Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 28

November 25, 2024: Podcast Thanks: A Serendipitous Conversation

[The mostsignificant part of my work this fall was the launch of my first publicscholarly podcast, TheCelestials’ Last Game: Baseball, Bigotry, and the Battle for America. Alot of factors helped make that work possible, so for my annual Thanksgivingseries I wanted to express my gratitude to a handful of them!]

Asattentive readers of this blog will remember, for many years The Celestials’Last Game was a book manuscript and proposal. The transformation into apublic scholarly podcast didn’t happen in any one moment, but the idea for it actuallydid: while taking part in retirement celebrations for my PhD advisor, ProfessorMiles Orvell, I happened to have a conversation with one of his recentundergrad students at Temple University. She was kind enough to ask about whatI was working on, and when I described both the project and my struggles toland it with a publisher, she (an avid podcast listener herself) mentioned thatit sounded like a great idea for a podcast. Despite having appeared on manypodcasts as a guest, I have to admit I had never thought about creating one ofmy own, so this serendipitous conversation was really important in presentingme with that possibility and lighting the initial spark that would end up withmy first podcast.

Nextthanks tomorrow,

Ben

PS. I’d bethankful if you’d check out the podcast and let me know your thoughts!

November 23-24, 2024: AmericanTemperanceStudying: The WCTU

[150 yearsago this week, the Women’sChristian Temperance Union was founded at a nationalconvention in Cleveland. So this week I’ve AmericanStudied a handfulof key temperance histories, leading up to this weekend post on the influentialorganization launched by that 1874 convention!]

Six impressivewomen who together reflect the evolution of a successful and still-activeorganization.

1)     MatildaGilruth Carpenter: No national organization springs to life without morelocal efforts on which it’s building, and that was certainly the case for theWCTU, which in many ways began in central Ohio in lateDecember, 1873. It was there that a reformer and religious leader named MatildaGilruth Carpenter spearheaded an effort to close saloons, calling her communitythe Women’s Christian Temperance Union in the process. The bookshe authored a couple decades later about those experiences is one layer toher legacy, but the national organization that met in her native Ohio about ayear later is certainly another.  

2)     AnnieTurner Wittenmyer: By the time she was elected as the WCTU’s firstpresident at that 1874 convention, Annie Turner Wittenmyer had been a prominentactivist for at least a decade, most especially through her Civil War-eraefforts with Soldiers’ Aid Societies, Sanitary Commissions, and dietaryreforms. But Wittenmyer’s activism made an effort to be as apolitical, or atleast non-partisan,as possible, and she frequently fought with other WCTU leaders over whether theorganization should address (much less support) women’s suffrage. Which is why in1879 she lost the presidency to…

3)     Frances Willard:Willard was a groundbreaking educator who also became one of the late 19thcentury’s most impassioned and effective feminist activists, and she saw the WCTUas very much part of the overall women’s movement, rather than solely or evencentrally a temperance organization. In her 19years as WCTU President (a term ended only when she passed away in 1898)she pushed the organization to fight for not only suffrage, but also many othersocial reforms, including equal pay for equal work, uniform divorce laws, andfree kindergarten. She also founded the World’sWoman’s Christian Temperance Union to make these efforts truly global.

4)     Bessie Laythe Scovell:Think globally, act locally isn’t a new idea, though, and some of the mostsuccessful WCTU efforts took place in state chapters. Probably the mostprominent and effective of those state chapters was the Minnesota WCTU, whichwas founded in 1877; Scovell didn’t become its president until 1897, so itsefforts were well established by then, but she became a particularly importantsymbol of this chapter’s groundbreaking work, especially among immigrantcommunities in the state. In that hyperlinked “President’s Address,” deliveredat the Minnesota WCTU’s 24th Annual Meeting in 1900, Scovell laysout her holistic and progressive vision for the organization and how it couldbecome better connected to immigrant communities through linguistic andcultural solidarity.

