Whig Hill

A Note About Richmond

I really appreciate Richmond because it's citizens are so publicly spirited. I'm mean, on the six block walk between my hotel and the conference hotel, so many people were dressed up for Halloween; they had folks dressed as pimps, some as drug dealers, some as hookers, some as thugs. Very convincing. I hope those kids get lots of candy.

Happy Halloween

  Happy Halloween 
  Originally uploaded by natmaconjr.

I'm in Richmond for three days of historical geek-out at the Southern Historical Association annual conference. This should be good.

Happy Halloween. Now get this thing off me.

Happy Halloween. Now get this thing off me.
Originally uploaded by natmaconjr.

This is not a very good review.

Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1961, with a new forward by Thad W. Tate and a new introduction by Gary B. Nash, 1996)

Benjamin Quarles published this groundbreaking study in 1960 and yet it still remains the singular monograph on the subject of blacks in the American Revolution. This reviewer cannot begin to understand why. In both Quarles’ strengths and shortcomings are starting points for fruitful and imaginative interpretations of the African American experience.

review

Gerda Lerner, The Grimke Sisters from South Carolina: Pioneers for Women’s Rights and Abolition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, revised and expanded edition, 2004)

What a wonderful biography. Gerda Lerner’s 1967 portrayal of the Grimke sisters is both heart rending and astute. She has wrangled a mountain of evidence into a knowing assessment of the abolition movement and the internal tension of the women’s movement growing within it. And her portrait contains a highly satisfactory analysis of religion as a force in American politics and society.

Quick update between books

Lizzie is sick. Diagnosis is cabin fever. She's got it bad. And she thinks this whole "it's raining" thing is another of daddy's cheese-dick, bullshit excuses.

Hey look. The State Archives has a blog.

Alright, I can't think of anything else at this time.

I like them both

The Original

(I missed the bandwagon on this one as today is the first time I've ever heard it.) The Cover Awesome!

Some things

Playlist for the radio show.

SOC Rovers practice was funky.

Redskins won. Barely. They didn't deserve it, but I'll take it. London Fletcher is a mad-man.

Scott finished a respectable 16th at Martinsville. Woo-hoo!

Sometimes a book comes out that I think is so important to my historical interests I'm afraid to open it from anticipation and jealousy. This is the book in hand now.

They're showing From Here To Eternity now. Deborah Kerr aside, Donna Reed in that movie makes me tingle. Hubba hubba hot stuff.

review

Women of the Republic: Intellect & Ideology in Revolutionary America. Linda K. Kerber. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980.

Women of the Republic is, as the subtitle suggests, an intellectual history and concerns itself with how the American Revolution caused—or didn’t cause—reconsideration of women’s place in the political sphere. It is a thorough examination, and a pessimistic view, as Linda Kerber concludes little of the radicalism of the Revolution produced changes in the American polity for women.

review

The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It. Richard Hofstadter.  New York, Vintage, 1940; reprinted 1989 with new forward by Christopher Lasch.

In this sweeping survey of United States political history, Richard Hofstadter identifies individuals emblematic of beginnings, ends, or transformations in the fundamental nature of American government. The author argues from a testy Hamiltonian position that the central thesis of government is indelibly entwined with the needs of business and labor. Hofstadter develops the growth of business, from aristocratic merchants to international corporations, from craftsmen to labor unions, and how politicians have negotiated the call of individualism and equal opportunity with the dislocating demands of free market capitalism. The men who rise in his estimation, those who have mastered the American political tradition, are those who practice a forward-looking pragmatism.