Transcripts For CSPAN3 Lectures In History 20150405

To move to the cloud. As a result, even civilian agencies are turning to cloud services. Monday night at in iraq eastern on the communicators on cspan 2. You are watching American History tv weekend, every weekend on cspan 3. To join the conversation, like a fun facebook. Each week, American History tvs real america brings you archival films that tell the story of 20th century america. Planes lineup to take part in the greatest error invasion in history. Americans, british, and canadians make up this army crossing the rhine in the north. In this leapfrog over german positions east of the rhine. This trip is really necessary for victory, as the first planes get away. Carefully guided to avoid s narl. Its a gigantic task to get the two planes and gliders away from their bases in england safely. A job without presidcedent. Take off instructions Winston Churchill and general eisenhower of their progress from the ground, near the rhine. Then the Prime Minister takes a Vantage Point as the plane nears the objective. Air force and british cameramen made these pictures as the men ready for the jump. This is it. The plane and enables them to jot from both sides, 18 at a time, speeding up the operation. In a matter of seconds, the sky is filled with parachutes. Next, the glider troops. The plane zooms to a landing with the position that comes from the invasion goes forward on schedule. The first wayve of troops are out fast as they wait for their buddies to land. Some are hit by enemy shells. A carrier falls in planes caught in aircraft fire. With more splitsecond timing, artillery opens up. [gunshots] within eight hours, every objective was seized. Antimine tanks care of path on the western front. The infantry exploits from two sides. Right on the heels, many seen in this film are from his camera. The mop up continues, street by street. An officer calls on the nazis to surrender over the loudspeaker. They can take a hand when the going is tough. Civilians are quick to fall. The defense was brief but better. However, Pattons Third Army has struck terror into their minds. It could be a hitler hangover or just a patton pasting. Looming is the ancient castle. Koblenz is again an american hands. This giant seaplane, powered by six motors, was developed during the occupation of france under the noses of the gestapo. The method by which it was built are as eager as the plane specifications. This plane represents frances bid for a place in postwar. France, a pioneer in aviation, stages a come back in the world of flight. Belgium will long be remembered as the site of the airborne division. Eisenhower honors the screaming eagles in a ceremony without parallel in more history. Eisenhower it is a great personal honor to be here today to take part in the ceremony that is unique in American History. Never before has a full division then cited by the War Department by the president for gallantry action. Watching the president is a screen actors. General eisenhower himself salutes the herald division, whose commander turned down the german demand for surrender with the famous word, nuts. Against heavy odds, the yanks stood firm. Next, university of tennessee professor, dan feller and his class discussed Andrew Jackson. They talk about the different ways johnsons presidency has been interpreted by historians. This class is about one hour and 15 minutes. Dr. Feller we are considering the problem of jacksonian democracy. Let me try to frame the problem. There is this phrase, jacksonian democracy, that shows up. Its pervasive and historical literature. What is jacksonian democracy . Is it a Political Movement . Is it merely jacksons Democratic Party . Is so, what does that party stand for. Does it lay legitimate claim to the name of democratic . Or is that just a party label. If the jacksonians are the democracy, does that mean democracy is contested and their opponents are not democratic . Or, if democracy the spirit of an age, in which case jacksonian democracy does that mean a Political Movement, but the political environment that has somehow been democratized from an earlier. . Is the latter, is jacksonian democracy is merely a word to describe the times, then why did we name after jackson . Which brings up the question of to what extent jackson is representative of jacksonian democracy, whatever jacksonian democracy is. Then, another question is to what extent are we talking about politics and to what extent are we talking about something beyond politics . Is jacksonian democracy is a Political Movement, what is the relationship between the Political Movement and wider social phenomenon and social change . We started looking at this from the perspective of arthur sessions are schesinger. We thought he claimed that this is indeed a Political Movement, that democracy contested, and the other people, the Business Community are not democratic. Or are reluctantly democratic. That jacksonian democracy is not as an earlier school. Frederick Jackson Turner would have it as something not come out of the west. American democracy does not come out of the west, except in a monday and political sense that the western states believe everybody ought to have the political vote. According to schelesinger, there is a political component that does not come out of the west. It is an updated version of the jeffersonian resistance to the federalists and the business domination of the federalists. By the jacksonian period, the resistance to business domination is no longer centered among farmers. It is centered among workers. It is centered in the factories in the mills, in the cities, and those are in the east. Just a cities like new york philadelphia, and boston represent the cutting edge of social and economic change, thats where the emerging dare i say it class struggle first takes pla shape. The democrats represent, at their heart, the working class against the employing class. I think we saw it is a class conflict within certain bounds. It is not a once and for all fight to the death struggle to conquer the other side. The two sides being the Business Community and everybody else but particularly the working class. Instead, it is a struggle that produces a slick equal cyclical equilibrium in a society that is democratic and capitalist. The democratic side sometimes gets the upper have politically and fixes the mess that the Business Community made. Then, the Business Community reasserts its power. It comes in control of government, and this happens over and over again. Andrew jackson gets in a pattern of democratic antiBusiness Community reform that started with the jeffersonians but then moves primarily to the cities and his exams abide is exemplified by jackson and later by roosevelt, and kennedy and johnson. Does that some a gift fair summary . Last week, we saw a whole bunch of people responding to this. One more thing, what did the indians have to do with this . Basically nothing. You can tell that story completely, really without mentioning indians at all. And mentioning whats going on in the front tier or the west, only tangentially. So, last week we saw someone responding by saying that this cluster was not a class struggle. Its a struggle between old capitalists and new capitalists. Between old money and new money. People who were already rich and people who wanted to be rich and had to shove aside the old rich. We saw benson suggesting that democracy is indeed the spirit of an age. That the Democratic Party has no particular claim to it. And facts, they do not come to it first. And the also there is a certain disconnection between politics and not so much between politics and society, but between policy politics and electoral politics. Voters are voting ethnocultural antagonisms or