5)     FrancesEllen Watkins Harper and ElizaPierce: Such local efforts certainly helped advance the WCTU’s cause, but evenmore important were the leaders of color who could help make the organizationmore truly representative of the American population. That included Harper, theAfricanAmerican poet, novelist, educator, and activist who led the WCTU’s “Departmentof Work Among the Colored People”; and Pierce, the Iroquois NativeAmerican activist who started a new New York chapter and extended the WCTUto Six Nations communities throughout the state. As with all the temperancehistories I’ve highlighted this week, the WCTU’s was complex and could featureexclusionary attitudes to be sure; but women like Harper and Pierce helped makesure it likewise featured inclusive possibilities.

Thanksgivingseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

November 22, 2024: AmericanTemperanceStudying: Prohibition

[150 yearsago this week, the Women’s Christian TemperanceUnion was founded at anational convention in Cleveland. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handfulof key temperance histories, leading up to a weekend post on that 1874convention!]

On threegreat scholarly books that can help us analyze an incredibly multi-facetedhistorical period and its many legacies.

1)     Lisa McGirr’s The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Riseof the American State (2015): Yesterday I argued that theAnti-Saloon League’s successful pressure politics were instrumental in finallyachieving the movement’s longstanding goal of nationwide Prohibition. That wasabsolutely a factor, but it’s also far from a coincidence that the 18thAmendment passed Congress in 1917 (the same year as theEspionage Act) and was ratified in 1919 (the same year that the post-WWI PalmerRaids began). As McGirr argues convincingly, World War I specificallyand many wartime contexts more broadly were crucial to turning Prohibition froma movement priority into a nationwide policy—and while that particular policyended with theamendment’s repeal in 1933, many of those wartime contexts have enduredin the 90 years since.

2)     Stephen Moore’s Bootleggers and Borders: The Paradox ofProhibition on a Canada-U.S. Borderland(2014):Another crucial legacy of the Prohibition era was the creation of—and yes, Imean that precisely; not just newfound attention to, but in many ways thecreation of—the U.S.-Canadian border as a spacefor law enforcement concerns and activity. My paternal grandfather and hisparents moved across that border and into New Hampshire in the mid-1910s withno hassle or legal attention of any kind; but just a few years later, thatwould have been impossible, and as Moore argues Prohibition enforcement was thereason why. While the U.S.-Mexico border was not as much of a Prohibition focalpoint, it’s no coincidence that it was likewise during the1920s that that border became genuinely patrolled. The end ofProhibition was only the start of U.S. border patrols, of course.

3)     Marni Davis’ Jews and Booze: Becoming American in the Ageof Prohibition (2012): I wrote a bit in yesterday’s postabout the interconnections between white supremacy, race, and Prohibition,especially in the alliance between the Anti-Saloon League and the Ku Klux Klan.The 1920s Klan focused equally on anti-Black and anti-immigrant domesticterrorisms, of course; and as Davis’ book traces powerfully, so too wasProhibition driven by anti-immigrant and anti-Semiticnarratives. I’ve argued for many years in many different settings that the1920s represented a nadir of American racism, xenophobia, and exclusion—andyes, I’m well aware that this is a very competitive contest; but the more Ilearn, the more convinced I am that this was indeed a stunning low point—andit’s crucially important that we include Prohibition in our understanding ofthose elements of 1920s America.

WCTU postthis weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

November 21, 2024: AmericanTemperanceStudying: The Anti-Saloon League

[150 yearsago this week, the Women’s Christian TemperanceUnion was founded at anational convention in Cleveland. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handfulof key temperance histories, leading up to a weekend post on that 1874convention!]

On oneimportant innovation and one troubling interconnection for America’s mostinfluential temperance organization.

