record that he wanted it for geopolitical reasons. Whichever his
motives, however, Polk remains guilty of waging aggressive war.

(7) Bertram Wyatt-Brown's comments on religion and reform are detailed
and sympathetic; indeed, they constitute an essay in their own right.
Wyatt-Brown recognizes the extent to which I rely on stories of
individual people to relate my larger narrative. He approves the
emphasis he finds on "struggles and triumphs of faith and their
expression in what we, as the heirs of a rich legacy, consider good
works." The most significant criticisms he offers are two: that I
could have made more of the transatlantic quality of reform,
especially abolitionism, and that I should have pointed out more
specifically the advantages of the steam press to the American Tract
Society and other evangelical and abolitionist causes. I accept both
criticisms as legitimate. (There is, at least, an allegorical
celebration of the press by the American Tract Society among the
glossy illustrations in my book.)

One very small comment on Wyatt-Brown's presentation: I am not a "New
Englander," though I did spend a dozen years at Harvard and Yale. I
grew up in Denver and have lived much longer in California than
anywhere else.

In conclusion, _What Hath God Wrought_ contains more than facts and
interpretations of past events. It also passes judgments, and these
have revealed something of my own values and personality, along with
the fruits of years of study. What story worth the telling would
disclose nothing about the narrator? At the same time, it is not
surprising that specialists will wish that a general work should
include more about their own specialties, and almost inevitable that
they should wish it mirrored their own attitudes toward those
specialties. So differences between myself and the seven commentators
are part of the natural order of scholarly discussion.

_What Hath God Wrought_ raises a larger historiographical issue that I
would like to highlight. The book seeks to help us understand how the
present came to be. The "transformation of America" mentioned in the
title is a transition, to quote Joyce Appleby's words in her book
_Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans_ (2001),
"from the end of traditional society--'the world we have lost'--to the
social framework that we are still living within" (p. 8). Like all
conscientious historians, I try to be faithful to the otherness of the
past, to the many ways in which it was different from our world. Yet
_What Hath God Wrought_ emphasizes the new, not all of it good:
technological innovation, social and economic change, conquest and
expansion. Curiosity about the present is one of the motives that have
prompted people to study the past. But not all historians take the
coming of modernity as their theme. Is my book "whig history" with
both an upper-case and a lower-case "W"?

I continue to see more things in WHGW even after I have finished
writing it, and the seven learned commentaries have helped me do so. I
am grateful to the roundtable participants, and to its organizers.

If you've made it through such a long message as this, you might be
interested to know that _What Hath God Wrought_ will be out in
paperback in the Fall of 2009, in time for course adoptions.

Daniel Walker Howe
UCLA and Oxford University

*****

Catch up on all previous parts of Howe Forum:

INTRODUCTION (Oct. 27)
http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-SHEAR&month=0810&week=d&msg=/eKgyeicCgpYSkmSDVdJng

JAMES HUSTON ON ECONOMIC HISTORY (Oct. 27)
http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-SHEAR&month=0810&week=d&msg=xC7PayA4egD0XIRVNPkdcA

MICHAEL A. MORRISON ON POLITICAL HISTORY (Nov. 3)
http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-SHEAR&month=0811&week=a&msg=7lyPqVnVCIx6iIXmEMx2ig

DAVID M. HENKIN ON THE "COMMUNICATIONS REVOLUTION" (Nov. 10)
http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-SHEAR&month=0811&week=b&msg=1vGEslA6v7PF6F6yHB3tew

MARY P. RYAN ON WOMEN AND GENDER (Nov. 17)
http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-SHEAR&month=0811&week=c&msg=z155z8gznJ6g8419lSHctQ

JAMES TAYLOR CARSON ON NATIVE AMERICAN HISTORY (Nov. 24)
http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-SHEAR&month=0811&week=d&msg=81nZO0AUlEbrxIZKszL0tg

MANISHA SINHA ON SLAVERY AND RACE (Dec. 1)
http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-SHEAR&month=0812&week=a&msg=%2bC6B8U5grW4ZGl22ci3b6w

BERTRAM WYATT-BROWN ON RELIGION AND REFORM (Dec. 8)
http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-SHEAR&month=0812&week=b&msg=5dS4kUwivT4f9Jnc7jpN/w

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