The political history of the coming of the civil war is as important as history can get the only timeause weve ever had in the political system disintegrated. Have three people to talk about this. We have tried to mix the generations. Comment. State general we like to mix the generations. We dont want everyone as old as me. Our first speaker will be pamela brand line. She holds a professorship in Political Science at the university of michigan. She has also taught at ut austin. Historians andof social scientist to. She is the author of two important books. Rethinking the judicial system of resettlement. A title long before the age of trump. That was a slip, i didnt mean that. Honestly. Pamela is going to speak on the of rethinking Party Appeals and capitalist contexts. Lynnecond speaker is josh who is a postdoctoral fellow here at yale. Hes part of the macmillan center. He did his phd at the university of North Carolina at chapel hill. Is teaching a course here at yell on jacksonian democracy. He has planned a major conference the first weekend in december. On that old but still very important problem of who was jackson and what is jacksonian democracy . Book is now accepted preservinpress called republic. Ans hes artie ridden an essay about this, comparing Frederick Douglass and Stephen Douglas. Called the black douglas and the white douglas. There were more relationships and connections between those two then i ever realized. Frome lifted shamelessly his article in my forthcoming book. Lastly, joe murphy, who helped us organize this conference. Organizerwas a prime of the conference at cuny four years ago. The cunys phd at graduate center. He is currently a postdoc fellow over the seer at the New York Historical society. He is a scholar of antislavery politics and is himself writing neither a slave political and teh rise of antislavery nationalism. Josh will speak on the theme of 1850s populism, economics, and white supremacism. Each person gets 15 minutes. Then we open it up to you. Dont be shy. Will pamela thank you, david. I want to return to a question that civil war historians used to argue about in the 1980s, and that was the nature or character of the republican appeal. The contributors to this debate, all agree that political ideology is a central feature of sectional conflict and political realignment. They mean a worldview or relatively coherent set of beliefs. Agreement among them about the character of the republican appeal. Causes of the realignment in the 1850s. The focus for my remarks, im going to focus on the disagreement between two scholars. We can start with a free labor story, which is familiar. Lets do a couple highlights. The free labor story talks about slavery degrading labor. The right to rise. Small, independent producers had a stake in the story about the nation and the nature of the nation. Aspirations for social mobility. Storypower comes into the , threatening the life blood of the nation. Threatening the aspirations of laborers. The notion of a safety valve was crucial. Northern workers needed the west to rise. Says the comes in and free labor commitments divided northerners from seven slaveowners. But he says its not clear that free labor commitments divided republicans from northern democrats. Asturns to the slave power the major construct, the master symbol of the Republican Party, identifies with her public and values. He says of the essence of appeal were republican values. Free labor concerns were about economics and slave power concerns were about public and is him, small are. He is referring to things such as northern rights and liberties. Free speech. Clause. Tive slave concerns with aristocracy. Slave power was seen as an aristocracy under republican principles. Also, they were a political minority. Seen as a violation of republicanism and an increasing extremity of southern demands. According to the scholar, this created a profound fear of republican values. For republican values. , i thing that can be said would offer the suggestion that republican ideology, especially as articulated by seward and lincoln, fused economic concerns with republicanism. False blip is evidenced in the very five fed aristocrats were seen as nonproducers. The very equation undermines the idea that economic concerns and republican, small are, concerns were separate. I want to focus the presence in the Republican Party of what trueled true them democrats. These were a group of political actors that i dont think have been well understood by historians. With their name. They left the Democratic Party in the 1830s. They are coming out of ohio. Ohio Liberty Party but they called themselves true democrats. Under the leadership of john hale they called themselves independent democrats. These are not the barn burners. These are not the northern democrats who said they want the west for white labor. These are a group of asked democrats that said the Democratic Party were not being true to the principle of the equality. They criticized the slave power argument. They also borrowed a jacksonian , andpts, the money Power Building a critique of the wrist across of the south and the risk as of the north. The northern aristocrats included merchants, financial ors, and business owners. Thinks something i dont we have enough of a grip on in terms of our understanding. At bottom, the fact that these true democrats also launched a slave power critique as well as the whig republicans launching a slave power critique, what that means is that the slave power cannot be the essence of the republican appeal. Thats because these true democrats are combining a slave power critique with a critique of the northern economic system. Something is going on here, and this is where i want to pick up. , theire democrats presence, is signaling that not just do we need to expand our time verizons, we have to look the history through of antislavery politics. I want to add another feature to this, which is the creation of this true democrat political movement. I