Gold and Freedom: The Political Economy of Reconstruction (A Nation Divided)

375 Pages·2015·4.432 MB·English

by  Gold and Freedom: The Political Economy of Reconstruction (A Nation Divided)

University of Virginia Press
© 2015 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
First published 2015
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Barreyre, Nicolas, 1975–
Title: Gold and freedom : the political economy of Reconstruction / Nicolas Barreyre ; translated by
Arthur Goldhammer.
Other titles: Or et la liberté. English
Description: Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, 2015.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015019358 | ISBN 9780813937496 (cloth : acid-free paper)
ISBN 9780813937755 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865–1877) | Southern
States—History—1865–1877. | United States—Geography—Political
aspects—History—19th century. | Spatial analysis (Statistics) | United States
— Politics and government—1865–1877. | United States—Economic
policy. | United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Influence.
Classification: LCCE668 .B25513 2015 | DDC973.8—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015019358
Cover art: “This is a white man’s government,”
Thomas Nast, Harper’s Weekly, September 5, 1868.
(Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division,
LC-USZ62-121735)
A NATION DIVIDED
Studies in the Civil War Era
———
Orville Vernon Burton
and Elizabeth R. Varon,
Editors
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Note on Statistical and Geographic Analysis
Introduction
PART I. SECTIONANALISM
1. Sectionalism: The View from the Midwest
2. Gold and Paper: How Money Became Sectional
3. Economic Policy and Spatial Justice: Taxation and the Tariff
PART II. RECONSTRUCTION
4. Closing the Books on the War: Republicanism, Civil Rights, Finance
5. For the Good of the Country and the Party
6. The Republican Retreat to the North
Epilogue: On Space in Politics
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A FIRST BOOK is a long intellectual journey, and along the way one contracts
many debts that no gold can repay. They are debts of mentorship, friendship,
and moral support. Unlike other debts, they are a pleasure to acknowledge.
I owe a great deal to four outstanding historians for their mentorship:
Gilles Pécout, my undergraduate advisor at the École Normale Supérieure
(ENS); Jean Heffer, my master’s advisor, and François Weil, my Ph.D.
advisor, at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS); and
Olivier Zunz, at the University of Virginia. Their generosity and intellectual
rigor are inspiring, and their friendship honors me.
EHESS in Paris has provided a matchless environment for intellectual
growth, and its Center for North-American Studies is a unique place to
discuss ideas. I especially thank my colleagues Cécile Vidal, Gilles Havard,
and Pierre Gervais for the many conversations that informed my thinking.
My years training at the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago
have also been seminal. I extend my heartfelt gratitude especially to Michael
Holt, Kathleen Conzen, Richard John, and Michael Perman, who have
generously guided me during my stays. I have also enormously benefited
from critical discussions of my research in progress at the University of
Illinois at Chicago, Oxford University’s Rothermere Institute, the University
of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, the Centre Maurice Halbwachs (ENS-EHESS),
and the University of Heidelberg, as well as conferences of the Social
Science History Association and the Journal of Policy History.
Historians would be helpless without the assistance of librarians and
archivists, and I am no exception. My gratitude goes to the geospatial staff at
the University of Virginia’s Scholar’s Lab; to Christopher Winters, Franck
Conoway, and Sandy Applegate at the University of Chicago’s Regenstein
Library; to the staff at the Library of Congress Manuscript Division; to Susan
Swaide at the New York Public Library; to Nan Card at the Hayes
Presidential Center; and to Paul Erickson, Vincent Golden, and Lauren
Hewes at the American Antiquarian Society.
Being an Americanist in Europe requires many long-distance trips to far-
away archival repositories and other institutions. I am thankful to EHESS and
ENS in Paris for providing travel funding, and to the George Lurcy
Educational and Charitable Trust, the Fulbright Program, and the American
Antiquarian Society for generous scholarships.
Many colleagues have kindly read parts of the manuscript in some form
or another, and given me invaluable feedback. I especially wish to thank,
besides those already mentioned, Richard Bensel, Michael Caires, Romain
Huret, Claire Lemercier, Annick Lempérière, Alan Lessoff, Nicolas Lyon-
Caen, Vincent Michelot, Natalia Muchnik, Scott Nelson, Elizabeth Varon,
and Richard White, as well as the anonymous readers at the Éditions de
l’EHESS and the University of Virginia Press.
This book was first published in French by the Éditions de l’EHESS. I am
particularly grateful to Christophe Prochasson, its director, and to Caroline
Béraud, my editor there, for their welcome. I extend my thanks to the whole
team who made such a beautiful book out of my manuscript.
