Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850 (Galaxy Books) [Paperback]

Sean Wilentz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 20, 1986 | ISBN-10: 0195040120 | ISBN-13: 978-0195040128

Chants Democratic is a fascinating reinterpretation of the origins and development of our nation's working class, as seen through the politics, culture, and ideas of New York City during the Jacksonian period. Here, Wilentz explores the dramatic social and intellectual changes that accompanied early industrialization in New York. Wilentz examines the significant roles played by immigration, religion, and women in the formation of new social classes. Using court records, ceremonial speeches, and art to illuminate the changes of the period, Chants Democratic presents a rich and detailed portrait of the social life, political battles, and cultural development in the emerging American metropolis.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Gives the student of the Jacksonian Era an insider's look at the developing labor system of the northern industrialization process. In my 'Voices of the Union' course I use Chants to contrast the young republic's divergent and conflicting concepts of the Union, including its ideologic, economic, political, religious, and historical identities."--Wayne Cutler, University of Tennessee

"A brilliant book."--U. Scharff, University of New Mexico

"Certainly the best book yet written about the emergence of New York City's working class and a major contribution to American working-class history."--The New Republic

"[Chants Democratic is] nothing less than a scholarly epic...it has no equal in breadth of subject, grace of style or acuity of interpretation."--The Nation

"A great leap forward in both American social and American political history....Wilentz has written the statement on Jacksonian New York."--Journal of American History

"Chants Democratic is a remarkable book that will quickly establish itself in the historiography and exert a powerful influence on the future direction of social, labor, and political history."--Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"Wilentz's Chants Democratic gives the student of the JACKSONIAN ERA an insider's look at the developing labor system of the northern industrialization process. In my "Voices of Union" course, I use hants to contrast the young Republic's divergent and conflicting concepts of the Union, inclusing its ieologic, economic, political, religious, and historical identities."--Professor Wayne Cutler, University of Tennessee

About the Author

Sean Wilentz is at Princeton University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (March 20, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195040120
• ISBN-13: 978-0195040128
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,104,117 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If You Want to Understand Am. Labor History, June 11, 2000

By 

J. Hart (Oklahoma) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850 (Galaxy Books) (Paperback)

The other contributor must not be very serious about the study of history. You will find this book on every 19th-Century U.S. PhD reading list from Columbia to Okla. State U. If you want to understand Am. labor history, antebellum history, class stratification, free v. slave labor, this is one of the most valuable books you can read. It's not for casual reading, but if you're SERIOUS about understanding American history it's for you.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The mind of the urban proletariat, June 28, 2008

By 

Harry Eagar (Maui) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850, 20th Anniversary Edition (Paperback)

An American "middling" working class would be more accurate. Sean Wilentz' study is about "mechanics," that is, skilled workmen who had been through an apprenticeship and could, at the beginning of the study period, aspire to become independent masters and producers.

The beginning of the study period was also the beginning of the end for that sort of industrial organization. Rationalization of steps of production allowed entrepreneurs to divide methods that had formerly required an extensive skill set into a series of easily teachable components.

They then were able to dispense with skilled workers, either driving journeymen down to wage levels of common laborers or (in the most optimistic view) giving new kinds of work to formerly marginalized workers -- illiterate country boys, women, Irish.

Naturally, the journeymen who ended up in these "sweated" trades felt a grievance, Whether their grievances amounted to a "rise" of a working class seems debatable. The inarticulate common laborers may already have felt themselves a wronged class. If they did, that is beyond the reach of the historian.

What Wilentz can do, and does thoroughly, is document the emerging self-consciousness rise of an articulate working class with a more or less coherent ideology and, by the mid-1820s, a political program.

"Chants Democratic" is anything but light reading, but it has its exciting episodes. These are somewhat repetitive: Inchoate working class reformers create novel structures (unions, benefit societies, cooperatives), attempt to use them to change the relations of production and get co-opted by mere political parties -- usually but not always Tammany Democrats.

The story is exceedingly complex, playing out as it does against a similar change in working conditions in non-republican Europe. Wilentz emphasizes the republican ideology of the "artisan republic."

They were not the only faction in New York City that claimed republican virtue, but their approach made a difference. Socialism, which is where much of this was heading, has always a different character in America.

Wilentz, who wrote this as a dissertation, had to document his assertions with sociological methods, which he did by comparing names to tax and voting rolls etc. to help quantify the changes. "Chants Democratic" is now considered a classic of American labor history, no doubt because it is not impressionistic.

Nevertheless, it is not all by the numbers, Wilentz occasionally stops to paint with a broad brush. In describing the impoverishment of formerly solid citizens, he claims that New York (that is, Manhattan) "ranked second to none as a disaster of laissez-faire urban development."

Both up to 1850 and for much longer, the New York working class failed in most of its economic and political goals. However, Wilentz judges that during these decades "the burdens of necessity (forced) men and women, in the span of a single lifetime, to some of the most creative popular engagements in this nation's history."

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars labor history in nyc, October 1, 2007

By 

S. Pactor "reader" (San Diego, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850, 20th Anniversary Edition (Paperback)

This book functions well as an adjunct to the "age of jackson" by arthury schlesinger jr. it basicaly handles the development of the "working class" in new york city between the end of the american revolution to the period before the civil war.

During this period the economy of new york city industrialized, and that impacted the development of the "american" or more accurately given the subject of this book "new york" working class.

This book might also have a cross over audience with gangs of new york. mike walsh, the oft drunken "shirtless democrat" leader of the 1840s and 1850s comes across similar to the character played by daniel day lewis in scorcese's adaptation of gangs of new york. i was suprised to read of the linkage of the working class movement to nativist sentiment expounded by the whigs as early as the 1830s, but i suppose i shouldn't have been suprised at all....