Another great series of updates-- just got caught up and these story is such a pleasure to read!
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CHAPTER XVIII: THE AGE OF BRYAN
Women’s Suffrage: The 18th Amendment and how it was Won
Women’s Suffrage: The 18th Amendment and how it was Won
Perhaps the greatest event of the Bryan Presidency was the passage of the nineteenth amendment to the United States Constitution which granted women the right to vote. The burgeoning women’s suffrage movement was longstanding with roots to the Seneca Falls Convention and proto-suffragist movements from the mid nineteenth century. Perhaps surprisingly, it was not well-off women who were the primary soldiers leading the charge, though well-financed women were the face of the movement, but poor and working-class women instead.
The root of women’s suffrage was not found in the east coast but the western prairies and farmlands. Women’s suffrage emanated from the work-oriented reality of the agrarian and western way of life. In the aftermath of the Civil War, as I discussed earlier in this work, many families moved west to find new land to settle and farm. Many northern farms and families were broke by the federal confiscation of land and animals for the war effort. Few were ever compensated back for the Lincoln’s illegal seizure of private property for the war effort.[1] Some northern families took the opportunity to start over by heading westward. Likewise, many southern families – whose farms and land were destroyed in the war – also trekked west for a new life.
The movement westward by the stoic and hardy peoples of the American frontier brought new challenges. American-Indian relations were hostile and raids, murders, and revenge killings all too common. Tensions between Republicans and Democrats ran high too; western Republicans were often perceived as agents of big business and carpet baggers looking westward, rather than southward, to steal a fortune. Most Republicans, however, were of the radical agrarian and labor spirit which characterized Midwestern Republicanism. That didn’t matter. As such, the Democratic-Republican divide in the west was a perceived agrarian vs. urban and capitalist division, a division which did exist, but not to the extent that many often claimed. Instead, the division was often between large farming and cattle lords, often supported by Republicans, and the small scale and small time farmer supported by Democrats. One can say that the western base of the Republican Party was proto-agribusiness while the western base of the Democratic Party remained the yeoman farmer and laborer who proved instrumental to Bryan’s election and re-election.
But starting over also brought new opportunities for women. Men, alone, could not start the communities and farms necessary to survive. As such, women took a much more active role in the frontier and were as every bit the equal to man in the laboring effort of building and sustaining the community. Considering this reality, many women felt like they should have a share in the decision-making of the community given their labor to ensure its survival and, in many cases, its flourishment.
Western states like Wyoming, then, though sparsely populated, became the first states to allow local women’s suffrage. It wasn’t long until the local suffrage leagues in the western states spread eastward.
A cartoon showing the westward origins of the women’s suffrage movement.
*
If we make the claim that women’s suffrage was a proto-feminist movement, then it is true that feminism is not so much rooted in the impulse of metaphysical egalitarianism as it is in work opportunity. What motivated the first suffragists was the fact that they had labored to build and sustain the community they lived in. They continued to work even after they had constructed safe communities which were now sustaining themselves from self-sufficient agriculture, barter, and local trades. Politics, in the 1890s and early 1900s, was conceived as being tied to labor. Most local issues were economic in nature. And if women were economic agents, just like men, they should have a say in the economic decision-making of the communities.
This type of feminism, sometimes referred to as bourgeois-feminism by the likes of “authentic feminists” like Simone De Beauvoir and Shulamith Firestone,[2] has been accosted for just being a tool of liberal capitalism. Perhaps it is. But I am not here to get bogged down into the philosophical technicalities of “feminism.”
What we can say, however, is that the women’s suffrage movement – irrespective of whether we consider it feminist or not – was born out of the women’s labor movement; not the organized labor of the trade unions, but the personal sweat and toil of building a home and raising a family. This is what distinguished the “western woman” from the “eastern lady.” The western woman was gritty and headstrong. She gave birth in the wagon and breastfed on a horse. The western woman was muddy and, often, a workaholic. The western woman did not have an inheritance to raise a family on. She labored daily to provide for the needs of the family she was raising.
The eastern lady, by contrast, was more reserved and conservative. She came from well-to-do families who had secured an inheritance long ago. She lived off the patrimony of her ancestors and sought not to defile that noble lineage. The eastern lady, with her manners and customs, had no reason to work. She had money from marriage and from her family’s lineage. She could depend on her wealthy siblings, her brothers, to equally provide for her. Moreover, she certainly could depend on her wealthy husband to provide the moon over and more. The eastern lady could tend the home, with midwives, and raise children in the comfort of luxury instead of the sweat of axe and ox. The eastern lady was happy to let the man deal with the intricacies of politics while she educated the children.