reflexively voting for a party that they attach themselves to in the past. We saw marvin meyer suggesting that what jacksonian democracy is not really about is a class conflict, but instead, in his words, a persuasion characterized by jackson and his party as not to much a program but a sense of unease. The whigs speaking to americans hopes, and jacksonian democrat speaking to fears, so that if theres is anything that divides weights and democrats, it is more a frame of mind. Taking that even further, we saw Daniel Walker howe celebrating the whigs as carriers of progress. As optimists. They are, in certain parts of Business Community but it is not a Business Community towering in fear and trying to fight off the bastions of modern india, aity. They are the progresses of their day. The builders, the doers who want to make america better, and who are not unwilling to use government to do that. Those who i think myers and howe sit together very well. Lastly, we have charles sellers coming along some years later and the idea of the market revolution of the 1990s. Sellerss market revolution is his market revolution. It comes back to the idea of class conflict, but supercharges it. It is about a Business Community, or the booze was the bush was where and he has the equilibrium he said, is a capitalist one, we would lose democracy. If democracy one, we would lose capitalism. Seller says, no that is not true, capitalism and democracy do not go together, they are naturally antithetical. What happened in the. Of the market revolution is that the rest of us lost. We have been suffering under bourgeois hegemony ever since. First lessened or for schlesi nger, it is a continuing cyclical pattern over years. For sellers, it is a oneoff. There is a before and after in American History. There is before the american revolution, what sellers calls land characterizing American Society, then there is the market revolution. From then on, it is market. I think the jacksonian period may be unique in the way the different historians, all of them making arguments that are on their face, when you read them compelling, can disagree so completely with each other. You wonder if they are describing the same phenomenon. With that as prologue, we have Michael Rogans subjugation of the american india. Whats rogan got to say about jacksonian democracy and what it is all about . There is a pity sentence that describes the core of jacksonian democracy being primitive rage, nostalgia, and acquisitive capitalism. You ask the question, where does jackson fit in . We can give him the primitive rage leg of that stool. It is pretty clear he is at odds with schlesinger on the components of jacksonian democracy. You think he is at odds with schlesinger. You mentioned specific points but where is he not at odds with him . First of all, with schlesinger you have jacksonian democracy forming in the crucible of the eastern cities where class conflict needs to form, different classes in close proximity to each other. You have rogan, taking place in the west. The story of americans venting their furtive rage toward the west, a place where they can exorcise these feelings of childlike omnipotence. Making claims to paternal authority, it is all about moving to the west. That is not what turner said. It is not like a safety valve for economics, but much more of a Psychological Safety valve. The promise out there can distract you. So jacksonians are looking very much westward rather than eastward. You can go with that is just one to start us with. It does seem to be a striking similarity between sellers argument and the market revolution and rogans argument in this book in the sense that the market quoteunquote underlies everything and is the driving force behind all of the change that is occurring. It is the force that is creating individualism, bourgeois values, but for sellers, where is jackson is the individual, the kind of heroic figure opposing all of these changes, and for rogan, this is jackson is at the forefront of the market revolution. He is the one that rogan says, look, conquering the indians is what liberalism is all about. It is what the market revolution is all about. Without indian lands, the market revolution does not happen. There is a thought that i had and i struggled until i discovered one sentence from this book where to find sweater with struggling with. This idea of paternalism over the indians. What does it mean . I struggled because i was thinking removal, forced removal does not sound necessarily fatherly. But then on page 207 and i was rather excited when i found this. Why the indians were roped into the market revolution could take place the advancing tide of White Settlement in the east would protect them in the west. It was not that they moved toward the west. They saw the error of their ways to accept this notion of capitalist democracy. That is benevolence. This idea of paternal benevolence. The idea of your children moving west. That is an act of salvation for them. Those were latent elements in jacksons psychological arch here. Rogan thinks it is significant using it only 1814 after he has militarily conquered many of them and signed treaties, i wonder if he starts using it then because that is when he begins to sign treaties and that is when the occasion arises. In rogans interpretation this , early paternal language is all about violent paternalism. Paternalism ought to be to dominate, but not to protect. This ties in with the whole thesis about primitive rage. The regressive impulse the , desire of the child for freedom, which is what you mean the west. You need paternal authority, but not responsibility. Eventually i guess they come to this decision, well, can i continue doing this on the grounds of benevolence . That is my take on his take. I think there are also some great quotes by van buren on the world stage they had to justify this removal. You can civilize them, make them capitalist by removing them. You can justify it. Again, it seems to me that he is saying liberal society produces a nostalgia for the paternalistic, more structured society that existed before the revolution, and it is that nostalgia that it creates within americans and most prominently jackson himself. Paternalism evolves to control to oversee indians. Thats another interesting point to me, is this is a similarity i see with schlesinger and with sellers that what came after the revolution or what happened after the revolution is, schlesinger says it in chapter one, the title of chapter one of schlesingers book. The end of arcadia. That is the general sense i get from all of those books. One thing about what you said and what you said. What we have not gotten into that i think we need to, the book is about the centrality of indian removal and what is different with sellers, and rogan argues it is the indian removal that initiates the market revolution by securing, by taking the land out of common use, and putting it into private and secure title, so on and so forth. The other thing with the age of paternalism, you still want to ascribe benevolence to the idea of paternalism and i think rogan makes it clear that from jacksons point of view, indians were subjects. They were not members of the new nation. In the language, it is almost say rhetorical device. Language that jackson used in his later career was paternal benevolence in contrast with his , earlier career which was extermination. The whole idea of what we can do to civilize the indians so many will move west there is no more civilized indian than the ones in georgia who have large scale agriculture and were fitting in quite nicely into the market revolution. Professor feller paternalism actually, that word has a nice sound to it. If i am reading rogan, it seems that paternalism is to some