Then im going to introduce a new concept to you, and thats the idea of political culture. And i will compare that concept to something weve encountered before, Political Parties. And finally, the bulk of the lecture is going to be presenting new evidence, in fact on the antebellum political culture. I have three major areas of evidence to talk about today, one, Tobacco Culture, two, political friendships, and, three, affairs of honor. And well conclude there after getting through that evidence. All right. Like we obvious do in the class, im going to start today with an image on the screen and im going to ask you to tell me what you see. This is Lady Washingtons reception from 1861. Take it in. Who can point out something that you see right away that strikes you . There we go. Lady washington is on a platform. Yeah. How high do you think she is, maybe, off the ground . Like, i dont know, a foot. A good foot. Thats a good piece there. What else do you see . Another one down there. Thank you. Everyone is dressed up sup superfancy. Yeah, exactly its very fancy. The ladies are wearing gowns. How about a third thing . Go ahead, jimmy. It looks like theyre all fairly close together. They might be dancing or i dont know. Theyre all close together. Exactly. Very good. Thats good. Now i should say about Lady Washingtons reception, that lady washington herself is standing literally center stage in an elegant gown. What you might not have noticed, there was someone else who we think of as important in the background here and thats good, old george. Sort of overshadowed by lady washington. The title was Lady Washingtons reception. The word used at the time was that of a levy. It was a reception held by the first lady, marsha washington. She was standing on a platform and you noticed the on latpulan attire. The next image may be a little more familiar. This is county election from 1851. What do you see here and how does it differ from that last image . A hand down here. Pass it down, if you would. Thank you. Go ahead, zachariah. I see a drunk guy in the top left drunk people, very good. Theres more than one drunk guy. This guy here. We got someone who has had a little too much here. Good, yeah. Stump speaking. Yeah, we talked about this. Good, you remember. Stump speaking. The whole, vote for me for president. Excellent. Anything else you see . Theres a hand back there. Its primarily working class people. Not the wealthy. Good. Thats all good. Youre seeing a diversity of people. One thing youre also seeing is the white male electorate. This is going to stand in for democracy in this period, the jacksonian period, the one were going to look at today to start. But also, even though it is the white male electorate, its a diverse scene. Its the whole town. Note the africanamerican to the left of the picture, of course, children, as well. Although it would be the white male voter for many, many years who would be the voter in america, nevertheless, political culture encompasses all people, men and women, encompasses whites and africanamericans alike and its not so much a question of whether one can participate in the vote, but whether one can participate more broadly in politics. Now, when we think back to the First Party System, when we think back to the people who stood in as the politicians of the early day, two people come to mind. From the federalist party, alexander hamilton, mr. 10 bill, right . And from the democratic republicans, the Opposition Party to the federalists, we have Thomas Jefferson. These two men could not have been more stark opposites politically. Recall that the federalists stood for a strong constitution, a strong federal government, a Strong Financial and manufacturing base, and as we say, hamilton was their leader. Versus those democrat republicans or just republicans for short, who were wary of centralized government, who were wary of encroachments upon personal liberties and who promoted farming and commerce among small villages and towns instead of large cities and manufacturing. And jefferson, the enlightened figure of the democratic republicans was their leader. Thats the firstparty system. Its socalled because of what follows. Indeed, the First Party System was an earlier moment. During the firstparty system, one of the key issues was the embargo. And we see from this political cartoon that the embargo is spelled backwards as, oh, grab me. The artist is representing the embargo as a large turtle biting at the british smuggler who would try to break the embargo. The embargo was a Foreign Policy measure. It was designed to make it so britain would have a hard time trading with the United States. It was one of the policies that doomed the United States to a second war with great britain. Again, thats part of the firstparty systems history. Its about the ways in which the federalists and republicans clashed, the ways in which hamilton and jefferson came into office, came into power and eventually faded from the scene. Who they left the politics of the United States to were these guys, the men of the secondparty system, socalled because we have totally new names for the parties and although some of the issues change, once, these are the new leaders of american politics. On the left you have arounndrew jackson and on the right, henry clay, a kentucky whig. Between clay and jackson, we have two very different views of what america should look like. And i have two political cartoons so show how in the secondparty system new issues were emerging. For example, the question of the bank. This is the second bank of the United States. In this image we see Andrew Jackson on the left holding a cane, which he usually walked with from all of his bullets from his duals. Trying to battle back the hydra. On each of