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A Renegade History of the United States

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Thaddeus Russell's 'A Renegade History of the United States' succeeds on every level. It is a comical, rigorous, and incisive social and cultural history of the United States, spanning the early colonial era all the way to the Obama Administration. Skillfully utilizing a plethora of primary documents while astutely navigating and critiquing the secondary literature (Russell is a Columbia-trained historian), Russell takes us on a colorful, edifying, and enormously enjoyable tour of the underside of US history. Indeed, taking off from Zinn's people's history, Russell emphasizes that the "people" are neither homogeneous nor pure at heart. Russell in particular shows that, contrary to standard liberal accounts, history's drunkards, prostitutes, and general misfits have a lot more to do with advancing conceptual and material freedoms than has ever been acknowledged. 'A Renegade History' evokes Tocqueville's 'Democracy in America' insofar as it can either please -- or infuriate -- just about everyone. Conservatives will delight in Russell's demolition of politically correct -- but historically dubious -- truisms, but just when they're convinced they've found an ally, they'll be scandalized by Russell's celebration of radical anti-authoritarianism. Liberals will similarly be horrified by Russell's compelling and iconoclastic treatment of slavery and the Civil Rights Movement. Indeed, ideologues might fear this book. But those who value history, cultural analysis, and an amazing and brilliantly-told story will be elated.

Thaddeus Russell's premise for Renegade History is to look at the people and things in American history have always been left out: particularly how "vices" and those who pursued them have done as much to shape American history - and American freedom - than many political movements and acts. And the results are thrilling! This, folks, is the REAL People's History.

We start at the beginning. Part 1 goes from Colonial America and the omnipresent saloon to the Civil War. About colonial and early American history, we learn that saloons and alcohol consumption were not only common, but many saloons were owned (very successfully) by women, and catered to white, black, slave, and free. Despite efforts of states during and after America's independence to shut them down in the name of patriotism, they kept going.

The Civil War chapters may be the most controversial as they mount an impressive array of evidence to show that slaves may have had more freedom under slavery than as free men and women. Using interviews with former slaves, speeches and textbooks during reconstruction, and references to many secondary sources, Russell illustrates the difficulties in creating a new work ethic among a people who were quite unaccustomed to "fending for themselves." Russell IS NOT saying that slavery was better than freedom, but is pointing out that slavery often elicited less responsibility than freedom and, as such, slavery was often easier than freedom. Of particular importance to Russell's thesis is the idea that many vices flourished under slavery that had to be given up for freedom: serial monogamy, for instance, was the norm during slavery where freemen were expected to marry and stay married.

"Whore and the Origin of Women's Liberation" is another chapter that has the potential for controversy. The claim here is that "women of the night" are the best models the United States has for early independent women. Many not only owned their own businesses, but were the richest people in their towns or cities. Many did not get married until they were older, wore flamboyant clothing (that we now accept as normal), and pushed many other boundaries. All of this because they simply did not care about the "proper" mores. Lo and behold, more of their mores became "acceptable" to future generations than the then-"proper" ones.

Part II is called "How White People Lost Their Rhythm" and deals with four marginalized groups - African-Americans, Irish, Jews, and Italians - and their contradictory struggle to have their own identity in a U.S. that often didn't want them. All of them found ways to be renegades - to live a bit outside the "proper" model that was often both expected of them and told they could never meet. The Irish largely developed the minstrel show not out of disdain, but admiration, for African-Americans' culture as a group "at the bottom" who had adjusted to that life and was less worried and hurried as a result. African-Americans, of course, developed Jazz (along with Jews and Italians), Jews and Italians are largely responsible for organized crime, etc. When being forced to live outside the bounds of "respectability" there is a lot more freedom in what one can do.

The third section - "Fighting for Bad Freedom" - has largely to do with the early and mid-1900's and the overall message that the "progressives" were every bit as morally repressive as anyone on the "right." The temperance movement, eugenics, a longing for fascism and its top-down planning schemes - all of these are found in plenty in the writings of "progressives" of the day.