Each ofthe posts in this series has moved between more individual and more collectiveand organizational temperance activisms, and I don’t think that’s just due tomy own choices and focal points: it seems to me that any social movement thatendures and achieves significant successes likely needs both groundbreakingleaders and widespread communal support. Similarly, the final push towardProhibition (on which more in tomorrow’s concluding post) in the late 19thand early 20th centuries relied on both the individual presence andprominence of yesterday’s subject Carrie Nation and the social and politicalconnections of the Anti-Saloon League. Foundedin 1893 in Oberlin, Ohio, the League certainly featured its share of impressiveindividual leaders, from founder HowardHyde Russell to the hugely influential lawyer WayneBidwell Wheeler among others. But it was precisely the League’s organizationalpresence that made it so effective in shifting national conversations.

The Leagueutilized a number of strategies to achieve those aims, including creating itsown AmericanIssue Publishing Company in 1909; that publisher produced and mailedso many pamphlets that its hometown of Westerville, Ohio became the smallesttown to feature afirst-class post office in the period. But by far the mostinfluential element of the Anti-Saloon League’s activist efforts was a strategythat the organizationseems to have created (and which was certainly related to thoseubiquitous publications): pressurepolitics, the concept of using a variety of interconnected means, frommass media and communication to intimidation and threats, to pressure politicalleaders to support and pass particular legislation and policies. There’s nodoubt that it was the successful application of such political pressure by theLeague and its allies (but most especially by the League) that convinced enoughnational and state politicians to support Prohibition (after well more than ahalf-century of unsuccessful temperance movement efforts toward that specificend), leading to the Congressional passage and state-level ratification of the 18thAmendment in 1919.

I’ll havea lot more to say about that specific League legacy tomorrow. But it’simportant to add a troubling layer and contemporary context, particularly tothe application of pressure politics: the other organization which used thatstrategy with particular effectiveness in the 1920s was the resurgent Ku KluxKlan. Moreover, this wasn’t a coincidence or even just a parallel—as historianHoward Ball has discovered, in a setting like late 1910s and 1920s Birminghamthe two organizations were closely connected, to the point that a local journalist wrote, “InAlabama, it is hard to tell where the Anti-Saloon League ends and the Klanbegins.” And it wasn’t just Alabama—throughout the 1920s the two organizationsbecame allies not only in enforcing Prohibition (although I’m sure the Leaguewould say that was their only goal) but in achieving their political and socialgoals on multiple levels. The ties between whitesupremacy and American social movements are far from unique to temperance, ofcourse—but that doesn’t excuse in any way this most influential temperanceorganization’s symbiotic relationship with white supremacist domesticterrorists.

Last temperancehistories tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

November 20, 2024: AmericanTemperanceStudying: Three Reformers

[150 yearsago this week, the Women’s Christian TemperanceUnion was founded at anational convention in Cleveland. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handfulof key temperance histories, leading up to a weekend post on that 1874convention!]

Ontakeaways from a trio of temperance reformers across the 19thcentury.

1)     SylvesterGraham (1794-1851): As that hyperlinked article argues, Graham’stemperance activism was just one small part of his truly multi-layered effortsfor health and wellness reform. But my older son dressed up as and interpretedGraham for an APUSH project earlier this year, and in his honor (and in tributeto Graham’s most enduring legacy, the undeniably tasty GrahamCracker) I wanted to include the quirky and influential Graham in thispost. Moreover, Graham did hold a position for years with one of theorganizations I highlighted yesterday, the Philadelphia Temperance Society, sohe did see alcohol abstinence as an important part of his overallhealth reforms. While analyzing the longitudinal history of the temperancemovement over these 400 years is one important way to think about this issue,it’s equally worthwhile to connect each specific moment latitudinally to otherelements of its era and society, as Graham’s multi-faceted efforts remind us.

