Transcripts For CSPAN3 Lectures In History 20150329

University of tennesseeknoxville professor Daniel Feller talked about president Andrew Jackson and the politics of the mid19th century. They also talk about how jacksons presidency was interpreted by historians. This is about an hour and 50 minutes. Professor feller there is this phrase, jacksonian democracy that shows up. It is pervasive in a historical literature. What is jacksonian democracy . Is it a Political Movement . Is it merely jacksons Democratic Party . If so, what does that party stand with . Does it lay legitimate claim to the name of democratic . Or is that just party labeled . If the jacksonians are the democracy, does that mean democracy is contested and their opponents are not democratic . Or is democracy the spirit of an age in which case, jacksonian democracy does not mean jacksons Political Movement. It is democratized from an earlier period. If the latter, if jacksonian democracy is a really merely a word to describe the times, why did we name it after jackson . Which brings up the question, to what extent is jackson representative of jacksonian democracy, whatever jacksonian democracy is question, to what extent are we talking about politics, and to what extent are we talking about something beyond politics . If jacksonian democracy is a Political Movement, what is the relationship between that Political Movement and wider social phenomena in and social phenomena and social change . We started looking at this from the perspective of arthurs lessened her junior, the classic age of jackson, published in 1945. I think he claims that jacksonian democracy is indeed a Political Movement. Democracy is contested, and the other people, former federalists, now whigs, are not democratic or are only reluctantly democratic. That jacksonian democracy is not , as an earlier school, centered on as Frederick Jackson turner would have it, not something that comes out of the west. American democracy does not come out of the west. Except that they believe the western states ought to have the vote. But according to slow center the author there is a component that does not come out of the west. It is an updated version of the jeffersonian opposition to the federalist, but 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. It is centered in the mills. Those are in the east. Just like cities in philadelphia and boston represent the cutting edge of social and economic change, that is where the emerging, dare i say it, class struggle, first take shape. Of the democrats represent, at their hearts, the working class against the employing class. I think we saw it is a class conflict according to schlesinger that maintains a certain balance. 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 particularly the working class. It produces a kind of cyclical equilibrium in a society that is both democratic, small d and capitalist. The democratic side sometimes gets the upper hand politically and fixes the mess that the Business Community made, and in the Business Community then reasserts its power, comes into control and this happens over and over and over again. So, Andrew Jackson fits into a pattern of democratic, small d into a Business Community reform that started with the jeffersonians, but then moves primarily to the cities, as exemplified by jackson, later by franklin roosevelt. And kennedy and johnson. Does that sound like a fair summary . Last week we saw a whole bunch of people respond to this. And one more thing. What do the indians have to do with this question mark basically nothing. What do the indians have to do with this . Basically nothing. You can tell that story completely without mentioning indians at all. In mentioning what is going on on the frontier or on the west only tangentially. So, last week we saw hammond respond by saying this class struggle is not class struggle. It is a struggle between old capitalist and new capitalists between old money and new money. People who are already rich, and people who wanted to be rich and had to shove aside the old rich. We saw lee benson suggesting democracy is indeed the spirit of an age. That the Democratic Party has no particular claim to it. And that there is a disconnection between politics and not so much between politics and society, but between policy politics and electoral politics. Voters are either voting ethnocultural antagonisms, or else reflexively voting for a party that they attach them to the attached themselves to for some reason in the past. We saw Marvin Meyers suggesting what jacksonian democracy really is not about is less conflict but instead in his words, a persuasion. What characterized jackson and his party was not so much a program as a sense of unease. The whigs speaking to americans hopes and jacksonian democrat speaking to their fears. So if there is anything that divides whigs and democrats its more a frame of mind. Than a class position. And taking that even further, we saw Daniel Walker howe, the political culture of the american whigs, celebrating the whigs as carriers of progress. As optimists. They are in certain parts of the Business Community, but it is not a Business Community that is cowering in fear and trying to fight off the bastions of modernity as schlesinger would have it. Instead, they are the progressives. The doers, the people who want to make america better. Those two, myers and howe, fit together very well. And lastly we have charles sellers, coming along some years later. The idea of the market revolution in the 1990s, and sellers is market revolution. Comes back to the idea of class conflict, but kind of supercharges the it. It is about the Business Community or the bourgeoisie against the rest of us. But where schlesinger has contending forces in a really salutary equilibrium, because it some point schlesinger says if the capitalists one altogether we would lose democracy and if the democrats won absolutely we would lose capitalism and they are in contention with each other. Seller says, no, that is not true. Capitalism and the moxie to not naturally go together. Capitalism and the mock receipt do not naturally go together. Capitalism and democracy do not naturally go together. We have been suffering under bourgeois hegemony. For schlesinger it is a kind of continuing cyclical pattern over the years. With sellers, it is a one off. There is one struggle, a before and after in American History. There is before the American Revolution when what sellers calls land characterizes American Society, and then there is the market revolution and from then on, it is market. I think the jacksonian period may be unique in the way that different historians all of them, make an argument that on the case we read them, compelling can disagree so completely with each other that you wonder if they are describing the same phenomena. So, with that as prologue, we now have Michael Rogan, fathers and children Andrew Jackson and the subjugation of the American Indian. What does that say about what jacksonian democracy is really all about . There is a pit the sentence to that. It describes the core of jacksonian democracy as being truly agrarian nostalgia and acquisitive capitalism. You ask the question, where does jackson fit in . 