Translation is also an adventure in itself. My thanks go to the University
of Virginia Press, and especially Richard Holway, my editor there for a warm
welcome. The Florence Gould Foundation provided generous financial
support. And I owe an enormous debt to Arthur Goldhammer, who provided
a flawless and elegant translation; working with him is an absolute pleasure.
Finally, I am grateful to friends and family for their presence and support
throughout the years. I dedicate this book to my parents, in humble homage
to their unfailing trust and support.
NOTE ON STATISTICAL AND GEOGRAPHIC
ANANALYSIS
PART OF THE interpretation proposed in this book is based on a statistical and
map analysis of congressional roll-call votes between 1865 and 1877. It uses
the database put together by Howard L. Rosenthal, Keith T. Poole, and their
team.1 For parties, I have simplified affiliations by grouping Conservatives
and Independent Democrats with Democrats, and Unionists, Unconditional
Unionists, Independent Republicans, and Liberal Republicans with
Republicans. For sections, I have grouped states along the conventional
understanding of sections at the time shown on map 1. The Northeast
includes New England (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
Rhode Island, Vermont) and the Mid-Atlantic states (New Jersey, New York,
Pennsylvania); the West is mainly made up of Midwestern states (Illinois,
Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio,
Wisconsin, with Nebraska added in 1867), as well as the three Pacific states
(California, Nevada, Oregon). The bulk of the South comprises the
secessionist states (Alabama, Arkansas, the two Carolinas, Florida, Georgia,
Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia), as well as the former
slave states that remained in the Union and, therefore, did not undergo
Reconstruction (Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, West Virginia).
The roll-call analysis in this book is based on these groupings. A partisan
vote describes a vote where the majority of Democrats opposes a majority of
Republicans. A sectional vote describes a vote where a majority of
Northeasterners opposes a majority of Westerners, irrespective of parties. The
cohesiveness of each group is measured with a simple Rice Index, going from
0 (perfectly divided group) to 1 (perfectly united group).2 The polarization
between two groups is calculated as the mean of the Rice Index of each. I
have termed it a polarization index.
The mapping of the roll-call votes in Congress is based on the atlas edited
by Kenneth C. Martis.3 Each congressman’s vote is represented as his district.
Maps mapping one particular vote thus show the districts. Maps showing
series of votes spanning several Congresses do not show the districts, as they
saw their boundaries change over the Reconstruction period. For those maps,
I devised a sectional index: each sectional vote is assigned 1 if the vote
aligned with the majority of Western votes, -1 if it aligned with the majority
of Northeastern votes, 0 if no vote was cast. The total was put on a scale from
-100 (systematic alignment with the Northeast) to 100 (systematic alignment
with the West).4 Only states with entire series from 1865 to 1877 are
included, which explains why most of the South does not appear in those
maps.
Introduction
There were only four witches in all the Land of Oz, and two of
them, those who live in the North and the South, are good witches. I
know this is true, for I am one of them myself, and cannot be
mistaken. Those who dwelt in the East and the West were, indeed,
wicked witches; but now that you have killed one of them, there is
but one wicked Witch in all the Land of Oz—the one who lives in
the West.
— L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, 1900
L. FRANANK BABAUM’S Wizard of Oz, published in Chicago in 1900, met with
immediate success. Written for children as a classic coming-of-age story, the
book resonated in specific ways with the society of its time. One of its
attractions was to echo the great political debates that had mobilized
Americans in the years leading up to its publication, thus lending itself to an
allegorical interpretation of the contemporary United States. The book
recounts the adventures in the Land of Oz of Dorothy, a typical American girl
from Kansas, in the country’s heartland. Along the way she encounters a
scarecrow (symbolizing farmers), a Tin Woodman (allegorically representing
workers), and a Cowardly Lion (William Jennings Bryan, the Populist
candidate in the 1896 and 1900 presidential elections). All four must go to
Oz, the capital of the kingdom, to find a solution to their problems. They
must travel the Yellow Brick Road (gold) to reach the Emerald City (the
color of the dollar), where the man in charge is a Wizard who wields power
through illusion (the president). After many adventures, the characters
discover that they already have what they are looking for: common sense for
the farmer, humanity for the worker dulled by mechanization, and courage
for the silver-tongued candidate. Dorothy learns that the Silver Shoes she has
been wearing since the beginning of the story have the power to take her back
to the America she loves, with her family. Together, farmers and workers,
aided by the populist candidate Bryan, are thus led to the discovery that silver