Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic

Rating:
Summary: Great history
Review: Ask a politician about what is important to him, and my guess is that he will reply something about service to the people, and perhaps he will feel he is being sincere. If you had asked an American politician in the post-Revolutionary period, it seems he might have replied, "My honor." After all, this is the bunch that pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to the new endeavor of a republic, and honor was sacred to them in a way that we do not regard it now. That is not to say that we (and our politicians) are less honorable these days, but rather that honor had a special culture and meaning in the new nation that it no longer has. This is the main theme of _Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic_ (Yale University Press) by Joanne B. Freeman, a surprising look at the codes of honor of that time and how they changed history.

The main players are familiar to us all (Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Burr), and Freeman has drawn on the diaries and notebooks of many who had supporting roles. Politics was at least partially a means to improve the reputations of the participants and to demonstrate their honor. An attack on the reputation of a political opponent and his rebuttal were the ways the game was played. The use of the written word had such power that that politicians were careful about what medium to use. They might use personal letters among small circles of friends to give the lie to an accuser. They might use pamphlets, or anonymous broadsides. Dishonor in print was not only seen as a present infliction of insult, but a damnation of a reputation in history, and fear of history's judgement led Adams, Jefferson, and others to bring an outpouring of autobiographical apologias toward the ends of their lives. The use of such measures in print and eventual duels were, according to the code, by gentlemen against gentlemen; it was dishonorable to use them against a social inferior. Against, say, a newspaper editor, a gentleman used a cane or a tweak of the nose.

It is significant that no one paid more punctilious attention to the demands of honor than Aaron Burr. Freeman suggests even that in the disputed election of 1800 he was more honorable than Jefferson, who may have engaged in a ploy to mislead a critical congressman to break a deadlock. After Burr had lost the election to Jefferson, he was particularly alert to attacks on his character. When offended, a final time, by Hamilton, Burr would have seen himself as having no option but one. His second in the famous duel wrote that if Burr had dropped the affair, his friends "must have considered him as a man, not possessing sufficient firmness to defend his own character, and consequently unworthy of their support." Freeman demonstrates that understanding honor is essential to understanding Burr and all the men around him. She also explains that institutionalized parties altered for good the political dynamic of individual honor. The period when the code of honor was in force was a particular time when the new nation had not clearly thrown off ideals of aristocracy inherited from the old country. Freeman's book represents a new and instructive way of looking at the history of a vital period.

Rating:
Summary: questionable research?
Review: I just watched BookTV on which the author was discussing the duel between Burr and Hamilton. During her presentation she discussed some of the rumors surrounding it, in particular one that stated that Burr wore a silk vest as a sort of bullet proof vest. This was presented in a mocking manor, as if a silk vest would be useless for this function. However, a few years ago the Thai military or police had bullet proof vests made from silk, fifteen layes of which, apparently, can stop just about any bullet. Did she not follow other lines of research because the idea seemed to far-fetched for her? If so, what else is there that is inadequately studied?

FWIW, I haven't read the book and cannot otherwise judge its quality.

Rating:
Summary: Great history
Review: I regret that DMM's review is so misleading, for Joanne Freeman's book is nothing like his or her description of it. Freeman does a fine job of linking dueling to politics. She shows that politicians used honor disputes, including duels, to repair their reputations and their honor and to damage the reputations and honor of their foes. She shows in particular how the duels she writes about followed elections, and how politicians on the losing side of those elections provoked honor disputes with politicians on the winning side. Her title is not misleading at all, because the book does deal with national politics (and with state politics and how state politics interacted with national politics) and with how honor culture helped to shape politics. She doesn't waste a word; she writes very well; and she ably connects the stories she tells to her interpretation of politics and political culture in this period. All the way around, I don't know a better book on the subject.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful, amusing and a vastly entertaining read
Review: If you have read enough books on early American politics it begins to appear redundant, that there isn't really any new areas that haven't been discovered. Joanne Freeman shows this simply isn't true by presenting an entirely original framework to understanding early American politics. Freeman presents an argument that early politics is best understood within a overarching framework of personal honor; that the political elites of the day operated within a traditional and highly regimented system of honor that controlled thier political actions. Freeman examines this system through a variety of case studies of the uses of gossip, paper, and dueling within the system and ends with a discussion of the 1800 election. While her arguments is strong, I'm not convinced that all of her claims necessarily hold water. But the best part of this book is that a new perspective is shown and that even heavily researched areas of history still have unexplored potential. I highly recomend this book for many reasons, not the least of which is it dispells the myth that the founders were above partisian politics. Freeman presents a picture of politics that is every bit as dirty and nasty as modern day, albeit for different reasons.

Rating:
Summary: Good look at the early republic
Review: Oftentimes, we lament the existence of political parties and see them as the source of all evil in the country. Freeman's book takes a look at 1790s America, when parties did not yet truly exist, and finds that it was not much better.