2)     Neal Dow: But somereformers did laser-focus on temperance throughout their lives and careers, andwhile Portland,Maine’s Neal Dow (1804-1897) did other important work aswell—including with the Underground Railroad and as a Civil War BrigadierGeneral—temperance was the through-line, leading to his nickname as the “Fatherof Prohibition.” Active in the movement since his early 20s, it was with a pairof closely linked mid-century elections that he really took his efforts to thenext level: he was elected president of the Maine Temperance Union in 1850 andthen mayor of Portland in 1851. Dow saw his political role as an extension of hismovement activism, to the point where in 1855 he ordered statemilitia members to open fire on rioters who opposed his “Maine Law,” thefirst in the nation to prohibit all alcohol. Dow even tried to take thosepolitical goals truly nationwide, running for President in 1880 as the nominee ofthe Prohibition Party. In those and other ways, the politicalhistory of prohibition is inseparable from the career of Neal Dow.

3)     Carrie (sometimesCarry) Nation (1846-1911): While Dow did order that moment of militia violence,his own activisms remained more on the organizational and legal levels, as wasthe case with the 19th and early 20th century temperancemovement as a whole. But all social movements feature a variety of perspectivesand tactics, and not long after Dow’s presidential run the temperance movementcame to be dominated by a figure who preferred much more direct and violentaction. Believing herself called from God to oppose all things alcohol—“a bulldogrunning along at the feet of Jesus, barking at what He doesn’t like,” as she strikinglyput it—Nation’s activist weapon of choice was neither words nor laws,but a literal weapon, the hatchet with which she attacked both liquor bottlesand the businesses that served them (leading to the nickname “HatchetGranny”). While Nation was part of the broader community of theAnti-Saloon League about which I’ll write tomorrow, she was also profoundly andpowerfully individual, as were each of these influential temperance reformers.

Next temperancehistories tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

November 19, 2024: AmericanTemperanceStudying: The Early Republic

[150 yearsago this week, the Women’s Christian TemperanceUnion was founded at anational convention in Cleveland. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handfulof key temperance histories, leading up to a weekend post on that 1874convention!]

On threemilestone moments in the movement’s early 19th century evolutions.

1)     1813: While the issue and debate continued tosimmer (to steep? Not sure of the best alcohol-based pun here) for the twocenturies following the 1623 Virginia law, it was with the 1813 founding of theMassachusettsSociety for the Suppression of Intemperance that a truly organized TemperanceMovement began to develop in the Early Republic United States. To reiterate mylast point in yesterday’s post, the Society did not initially advocate fortotal abstinence from alcohol, but rather opposed “the frequent use of ardentspirits and its kindred vices, profaneness and gaming.” But the more than 40chapters founded in the Society’s first five years certainly reflects howbroadly and passionately shared this perspective was in the first decades ofthe 19th century.

2)     1826: As its name suggests, the MassachusettsSociety was still somewhat local in its efforts; but a few years later, anotherBoston-based organization, the AmericanTemperance Society (ATS) or American Society for the Promotionof Temperance, explicitly took the movement national. The ATS was also far moreovertly committed to abstinence as a principal collective goal, with members signing apledge to abstain from drinking distilled beverages. Moreover, whilethat pledge was of course voluntary, the ATS soon shifted its efforts toarguments for mandatory legal prohibition, reflecting a significant and lastingshift in the movement’s goals. The more than 1.25million members who joined the ATS in its first decade of existence (about 10% ofthe total US population in the 1830s) makes clear that this was a trulycommunal such shift.

3)     Philadelphia: This developing nationaltemperance movement also led to countless new local organizations—in Philadelphia alone therewere 26 distinct Societies operating in 1841, and an entire building (TemperanceHall) dedicated for the movement’s meetings and rallies. Two of thoseSocieties reflect the breadth of the movement’s inspirations and motivations:the PennsylvaniaCatholic Total Abstinence Society was founded in 1840 by an Augustinianpriest and focused on issues of religious and morality; while the Philadelphia Temperance Society was ledby doctors and focused much more on reform narratives of health and wellness. Whilethe movement was certainly coalescing around abstinence and prohibition in thisprominent Early Republic period, it remained a broad and varied representationof the landscape of American reform, activism, and society.