the heads is an individual who was representing the bank. The most predominant one in the center here was Nicholas Biddle who was the president of the bank and who became an enemy to jackson in this process. This is something of a satire because jackson would socall kill the bank issue by vetoing its renewal application prior to its usual termination and that political story is somewhat well known at this point. What we know from it is after the bank war, so to speak, the whig party coalesces. A lot of the cartoons take the whig perspective because it shows that the whigs were trying to attack jackson. As i was doing my research for this lecture, i had a hard time finding projackson cartoons and yet we know he was the man of the people. Yet we know he was a symbol of american democracy. What we have left are these antijackson cartoons coming out of the period of the when i wills. In this one, the issue under consideration is executive power. At the top of the image, we see the phrase born to command. Jackson is figured as a regal figure. You may not be able to see all of the details. He has a scroll which says the word veto. This is in reference to him using the veto more than any other president in history as a way to claiming executive power. Underneath him, youll see the constitution of the United States as if hes trampling on it. And youll also see various other improvements, internal improvements, things that the whig party stood for like roads, canals and eventually railroad. Jackson here is pictured as being against all of those improvements and as a whig attack, this was very effective. Because if theres one thing that american politics feared, it was that of a king. Remember the American Revolution had been fought over this very issue fighting a monarch to replace it with the democratic system. Although jackson is thought to be a leader of democratic reform, lets not forget that sometimes politics is personal. I want to ask a question and see if we can knock out a few of them. Lets name some of the characteristics of the Democratic Party versus the whig party. Lets think about a few things here. Yeah, josh. Democrats are for weak government and against Government Spending and against the tariff. What was the tariff again . Some sort of tax, right . Yeah. Tax on . Goods. Yeah. Goods coming into the United States. Weak government, got that one, and i put up theyre against action lets not forget indian removal. That counts as an action. More like the actions that jackson imposed. Spending, yeah, i think we heard that one. That was jacksons maysville road veto. That refers to the veto in the image youre seeing Jackson Holding it as a power and i think you mentioned antitariff. So you got them all. Remember that the tariff of abominations, that was a measure passed under the John Quincy Adams presidency. It was attacked by jackson. So what we see then are the democrats are in a lot of ways, theyre the legacy party of the democratic republicans. They even have the same name, right . So theres really a continuation between jefferson and his policies and jackson and his policies. All right. Flipping the coin, whigs. What do we know about the whigs . Whigs is the opposite of democrats that are for strong government, theyre for Government Action in general, theyre for Government Spending and theyre for the tariff, basically. Thats good, actually. Yeah, this is an easy one to remember. The whigs are everything the democrats are not. Strong government. They wanted certain economic goals. Jackson is antibank. The whigs are pro spending we might say, especially on transportation. Particularly the socalled internal improvements, like the canal and roads. And the tariff. From the when i will point of view, it was no tariff of abominations, it was a reasonable tariff. It was the kind of Economic Policy that the United States should enact. Much like jackson and the democrats are the legacy party of jefferson and the democratic republicans. It can be argued that the whigs very much secede the federalist agenda. Although theyre remade and remixed, the jackson democrats, the henry clay whigs, theyre the next generation of politics. And its this party system, this is the Second Party System that i want to focus on. In order to move us from parties to political culture, i want to introduce to you this concept. Its a concept that i think will be useful for us to think about. Parties. Ive broken parties into two sets of components. Its people. Its the leaders, its the issues. Its the organization. People. And its actions. Were talking about campaigns, platforms, elections. Parties are focused on these things. A group of organized people taking action for a certain result. Thats the role of the party. The partys role is to gain power through all of these things, elections, campaigns. Political culture is a little different. It including beliefs. These are more abstract things like norms or values or attitudes. And it includes elements of power. Things like symbols, meanings and rituals. So between Political Parties and political culture then, we have a broad view of politics. And we can think about how Different Actors or politicians are both partisans or members of Political Parties and part of a political culture which may transcend those parties or may be limited to those parties. So thats the idea and the concept i want to introduce and i want to suggest that the study of political culture which is a growing field in history allows us to get into some new concepts, allows us to go beyond the party mold and look at interesting stuff from the antebellum period. I have a few questions to consider during the remainder of the election. How and why did American Political Culture change from the days of the early republic to the