extent a delusion, explainable only by distasteful psychological mechanisms. [laughter] and beyond that, it is a shock. It is a fraud. He actually says, and i think you may be right on this, the dialogue between indians and whites is structured by the great white father. That is not the indians idea. The first time a white man said to an indian, your great white father in washington the guy says, he is not my father. Paternalism is a device that whites use basically in order to justify what they are doing to the indians. And it is also a way of blaming the indians for what happens to them. Have i got that wrong . No. I could not help and i do not want to get off the subject but i could not help thinking, these books were published about the same time, and thinking very much about this other paternal is in. I do not see that in rogan. I think it would have been helpful, and not to criticize the author for not righting something he did not write, but i will how does slavery and print journalism and paternalism in jackson for life affected this whole idea of jacksonian democracy . Indeed, it may downplay the role of slavery. If you have an all inclusive focus on his relationship with how he could use native americans on a psychological basis, using that as a theory, it seems like there just to be more to the story here. I did think that was lacking in the book, because the only time he mentioned Andrew Jackson as a slave owner was when he was on the deathbed and the slaves cried because their paternal father figure was no longer in the picture. But, you know, i feel like there is no political inquiry into where slavery the extent and the number that he owned. It seems that this would have had some sort of affect post adolescence. Professor feller and he should deal with it like Arthur Schlesinger did . I would not say that. Professor feller how did Arthur Schlesinger deal with the fact of Andrew Jackson as a slaveholder . He sort of paints this idea the democrats becoming the antislavery party. Professor feller yeah, so jackson is a slaveholder does not appear to my memory in schlesinger at all. And i think the only time when they really mentioned that he owned slaves is when jackson is on his deathbed and says, i hope to meet you all in heaven, one and all, white and black. And you are right. Slavery only appears and i think we talked about this the slavery issue only appears as the fruitless conceit of a bunch of reformers who ought to be out campaigning for the independence of the treasury. They do not really care about what happens to the downtrodden until the democrats embrace it and lo and behold, provide the real life blood of abraham lincolns Republican Party. [laughter] when he draws this line connecting the democracy to the emergence and eventual fruition of the Republican Party, the direct line. Professor feller the challenges here that rogan is making are stark and direct. And so direct, there is a natural tendency to say, well you emphasize this and you emphasize that and you put them together and you synthesize and come up with something, some platform on which all of these different takes on jacksonian democracy can exist. I dont know how you can do that with schlesinger and rogan. Schlesinger, who thinks you can tell pretty much the story of not only jacksonian democracy but the age of jackson encompassing politics, literature, religion, reform all of these things he has chapters on and leave out indian removal. Not directly talk about it at all. Implicitly, and i think rogan says this, implicitly it is just kind of a natural backdrop. It is like the weather. Everybody understands that what ite people are going out west and the indians are receiving before them and the country is getting bigger. But that is a backdrop to the it is like background scenery to what is actually going on with the actors and jacksonian america. Am i making sense here . Then you have rogan, and i pulled out some sentences jackson first developed in indian relations, the major formula of jacksonian democracy. The cherokee treaty negotiations introduced the rhetoric of jacksonian democracy into american politics. Historians have interpreted the age of jackson from every perspective but indian destruction, the one for which it actually from which it actually developed. If rogan is right, that schlesinger is telling what he presents as the story, is telling a side story. [laughter] a story which has almost nothing to do with what made American Society what it was. You do not have the same addition, but in his new introduction he sharpens that point even more saying schlesinger is telling the story im sorry Andrew Jackson as fdr, and he says, i am telling the story of Andrew Jackson as Ronald Reagan. Yeah. Professor feller yeah. [laughter] yeah, he would have liked that. Professor feller i dont think Ronald Reagan would have liked that. At that point i would be tempted to say that rogan is it is a vivid metaphor. Professor feller my guess is rogan did not particularly like Ronald Reagan and did not mean that to be a compliment. So that clarifies the point he does not like jackson. [laughter] jackson is the hero in schlesingers story. I will go ahead and say it. He is a villain in rogan. The only reason i hesitated villain is, with the fascinating meter neofreudian or crypto freudian or plain old freudian analysis, you just go whoa. And by the way, i think most historians today would just kind of go, whoa. I lost my train of thought. I wanted to mention professor feller now i remember. Somehow, describing jacksons feelings about his mother and his feces his first possessions. [laughter] professor feller yeah, whatever psycho historian. That was a term, quite common at the time. Doing that, you are acting as the doctor. As a clinical analyst, but somehow as the reader, it is hard to believe that this is not somehow distasteful. What am i trying to say here . As an analyst, i could say you , have an unfortunate cancer which i hope you dont. I would not immediately follow that with ew, and get away from me. When he discusses Jackson Jackson is not merely even if he is his rage, is uncontrollable and therefore not his fault, it comes off as kind of his fault. The line between characterizing and insulting is kind of hard. On the one hand, jackson comes off as one sick puppy and we tend to sympathize with sick puppies because they are sick. Its not their fault they are sick. But he also comes off as one bad dude. He was probably not invited to many jackson dinners as a speaker. Professor feller january 8, the celebration of the battle of new new orleans. 200th anniversary. These were not historians. Except for two or three. It was all celebrationists. And they were all celebrating. Andrew jackson, he won the war he conquered this, and settled that. They were all cheering. And you would read this program and think, if rogans rights, if rogans point is legitimate, what does it say im not going to pull any punches here what does it say about america, that we think this guy is a heroic figure . To put it another way, the westward expansion, the westward movement. The course of empire takes its way. This, what im pointing out here, has been 20 pointed out a lot. Expansion, movement those are , kind of neutral. What are rogans terms . Conquest, expropriation . Infanticide. Professor feller infanticide. These are not natural processes. They are not processes that we would normally cheer about. But rogan is arguing these processes, not only did they happen, because a lot of historians will point out but this is what jacksonian democracy is all about. This is the core. Yeah, i want to answer one of these questions. So, why do we name it after jackson . Rogan sure does a lot of talking about and using the phrase, age of jackson throughout