Race And Class Politics In New York City Before The Civil War

Challenging the studies of several historians and providing a perspective on nineteenth-century politics, Anthony Gronowicz demonstrates that the Democratic Party employed the racist ideology of democratic republicanism to shape the political values of New York's labor force. He also sheds new light on the crucial role that white male workers played within the Party's organization. Gronowicz begins his cogent analysis by tracing the roots of racism in the colonial period, and then illuminates the economics of slavery and its significance for the emergence of the democratic-republican ideal. He delves into such topics as the relationship between European artisans and the African American community in the early nineteenth century, the impact of Democratic ideology on a segmented labor force, the influence of the Working Men's movement and Loco Focos, the rise of the market culture, and the ways in which African American New Yorkers shaped American cultural identity. Gronowicz also offers a quantitative portrait of the 1844 New York City Democratic Party, detailing its significant Irish and German working class components as well as its organizational and ideological ties to the South. Finally, he examines the "new republicanism," which excluded slavery from its social vision, and evaluates the political defeat of democratic republicanism through the agency of the Civil War and accompanying draft riots. This insightful, thought-provoking volume enriches one's understanding of antebellum politics, economics, and culture, and it provides a solid basis for further discussions on class and race in nineteenth-century America.