Next temperancehistories tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

November 18, 2024: AmericanTemperanceStudying: A 1623 Origin Point

[150 yearsago this week, the Women’s Christian TemperanceUnion was founded at anational convention in Cleveland. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handfulof key temperance histories, leading up to a weekend post on that 1874convention!]

On acouple historical and movement lessons from the 400th anniversary ofa foundational law.

As withmany things early 1600s, it’s difficult to find too much specific informationabout the groundbreaking temperance law enacted in Virginia on March 5th,1623. The colony’s first royal governor Francis Wyatt and the recently-established coloniallegislature deemedthat date Temperance Day in an attempt to prohibit, as the law put it,“public intoxication.” That was just the first public and political step in acentury-long debate in the colony over alcohol and its effects, as traced atlength in Kendra Bonnett’s 1976 PhD dissertation Attitudes toward Drinking and Drunkenness inSeventeenth-Century Virginia (I’ll admit to having only brieflyskimmed the beginning of that thesis for this post, but it’s linked there foranyone who wants to read more!). While those specific Virginia and 17thcentury contexts are of course important to understanding this law, I want touse that 1623 moment to introduce a couple key lessons about temperance inAmerica for this entire weeklong blog series.

For onething, it’s crucial to understand how longstanding, widespread, and indeedfoundational American temperance debates have been. Much of the narrativearound this issue links it to early 19th century reform movements,which were certainly influential and about which I’ll have a lot more to say intomorrow’s post. But it’s pretty striking and telling that one of the veryfirst laws passed in collaboration by two of the first European Americanpolitical entities—both Virginia’s royal governor and its colonial legislaturewere only four years old at the time—addressed the issues of alcohol,drunkenness, and temperance. Moreover, while we might expect that the otherprincipal English colony at the time, Puritan Massachusetts, would enact such alaw—and while the Puritans most definitely had strongopinions on strong drink, but similarly more in opposition to publicdrunkenness than alcohol itself—this took place in the far less overtlyreligious (or at least religiously governed) Virginia colony. Clearly the issuewas consuming across the new colonies from their outset.

But it’sjust as important to note what this groundbreaking law specifically did anddidn’t do. The temperance movement is often closely associated in ourcollective memories with—if not directly defined by—the goal of prohibition, anunderstandable connection given that particular, prominent early 20thcentury Constitutional amendment and 13-year period (with which I’ll end theweek’s series). Indeed, the association is so strong that one definition of“temperance” has come to be “abstinence from strong drink.” But I would arguethat that definition emerged because of the association of the movement withprohibition, and that another definition—“the quality of moderation orself-restraint”—is more foundational to the word and movement alike. Virginia’Temperance Day didn’t ban or even legally restrict alcohol, just “publicintoxication”—a demonstrable lack of moderation or restraint in the consumptionof such drinks. There’s at least a spectrum in play here, and one that wouldcontinue to shape the movement’s goals and laws throughout the subsequent 400years.

Next temperancehistories tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

November 16-17, 2024: AmericanStudies’ 14th Anniversary!: Thankful Tributes

[14years ago this week, this blog was born. For this year’s anniversaryseries, I wanted to highlight a handful of the types of posts that have kept meblogging for nearly a decade and a half now, leading up to these special weekendtributes!]

Along withthe obvious, AKA my favorite people in the world—my sons, my wife, and my folks—hereare a handful of people who have helped make this blog a favorite of mine aswell.

1)     Irene Martyniuk: One of my veryfirst Guest Posters, my colleague and friend Irene has also become my mostconsistent reader, and one who frequently takes the time to share thoughtfulresponses as well (some of which I’ve gotten to feature inCrowd-Sourced Posts). We all want to know we’re being read and read well,and nobody has helped me feel that better than Irene!

2)     RobVelella: I wrote in that hyperlinked post about what Rob’s blog and work havemeant to me. But I’m not sure I said clearly enough how much it helped to havean existing public scholarly blogger, one whose blog was a model for what I washoping to create, be so supportive and collaborative from the jump. I hope I’vepaid that forward!