the book, but for him, it seems like we do name it after an individual. It seems like it is embodied in jacksons inner child self, and this is where it is birthed. Im not exactly clear from rogan s presentation of it, how does it actually get filtered out to the public . Are these all of jacksons inner demons from childhood . It is not clear how that kind of permeates American Society . I think there is actually an interesting tension within the book. On one hand, rogan you cant help but get the impressions on this that if jackson had had a longer lasting relationship with his parents, for instance, you can make this moral argument that jackson in some way is a living aggregate of all of these characteristics of the american personality of the time. That his response to the developments in capitalism, in capital l liberalism, his alienation, his need to be selfreliant, all of these things were in some way reflective of the persuasion of the times. Im not entirely persuaded by that. He makes a distinction between the indian policies of monroe and John Quincy Adams and jackson, he says, because monroe and adams were much more respectful of treaty obligations, but jackson viewed them as subjects and not as people. So, i think that answers part of the question, why you can say this is Andrew Jackson. But for Andrew Jackson, any indian policy would have taken a different turn. He may have come up with a similar result, but it would have been perhaps really different. They were two different approaches. Professor feller would it have taken a different turn . Im thinking out loud here. Had the indians not been removed not been all the other things that removed is a nice euphemism for. If i understand correctly, and maybe i dont, what we are bringing up here is the tension between the individual explanation and the national explanation . To what extent are jacksons characteristics, is his mindset and his actions typical or reflective of what the country is or it to what extent is it just him . Have i got that question right . Would it have been different . Certainly in some immediate, shortterm ways, yes, but if we are going to argue it is jackson , then we have got to explain why in a larger sense indianwhite relations you could say they looked a lot different when jackson got there. I think that there is a line in the book, maybe in the old introduction, i cant remember. He does make the claim that jackson is a symbol for the american populace. I think if that is the case, at least in rogans case indian removal was not inevitable, no matter who was in charge. Rogan says in the chapter entitled indian removal that jackson was, yes, very active in bringing this about. It was not an issue that he could not stop it without fomenting a crisis. No, he was very involved in this for 20 years. He was the single most responsible individual. But i think theres also an indication in rogan from narrative that jackson aligns at an interesting moments in capitalism in relation to the revolutionary fathers, who were there as an inspiration also the legacy of the english parents that they never fully escape, the constitutional rule of law and more capitalism. I think there is the sense they said jackson did not necessarily believe in all of these values. Even if i did not articulate the case as clearly as i could out and thank you says, yes somebody was going to do this. In other words, if not jackson, somebody else . That gets close to answering your question why relations with United States and indians were the same for so long, but not quite. Professor feller i found this book to be incredibly rich in a ingenious explanation. At the same time, it is as close as i can come right now to answer to my own question. Not necessarily consistent in this scheme of explanations. At times i got this explanatory venue shopping. If we can bring in a little freud here, lets use a little freud and lets use this psychoanalytic theory and that psychoanalytic theory, and i suspect not all psychoanalytic theories are in agreement with each other. And we can explain this and kind of whatever works or it which means you have multiple, in fact, layers of explanation for everything, which, if we were to be logically entirely consistent, we might say, no you can have if this excellent nation is true, then that explanation isnt true. In that sense, i found it tell me if you found this also. Where schlesinger fits everything together, whether or not you think the parts really historically fit, he fits them together. All of the pieces are part of the same puzzle. And they all fit neatly with each other. Now that requires you to do some stuff like turn the democrats into the heart and soul of the Republican Party, which, by the way, those democrats that went into the Republican Party did think that they were the heart and soul. But the democrats who seceded also thought they were the heart and the soul im sorry, that they represented, yes, they thought they were the heart of the Republican Party, but they also thought they represented true democracy. In the 1850s you have democrats going everywhere politically and each one is swearing, im the only real democrat. The secessionists swear that. The antislavery people swear that. But at least his scheme logically holds together. Im not sure rogan really cares so much about making it all logically hold together. In that sense, the book is not so much a blueprint or a schematic. Its an expose. When youre doing an expose basically what youre doing is attacking something. You dont have to be consistent. You can attack it anyway you want to. You can attack it with what ever tools, rhetorical tools come to mind. Does this make sense . We had a similar conversation about this book earlier. You know, the difference between the way schlesinger fits it in he selects precise bit of evidence that he can work in print. It shows that the jacksonian democrats were antislavery. Professor feller he says, you are wrong. He takes the evidence that fits in. Rogan, the impression we got, he is going through Andrew Jackson s life, and instead of getting things to work, it he goes, how can i fit this in and do a segway and this can be marxist theory . That was why we were having a hard time. Basically making sense of it what ties the different parts of his life. Is there a different trajectory in this . It makes for a convoluted and contradictory narrative, certainly. One of the things he did pretty well, i thought, was says his two governing ideologies of his prepresident ial policy was paternalism, which we touched on, but treating the indians as individuals freely contracted , men. He shows, i thought, quite well how it was jacksons speculators, basically the learned classes of people who learned to manipulate, dupe if you will, coercion, other kinds of legal devices that in other words, it seems like rogan does a pretty good job of showing how the law was important to jackson but how it was easily manipulated. It kind of made me think of the book on the transformation of american law where the people are swept away by these legal formalisms and things of that nature. Therefore it seems some of the subjugation of the American Indians happened through the Legal Process. Professor feller yeah, but a Legal Process that was liberally, rather than cynically maneuver manipulated. The creek indian treaty gave every creek indian as an individual a landholding, a piece of a landholding in the territory they were leaving. And this if im getting rogan right thats a neat trick. You want the land, you give it to them as individuals. And that means you can sell it. And then you turn speculators and everybody else loose on them, and of course the creeks were not brought up to deal in market relations and immediately they all get fleeced. But