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 mention the civic points. First of all, with schlesinger you have the crucible of the eastern cities where class conflict was born, so different classes are in close proximity to each other. This takes place in the west. The story of americans venting their furtive rage toward the west, a place where they can exercise exorcise these feelings of shallow omnipotence. That is the west. The west 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 the hind 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. 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. West is the salvation for them. Those were latent elements in jacksons psychological arch here. Rogan thinks it is significant 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 find treaties and that is when the occasion arises. This early paternal language is all about defining paternalism. Paternalism ought to be to dominate, but not to protect. This ties in with the whole thesis about primitive rage. 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. 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 centrality is the question about 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 language, it is almost a root merkel a rhetorical device. His later career was paternal benevolence in terms with 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 indian said, he is not my father. Get out of here. 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 im a 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 that of of Andrew Jackson as a slaveholder . He sort of paste this idea of 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. At 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 comparing the democracy to 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 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. [laughter] if rogan is right, that schlesinger is telling what he presents as the story is telling a side story. [laughter] a story that 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. And that point i would be tempted to say that rogan is is a vivid metaphor. Professor feller my guess is rogan did not particularly like Ronald Reagan and did not mean that to become from entry, which claire like that to be complementary, 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 the term. Whenever i see historians doing that, you are acting as a 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 . You know. As an analyst you have an unfortunate cancer which i hope you dont. I would not immediately follow that with ew, and get away from me. [laughter] professor feller but 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 orleans, the anniversary. And these were not historians. Except for two or three. It was all celebration nests celebrationists. And they were all celebrating. Andrew jackson, he won as the war. He conquered this unsettled that and 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. In prior takes its way. All of those and certainly what im getting to hear has been pointed out a lot. The movement. Expansion. Those are kind of neutral. What are rogans terms . Conquest, expropriation . Infanticide. Professor feller infanticide. These are not natural processes. These are not processes 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 audit of it. How do they get filtered out to the public . These are 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 and he says, because munro and adams 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 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 are two different approaches. Professor feller would it have taken a different turn . Im thinking out loud here. Had the indians not been removed then removed is a nice use euphemism for it. 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 . 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. It might be in the introduction. I dont remember. He does make the claim that jackson is a symbol for the american populace. And i think that makes it clear. It was 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 . I did not conflate the question [indiscernible] 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 cycle and it clear he and i suspect not all psychoanalytic theories are in 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. Tell me if you found this also. Where schlesinger fits everything together, whether or not you take the parts really historically fit, he fits them altogether. Everything has a 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, and he has the last little precise bit of evidence that he can work in print. It shows that the jacksonian democrats were 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 for 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 he says his two governing ideologies in his prepresident ial policy was paternalism, which we touched on, but treating the indians as freely contracted men. And he shows quite well, i thought, and 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 to years but how it was easily manipulated. It kind of made me think of the write up of 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 Indian happen 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. All right, here. At 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. Just but i think that shows 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 wrong on a lot of grounds, but there are some historians who would like to salvage some of schlesinger. And a lot of our resources 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 . Having read rogan . Professor feller lets say having read rogan and not necessarily vouchsafe ring vouchsafeing every point reagan has to make. 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 schlesinger, 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. You know yes but professor feller if you were republican which some i am sure did against Ronald Reagan. Which is another caution of drawing to close historical lines. The idea of jackson battling against 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 him towards my soldiers in the indians and now it is to the average person being burdened by a least. That does not seem to be at audits, at least not 180 degrees. Yes, i think both authors do get on that fear of dependence. Whether it is we do not want to be dominated by this paternal 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. I think they were both pretty terrible. 