Lastly, we come to the final section - "Which Side are You On." It starts with the Cold War and how it was, in effect, won by the young people who, at every turn, refused to obey the orders and dictates of the Soviet bloc. No jazz, rock and roll, zoot suits, "loud" hair, etc? Yeah right! This section also contains an interesting chapter on the Civil Rights movement of the 1950's and 70's where Russell notes, ironically, that icons such as King and Malcolm X exhibited a moral conservatism that often gets overlooked when discussing their contribution to history.

In short, this book was eye-opening and challenging from start to finish. One could dismiss Russell as simply a contrarian "revisionist" were it not for his bevy of evidence including ample primary quotes. Two small complaints about the book though: first, the notes are not organized in a footnote or endnote structure. The sources are listed at the end of the book, but are not linked by markings to individual quotes or facts given in the book. Footnotes or endnotes would have been nice (but would likely have made the book about 100 pages longer).

Secondly, Russell says throughout the book that he is not advocating for his subjects' immoralities - not recommending or condoning drunkness, prostitution, organized crime, profligacy, etc. I confess, though, that it is really hard to come away believing him on that. Quite often - when the talk was over lack of work ethic, desire for material goods, disdain for saving, etc - I found myself concerned that maybe Russell was not seeing (or was choosing to ignore) the fact that many of those traits that he seems to celebrate may be directly tied to our current recession and overall financial difficulties. I understand that he SAYS he is not advocating these traits, but he sure seems to revel in them.

Anyhow, those are small grievances for such an interesting book. This is a history that everyone (except for grandma, the local chaplain, and those prone to conventionality) should read.

I was particularly intrigued by the argument that slaves were more free than working whites. You have to be more well read and intellectually gifted than your typical 'merican to understand the nuance of the argument and grasp the full context of the freedom that Russell is discussing.

But Russell's defense of his premise relies on anecdotal evidence, and he does not give proper weighting to the suffering imposed on slaves or on ex slaves in the decades that followed the Civil War. His suggestion that most plantation owners treated slaves delicately because they did not want to lower production by angering their slaves is just not adequately defended with hard evidence. There is plenty of evidence to counter this proposition, but you won't find it refuted or even acknowledged in this book.

There are many interesting aspects of American history discussed in this book that make it a worthwhile read. But it is lacking in rigorous scholarship. Being revolutionary and anti-establishment doesn't make the arguments true, it just makes them provocative.

This book made me stop to think and reconsider, but it did not leave me with the feeling that there was a kernel of a great revelation here, and that it is something I would like to dive into more deeply.

This is a book that will shake the foundations of anyone's world view.

Thaddeus Russell has written that rare book that is absolutely guaranteed to annoy right-wingers and left-wingers alike -- but centrists will probably find it the most disconcerting.

Thoroughly-researched, well-written, and persuasively argued, this one is a classic. If you only read one history book this year, make it A Renegade History of the United States.

What if the author of this book came back some day to apply his analytic methods and writing style to the history of the last 20 years? It might read something like this ...

The internet, originally a project of the U.S. Defence Department, had by 1995 become the notorious home of hackers, flamers and trolls. Individualists and non-conformists ruled the day. In fact, the internet had become the last, best home of fun in a repressive American society. Because of its apparent cloak of anonymity, everyone could dare to be provocative, profane, and uninhibited on the internet. They could be drunk, or at least act drunk, even while at work. They could be a girl, or at least pretend to be a girl. On the internet, Americans could live out their fantasies in public from the privacy of their keyboards. In short, they could be "black" whenever and wherever they wished, without giving up their day job.

During these years, the leading names of the internet (at least the ones the history books record) were doing everything they could to dampen animal spirits and enforce sobriety. Flame wars were banned from many Usenet groups, and flamers and trolls were often banished. Even Al Gore declaimed in an obscure Senate speech "I did not invent the internets in order to promote the greater dissemination of pornography and mindless discourse. If there is not some self-imposed restraint, I may need to consider regulation."