that enables you to say, it wasnt our fault. It removes the guilt. Professor feller exactly. It removes the guilt. In that sense, i think he doesnt a good job showing how manipulation through whatever , legal mechanisms were at hand were able to subjugate the indians. Professor feller so, im not sure we can answer this question, but in a way we have reached where the question becomes granted, schlesinger is wonderful on a lot of grounds, but there are some historians who would like to salvage some of schlesinger. In fact, when i read him, i say yeah, this is really compelling. , can we salvage anything of schlesinger . And i dont so much mean can we salvage a little vignette here a little episode in new york city . Because rogan, in a way, does not talk about this. It is a different universe. Can we salvage anything of schlesingers conception of what jacksonian america is about . Like rogan . Professor feller lets say having read rogan and not necessarily vouchsafeing every point rogan has to make. Even if i bought what rogan was saying and i thought his methods were correct, which i dont, if you read schlesinger he of course, it is jackson fighting the big bad capitalists. He is a big hero. He is the devil himself in rogan. So, no, you cant salvage it. I think rogan professor feller if you were republican which some i am sure did against Ronald Reagan. Which is another caution of drawing too close historical lines. The idea of jackson battling on behalf of elites, i do not think that that is inconsistent with rogans idea in the chapter on the banking controversy. Now rogan would extend it as this is his latest incarnation of paternalism versus eternal is paternalism towards my soldiers in the indians and now it is to the average person being burdened by elites. That does not seem to be at odds. Yes, i think both authors do get on that fear of dependence. The fear of dependence on the mother bank whether it is we do , not want to be dominated by this maternal figure in rogans book or in schlesinger, the fact that we do not want to be dependent on a credit system. I think that is brought up relatively well in both. Professor feller did it sound like marvin myers . Yeah, yeah. The collective thought processes. I think they were comparable. Professor feller yeah, well, we want all the things that acquisitiveness will bring us. But at the same time, we want to blame somebody for all the things about acquisitiveness that make us uneasy. We blame the banks. There are paragraphs in rogan s that almost seem like they were taken from myers. Yeah. Professor feller that probably were. One thing, he is very eclectic in his drawing on scholars, some of whom we having countered. For instance, when he uses the phrase regeneration through violence. There is a historian named Richard Slotkin who wrote a whole book called regeneration through violence. He is pulling from myers. I think he is pulling from lee benson. Without regard to rogan, or at least rogan does not deal with this directly the idea the idea of salvaging schlesinger, the idea of this equilibrium of tension between capitalism and democracy seems to hold up pretty well as an explanatory feature. Rogan also talks about how jackson set precedents for the kind of presidency that came to emerge in the 20th century, and the president ial power that was expensive, that was in rogans view paternalistic. I think schlesinger expresses a similar kind of sentiment and of course at the end of his book, when he tries to create a link between jackson and the new deal of the fbi. Of the are of fdr, now rogan might have a much more cynical view of what paternal president ial power means as opposed to schlesinger, but it is important. We will get to reagan later on fdr, however dubious that may be. I find a dubious that idea of capitalism and democracy, just because i think rogan is being a little more similar to sellers in that there is something climactic about this triumph of capitalism. Something irreversible about this process that Andrew Jackson unleashes on america. I do not think rogan lives or dies on that. Professor feller lets tackle this issue of capitalism, a word which now, like some virus, has so infected the historiography and we will see in some of things we are reading later. Im not saying capitalism is something we should avoid. Or an ocular their selves against. It just can be used in so many different ways to so many different ends and along with that being market revolution. I was startled when i came back to reading rogan as few years a few years ago. I read it way back when. I read it. I had forgotten it. He is using this term. He is not using the term market revolution. He has one third of the book titled market revolution. He was way ahead of his time. We talked a little bit about this last time. In sellers book, which we have discussed without delving into but i think i am not incorrectly characterizing it in saying the market revolution is the onslaught of the inquisitive bourgeoisie. That is the big economic and social transformation. There is a transformation. This is the jacksonian period, the time of transformation in American History. As opposed to all of those other times of transformation in American History. Nobody has ever written a book about an aging called it the age of stasis. The age of nothing happening. It is always the age of transformation. These guys are all saying it is the onslaught of the bourgeoisie. And again drawing on schlesingeroian ideas, be the champion of the people against the capitalists is Andrew Jackson. He is the leader of the resistance in sellers book to the market revolution. In the market revolution in sellers book is bad and andrew fought nobly against it. Now we go back chronologically to Michael Rogan who probably introduced the term, used it far more prominently than anyone else had at the time and to some years after. And we have a market revolution which seems to have the same characteristics as sellers. Certainly marked by unrestrained acquisitiveness. These guys are greedy. They want to get rich. They want to subjugate or kill pretty much anyone who gets in their way. And they are not particularly in any way, whats the word . Restrained in their methods. Rogan, rogan has these gleeful chapters on the land speculation on the front here where the frontier where everybody is trying to cheat everybody. The difference between them and sellers bourgeoisie is they are restrained by some internal mechanisms of morality. Now, sellers hates these. But these are the things that have turned us all into repressed, delayed gratification , sublimating desires, all because we are because we always had bourgeois values. Rogans capitalists are not at all restrained by bourgeois values. They are just out to get it. They are sort of swashbuckling. If sellers capitalists are crafty, skinflint merchants, rogans capitalists at the early stage are just plain pirates. Land pirates. And Andrew Jackson is the leader of the land piracy. According to rogan, that piracy is basically what drove the market revolution and thus created modern american capitalism. The primitive accumulation of indian land initiated a market revolution in america. I am quoting. From 1815 to 1845, the very years in which jacksonian democracy emerged and flourished, america transformed from a household to a Market Society. Household to Market Society is a phrase sellers would use exactly. Here we have jackson driving it through the primitive accumulation of indian land. Where in all of these processes do we locate the word capitalism . Is jackson, in fact, the driver of it . Or the driver of some kind of resistance to it . How can we have a market revolution with both versions of the market revolution with people on both sides switched . I have trouble