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 that almost seem like they were taken from myers. Yeah. Professor feller that probably were. [laughter] professor feller 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 slot can who wrote a whole book called 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 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 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. At im not saying capitalism is something we should avoid. 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 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 incorrect ly characterizing it in saying the market revolution is the onslaught of the acquisitive boards was the porch was the bourgeoisie. That is the big economic and social transformation. This is 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. It is the onslaught of the bourgeoisie. And again drawing on schlesinger oian ideas, be 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 extent 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 and anyway, whats the word . Restrained in their methods. Rogan, rogan has these gleeful chapters on the land speculation on the front year were everybody is trying to cheat everybody. On the frontier where everybody is try to cheat everywhere. The difference between them and sellersbourgeoisie sellers bourgeoisie is they are restrained by some internal mechanisms of morality. Now 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. But rogans capitalists are not at all restrained by bourgeois values. They are sort of swashbuckling. If sellers capitalists are crafty, skinflint merchants rogans capitalists at the early stage or just plain tyrants. Land pirates. 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 emerge and florist, america transformed from a household to a Market Society. Household to Market Society is a phrase sellers will 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 the driver of it were 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 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 possible 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 we use the word of 1812, and maybe someone can inform me, right after the war of 1812 is 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. We use these terms we as market revolution and capitalism almost as synonyms and they are not. Christopher clark in his critique of sellers pointed that out. We have not distinguished today. Professor feller do you want to try . No. That is too ambitious for this time of night. [laughter] put 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. We are talking about the argument that any removal that initiated the market revolution is based on the idea of pushing away the familiar use of land that was common to indians and putting land into private title. There are other sectors of the market than just land ownership. He gives a nod to the transportation revolution, but he does not tie that into indian rule. 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. He talks about 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 find him finance credit, finance capitalism. It emerges because of this. He specifies that. 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 roggans book, the bank war is honest and 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. Going back to what Christopher Clark the less 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. 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 an economic contest 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 question mark 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 . A 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 type 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, you are pre your precapitalist people are noncapitalists. But boy, are they exploiting and trying to get rich. Other ways historians have tried to distinguish capitalism you can tell capitalist system where everyone is profit maximizing which comes very close to explaining. So that his 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. The ones willing to go where the money goes our 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 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 is that . There must be a Market Network established. She says that is when we want to have the less 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 boys had a market in the sense of people trading with their neighbor. 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. The problem is she finds this happening in the late 1700ss 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, its wishes out it squishes out. [laughter] i was about to Say Something and lost my train of thought on it. Some historians have argued the mindset was a waste their them 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 a bit of the negative connotation. Is that fair to say . If we take out the word capitalist and say, when did americans become the less i am making broad generalizations. When did americans become an enterprising people . Every european traveler to america by the mid1700s if not earlier would say these are in enterprising people and 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 the market revolution, economic element of the mid19th century is it really made by certain people at the top steering and directing and 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 Farmers 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. I forgot who brought the point of earlier about the nature of this jacksonian democracy. Professor feller lets get back to politics. It seems for rogan, jacksonian democracy, similar to injure, sectional in that slice injure 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. Some people have done more research. It seems he downplays the significance of the land available in the northwest, michigan, and wisconsin. They had native americans to deal with as well. He says he cites numbers and figures. Admittedly, they are more in the south and southeast. If we are going to look at this from a cyclehistory psycho history 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 and 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 mak 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. The 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 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. Rogan is saying 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 noble division inennobled 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 . 