Some of the material here I have read in different form elsewhere, but there is also a lot of new stuff too. In particular, the different methods of attacking political opponents were new to me.

Just as we often bemoan the existence of parties, we also sometimes complain about the lack of shame in today's society (as shown through reality TV, etc.). This book also shows the flip side of this, to an era when honor and self-respect are deemed so important that even slight insults can lead to canings and duels.

Freeman does a good job at showing a political world that is quite different than our own. If not perfect, this book is still good enough to recommend to anyone interested in the early history of the United States.

Rating:
Summary: Putting political substance in cultural context is vital.
Review: Regrettably, it appears that the reviewer from Paterson, NJ, either hasn't bothered to read the book or has not read it with care. Professor Freeman proves beyond dispute that previous historians have not understood the central importance of honor culture in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Professor Freeman also proves beyond dispute that it is impossible to understand substantive political issues without careful attention to their cultural context.

One important point: Joseph E. Ellis and Jack N. Rakove are pretty dang good political historians who have paid close attention to substantive political issues in this period. And they both praise this book highly for its vital contribution not only to our understanding of politics in the early American republic but also to our understanding of how to do political history.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointment
Review: Simply put, this was a scattered unorganized book. The author's postulations far exceeded historical verification and were redudnant to boot. Her overly cursory review of the Burr-Hamilton duel completely ignored the other theories of what happened - probably because they would not fit her theorum. Her account of the election of 1800 went back and forth so much to the 1796 election it was near impossible to follow no less discern which election was the one being followed. I was disappointment because the area is one which can and should be interesting. THe book needed more history and less posturing and postulation.

Rating:
Summary: Their Sacred Honor
Review: This is a groundbreaking work that will be sure to change how we think about the revolutionary and postrevolutionary generations. In Affairs of Honor, Joanne Freeman illuminates the importance of the forgotten cultural force of honor among the Founding Fathers and the generations immediately following the revolutionary generation.

She proves her thesis admirably, and has chosen fascinating examples of how honor and its related values of fame and virtue were driving forces for their behavior. She demonstrates that through the prism of honor we can better understand behavior that we now find puzzling, having lost to history the central importance of the demands of honor upon our early leaders. Incidentally, she notes the relative paucity of historic sources during this period in American history, but argues convincingly that the influence of the code of honor, once recognized, appear everywhere in the documents of the time. She tells her story convincingly through the journals, diaries, and papers of politicians, pamphlets, newspapers and other historical documents, as well as through the histories crafted by Jefferson and Burr which she argues convincingly were written above all to defend their actions and their honor.

If it is true that every history book rewrites history, Affairs of Honor does so more than most. By exploring the complex interplay and shifting meanings of honor among the founding generation and how the code influenced understandings and misunderstandings among early lawmakers, she shows that the correct observance the cultural code was often more important than the actual programs and laws that were under consideration. For instance, even if a senator may have agreed with a proposal of Hamilton's, the fact that many considered his behavior to be dishonorable, might sway their vote against the proposal. (Notably, some of the battles about honor stretched forward through families for generations afterwards). To make it even more difficult and confusing, there were different kinds of honor as well - southern honor as practiced by the Virginians and other southern states, and as practiced by Northerners. (The code of Southern honor more often ended in duels than did the Northern interpretation). She notes that before political parties had platforms which enabled a politician to defend his voting as part of his party's requirement of him, each voting decision had to be defended on a personal level. The personal level was the level of honor, and thus a man's vote could be called into question on the basis of honor - sometimes resulting in bloodshed. Honor was sometimes used as a weapon in elections, too. Sometimes politicians would charge each other with dishonorable behavior just before an election so that the their opponents could not respond in time.

Contradictions between democracy and the culture of honor abound. While the founding fathers were "republicans," they were also "men of honor," a sometimes paralyzing combination. As republicans, they needed to demonstrate their allegiance with the citizens whom they represented, while in the chambers of government, they needed to pledge their lives, and their sacred "honor" to each other - the code of honor of the "aristocrat." In a classic example, she notes that in the story of the clothing G. Washington's wore for his inauguration, that Washington was conscious of and tried to balance these the conflicting demands, wearing a American made homespun suit but a suit of the finest homespun, coupled with the fancy buckles from France on his shoes.

She clearly shows that in this face-to-face culture, everyone was painfully conscious of the image they wished to project. Since man's reputation was critical to his success or lack of it in early government, much time is spent defending one's honor and questioning the honor and virtue of others. One chose one's enemies as carefully as one chose one's friends. Jefferson was a master of using the code of honor to advance his agenda, dirtying his enemies through intermediaries in the press. Adams, by contrast, was temperamentally too volatile to use the code of honor as subtly as his old friend Jefferson.

Overall, a great insight into the founding fathers, and into early American history.