with this question about capitalism. It seems a lot of historians particularly the ones we are mentioning today, sellers, rogan, and perhaps others, it seems they talk about capitalism and capitalists as the more fraudulent you are, the more cutthroat you are, the more of a sick puppy you are, the more capitalist you are. And the more the society that has those individuals as as capitalists professor feller capitalism is bad. Yeah. I have always wondered. Thinking of sellers, how he paints it seems to me he paints this sort of idyllic picture of society and life before 1815, as if this Household Economy was always a good thing and therefore this transformation is bad. Is it not plausible that certain segments of society thought this market economy, this market revolution if you want to call it that, was perhaps a good thing for them to better their standard of living, better their lives, Economic Development . It seems like to even push it back further, i dont know why why we use why we use the war of 1812, and maybe someone can inform me, right after the war of 1812 as the start point for capitalism transformation. It seems trade was flourishing throughout the colonial period as well. Benjamin franklin was an inquisitive person. I am agreeing with you. Part of the answer to the question is we use these terms rather, we use market revolution and capitalism almost as synonyms and they are not. Christopher clark in his critique of sellers pointed that out. One thing is we have not distinguished today. Professor feller do you want to try . No. [laughter] that is too ambitious for this time of night. But someone else can. The other thing is rogans slice of the market revolution is a fairly narrow slice. If the market revolution was piracy, it was land piracy. What we are talking about the argument that any removal that initiated the market revolution is based on the idea of pushing away the communal use of land that was common to indians and putting land into private title. There are other sectors of the market other than just land ownership. He gives a nod to the transportation revolution, but he does not tie that into indian removal. Anyone with ties those two together but he mentions it so someone cannot say you neglected the transportation revolution. I think it went beyond the fear of land piracy and gets closer to the idea finance capitalism. Banks, credit, those sorts of things. He says jacksons primitive accumulation of indian land, the availability of western land leads to the flourishing of banks, the credit systems, the credit needed to purchase the lands, the development of the infrastructure of a finance credit, finance capitalism. It emerges because of this. He specifies those events. I think that may get to the difference between rogen and sellers. I am presuming sellers is able to position jackson as the last opponent of this market revolution because i am presuming he was on the bank war. In rogans book, the bank war is a somewhat related attempt to make up for the consequences of what you have done. You have already created a condition for this to become a nation of banks. There is some specificity there. Going back to what christopher clark, how he differentiated between capitalism and the market, i might take a stab at that and connect it with rogan. Clark said capitalism entails a complete change in social relations between people. So, there is a new relationship created under capitalism between employer and employee, for example, that did not exist before. In a Market Society, there is still there still might be farmers taking their produce to a central location. But to use a marxist term, the social relations of production have not changed quite yet. If you take that definition, i think in rogans book it is obvious this society has become completely capitalist. Rogan always talks about transitioning from a Household Economy to a market economy. There are classes that developed. America became a class society. He says that somewhere. He talks about the extremes between rich and poor and the new relationships between employer and employee. I believe in that sense this is a new capitalist society. Professor feller we have a lot of rich issues here. I think you are right about the way historians have used these terms carelessly. And that they are not the same. Even defining any one of them, and i am not an economist, but neither are any of these people. One of the critiques of the whole market revolution thesis has come from economic historians who say this is basically in an economic concept, and you are talking about the cultural, social, and political implications of a fundamentally economic event which you have not bothered to identify. There was a market revolution. How do we know there was a market revolution . How would you know there was a market revolution . I think it is true that the economic content of the market revolution has never been defined or measured. One of those distinctions is capitalism, is it a system, and if so, what defines the system . There are a whole bunch of Different Things have been used to define the system. One is wage labor which juxtaposes capitalism against slavery. Free labor, socalled, versus slave labor. Another one is the profit motive as the driver of relationships. Just to show you this gets into things we will talk about more later, how this can tie people in knots, if you take the former definition, capitalist is defined by labor relations. Then southern plantations are precapitalist because they dont have wage labor relations. If you take the latter one profit motive, exploitation as a necessary adjunct to the profit motive, then all of a sudden your precapitalist people are noncapitalists. They are not taking wages, but boy, are they exploiting and trying to get rich. Other ways historians have tried to distinguish capitalism, you can tell a capitalist system where everyone is profit maximizing, which comes very close to exploiting, so that its farmers whose primary drive is to make as much money as possible so they can save it up or buy things, those are capitalist farmers. Whereas farmers who put feeding their families before buying things, farmers who decide to plant a field of corn because we can eat the corn rather than put it in cotton and make the capitalist calculation it is it makes more sense to put it in cotton because we can sell the cotton for more money that would enable us to buy corn and have some left over, those are those farmers are the ones who decide to plant the field and eat corn are practicing what has sometimes been called safety first agriculture. They are not capitalist. They are just ones willing to go where the money goes our for capitalists. Here, capitalism seems to be a kind of mindset. It is not necessarily an economic system. It is an orientation. Depending upon how you define capitalism, and one could string out none of these are definitions. They are more like markers. You see a farmer doing this instead of that, he is a noncapitalist farmer. Depending on which markers we look at, we can see capitalism appearing in all sorts of different times and places. One interesting piece of work that was done looked at Commodity Prices in the range of new england Rural Communities at the same time. First, you have to have data for this. What is corn worth in this town in western massachusetts and this town in southern connecticut and this town in maine at the same time . What historian rutherford found is all of a sudden a certain point, they all go into sync. All of a sudden, the price of corn is the same in these towns. Why can that be . It is because there must be a Market Network established. She says that is when we want to have a i will leave the word capitalism out, that is the moment we have the emergence of a