Declarations of dependence : the long reconstruction of popular politics in the South, 1861-1908

In this highly original study, Gregory Downs argues that the most American of wars, the Civil War, created a seemingly un-American popular politics, rooted not in independence but in voluntary claims of dependence. Through an examination of the pleas and petitions of ordinary North Carolinians, Declarations of Dependence contends that the Civil War redirected, not destroyed, claims of dependence by exposing North Carolinians to the expansive but unsystematic power of Union and Confederate governments, and by loosening the legal ties that bound them to husbands, fathers, and masters.

Faced with anarchy during the long reconstruction of government authority, people turned fervently to the government for protection and sustenance, pleading in fantastic, intimate ways for attention. This personalistic, or what Downs calls patronal, politics allowed for appeals from subordinate groups like freed blacks and poor whites, and also bound people emotionally to newly expanding postwar states. Downs's argument rewrites the history of the relationship between Americans and their governments, showing the deep roots of dependence, the complex impact of the Civil War upon popular politics, and the powerful role of Progressivism and segregation in submerging a politics of dependence that--in new form--rose again in the New Deal and persists today.

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Downs (CUNY) has produced a significant and provocative study of the relationship between government and the governed, the implications of which transcend the "long reconstruction" (1861-1908) of the book's subtitle. Grounding his work in thorough archival research and a careful, nuanced reading of both the primary and secondary literature, Downs uses North Carolina in the postbellum decades as a case study for his larger conclusions. Arguing that "patronal" politics characterized the decades of the late-19th-century South, Downs posits a reworking of the relationship between state and citizen from one of distance to one of almost intimate familiarity and dependence (which he argues should not be seen as a pejorative term, but as a political strategy for this era's lower orders). Downs concludes that for North Carolina and, by implication, the early New South, the political was personal and the personal was political in a myriad of ways. After concluding this rich study, one wonders if the rest of the South exhibited patterns similar to North Carolina. Either way, Downs's book is required reading for students of US political history because of its insightful and well-argued conclusions about the nature of state authority and citizenship in a multiracial society. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates and above. K. M. Gannon Grand View University

Table des matières

Introduction: Friends Unseen: The Ballad of Political Dependency	p. 1
1 Hungry for Protection: The Confederate Roots of Dependence	p. 15
2 Slaves and the Great Deliverer: Freedom and Friendship behind Union Lines	p. 43
3 Vulnerable at the Circumference: Demobilization and the Limitations of the Freedmen's Bureau	p. 75
4 The Great Day of Acounter: Democracy and the Problem of Power in Republican Reconstruction	p. 101
5 The Persistence of Prayer: Dependency after Redemption	p. 131
6 Crazes, Fetishes, and Enthusiasms: The Silver Mania and the Making of a New Politics	p. 163
7 A Compressive Age: White Supremacy and the Growth of the Modern State	p. 185
Coda: Desperate Times Call for Distant Friends: Franklin Roosevelt as the Last Good King?	p. 213
Acknowledgments	p. 221
Notes	p. 227
Bibliography	p. 277
Index	p. 337

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Table des matières