As it turned out, neither restraint nor regulation were needed. The internet's renegade renaissance lasted only ten years before it was squashed by a complete corporate takeover between 1998 and 2001. After that, when the RIAA began tracking down Napster "pirates", and ISP's started naming names, addresses and phone numbers of their not-so-anonymous-any-more internet subscribers, the jig was up.

But before you settle back into the comfort of your safe, corporate-controlled internet with its ubiquitous spell checking and massive NSA supercomputers endlessly sifting every phrase you write (or perhaps auto-completing your phrases so it can analyze them before you've even finished writing or thinking them), spare a thought for the renegades, the pirates, and yes even the whores of the early internet. They're the ones who expanded our freedoms. Without their pluck, our goose would already be cooked.

Since I was small, I've always regarded hippies, along with civil rights and anti-war protesters, as the real founders of freedom in the United States. Most of the good things in our culture, from rock and R&B music to sexual freedom to marijuana, seemed to come from folks such as these, rather than from the peruqued heads of the Revolutionary War. This book points out that this view of things has deeper roots than the 1960s.

That said, many passages are likely to make you uncomfortable. Not with the tales of factory workers pushing back against industrial discipline, of whores and gay pirates: they're still safe to cheer for.

But the book's treatment of issues involving African-Americans and slavery may well cause some discomfort. For I'm still enough of a product of a Puritan culture that frequent examination of conscience is an indelible part of my background; and what is white guilt but the fruit of examination of conscience brought to racial issues?

Now, the tale the book tells is convincing, and likely true. The author tells us that many former slaves found that the movement from being valuable livestock to hired hands was no improvement. As livestock, they knew they would be fed and taken care of. Giving this up for the "liberty" of being able to switch employers and move on was a bargain many would not have chosen. As slaves, being property, their sexual relationships were unregistered, and could be changed as was convenient. Nobody expected different. "Liberty" brought with it the tyranny of nineteenth century marriage law.

The author argues that blackface minstrelsy, which we assume was pure stereotype, in fact was popular because it portrayed a people relatively free from work ethic, sexual repression, and able to engage in public merriment without fear of shame. Some White people in the nineteenth century liked it for some of the same reasons that some White people in the twenty-first century like gangsta rap. This rouses a perhaps unwholesome curiosity about what the performances were actually like. An entire genre of Americana has vanished leaving only the slightest traces; it made previous generations that uncomfortable.

The author, despite his disclaimer that the "renegades" are not really heroes, seems to take a pleasantly subversive delight in making these arguments. He likes to make his readers squirm a little. You might have preferred to have these themes broached first in a stuffily scholarly and less readable text than this.

I told an acquaintance of mine today that I spent most of this weekend reading this book, getting all riled up and outraged only to have the author calmly point out how this or that molded many of the Amendments we have on our Constitution today.

I must say, his take on slavery is a bit... unorthodox and tying in minstrel was just... unbelievable, but at the end of the chapter he makes it work. You see the truth of his words when you look back or even look out your office window. More than that, you cannot deny the words of the people themselves who were recorded for posterity during the FDR Administration.

As for prostitutes and womens rights, it's a stretch with a kernel of truth to it. However, it is true that pre-Revolutionary women had far more freedoms than after.

Read it with an open mind and if you doubt, check his facts. I did and was flabbergasted at what I was never taught in school or through extensive reading.

Where do I begin to describe the nonsensical and illogical nature of this book? It's thesis, in a nutshell, is that America's rights and freedoms are not due to the actions of politicians, social activists, and deep thinkers, but are thanks to the actions of "renegades" of various stripes, dating from colonial America right up until the late 1960s. Renegades, in Russell's view, consistently rejected the status quo, the norms of capitalist society, in favour of individual expression and pleasure. In short, renegades didn't want to be cogs in a machine.