want to put on the table the idea that capitalist development in the north was more evolved, more advanced, more developed than has generally been recognized. These true democrats are appealing to an antislavery contingent that is less racist than one might imagine given conventional stories about the irish in new york city. These folks are not prospering under the growing capitalist system. The way of exploring these appeals, repeals the whig republican and true democrat appeals, i want to tie the question of these appeals to a question that economic historians of slavery used to talk about. And talking of gavin right. I want to expand on their conceptualization and crucial ways. By 1790y have proposes and 1800, you had property systems in the north in conflict with the property system of the south. The property system in the north , i dont have time to talk about in detail, but the critical feature was property in yourself. Property in your labor. There was an evolution of this in the north. Courts also got rid of something called specific informants performance which was when workers, if they did not fill the contract, could be put in jail. Of labor law stoppect operative by the 1820s. You have this property system in is north, a feature of it the gradual emancipation of the north from slavery. Areges in property law vital here. I just want to reference briefly to works, one by Charles Poston one by david meyer, who give us some tools to think about capless context in the north. Populationh we had a a system in slavery. As part of a system. There a hybrid dimension to this. Slaveowners traded in commodities. They got very wealthy. They looks like cap lists that its is not a capitalist system. I want to talk about some features that are typical and unique. Once we brought in the context even this far, back to the rise of the atlantic economy and the transit clinic slave trade, he gives us some purchase on when and how southern democrats amped up there demands. Poston ights from post and meyer. I dont think we can reduce this to property systems. Can reduce itwe to economic determinism. But theres something he contributes that is vital. He talks about demythologizing the family farm. History,of civil war that family farm is mythologized as independent. Post gives us some tools to d mythologized this. The late 1830s, family farms were no longer independent. They came under the law of value. That means they become embedded in northern markets. They have to sell to survive. They must. ,hey have to specialize output they have to create laborsaving tools, they have to accumulate land. 1830s, theo late cost of entry into western farming was prohibitive for urban poor laborers. This fact is final because it gives us some understanding not just the republican appeal to these poor urban laborers but whether or not that appeal was feasible. Post suggests that appeal was not feasible, yet it was made. We have these dependent family farms, dependent in a particular cents. Dependent on market, dependent on credit from capital, but not pursuing what is called competency. They have to grow to survive. Want to pullm my i in, david meyer has a new book out and he talks about prosperous northern agriculture. And industrialization. As processes that happen together and are interrelated. We cannot understand industrialization in the north without understanding prosperity among commercial farms. He gives us all kind of information. Philadelphia area, boston area, new york area. Ional metropolises since metropolises. Population is rising in rural areas, which seems counterintuitive. That between 1840 and 1860 we had these incredibly prosperous farms thatll generating social differentiation. Folks with access to markets are doing well. Folks with good land are doing well. But there are a lot of folks who are not doing well. Between 1840 in 1860, we have the fastest. Of industrial growth in the 19th century. The number of employees in manufacturing is increasing threefold. Productivity is increasing fivefold. This shouldnt come altogether as a surprise given irish immigration and the fact that labor scarcity was a problem that no longer existed. Underline points, this is not the world of the small producer. Lastly, i just wanted to come to this question of southern democratic aggression. And their increasing demands and timing of the session. There are features of southern slavery that were typical of Atlantic World slavery. And there are features that were unique. This combination i want to bring us back to. Typical, theres a rachel basis. Typical slaves ran away. Typical, slaveowners got very wealthy. Typical, slave property was compatible for a. Of time with capitalist markets. Boom in a single export crop is what drives this wealth. We have this with cotton starting in 1800, when the south became britains primary source. And the huge boom in the 1850s. Also typical, busts follow these booms. The horizon on already but folks in the south could not and did not know that. What is unique, resident planters. Very important for understanding the formation of a slave society. Unique, profound regional political power and National Political power. This is unique. This fact is absolutely vital for understanding the timing. Its not just population growth in the north. This is constitutional design. This is the 3 5 clause. This is over representation in the house that turn do the Electoral College that turned into the presidency agenda to Supreme Court appointments. The political power of the southern democrat is combining with this huge wealth thats been dimming being generated from a world market. Britain are the market for carton from the 18 four cotton from the 1830s to the 1860s. It creates the sense that the south can do it on their own. They dont need the union anymore. The thing i want to underscore is this idea that we need to reintroduce property systems as a category of analysis. Say, and i want to underscore this, no economic determinism. This is not