Preserving the White Man’s Republic: Jacksonian Democracy, Race, and the Transformation of American Conservatism by Joshua A. Lynn

Abstract

Reviewed by: Preserving the White Man’s Republic: Jacksonian Democracy, Race, and the Transformation of American Conservatism by Joshua A. Lynn Rachel A. Shelden (bio) Preserving the White Man’s Republic: Jacksonian Democracy, Race, and the Transformation of American Conservatism. By Joshua A. Lynn. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2019. Pp. 288. $39.50 cloth) At a time in which our contemporary politics have become increasingly partisan and ideological, it seems fitting that one of the most exciting trends in the political history of the Civil War era is a reappraisal of mid-nineteenth century political parties and their cultural and ideological foundations. Joining this important conversation [End Page 506] is Joshua Lynn’s Preserving the White Man’s Republic, a cultural and intellectual history of the Democratic Party during what he calls the “interbellum” years between the U.S.-Mexico War and the Civil War. Lynn uses racial, gender, and rhetorical analysis to get to the heart of the Democratic Party’s political philosophy. This philosophy, he argues, revolved around individualism, local democracy, and a cross-sectional culture of “manhood, whiteness, and domesticity” (p. 7). During the Jacksonian era, Lynn explains, Democrats crafted a radical ideology of white male diversity, a “liberal” and “broad-minded” approach that “tolerated much that other Americans considered social, political, or moral evils” (p. 44). But by the interbellum period, the radical Jacksonian ideology had become inherently conservative as the Democrats fought off the various fanatical “isms” that weakened white supremacy. Thus, Lynn’s main historiographical target is the tradition that views Democratic principles as antithetical to white supremacy. Indeed, one of the most compelling aspects of the book is Lynn’s reappraisal of democracy itself. Much like Gregory Downs’s reexamination of Reconstruction politics in After Appomattox, Lynn shows how the foundations of American equality and freedom were (and remain) tied up with regressive and illiberal politics. While Downs focuses on the coercive means by which Republicans secured essential rights during the post-war period, Lynn similarly contends that Democratic ideology “synthesized democracy, equality, and white supremacy,” demonstrating that “democracy is not inherently progressive” (p. 5). Although the Democratic party thrived on this gendered and racial vision of individualism and local democracy in the 1850s, fissures in the coalition began to appear in debates over popular sovereignty in Kansas by the end of the decade. Party leaders who had long assumed that majoritarian democracy was fully compatible with individual rights came to learn that “local majorities . . . were neither necessarily silent nor conservative” (p. 148). As Stephen Douglas debated the meaning of “the people” and their power with African Americans and white Southerners, all began to feel the rising tension between the party’s ideology and practical (sectional) politics. Yet, [End Page 507] Democrats remained committed to both white supremacy and local rule in the post-war years, creating what Lynn calls the basis for contemporary conservativism. Here the interbellum Democrats have key lessons for our current moment: “In the United States,” Lynn concludes, “individualism and democracy can work together to consecrate an inegalitarian present” (p. 180). Like Adam I. P. Smith’s The Stormy Present (2017), Lynn shows that the relationship between ideology and practical politics in the Civil War era was often fluid and complex. Yet, in many places the book feels muddled. The reader never really sees the transition from radical Jacksonian Democracy to conservative interbellum partisan-ship; a chapter on the radical origins and one on the party in transition would have been welcome. Moreover, by the end of the book, Lynn claims that the Democratic party “rejuvenate[d]” conservatism in the 1850s (p. 178) but it is not clear what it was rejuvenated from. Definitions are also elusive and oddly timeless; even a capacious or contingent explanation of progressivism and conservatism would have been helpful. Lynn is undoubtedly right that Democrats were “simultaneously progressive and conservative because the individual at the heart of Democratic ideology was the agent of both liberty and order” (pp. 66–67) but what that tells us about the long trajectory of American conservatism remains unclear. Rachel A. Shelden RACHEL A. SHELDEN is an associate professor of history and the director of the George and...