The author takes us on a quick tour through U.S. history, stopping at different points to argue that various criminal, social and economic underclasses were in fact fighting for freedoms that we all now take for granted. The underclasses, Russell argues, were always despised by those above them because they refused to conform to the model of what constitutes an efficient, reliable and moral American citizen. In a section on slavery Russell opines that slaves who shirked or sabotaged work on plantations were, in some way, standing up to conformity and the harsh Protestant work ethic. Russell ignores the fact that slaves, or those who are de facto slaves, have always been bad workers. One of the stock characters in classical literature is the lazy, scheming slave, who in Elizabethan literature became the lazy, scheming servant. Russian serfs were equally famous for being grossly lazy and inefficient. It would hard, though, to argue that slaves, servants and serfs ever acted as agents of social change.

If Russell was simply trying to prove that renegades were able to influence social mores that would be fine, but he also has some political axes to grind. This is most obvious in his section on the New Deal, in which he argues that fascism and New Deal liberalism were largely one and the same. This view is much in favour with Tea Party ideologues and Fox News, but it doesn't stand up to close examination. Because both fascist Italy and the New Deal had economic stimulus programs that were, on occasion, identical, Russell leaps to the illogical conclusion that this makes Franklin Roosevelt a quasi-fascist. This is bit like claiming that vegetarians are Nazis because Hitler was a vegetarian. Another problem is that fascism, both in Italy and Germany, was not much concerned with economics. The core features of both strains of fascism, and what dominated the imaginations of Hitler and Mussolini, were muscular, messianic nationalism and a vicious contempt for democratic institutions. Russell clearly doesn't see it that way as he ends his section on the New Deal with this eyebrow-raising statement: "...the New Deal and fascism went to war [WW II] not over ideas or values or a way of life. Rather, it seems, the war was a struggle between brothers for control of the world family." Sounds like someone wants to be invited to Glenn Beck's next barbecue.

Renegade takes a sharp turn into the nonsensical when it looks at the case of Japanese-Americans interned during WW II. Russell states that a significant number of these people were, in fact, loyal to Imperial Japan, and belonged to various organizations that swore loyalty to the Emperor and Japan. What does this have to do with renegades or social change? Nothing. Equally silly is Russell's claim that the beginning of gay liberation, which he dates as 1969, somehow produced heterosexual liberation as well. His proof of heterosexual liberation is that The Joy of Sex, a huge bestseller, was published only four years later. Russell conveniently forgets that popular culture in the post-war era had become increasingly comfortable with the idea of sex before and outside marriage. If there is such as thing as heterosexual liberation it's probably thanks to Hugh Hefner, Russ Meyer, Marilyn Monroe, hippies, the Pill, and James Bond movies.

Russell does make some convincing arguments that nineteenth-century prostitutes played a role in advancing women's rights, and that the civil rights movement, widely hailed as being non-violent, actually benefited from less pacific black protestors. Most of the time, however, Russell uses faulty logic and anecdotal evidence to manufacture proof that "renegades" were unconscious leaders in the fight for individual freedom. In sum, this book feels more like an extended opinion piece than a work of historical scholarship.

You can read more of my reviews at JettsionCocoon dot com.

"In the summer of 1957, a Baptist preacher in the segregated South issued a series of fiery sermons denouncing the laziness, promiscuity, criminality, drunkenness, slovenliness, and ignorance of Negroes," says Thaddeus Russell; from the book A Renegade History of the United States. "He suggested that blacks were `thinking about sex' every time they walked down the street. They were too violent. They didn't bathe properly. And their music, which was invading homes all over America, `plunges men's minds into degrading and immoral depths.'"
In the introduction his book, Russell informs the reader that his book is "about the fight that political philosophers have always identified as the central conflict in human history; that between the individual and society." He goes on to say that the founding of the United States "simply began the war [between pleasure and discipline] that continues today."
We recently reviewed a book about the Founding Fathers and the weeks leading up to July 2, 1776. What struck this reviewer was that the founders were the rich elite of the times. Can you imagine the outcry if Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Ross Perot, and the other richest people of today overtly attempted to change our government? [I know they do, but it appears they don't want it on the front page headlines.] What was going on in 1776 with the common "man-on-the-street"? What kind of life did that person enjoy? Russell agrees with John Adams that "probably most inhabitants of early American cities were corrupt and depraved." And it's Russell's conclusion that we owe much of our individual personal liberties to the drunkards, laggards, prostitutes, pirates, slaves, and other renegades of the past.
A Renegade History of the United States is filled with ironies and none more significant than the fact that the thing that would make men give up their own freedom and still believe they were free was self-rule. The Founding Fathers took advantage of the knowledge that democracy is the enemy of personal freedom and once free of British rule, began a concerted effort to swing the pendulum back towards a severe, Victorian moral code. They got laws passed to support their efforts such as divorce laws in Georgia in 1802. According to the great state of Georgia, "...the republic is deeply interested in the private business of it's citizens." This was America? No wonder renegades revolted!