antebellum . In other words, from the days of hamilton and jefferson to the days of jackson and clay . So we want to try to trace that change. Thats the first goal of the lecture today, and then the second one is what does this emerging political culture of the Antebellum Congress reveal about American Society . I want to return to the questions at the end of the lecture. But i want to present some evidence that will begin to answer that question and will help you to understand how political culture operated in this period. The three areas that i want to investigate today, Tobacco Culture, political friendships, and affairs of honor. Theyre interrelated. Its not to say that one couldnt affect the other. Some are more important than others, as well see. But broadly, these are three important aspects of the political culture of the day and when we think about it in those terms, we see that these are ways for us to understand why and how politicians came into conflict with each other in the era before the civil war. So the first piece, Tobacco Culture, this draws a lot on my own research ive done. Ive not published these findings. Im presenting them to you today in an eye towards seeing what you think. But theres some elements of the Tobacco Culture that i found really interesting and i have a few really kind of compelling images here on the screen. Its amazing what you can find out there. Some of the elements of the Tobacco Culture i found including chewing tobacco, snuff, and cigars. In the 19th century, i should say right now, they had not quite invented the cigarette by this period. If you were doing tobacco, you were doing it one of these three ways. It may sound a little funny, but indeed tobacco was one of the key ways that politicians across parties could even talk to each other and i found numerous instances where sharing a cigar, sharing a pinch of snuff, or sharing a wad of chewing tobacco could bridge a gap that otherwise existed between a democrat and a whig. Im going to share a story with you from that. To convince you that tobacco wasnt just an everyday thing that didnt matter for politics, let me read to you this quote from an english observer who came to the United States, who went to washington, and who checked out the scene. He said, the habit of chewing tobacco and also prevalent in the states. Nor is it almost entirely confined to the poorer classes. Members of the house of representatives and of the senate, doctors, judges and attorneys chew tobacco almost as generally as the laboring classes in the old country. Even if a court of justice, more especially in the western states, it is no unusual thing to see judge, jury and the gentlemen of the bar all chewing and spitting as liberally as the crew of a homeward bound west india man. So you have the house of representatives, you have the senate, you have judges, everyone is chewing and spitting. Its incredible to think about it. If you were sitting in the congress in 1840, you would be hearing the spitoon. This is really kind of incredible to think about because this is really kind of a nasty habit. Its called snuff. And this is from a book from 1840 that i found called a pinch of snuff. And heres what this author said. A mans character may often be judged by the manner in which he takes snuff. We detest the stealthy attitude in which some people need their noses. A liberal elegant may be known in this work at a distance too great for a fact that serves to be seen. And that rather unattractive person in the screen youre seeing, i assume a women, its hard to tell, is actually reaching into a little box, much like the one on the left. Shes taking a pinch of this very fine pulverized tobacco and putting it into her nose by way of a snort. When you took a pinch of snuff, the first thing that would happen is you would sneeze violently as the particles were in your nostrils and secondly, you would get the hit of tobacco. I found the most common user of tobacco of the entire u. S. Senate was henry clay. This is the guy who is the leader of the whig party, mr. Antijackson. And he was more noun fknown for tobacco than any politician in the senate. And we see king, and these two men, it turns out in 1841, had a Major Incident that almost led to a duel. It came when senator king asserted that the character of Andrew Jackson, his president , and that of his editor, Francis Blair would compare gloriously to that of mr. Clay. This is king making an attack on clay by comparing him and his character to a jacksonian supporter. He said that mr. Clay considered this remark as placing blair on an equality with himself and pronounced it false and cowardly. When you hear cowardly, a duel is about to challenge. King issued a challenge to clay and both men went so far as to arrange for seconds. In the process, clay realized that he was a little bit overboard. The two men come to reconciliation. On a personal level, they had not yet kind of apologized to each other. So this is how clay does it. There are no hard feelings after the formal apologize because the next day clay approached kings desk and in a friendly manner said, king, give us a pinch of your snuff. And the gallery who heard it burst into applause because they knew this was clays way of saying, im sorry. This incident demonstrates there are so many more like it political actors could rely on a common act, in this case, taking a pinch of snuff. So what do you think of this example . Had you heard of tobacco before . What do you think . I thought it was incredible. Omar . Is there any remnants is there any remnants that Tobacco Culture today . Thats a good question. We think maybe its just henry clay who was snuffing. Well, what i found out, i really cannot believe this, even when you walk into the congress t