The Gilded Age, 1865–1900

2019 ◽  
pp. 99-128
Author(s):  
Gillis J. Harp
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
Evangelical Protestantism ◽  
Conservative Evangelical ◽  
Laissez Faire

Richard Hofstadter argued that the new laissez-faire conservatism that became dominant during the last third of the nineteenth century was different from its predecessors in several respects, including in its secularism. Some popular preachers still attempted to accommodate laissez-faire principles and socially conservative evangelical Protestantism. A few conservatives refused to accept much of the new conservatism. These Protestant clerical intellectuals (both northern and southern) dissented from conservatism’s new orientation and offered a social theory still rooted in Protestant theology. This chapter highlights where these old-fashioned dissidents differed from their fellow conservatives and seeks also to describe their alternative conservative vision. Their story serves to clarify just how significant a shift occurred among conservatives during the Gilded Age and illuminates the last gasp of a more theocratic tradition among American Protestants.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 234-242
Author(s):  
Christopher W. Calvo
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
Industrial Capitalism ◽  
Laissez Faire ◽  
Full Century

Summarizing the developments in nineteenth-century academic economics, this chapter draws comparisons and discovers new connections between America’s first full century of economists. German historical economics is discussed in the context of nineteenth-century protectionism and industrial capitalism of the Gilded Age. Parallels are found between antebellum and post–Civil War expressions of opposition toward finance. And special attention is paid to the evolution of conservative economics during the middle decades of the nineteenth century, and ultimately the ascendancy of laissez-faire capitalism in the conservative economic mind.

Traveling in Old and New Worlds with John Jea, the African Preacher, 1773–1816

1999 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-490 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN SAILLANT
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Thought ◽  
Evangelical Protestantism ◽  
Laissez Faire ◽  
Black Man ◽  
Liberal Individualism ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

Nineteenth-century exslave narratives allow us to understand the way in which freedmen, freedwomen, and runaways experienced and enjoyed liberty. In such narratives, liberty, naturally enough, it seems, is the opposite of slavery. Once free, one was no longer a slave. Yet we should view this understanding of slavery and freedom as a problem in itself, as a rhetorical and time-bound use of the notions of enslavement and liberty. This article argues that an early exslave narrativist, John Jea, articulated a dichotomous, unrealistic, yet characteristically American, notion of the relationship between slavery and freedom: that anyone who is not a slave is free. Expressed in evangelical Protestantism, liberal individualism, and laissez-faire economics, this notion was a staple of nineteenth-century American ideology. It is no longer a convincing notion, since it obscures not only the variety of the experience of slaves, freemen, and freewomen, but also the forms of bondage that accompanied slavery and survived it. As a man of the nineteenth century, Jea seems never to have comprehended the ways that he remained unfree once he was manumitted. As a black man and exslave, Jea might have been one of those most sensitive to the persistence of bondage after slavery, but he was not. Surely this suggests how convincing, yet how false, was new thought about slavery and freedom in the early nineteenth century.

TRADITIONALIST DISSENT: THE REORIENTATION OF AMERICAN CONSERVATISM, 1865–1900

2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 487-518
Author(s):  
GILLIS J. HARP
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
American Conservatism ◽  
Evangelical Protestantism ◽  
Signal Characteristics ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Laissez Faire

The last couple of decades has brought a renewed interest in American conservatism among historians. Yet most recent studies have focused on the emergence of neoconservatism after World War II and virtually no recent scholarly work has pursued the history of conservatism before the 1920s. Both Richard Hofstadter and Clinton Rossiter agreed that the late nineteenth century was an important watershed in the evolution of American conservative thought. Hofstadter argued that the new laissez-faire conservatism that became dominant during the Gilded Age was remarkable in that “it lacked many of the signal characteristics of conservatism as it is usually found.” Yet some conservatives refused to accept key features of what Clinton Rossiter once branded this new “contradictory conservatism.” This essay focuses mostly on Protestant clerical intellectuals (both Northern and Southern) who dissented from the new orthodoxy and attempted to preserve older conservative principles. Against the laissez-faire conservatives' hyperindividualism, these dissenting conservatives stressed an organic view of the social order and the importance of mediating institutions such as family and church. To the others' secularism, they offered a social theory suffused with evangelical Protestantism. This analysis highlights where these dissidents differed from their fellow conservatives and seeks also to elucidate their alternative conservative vision of the American republic. Such a study serves to clarify just how profound an ideological shift occurred among conservatives during the Gilded Age and illuminates some of the persistent tensions within American conservatism still evident today.