Market Society, when you have a market you have always had a market in the sense of people trading with their neighbor. But now you have prices being stabilized because goods are being transported over a longer distance. You are not just trading back and forth with your neighbor. Instead, you are selling cotton and corn on the market where it will compete with corn from other towns far away. Is this all making sense . The problem is she finds this happening in the late 1700s. You know, goodbye, transition to market capitalism and all this in the jacksonian period. According to this definition and measure, it happened in the late 1700s. This market revolution or the other phrase used, transition to capitalism, it is like wherever you put your thumb on it it squishes out. [laughter] i was about to Say Something and lost my train of thought on it. But some historians have argued that the mindset was always there. It sounds kind of distasteful if you talk about the capitalist mindset. But if you replace capitalist with a word that does not have the nasty connotations parenthetically it is kind of funny it has nasty connotations because we live in a capitalist society. I think most of us do not shun from that. But does anyone here want to be called a capitalist . [laughter] only when i am applying for a loan. Professor feller the word has a little bit of capitalist speculator, exploiter. It is used by these historians. It has a little bit of the negative connotation. Is that fair to say . If we take out the word capitalist and say, when did americas become i realized i am making broad generalizations here. When did americans become an enterprising people . Every european traveler to america by the mid1700s if not earlier would say these are in an enterprising people. I will play this out one more way. Another kind of fault line i think we have seen in these books is are the character traits of being enterprising industrious, inquisitive, blah blah blah, are these the characteristics of americans as a whole or a Certain Group of americans who are enforcing them on the rest . Sellers would certainly say the latter. Your farmers are victims of capitalism. But one could, and eric, i am referring to your point. Another way of looking at it is to say the market revolution the Economic Development, of the mid19th century, is it really made by certain people at the top steering and directing and exploding . Exploiting . Or is it made by the masters of the lowell mills or the farm girl who says im going to town to get me some money . Is there really a difference in mentality between those who appear to be in command and the rest of us or is it just a difference in means . Does that make sense . I would vote for a difference in means. In my work, i looked at a Tennessee Farmer who has hardly anything to his name who was heading off to illinois to get to missouri. He stops in illinois. They say why not stop in illinois and have a great life . This guy wants land in missouri to own property and human beings, but he has no money. He is aspirational from his bones. I think rogan falls more in that line. In chapter three, he talks about how land hunger is what defined early america. He says the virgin land gave america its identity. Ownership gave americans land. In his view, this land hunger is somehow tied to what it means to be an american. Unlike europe, we have a surplus of it. Of course, we had to steal it from other people. But there was an opportunity to gain land that was not available in the old world. This sounds turnerian. It does. It does. I forget who brought the point of earlier about the nature of this jacksonian democracy. Professor feller lets get back to politics. [laughter] it seems for rogan, jacksonian democracy, similar in that solicitor sees it on the east coast, it is not only west for rogan but southwest. I am not an expert on land policy in the southwest. Northwest. Some people have done more research. It seems he downplays the significance of the land available in the northwest michigan, and wisconsin. I just wonder, too, how come and they had native americans to deal with as well. He says, yes. He cites numbers and figures. Admittedly, they are more in the south and southeast. But if we are going to look at this from a psychohistory prism, why would speculators not be facing the same problems in the old northwest as in the southeast . Titles were better for one thing. You had clearer title in the old northwest then you did in kentucky and tennessee. The other factor rogan points out is the indian problem is much less of a problem in the old northwest because they were fewer indians and they were more used to having a trading economy rather than an agricultural economy. I think the third reason you might look at would be the clearing of the creation of Land Availability for white settlers in the southwest helped make, helped create the cotton kingdom in a way that was not happening in the northwest. It had a disproportionate impact in the southwest because that is where the money was. Right, i see that. But i wonder if if you had temporary living in these northwestern regions, did they have the same type of psychological he is using this from the prism of one person initiating how the jacksonian democracy comes about. It comes about from policy in the southwest. I guess my thoughts are we have similar land disputes occurring throughout the midwest region. It seems the landgrab grab by later jacksonians like stephen douglas, they will be pushing land grabs throughout the entire great plains. I am just thinking from a geographic space perspective contrasting that with jackson, schlesinger, and rogan, it seems they both have their issues with kind of defining jacksonian democracy to these small subregions. Professor feller i think i am with you on this point, if i do understand it. Rogan, like schlesinger, is talking in hegemonic terms. This is the american story at this time. You are saying he is taking the southwestern story and treating it as an american story by doing a reverse schlesinger. Schlesinger simply focuses mainly on the northeast and implicitly denies the significance of what is going on elsewhere by leaving it out. What you are suggesting is rogan is doing the same thing. Both of them make the explicit claim in justifications. Schlesinger says the real social action is the class struggle and the class struggle is developing in the northeast so that is where we ought to look. And rogan is saying, no, what is the making of american character and American Society is the primitive accumulation at the expense of the indian. That is what makes jacksonian democracy, so we look at where that is happening, which is the southwest. Where is abe lincoln in all of this . [laughter] the kind of quintessential american, he is on a small farm in Southern Indiana or Southern Illinois and espousing later on a kind of vision a much in and noble enobled vision of the selfmade man. Started working for others and then coming into your own, and eventually up the ladder of opportunity, which he describes as the essence and affirmative the morally good essence of northern society. Is that capitalism under another name . [laughter] if we call that capitalism, is it less attractive . I am just playing with words. [laughter] how would we i am tempted to say, is it possible for all these different people to be right . We can try to tackle that question. If we accept not necessarily schlesingers largest claims to having explained everything, but if we except the basic narrative, do we have to say rogan, if not necessarily wrong, is not central . By the way, one of the fascinating characteristics of jacksonian scholarship is so much of it makes these overarching claims, claims to explain the american character, claims