After an introductory chapter, the second and third chapters are, "The Freedom of Slavery" and "The Slavery of Freedom". Old research is presented pointing out how many of the slaves missed the plantation and didn't enjoy freedom after the Civil War. Evidence is presented to show how many of the efforts of the government and civil leaders were ineffective against the renegades. Oh, and that preacher in 1957? None other than Martin Luther King, Jr. According to Russell, "the immoral black people [King] denounced did more to destroy segregation than did the civil rights movement."
In addition to all the irony that Russell exposes, another important aspect explored is that of connections. Specifically, Russell credits slaves with many of our freedoms such as dancing and music, whores with women's rights, working class women with the creation of the weekend, consumerism, and FUN. Russell also credits jazz, legal alcohol, gay and lesbian liberation, and much of the entertainment business to organized crime (which was so much better than the dis-organized crime we have today).
Rather than avoid the politically incorrect topics as do many of his peers, Dr. Russell, the renegade historian, boldly addresses taboos, stereotypes, and prejudices against minorities and immigrants (especially Jews and Italians). He discusses their origins and how they influenced the renegades and helped them succeed in giving us many of our "personal liberty" freedoms we enjoy today. Should the government care what you do alone at home in the dark? If you think not, then thank a renegade!

Like many Americans, I'm pretty ignorant about stuff like history. So what if we're condemned to repeat the past if we don't know it? "It's new to you!" as NBC promised us a few years ago in promoting network reruns. And a whole lot more people know NBC than George Santayana, so I think we know who won that argument.

This week marked the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's first inauguration, and so stories about Lincoln's "controversial" desires to colonize the slaves in Central America were in the news. And I thought, what's controversial? The argument about slavery among the white folk was never really about the "morality" of slavery. It was about whether former slaves could function as "free" white men at the time, which meant seven-day work weeks, no sex, no music, no dancing, and no fun, just livin' the Protestant Work Ethic Dream. In that light, the AP's quote from Lincoln's speech to African Americans that "For the sake of your race, you should sacrifice something of your present comfort for the purpose of being as grand in that respect as the white people" makes perfect sense.

That's what this book has done to my brain.

I've seen Mr. Russell's name on some right-wing list of the most dangerous professors in America in the past, but I gotta think it's the libertairan in you who will enjoy this book. I don't think I've read anything that has so engagingly made the argument that it's the individual who truly makes democracy work, not the politcal parties, not the political movements, not the high ideals nor the moral crusades. And we're not talking about Great Men or mythological heroes. This book celebrates the Gabby Hayes over the John Wayne.

It's an entertaining read with a fresh perspective that will enrage you at times, regardless of your political views, but will make you think about your culture in new ways, for good or ill. Me, I'm disturbed about the whole consumerism thing -- this book makes a case that it was mostly women wanting to buy useless and petty crap, and then go dancing at night, that moved us forward as a nation. The next time I see a woman with 100 pairs of shoes, I feel like it will be my patriotic duty to thank her.

I don't think I've enjoyed reading a contrarian view this much since Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. If you read stuff to primarily confirm your world view and tell yourself how smart you are, stay away. If you like to read to be surprised about how ignorant you may be after all, you should enjoy this quite a bit.