Staking out an inshore commons: Pound-netting in Gilded Age America

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-15
Author(s):  
David Ress
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Fish Species ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Important Food ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Over Exploitation ◽  
Specific Part

Controversy over the expansion of pound netting in the largest US fisheries of the late nineteenth century marked an early conflict between those who considered fisheries a commons and those who sought to establish property rights in a fishery. Pound-netters physically staked out a specific part of the sea for their exclusive use, and their conception of their property rights resulted in significant overfishing of important food – and oil – fish species. Here, just as with the commons that many economists argue inevitably result in over-exploitation of a resource, regulation was rebuffed and the fisheries collapsed.

‘Laissez-faire’ or Active Intervention? The Nature of the British and Foreign Bible Society's Patronage of the Translation of the Chinese Union Versions

2010 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
GEORGE KAM WAH MAK
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Financial Support ◽  
Controlling Factor ◽  
Greek Text ◽  
Bible Translation ◽  
Active Intervention ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
Ideological Influence ◽  
Laissez Faire

AbstractThis paper investigates the nature of the British and Foreign Bible Society's (BFBS) patronage of the translation of the Chinese Union Versions (CUVs), the largest Chinese Protestant Bible translation project initiated by the western Protestant churches in the nineteenth century. Drawing on André Lefevere's concept of patronage, it delves into how the BFBS served as a controlling factor of the translation of the CUV by examining the BFBS's financial support to the translation project, conferment of honorary titles to the translators and ideological influence on the translators’ choice of Greek text as the basis for the CUVs New Testament translation.

Some Classical Economists, Laissez Faire, and the Factory Acts

1952 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lloyd R. Sorenson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Laissez Faire

Until very recently scholars have been able to solve certain problems of historical interpretation to their own and presumably to their reader's satisfaction by merely uttering the magic words, “laissez faire.” Thus, much of what was done and most of what was not done, some of what was good and practically all of what was evil in nineteenth-century England and America have been accounted for by a facile reference to laissez faire. During the past few years, however, several studies have cast much doubt on the validity of this catchall interpretation. Laissez faire, it seems now, is a principle more easily imposed upon nineteenth-century data than found there; and in successive investigations supposed instances of this principle have dropped away one by one.

State Intervention in Mid-Nineteenth Century Britain: Fact or Fiction?

1983 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
P.W.J. Bartrip
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
State Regulation ◽  
Individual Freedom ◽  
The Third ◽  
The People ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
Government Interference ◽  
Laissez Faire

The question of the degree of state intervention in nineteenth-century Britain has interested generations of scholars since the beginning of the present century. Did mid-nineteenth century England constitute an “age of laissez-faire” which gave way to an “age of collectivism,” or did an “age of mercantalism” merge into one of state regulation during which process, even in the early and mid-Victorian period, the state exercised considerable control over the day-to-day lives of its citizens? These are two of the questions over which there has been extended debate.The term laissez-faire has been employed in a variety of ways by different writers, by no means all of whom have troubled to define their understanding of the expression. Recently Professor Perkin has argued that during the nineteenth century two distinct meanings were attributed to it (and seven to the related, though antithetical, concept, collectivism!). For the purposes of this paper the term is taken to mean the philosophy, policy and, above all, the practice of minimal government interference in the economy.The most influential case for an “age of laissez-faire” was presented by Dicey in Law and Public Opinion. In this Dicey identified three overlapping legislative phases: Quiescence (1800-1830), Individualism (1825-1870), and Collectivism (1865-1900). The first consisted of an absence of legislation, the second of “constant” parliamentary activity to abolish restraints on individual freedom and the third of state intervention “for the purpose of conferring benefit upon the mass of the people” at the expense of some loss of individual freedom.

The Steamboat, Safety and the State: Government Reaction to New Technology in a Period of Laissez-Faire

2011 ◽  
pp. 51-74
Author(s):  
John Armstrong ◽  
David M. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
State Government ◽  
Government Intervention ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Steam Power ◽  
Role Of Government ◽  
Government Response ◽  
Laissez Faire ◽  
The Government

This chapter explores the government reaction to steam power and the issues of public safety that surrounded it. In particular, it questions the lack of prominent government intervention until the middle of the nineteenth century. It studies the economic advantages of steam over sail; the new hazards associated with steam power and the causes and rates of accidents; the call for government intervention which grew out of these hazards; an analysis of the lack of government response to this pressure for close to thirty years; and a study and assessment of the action eventually taken. It concludes by bringing these points together and places them into the wider context of maritime safety, the role of government, the problematic aspects of laissez-faire politics, and the difficulties inherent in the transition to new technology.

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