Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 32

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!

November 13, 2024: AmericanStudies’ 14th Anniversary!: Teaching Thoughts

[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!]

In mid-May2011, almost exactly six months into my blogging career, I decided to endthe Spring 2011 semester with a few consecutive posts (starting with thathyperlinked one) reflecting on that semester’s classes, teaching, and otherwork in my roles at Fitchburg State. I won’t pretend to remember if I plannedat that time to make such end-of-semester reflections a consistent part of theblog, nor exactly when I decided to complement them with beginning of semesterposts (I featuredone individual such post in September 2011, but featured the first full pre-semesterseriesin January 2012, and likewise featured a weeklong end of semester seriesthat May). All I know is, it’s been a long time since I’ve started or endeda semester without blogging about it, and I really love how much the two gohand-in-hand for me: the promise of a new semester and the opportunity to expressthose hopes in this space; the culminating moments of a semester and the chanceto think about takeaways from that work here. Other than my sons, teaching andblogging have been my two true constants over the last 14 years, and I lovethat they’re so intertwined.

Next poston posts tomorrow,

Ben

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

November 12, 2024: AmericanStudies’ 14th Anniversary!: Lifelong Learning

[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!]

For sometime in the blog’s early days (and really its early years), I’d say my poststended to focus on the kinds of familiar topics I highlighted yesterday—sometimesfavorites, sometimes frustrations, but most of the time subjects about which I knewa decent amount before I began planning and writing. It was really when I beganplanning weekly series around a particular topic that I likewise startedcreating posts—not all of them, but at least a couple in each series, let’s say—froman initially less well-informed place, and thus needing to research before (andwhile) writing. As a result, there’s absolutely no doubt that I have learned agreat deal from this blog, about an unbelievably wide variety of topics: including,to cite just a few from my early moves into such weekly series, SanDiego, satire,and Sendak.I hope I’ve modeled lifelong learning as a collective goal in the process, but inany case that goal has kept the blog fresh for its author, and thus withoutquestion kept me going.

Next poston posts tomorrow,

Ben

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

November 11, 2024: AmericanStudies’ 14th Anniversary!: Foregrounding Favorites

[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!]

For folkswho know me, it’s likely no surprise that the first month of this blog includedposts that featured TheMarrow of Tradition, Thunderheart,Boston’sShaw/54th Massachusetts Memorial, TheGrandissimes and The Squatter and theDon, TheBest Years of Our Lives, and the ChineseEducational Mission and its Celestials baseball team. That is, all of thosethings are favorites of mine in their respective cultural and historicalcategories, and I can’t imagine creating a daily blog without getting thechance to share such favorites with y’all (I’m honestly just surprised I didn’tget to Springsteenor Saylesfor as long as I did, although I’ve more than made up for it since). While Igot a lot of those favorites into the mix very quickly, I’ve certainly returnedto favs every month and year since, including further attention to those butalso to other subjects such as (to name just a few from this past year) KaneBrown, Houseof Leaves, Deadwood and Justified, and many many more. I’mstill doing this 14 years down the road for lots of reasons, as I hope thisseries will illustrate, but high on the list is that I’m having a lot of fun,and favorites help make it so.

Next poston posts tomorrow,

Ben

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

November 9-10, 2024: 2024 Election Reflections

So thathappened. I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years thinking and writingabout the worst and best of America, and somehow I’m still surprised andsaddened when we lean into our worst. We can try to understand and analyzethese results in all sorts of ways, but the bottom line is that more than 70million of my fellow Americans voted for a candidate who expresses and embodiesnot just the worst attributes of human behavior and the worst impulses toward fascism,but also (and most relevantly to this blog) the worst of our shared historiesand national identity.

The onlyother thing I want to say here is this: over the last few days, I’ve started towork hard to lean in myself, into the people and things I love, into the bestin my life, from the biggest (my younger son as he moves through his senioryear, my older son as he continues to rock his freshman year in college, myparents, my wife) to the smallest (a Reese’s ice cream cake for no reason otherthan all the reasons). And one of the things I love most is the best of thework I get to do—in the classroom, on my podcast, in this blog, everywhere Iget to do this AmericanStudying thing. La lucha continua, and as ever I’m veryproud to be in it with y’all.

Bloganniversary series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

November 8, 2024: The 1924 Election: Foreshadowing the Future

[This hasbeen a particularly crazy last year/decade/eternity, but it’s not the firstnutty presidential campaign and election. 100 years ago wascertainly another, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of 1924 electioncontexts, leading up to some reflections on this year’s electoral results!]

Three waysthat the 1924 election foreshadowed future political events.

1)     Progressive programs: I don’t want to repeattoo much of where I ended yesterday’s post, but I don’t think it’s possible tooverstate the significance of La Follette’s third-party run and success.Coolidge’s win was due in large part to perceptions that the economy was booming—butfive years before the stock market crash, La Follette’s success reflected asizeable contingent of Americans for whom things weren’t going so well, and adesire for a government that could support and help those folks. Less than adecade later, the federal government would dedicate itself to doing so in waysthat would extend into at least the1960s and in many ways the rest of the century.

2)     Catholic candidates: A major reason for theridiculous deadlock at the 1924Democratic National Convention was that one of the two leading contenders forthe nomination, New York Governor Al Smith, wasCatholic, and thus the target of the same longstanding anti-Catholicprejudices I highlighted in thispost a couple months back. If Smith did not ultimately break through thoseprejudices in 1924, however, he was able to do so just four years later, winning the Democratic nominationat the also-contested 1928 Democratic National Convention in Houston. Smith lostto Herbert Hoover in November, and there’s no doubt that hisCatholicism played a role; but progress is progress, and I believe Smith’sprogress in the 1920s absolutely foreshadowed Kennedy’selection in 1960 (as well as the non-issue that Biden’s Catholicism hasbeen in our current moment).

3)     Right-wing extremism in New York: Both ofthose were genuine and positive legacies of the 1924 election, and I don’t wantto minimize them by ending on a darker note. But the presence and influence ofthe Ku Klux Klan at the Democratic Convention in New York City was a powerful momentof foreshadowing in its own right, and I’m not talking here about the immigrationrestrictions and exclusions I highlighted in Wednesday’s post. Instead, I’m thinkingabout another, even more extreme right-winggathering in Madison Square Garden fifteen years later, one that trulyreflected the presenceof such American extremists. I think it’s fair to say we’re still dealingwith that presence lo these 100 years later.  

2024election reflections this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other crazy elections you’d highlight, or thoughts on this oneyou’d share?