to explain everything. I am not sure there is another period in American History where you have historians presenting these kind of holistic comprehensive, systemic explanations of everything saying this is what it is all about. In the 1920s and 1930s, theres plenty of history, but are they duking it out about what the american character was during the 1930s . Compensating for the lack of a big war. We dont have a civil war or revolutionary working we just have the mexican war, so we make these big themes, these big claims because we are looking for our significance. It is cynical. Professor feller hold on because i have thought that at times, because that it is may be just a function of necessity of putting titles on textbook chapters, right . Youve got the revolution and in the jeffersonians or Something Like that. You have the war of 1812, later the mexican war, and the civil war. What do you put in the middle of it . Jacksonian america. This is the one era of American History named after a guy, one guy, always jacksonian america. You have a unit called jacksonian america. What do you put in it . You have to have some central theme. You have to have some central storyline to tie everything to so it is this or that. There is all this stuff going on and you have to try to fit it all together. There has been this impulse to try to aggregate, to fit it all. Sellers, schlesinger, rogan in his own way, are all trying to do this. They are trying to find a way where all the important parts fit together and make this period something special. Go ahead. Something that occurred to me with the narrative is that schlesinger did not seem to see a common american character. For him, it is a cycle of American History with different american characters in conflict. The character of the Business Class and everybody else, the common man, the workers, the labor. Rogan is one of the first one who acknowledges lewis heartart with richard hofstadter, those who saw consensus in america, that politicians have always occupied a narrow strand where morality and the free market, hofstadter called this the rise of liberal capitalism. I think he can claim an intellectual genealogy from these consensus historians. I think he is saying this is the formation and he is again taking the southwest story saying this is the origin of the american consensus in a way. Professor feller for reasons i think you are familiar with, i cringe at the consensus part. Because they are not celebrating , necessarily, consensus. If i have understanding you correctly, i agree to this extent. Hofstetter, the socalled consensus historians furnish a necessary platform for rogan and myers in that before that, lets say the prevailing, the most compelling explanation of what is going on in jacksonian america is it is about class. Somehow, if you want to say the main story is about Something Else, you have to get that story. You have to get the class story off the stage. You have to vacate the stage so you can put Something Else there. Am i making sense . They both come along and say no it is not about class. The class struggle is not really a class struggle. There may be some interplay, some conflict between people but these are not classes. They are interests, and the conflict is within a narrow range. Ok, once we have got that, all you schlesingerian class people, get out of the way. Then we have this stage and we can introduce new players. Then it is about whites and indians or it is about hopeful people and fearful people. Is this what you are sort of. I just wonder. I guess i am thinking along the lines of the word distinctiveness. I know you get more into the sectional period, you hear historians debate southern distinctiveness. Versus northern distinctiveness. I think it has got to come back if we are going to have an entire unit, and there is in every textbook, jacksonian america. Theres got to be something distinctive about this period. It seems to me 1815 to 1845 is the typical range. But just because jackson dies in 1945, if i am correct, it seems the jacksonian persuasion is going to continue past that. I think it is important to identify what marks that period this think different enough to identify and pivot around one individual. Maybe some of you are studying for exams and will get further in the class. You will find there is a lot of things, whether it be religious reform or antislavery, theyre are also some things occurring there are also some things occurring in this critical period. The westward expansion. I think theres something to be said for arguing this as a distinctive period that perhaps deserves special treatment, but whether it should center around jackson is debatable. Professor feller here is a guy that is the age of lincoln heres a guy that is the age of lincoln characterized from the 1830s up to 1878. Vernon. Yeah. That is another alternative, to not focused directly on the jackson period. You have a lot of choices to make. You can have like major jefferson. It does not seem like there is. Not to use the title, but i mean that is just the age of jackson , as the title. Something that is defining. What defines it, what justifies the beginning and end . What is the main thread of the story . Or is there a main thread of the story . Are we looking for im thinking off the top of my head. To take, lets say, the immediate period thereafter, you have civil war and reconstruction. Everybody knows those are the main stories. But there are a lot of things going on underneath all that. There are developments in economy, social relations, religion, reform. It is just we dont have to try to make a main story out of those because we have a main story we already know superimposed over it all. The jacksonian europe is era is lacking that main theme work theme, that main plot line. Maybe we are looking for something we should not be looking for. I deeply resist this because i am a jacksonian historian, and i do not like to see my specialty defined out of existence. [laughter] what do you do . I kind of do uh that stuff. After the war of 1812 and somewhere in there. [laughter] but this is while it is frustrating, we are reaching something profound here. That is the way in which the thecompulsions of our disciplines and mental necessity to make sense out of things and to put them together are forcing us to construct a narrative. Historians always have to do this. But you have to make a reality check to yourself. To what extent am i constructing something that may not have existed . To what extent is that construction not serving the aims of perceiving the past more clearly but unfulfilling our own impulse to have a story to tell . Boy, i am going to begin to frighten myself with this. [laughter] it seems to me like the thread has to be lets say jackson is the thread. There are all these subdivisions. If we use jacksonian america that paints a large umbrella. There are all these pieces underneath. Jacksonian democracy or jacksonian reform. There are these subjects on in subjacksonian periods as well. Whatever the historian has an interest in will be the driving core of what jacksonian america is all about. For me, i happen to think jacksonian democracy and the application is politics. You can use the cliche term of age of the common man. We know the ulcerative fraud with that. That is usually how it is presented in the textbooks but i think there is something to be said for the number of people earning a franchise in this pi eriod. There is some sort of stirring of maybe the underclass in having some involvement in public political life. Therefore, in that sense, you can say it is about gender or utopian visions for the millennium. It has got to pivot around something. For me, i think it is politics. Somebody else might Say Something very different