progressive history. Aboutys of thinking property systems have to include the fact that theres a wonderful article in the american Historical Review where it says racial slavery has an economic motive. He shows that the empires in europe, if they want a cheap way of getting slavery, they should have enslaved convict laborers in europe. There are means to do that. They should have enslaved poor people in europe, there are means to do that. Slaverypest way to put in the new world was to enslave europeans. They didnt do that and all by underlines an economic determinist story of the south. The property system has to be very complicated and worked out. Gender has to be a piece of this as well. Men weres of english seen to be absolute. Property systems is a category of analysis, we need to do that. Understand these true democrats that were stepping out of the Democratic Party and fighting for the west ultimatelyntry and this fight between wig republicans and these true thecrats over what was problem in the country and how youre going to fix it. The new democrats said we have to get rid of the slave power. To getso said we have something about the northern economic order. I will stop there. [applause] as david mentioned, 2017 is the 250th anniversary of the birth of Andrew Jackson. As ourll know, but president seems a little confused about in his musings on American History, Andrew Jackson was not alive in the air we are here to discuss. But his ideas were. The populist political style that he pioneered divided a template for americans to approach this crisis in 1840s and 1850s. Today, some americans are also looking to that jacksonian template. Many americans youre in for an hour of jackson. As reviving the jackson style. President trump himself has embraced the idea that he is a modern day old hickory. Earlier this year he went to the hermitage to celebrate Andrew Jacksons history and said he was a fan. Drew a parallel between his populism and that of jackson who he asserted confronted and defined american elite and reclaimed the peoples government from an emerging aristocracy. Rehabilitated old degrees portrait to the oval office. Liberals have responded with soulsearching over how to reconnect with the people. Earlier this week, columbia professor gave a talk on his book the once and future identityagainst politics. Example of only one liberals trying to reconnect with a broad swath of americans that trouble allegedly speaks to. Others have likewise recommended of the Democratic Party sees to be the party of identity politics and rebrand itself or to being a party of class or economic appeals. They believe they can do that and bring back the white middle class without pandering to homophobia, and classes him on the right. That identity politics is an artificial one. American pipe is an is pioneered by the jacksonian has always both been a populism of political economy and a populism of identity politics and in this of white malem identity. Jackson taught his followers to conceptualize politics as a struggle between the nations natural majority of producers and entrenched economic elite. He mobilized against the money ofer, a conspiratorial cabal financial elites and corrupt government officials. Scholars have charted how that jacksonian appeal endured into the civil war era. Some talk about how antislavery jacksonians substituted the slave power for the money power in later decades of the 1840s and 1850s and this caused them to leave the ancestral party, the party of jackson, in order to fight monopoly in this new guys. TheDemocratic Party of 1850s then becomes nearly an appendage of the slave power. Democrats seem to exist outside the Democratic Party. These accounts emphasize the pivotal role of antislavery jacksonians in the fight against slavery and often deemphasize the racism of jacksonians. Worthd something preserving and seek to differentiate it from a party that is proslavery, prosouthern, and under the leadership of people like Franklin Pierce and james buchanan. For many, the jacksonian legacy should belong to Abraham Lincoln and not stephen jackson. But how many of those democrats were in the Democratic Party in the civil war era . Or they true democrats . I would say yes. The 1850s Democratic Party still the party of jackson. Once we recognize that, it raises implications for jacksons politics. Like republicans in the civil war era, the Democratic Party also detective a dangerous monopoly that threatened white mens liberty and the union itself. But it was not the slave power, it was the antislavery power. Instead of protesting against slavery and slaveholders, democrats detected a conspiracy among abolitionists, antislavery republicans, reformers, and their africanamerican allies. Democrats believed these reformers want to consolidate governmental power to aunt democratically takeaway white mens liberties through reform. Antislavery power for these democrats replaced the money power in their jacksonian populist formula. For example of this, governor henry wise virginia in 1857 reminisced that jackson once had to contend with the money power it was subdued by democracy. We now have to meet the black andent of abolitionism, sampson survives to fight for the chosen people. The Democratic Party continue to be white mens champion. Pamphleteer saw that a remarkable phenomena has reason the antislavery now inspires to control the union. The antislavery feeling some of the republican power, was this new grasping monopoly which threatened not just white mens economic rights, but theyre very identity as white men. The antislavery americans also fit into the jacksonian template for politics by being seen as arrogant elites who thought they knew better than the people. Abolitionists and republicans, they did not care about the average white man and not about enslaved americans. A democrat wrote in his diary in 1860, republicans do not care for the negro if they can carry their point to elect an antislavery president. And get the support of ant