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 v 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 the best kinds 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 claims because we are looking for our significance. Professor feller hold on because i have thought that at times, that it is maybe just a 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 here 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 but the character of the Business Class and everybody else, the common man, the workers, the labor. Rogan is one of the first one acknowledging lewis heartart with richard hofstadter, those who saw consensus in america, that politicians was 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 french at cringe at the consensus part. I agree to this extent. Hofstetter, the socalled consensus historians burnish 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. 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 . I stutter and hartz both know 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 am thinking along the lines of the word distinctiveness. I know you get more into the sectional period, you hear historians debate southern 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 45 if i am correct, it seems the jacksonian persuasion is going to continue past that. I think it is important to identify what prior to that is distinctive enough to 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 and high slavery theyre are also some things occurring in this critical period. You 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. That is another alternative to focus directly on jackson period. You have a lot of choices to make. You can have like major jefferson. It does not seem like there is. 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 . Is there a main thread of the story . Are we looking for im thinking off the top of my head. Immediately 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 hotline main theme or 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. While it is frustrating, we are reaching something profound here. That is the way in which the compulsiveness thecompulsions of our disciplines and mental necessity to make sense out of things and 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 great 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. 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. 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. I think the age of the common man is a less problematic term than the age of jackson because a lot of these things are happening independent of jackson or the jacksonians. I think you could do worse than the age of the common man. Granted, native americans probably disagree with that. I am jotting down a list of the broad themes that happened 1815 to 1848. Youve got in franchise men transportation revolution, a rise in the conflict over slavery, president jackson who towers over the period for 812 years or so, market revolution the age of reform. You can attach historian names to all of those themes. Professor feller well done. We are trying to look for the unified field theory. It probably does not exist that ties it all together. Maybe the best thing to do is here is all these themes and Andrew Jackson was the big kahuna and be done and not try to figure out what we mean by age of jackson. Professor feller ive sometimes argued we call it age of jackson because we dont know what else to call it literally. Ok, we will name it after jackson. Then you have a name. You can stop there and say it is the age of jackson. Is a powerful presence. He expands executive authority. He stands down the location. He needs his due at some level. There is not any executive during this period that has that sort of footprint. I would have voted for quincy adams over jackson in terms of president s who got things done. Outside texas . Professor feller in a way, we have done something remarkable for good or ill. We have managed to talk about the age of jackson and jacksonian democracy for close to two hours and have not even mentioned tocqueville. I think one could make an argument that part of the origin, aside from the historians compulsion to find a theme, a story, something to fit it all together the idea that this was a democratic age and there was something unique about it comes from tocqueville. Not for the record tocqueville celebrated american democracy in the way a lot of americans may think he did, but he did say it was distinctive. One way to elevate ourselves out of a morass of complexity and say, is there something distinctive to the United States and this time is to look at european travelers to america. Not only tocqueville, but others. Looking at european travelers to america has the defect that they were on tours and did not necessarily understand what they saw. Many had axes to grind on one side or the other. And yet, if you read enough of them, they all come back and say this place is weird. There is something going on here that is different. And that is new. Which distinguishes the age of jackson from all those other periods of transformation and also distinguishes it from what is going on elsewhere. We have not talked about this. You read some of these books capitalism was something invented by certain greedy americans, as if it was not happening anywhere else. What was that distinctive thing europeans, that distinctive characteristic they saw in the United States during exactly these years . Well, for good or ill, democracy. That brings us back to square one. And on that note, am i correct . We have been talking for nearly two hours . Do we want to keep talking . Do we get to vote on a break . Professor feller i think at this point, we should call it quits or invite summary statements. Ok. I am in favor of quitting. Professor feller next week, we will take on what will bring us back to a very different statement of the relationship between class and politics, between what is going on on the shop floors and union halls and what is going on at tammany hall and in the ward clubs then we saw than we saw in schlesinger. Thank you. Announcer join us each saturday evening for classroom lectures from across the country on different topics and eras of American History. Lectures are also available as podcasts. Announcer this year, cspan is exploring American History. Next, a look at our recent visit to columbus, georgia. 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