The mythology of nineteenth-century American economic exceptionalism trumpeted
the positive work incentives prevailing in a society of scarce labor, weak
class barriers, and abundant opportunity. This ideology agreed with the
optimistic vein of political economy, in which high wages went hand in hand
with increased productivity. What, then, was the supposed role of poverty,
the fear of poverty, and other "negative" work incentives in the
era of early industrial capitalism and escalating sectional conflict over
slavery? American Exceptionalism, American Anxiety examines a wide
spectrum of antebellum American thought on these and related issues, including
slavery and cheap immigrant and female sweated labor.
Some leading American critics of slavery and "indiscriminate"
poor relief suggested that "free market" compulsions of hunger
and thirst were therapeutic and ennobling and by themselves elevated capitalist
wage labor above chattel servitude. Others, including prominent Republican
proponents of the mythology of northern American exceptionalism, tied
the legitimacy of capitalist wage labor to the hireling's ability to commodify
his labor to his own advantage. Distinct from both these groups were labor-reform
critics who insisted both that capitalists were finding "starvation
wages" sufficiently labor-inducing and that the "lash"
of poverty demoralized and crushed, rather than ennobled, northern wage
laborers. Glickstein pays particular attention to neglected early nineteenth-century
debates over the circumstances under which the allure to employers of
"cheap" or otherwise "servile" labor trumped the supposed
superior productivity of more generously compensated, "respectable"
free labor. In probing Republican commentators' paradoxical fear that
northern white labor could not withstand competition from "inferior"
slave labor, for example, he challenges the still-dominant characterization
of Republican Party free-labor ideology as an optimistic, self-confident
creed.
In the course of exploring the dark side of antebellum American labor
ideologies, Glickstein engages some of the most significant issues in
antebellum historiography, including the market revolution, the linguistic
turn, whiteness as an axis of self-identity, and bourgeois ideological
hegemony.
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| "A considerable scholarly and intellectual
achievement, American Exceptionalism, American Anxiety addresses
many of the most interesting and significant issues in antebellum historiography,
among them the nature of market revolution, whiteness, slave and free
labor, Thomas Haskell’s concept of ‘remote sympathy,’ and
the utility of poststructuralist approaches."
—Richard B. Stott, George Washington University, author of Workers
in the Metropolis: Class, Ethnicity, and Youth in Antebellum New York
City
"American Exceptionalism, American Anxiety
is a sophisticated and subtle study, and its many important insights
can hardly be captured in a brief review. Glickstein's book should be
read by everyone interested in nineteenth-century history and the wider
history of American ideas."
—The Journal of Southern History
"Brilliantly reasoned and persuasively argued."
—American Historical Review
"Glickstein has written an estimable book, deeply
researched and formidably argued, the most searching treatment available."
—Journal of Interdisciplinary History
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American Exceptionalism, American Anxiety: Wages, Competition, and
Degraded Labor in the Antebellum United States
by Jonathan A. Glickstein
384 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Cloth ISBN 0-8139-2115-5 • $45.00
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