This cultural dynamic is ironic, given today’s political alignment where western and agrarian states are considered “conservative” while the eastern states are considered liberal. But the reality is, the torch of women’s suffrage was from the gritty and muddy women who plowed fields, broke horses, and raised cattle. The light of women’s suffrage slowly marched eastward, awakening other women to the plight and struggle of the women of the west.
Furthermore, women’s suffrage was also born out of the prohibition and anti-prostitution movements that flourished in the west. Because many men travelled west with nothing, made nothing of themselves, they resorted to drinking and prostitution to sooth away their failures. This, of course, often had negative ramifications for the local women. Given, as we’ve mentioned, the role of women in building the towns that these drifters and vagabonds entered, why should they be denied what a man who had done nothing could? Namely, vote.
Thus, Bryan presided over two reformist constitution amendments: the 17th (direct election of senators) and the 18th amendment (women’s suffrage). For a populist despised by progressives, it is perhaps ironic that the “simple idiot” presided over the two great “progressive” amendments of the progressive era. So it was, on December 11, 1904, just four months before leaving office after the election of William McKinley, that Bryan signed the 18th amendment into law.
*Note: In our timeline the 19th amendment secured women’s suffrage. In this timeline it is the 18th Amendment. The Prohibition Amendment (18th in OTL) was not passed yet.
[1] True in our timeline as well.
[2] Cf. Simone De Beauvoir, The Second Sex; Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex
SUGGESTED READING
Rebecca Mead, How the Vote Was Won: Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1868-1914
Rebecca Mead, How the Vote Was Won: Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1868-1914
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An insightful update as always, @volksmarschall I always look forward to seeing another update to this work.
I always look forward to seeing another update to this work.
An erudite look at the vexed questions surrounding the women's suffrage movement. The valuation and compensation of domestic labour remains a pressing question. I've encountered the arguments from 1920s/'30s Germany before now, but never anything from America – or indeed the turn of the century. A fascinating insight on both counts.
For those who would like to become more familiar with the classics, or, perhaps, understand more deeply the richness of the classics, you’re in luck! As part of my regular columns at TIC I’ve covered Hesiod and Homer, and Pseudo-Apollodorus (among others). For Merion West, where I frequently freelance, I provided a five-part exposition on the relevance of the classics to us today. Thus we cover Hesiod, Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes (and, of course, Plato – whom I’ve published on academically). As some of you know, literary essaying, especially on the classics, is my primary form of work apart from my academic writings in political philosophy (and, of course, AAR writing here!).
Those interested in gaining a deeper appreciation of the classics, their context, and content, and the course of the development of Greek literature, could read from that ancient wellspring that existed before its supersession by philosophy.
Homer’s Iliad and the Shield of Love and Strife (an in-depth, well, as in-depth as a 4,000-word essay can be, on the images and themes of strife and love in the Iliad; arguing that the Iliad is a “love epic on a cosmic scale”)
Homer’s Epic of the Family (an exposition on the centrality of the family and filial piety in the Iliad and Odyssey, especially as it relates to Odysseus as the culmination of Homer’s reflections on the role of love in the cosmos)
Why Aeschylus Still Matters Today (a concise reading of the Oresteia trilogy: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, and Eumenides)
Euripides: Oracle of Modernity (an exposition of how Euripides foreshadows modernity in his plays, mostly a reading of the Bacchae with Medea included; references and allusions to The Trojan Women, Andromache, Hecuba, and Iphigenia in Aulis also)
Sophocles and the Necessity of Family (reading Sophocles as a political theorist of tyranny and the role of the family in overcoming tyranny: principally a reading of Antigone and Electra, with included comments on Oedipus Rex and Philotectes)
Aristophanes: The First Poet Critic (a concise exposition of Wasps, Frogs, and Lysistrata from the mad man Aristophanes himself – my personal favorite Greek playwright – and how he provides commentary on Athenian politics, psychology, sociology, literary criticism, and civilizational criticism)
Plato’s Symposium: The Drama and Trial of Eros (an interpretation of Plato’s Symposium that wraps up Aristophanes; understanding Plato as a poet and a “re”-mythologist against the de-mythologizers, especially Eryximachus)
Better Understanding Plato’s Republic (an introduction to Plato and the Republic; non-academic)
You can also access my commentary on the The Republic here: Savagery, Irony, and Satire in Plato’s Republic (ca. 8000 words).
All of these essays are fairly lengthy, ranging from ca. 2400-4100 words. No knowledge of Greek is necessary since I provide my own translations where I directly quoted from the Greek or simply inform what the Greek name or phrase roughly means. You will gain a concise, but I hope, equally contextual and deep, understanding of the Greek classics and how they interact with each other. Or you can Eric Havelock’s long study: Preface to Plato, for a similar but equally alternative exposition of classical literature up to the time of Plato. Well, Havelock and I are in some sort of agreement that Plato’s rejection of poetry is due to the failure of poetry to deal with the metaphysical, ethical, and civilizational crises, that befell ancient Greece during, and in the aftermath of, the Peloponnesian War, though I tend to see Plato as still part of some sort of poetic-“mythological” tradition.