3)     HeatherCox Richardson: I likewise wrote in that hyperlinked post about how much itmeant to have Heather and her excellent Historical Society website support andshare my blog at any early point (and I could say the same about her even moreexcellent We’re History website, for which I was able to write many times). Nowthat Heather has become one of the most prominent and successful publicscholars in American history, I can add, “Couldn’t have happened to a nicerperson!”

4)     RobinField: That Guest Post of Robin’s was impressive and inspiring, as was the2023 NeMLA paper of hers I highlightedin this post (and as is all of her work). But Robin has also connected mewith a number of herstudents over the last few years, all of whom have contributed phenomenal GuestPosts in their own right (and who collectively have largely kept the GuestPost layer to the blog going). Am I suggesting that you all should connect meto awesome students who also might want to Guest Post on this blog? Yes, yes Iam.

5)     You: Whether you connect me to students or not,I’m so damn thankful for y’all. And not just in the colloquial Southern 2nd-personsense—for each and every one of you all. I try not to dwell on blog stats, asthey’re outside my control and can and do fluctuate and in any case are just numbers.But I get somewhere in the range of 30,000 discrete views each month, and Ireally am profoundly grateful for each and every one of those folks who findstheir way to this blog. So thanks, and here’s to the next 14 years!

Next seriesstarts Monday,

Ben

PS. Giveme a great anniversary present and say hi in comments, please!

November 15, 2024: AmericanStudies’ 14th Anniversary!: Communal Crowd-Sourcing

[14years ago this week, this blog was born. For this year’s anniversaryseries, I wanted to highlight a handful of the types of posts that have kept meblogging for nearly a decade and a half now. Leading up to some special weekendtributes!]

If youclick on the tabfor Crowd-Sourced Posts in the list of “Labels” to the right on the blog’s homepage,you’ll notice that there haven’t been any in 2024 and were only four each in2023 and 2022, compared to the average of about ten each year prior to that. Thereare all kinds of reasons for that shift, including the growth of my#ScholarSunday threads (first on Twitter, now on their own newsletter) which havebecome a powerful form of crowd-sourcing in their own right (both in terms ofsharing others’ voices and because many of the things I feature there have beenshared with me). But even if I never feature another crowd-sourced post—and Ihope and believe I will, at the very least for next year’s non-favoritesseries!—I don’t think I can overstate how much those posts have meant to meover the course of my blogging career. Scholarly blogging, like most everyother part of scholarly work, can feel individual and isolated at times; some degreeof that is likely inevitable, but I’ve still spent my whole career seeking waysand places to challenge that feeling and offer a communal alternative. I lovethat my blog has featured precisely such an alternative, and hope it alwaysfeels like it can.

Tributepost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Giveme a great anniversary present and say hi in comments, please!

November 14, 2024: AmericanStudies’ 14th Anniversary!: Great Guests

[14years ago this week, this blog was born. For this year’s anniversaryseries, I wanted to highlight a handful of the types of posts that have kept meblogging for nearly a decade and a half now. Leading up to some special weekendtributes!]

Two yearsago, I dedicated myentire anniversary series to sharing my 25 most recent (at that time) GuestPosts, a tribute as I noted to how much such connections to others, and theopportunity to share their words and ideas, has helped me keep the blog going. Inrecent years the roster of Guest Posters has included a growing number of FitchburgState students as well asboth of mysons, making this aspect of the blog even more meaningful than ever(although the veryfirst Guest Post was written by Mom, so they’ve always been plenty meaningful!).But even with the many Guest Posters whom I’ve never met in person—and in someways especially with that cohort, to whom I would never have become connectedwithout the blog—the chance to feature their work here has been a trueprivilege as well as a pleasure. When I ask y’all to consider Guest Posting, it’sat least as much for me as it is (I hope) an opportunity for you—and in any case,it’s one of the things that most definitely keeps me coming back.

Last poston posts tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Giveme a great anniversary present and say hi in comments, please!