What hath God wrought

This is a great history of the antebellum period. Clearly written and provides gripping narrative at some points. On the downside, this book is a mammoth weighing in at over 800 pages. Daniel Walker Howe doesn't purport to offer a thesis or central argument in the volume but it doesn't have some underlying assumptions that coalesce into a subtle thesis by the end of the volume.

Howe was contracted by Oxford University Press to publish this volume as part of their Oxford History of the United States. The initial author for the antebellum volume was Charles Sellers who, for various reasons, had his manuscript withdrawn from the Oxford History and published separately as The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1848. Sellers and Howe write about the same period but reach opposite conclusions. Sellers primarily argued that the Market Revolution (or the growth of a capitalist foundation) defined the period and that it broadly alienated men from labor and land. The Market Revolution describes a clutch of simultaneous transformations in the financial, communications, and transportation sectors that allowed more Americans to participate in mass consumption and fostered mass production and nascent industrial growth. Some critical components of the Market Revolution were innovations of the Fulton steamboat, the U.S. Postal Service, the Koenig Cylinder Printing Press, and eventually the railroad. These technological breakthroughs allowed for greater dissemination of news, pamphlets, religious tracts, and advertisements. Breakthroughs in the financial sector included new forms of abstract credit and fractional reserve banking that through the Second Bank of the United States (and subsequently private and state banks after 1836). Sellers wrote a declension wherein the Market Revolution had negative consequences for all arenas of life and spawned various religious, political, and social expressions.

By contrast Howe rejects the concept of a Market Revolution for several reasons. First he believes that markets antedated the nineteenth century and most Americans on the eastern seaboard already participated directly in markets during the late colonial and Revolutionary periods. The nineteenth century simply elaborated those formerly nascent processes. Critical to this debate is whether any such thing as a self-sufficient yeoman farmer existed before capitalism. Howe rightly asserts that no individual was entirely self-sufficient. Farmers' families commonly produced homespun clothing and other goods that they "put out' into the economy. Farmers also relied on the market for certain staple goods and often needed forms of credit to stay solvent. An individual also relied on neighbors for building barns and houses, cooking, midwifery, and other essentials of life. While a self-sufficient community may have existed it was probably eroded as select individuals in a community integrated more completely with the market. Harry Watson in his volume Liberty and Power makes this case—stating that the Market Revolution occurred when the balance between self-sufficient communal practices and market profitability tipped toward the latter. Howe largely agrees.

Without going into too much detail—with an 853 page volume I could probably write a 50 page review and still not cover everything—I'll briefly summarize some of his main contentions. Howe believes that Andrew Jackson's presidencies represented the height of demagogy in the United States, and not democracy. Andrew Jackson was egotistical, self-absorbed, fickle and quick to hold grudges against his opponents for decades. He enjoyed surrounding himself with yes-men and Howe believes that Jackson (and not the people) created the Democratic Party in the 1830s. Other historians would disagree or at least err on the side of moderation in approach. The Whig Party (e.g. Henry Clay and those who supported economic elaboration, education, and reform) are the closest to Howe's heroes in the narrative. They unveiled comprehensive plans for economic development, educational reform, improved race relations and an end to slavery among other things—in short, it's too bad that Old Tippecanoe William Henry Harrison died so soon in office and squandered the Whig mandate in the Election of 1836 to implement these reforms. Again, other historians might disagree.

Finally, the growth of capitalism was not foisted upon the masses by wily bourgeoisie but the industrial revolution, communications revolution and transportation revolutions were, according to Howe, products of the working-classes. This system grew organically from within society and most Americans desired the market because it offered a better quality of life.

It's surprising to me how much Charles Sellers and Daniel Walker Howe seem to implicitly rely on a rational human psychology and a conscious decision on the part of ordinary Americans to either accept the benefits of market integration or calculate the risks and reject the market. Historian John Lauritz Larson, for example, demonstrates that Americans resistance to the market only coalesced during the Panics of 1819, 1837, and 1839 and even then most responses were directed toward the government or banking rather than capitalism. Most of the ameliorative benefits that Howe describes in his volume—education, literacy, temperance, the growth of colleges and universities, medicine and science—were either intrinsically flawed or enjoyed only by the new "middle-class" that had won out economically during the industrial revolution. If economic growth represented progress, I might ask, what would the Lower Mississippi Valley slave have to say?


I think this is a great book, despite some of my minor reservations. It's probably the best comprehensive assessment of the antebellum period currently available. It's certainly far more accessible than Charles Sellers and offers broader treatment than Harry Watson's Liberty and Power.

4.5/5 stars.