Book Review - Gentlemen of Property and Standing
In "Gentlemen of Property and Standing": Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America, Leonard L. Richards explores some of the more fascinating attributes of America's history, particularly its more unsavory elements of crime and violence, during the Jacksonian Era. By examining the outbreak of mob violence in the 1830s, which was performed as a response to rising abolitionist movements, Richards seeks to find out "how, when and why mob violence erupted and ebbed in our past" (Richards 1970, p. viii). Richards' examination of this mob action goes into detail regarding the mobs that participated in these acts, how their leadership was defined and organized, and the patterns of these actions. In essence, Richards argues that the Jacksonian era was subject to a great deal of societal and economic change, primarily through the proliferation of technology, which led to mob actions against abolitionists intended to stop this societal progress.
There are very specific mob actions that Richards probes in detail - these are instances of violence that happen in New York City, Cincinnati, Utica, Alton and others, from the 1830s to 1840s. Richards' approach tackles both traditional and contemporary research methods, consulting secondary literature frequently when discussing abolitionism, primary literature of the time is also examined when looking at public and private responses to these mob actions. The author takes into consideration newspapers, journals, federal census data, and even personal diaries and letters, in order to gain a comprehensive portrait of the era's attitude towards these events. Quantitative measurement is also used to examine the veracity of this data, which he derives from identifying the individuals who participated in the mob violence cases he details and cross-references them with sociological data, thus creating a series of conclusions that are based in statistical support.
Based on this data, Richards comes to several conclusions - first and foremost, the mob actions that took place in the Jacksonian period (at least, the ones covered by his study) were far from disorganized and random; in fact, about 75% of the attacks were purposefully organized and structured attempts to attack leaders, specific targets who were "gentlemen of property and standing," rather than being baseless, unspecific acts of destruction (Richards 1970, p. 32). The quarter that remain simply have the appearance of being randomized, and their victims and participants were much more lower-class in social and economic standing. These included the "atypical" July 1834 attack in New York City, and the September 1841 attack in Cincinnati (Richards 1970, p. 150). Each of the mobs that fell under Richards' study are revealed to have been led by incredibly racially prejudiced members of the traditional, established social elite, and were motivated by the threat of racial integration. Fearful for the loss of the status quo, these mob leaders organized mob attacks to prevent the spread of abolitionist ideas and progress through violence. Richards, in light of these conclusions, is confident that another significant part of this (mostly white adult male) leadership was provoked further by the abolitionists' contemporary strategy of appealing to women and children strongly in order to gain support for their movement - this loss of power and perceived threat to their natural dominance of their families provided further reason to attack abolitionists.
In Richards' evidence, mob action is directly correlated to the increase in activity of the American Anti-Slavery Society, an important abolitionist group at the time; as their organization grows more powerful, the more frequent these mob attacks become. It is in this period of examination (the 1830s) that this fervor reaches its peak; afterwards, it starts to calm down somewhat, a shift that Richards explains under a variety of conditions. Furthermore, the author discusses violence against abolitionists in the context of the changing face of technology during the time, making the somewhat weak claim that the 1840s constituted the watershed moment for American history in terms of technology and social change. As this delays Hofstadter's notion of 'status revolution' back quite a few decades, this is somewhat unbelievable, but it is also presented quite persuasively. Richards eventually seems to conclude that "political affiliation was probably not an independent variable" in the creation of mobs that opposed abolition, a claim that is unfortunately ill-supported (Richards 1970, p. 148). Due to the northern Democrats' historically known hostility toward Negroes and abolitionists alike, it would be expected of Richards to delve into that relationship slightly more, and count them as among the mobs who carry out these attacks (Remini, 1988). Though these conclusions are well-researched and smartly presented, they offer merely a surface-level introduction to the complexities in racial politics that were developing during the 1830s and the height of mob violence.
In terms of how this book fits into the Jacksonian Era's historiography, it does not delve much into Jackson's role in these events, rather the social groups that carried a great deal of social and political weight at the time (abolitionist groups and the mob). While not evaluating the state of Jacksonian Era policy in any great depth, such as with writers like Remini (1988), Richards' work creates a fascinating portrait of the violence that this kind of change led to in the Jacksonian Era. By framing these changes as based in societal and technological evolution, the dynamic between those who wish to maintain the status quo and those who wish to change it becomes clearer. In this way, while Richards does not advance the perspectives of Jackson as a president, the America over which he presides is made somewhat more manifest.
In linking the Negrophobia of the mob rioters to "their nightmare of becoming cogs in a mass society," Richards furthers his idea that the independent variable that leads to social evolution is technology (Richards, 1970). However, his book is comparatively short and breezes through the material in light of the evidence needed to make this claim. As it stands, however, he has offered his audience a thoroughly researched, well-written and creative study which sheds some light on socioeconomic and cultural data surrounding this resistance to abolition. Richards' work enlightens its readers on social violence and the factors that play into it. Despite this helpfulness, however, it is difficult to place it in the historiography of Jackson's presidency; it notes significant changes in America during that time, but has little to do with Jackson's actual policies - it instead gives us a slice of life for abolitionist and anti-abolitionist groups of the time.
References
Remini, R.V. (1988). The Legacy of Andrew Jackson: Essays on Democracy, Indian Removal, and Slavery. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
Richards, L.L. (1970). Gentlemen of property and standing: anti-abolition mobs in Jacksonian America. Oxford University Press.