Rating:
Summary: Pathbreaking scholarship, and a joy to read.
Review: This is that rarest of books -- a work of pathbreaking scholarship that's a joy to read. Joanne B. Freeman, assistant professor of history at Yale University, combines the analytical talents of a subtle historian, the story-telling ability of a first-rate journalist, and the gift of empathy with historical figures. Her remarkable book examines the ways that the leading figures of the first decades of the American republic practiced politics. In her pages, such leading spirits as George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton are not serene philosopher statesmen but self-conscious, harried, angry, fearful, insistent, sometimes even fanatical -- as they were in real life.
Freeman examines a series of episodes -- which previous historians have either overlooked altogether or have dismissed as idiosyncratic or crazy -- and explains them by setting them into the context of a key value that pervaded the political life and assumptions of the period: honor. With skill and grace, she shows that a political leader's honor and reputation were essential components of his case for his own right to be seen as a political leader. Indeed, many of the most bitter and previously inexplicable conflicts of the early Republic can be explained by reference to politicians' battles to shore up their own honor and reputation and to undermine that of their opponents.
Freeman's book begins with an incisive prologue recapturing the sense of uncertainty and anxiety that accompanied the launch of the American constitutional experiment in 1789.
Chapter 1 examines "the politics of self-presentation" through a close, attentive interpretation of one of the minor classics of American political writing, Senator William Maclay's diary of his service in the First Congress (1789-1791). In these pages she brings out just how self-conscious these politicians were about the ways they dressed, traveled, spoke, and otherwise held the political stage.
Chapter 2, "Slander, Poison, Whispers, and Fame," analyzes the art of political gossip, focusing on Thomas Jefferson's skilled collection and use of gossip about friends and foes. Freeman demonstrates that, far from being the disinterested philosopher he liked to portray himself as being, Jefferson was a shrewd and ruthless politician thoroughly engaged in the political cut-and-thrust of his time.
Chapter 3, "The Art of Paper War," shifts focus to the various forms of practicing politics in print; it is built around the lengthy series of newspaper essays with which former President John Adams sought in 1809 to defend his historical reputation against an 1800 pamphlet penned by Alexander Hamilton. Freeman ably anatomizes the various forms of political writing -- letters, pamphlets, newspaper essays, broadsides, and so forth -- by reference to their purposes and their intended audiences.
Chapter 4, "Dueling as Politics," Freeman examines a perennial favorite among episodes from this period -- the fatal duel in 1804 between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. Freeman cuts through the fog of myth, legend, and psychohistorical speculation that have surrounded this most famous duel in American history. She demonstrates that the honor dispute between Burr and Hamilton was only one of a series of such disputes spanning the years between 1795 and 1807, and that this series of disputes (some rising to the level of an actual duel, some averted by negotiation) marked the fault-lines of politics in New York among Federalists, Clintonian Republicans (followers of George and later DeWitt Clinton), and Burrites. Indeed, dueling was the ultimate form of political combat -- in which politicians risked being killed and killing to vindicate their honor and reputation, and thus their claims to be political leaders. In this brilliant piece of historical detective-work, Freeman has solved the mystery of why these men went to the dueling-ground in Weehawken, leaving the reader understanding why they felt compelled to duel.
Chapter 5 brings all these strands together by focusing on the election of 1800 and showing how the culture of honor and the politics of reputation were key factors in shaping the outcome of the most critical presidential election up to that time. Here Freeman's central character is the enigmatic Aaron Burr. As with her earlier chapters, Freeman begins by taking Burr seriously and paying close attention to what he said, did, and wrote. Her nuanced and perspicacious investigation of the elections of 1796 and 1800 brings out how, in a period celebrated by other historians as witnessing the triumph of the first "party system," the politics of honor and reputation had far more than party to do with the actual outcome of the election and the process by which the crisis of 1800-1801 was resolved.
Freeman's deft epilogue examines the reverberations of honor culture and the politics of reputation in the struggles of key figures of this period to shape how history would view them and their thoughts, words, and deeds. Her central player is the Federalist New Hampshire politician William Plumer, who was determined (as a Senator during Jefferson's presidency) to collect and preserve the history of his time and vindicate himself and his allies. So, too, Jefferson, James Madison, Timothy Pickering, and other contemporaries struggled to fix their versions of the immediate past and transmit them to posterity. Indeed, the family of Federalist James Bayard, who had played a vital role in determining the electoral deadlock of 1800-1801, persisted in vindicating the role of their ancestor as late as 1907.
Freeman's fine book is formidably researched, and yet she carries her learning lightly. AFFAIRS OF HONOR sets a new standard for historical scholarship, not only in the rigor of its research and argument, but also in its lucid, accessible presentation. Any reader without any background in the subject will be able to pick up this book and read it with enjoyment and enlightenment. This is what books are for.