I’m finishing a commentary on the Crito, due out in January, and a long exegetical interpretation of cosmic pathos in Greek literature from Hesiod and Homer to Euripides (due out in May 2020). I’ll also have an essay on the geopolitical dimensions of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War (due out in January also), who is frequently referenced in many of the above essays on the Greek playwrights. So you’ll receive inter-dialogue with Thucydides as well in some of the above essays. Next month I'll have an essay on memory and history in Virgil's Aeneid also published; the work T.S. Eliot called "our classic."
I'll be getting back to this hopefully in the next week or so.
Those interested in gaining a deeper appreciation of the classics, their context, and content, and the course of the development of Greek literature, could read from that ancient wellspring that existed before its supersession by philosophy.
Homer’s Iliad and the Shield of Love and Strife (an in-depth, well, as in-depth as a 4,000-word essay can be, on the images and themes of strife and love in the Iliad; arguing that the Iliad is a “love epic on a cosmic scale”)
Homer’s Epic of the Family (an exposition on the centrality of the family and filial piety in the Iliad and Odyssey, especially as it relates to Odysseus as the culmination of Homer’s reflections on the role of love in the cosmos)
Why Aeschylus Still Matters Today (a concise reading of the Oresteia trilogy: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, and Eumenides)
Euripides: Oracle of Modernity (an exposition of how Euripides foreshadows modernity in his plays, mostly a reading of the Bacchae with Medea included; references and allusions to The Trojan Women, Andromache, Hecuba, and Iphigenia in Aulis also)
Sophocles and the Necessity of Family (reading Sophocles as a political theorist of tyranny and the role of the family in overcoming tyranny: principally a reading of Antigone and Electra, with included comments on Oedipus Rex and Philotectes)
Aristophanes: The First Poet Critic (a concise exposition of Wasps, Frogs, and Lysistrata from the mad man Aristophanes himself – my personal favorite Greek playwright – and how he provides commentary on Athenian politics, psychology, sociology, literary criticism, and civilizational criticism)
Plato’s Symposium: The Drama and Trial of Eros (an interpretation of Plato’s Symposium that wraps up Aristophanes; understanding Plato as a poet and a “re”-mythologist against the de-mythologizers, especially Eryximachus)
Better Understanding Plato’s Republic (an introduction to Plato and the Republic; non-academic)
You can also access my commentary on the The Republic here: Savagery, Irony, and Satire in Plato’s Republic (ca. 8000 words).
All of these essays are fairly lengthy, ranging from ca. 2400-4100 words. No knowledge of Greek is necessary since I provide my own translations where I directly quoted from the Greek or simply inform what the Greek name or phrase roughly means. You will gain a concise, but I hope, equally contextual and deep, understanding of the Greek classics and how they interact with each other. Or you can Eric Havelock’s long study: Preface to Plato, for a similar but equally alternative exposition of classical literature up to the time of Plato. Well, Havelock and I are in some sort of agreement that Plato’s rejection of poetry is due to the failure of poetry to deal with the metaphysical, ethical, and civilizational crises, that befell ancient Greece during, and in the aftermath of, the Peloponnesian War, though I tend to see Plato as still part of some sort of poetic-“mythological” tradition.
I’m finishing a commentary on the Crito, due out in January, and a long exegetical interpretation of cosmic pathos in Greek literature from Hesiod and Homer to Euripides (due out in May 2020). I’ll also have an essay on the geopolitical dimensions of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War (due out in January also), who is frequently referenced in many of the above essays on the Greek playwrights. So you’ll receive inter-dialogue with Thucydides as well in some of the above essays. Next month I'll have an essay on memory and history in Virgil's Aeneid also published; the work T.S. Eliot called "our classic."
I'll be getting back to this hopefully in the next week or so.
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I do apologize for my extended absence here. I'm writing to inform the gentle and patient readers that I'm going to have to put this on permenant hold for the time being. Between graduation, increased writing contracts, finishing a manuscript on Augustine's City of God, and starting a book on Homer's Iliad, I haven't much free time anymore to devote to this AAR. So we will have to unfortunately leave William Jennings Bryan and the supersession of populism by progressivism until I have more spare time to devote to completing this AAR. Though you do have my promise that I intend to complete our journey!
On other notes, several articles of mine were recently published; for philhellenes, you can read my explanation of the geopolitical nature of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War and a commentary on Plato's Crito (you can also read a commentary on Plato's Republic by me published back in 2018).
Excelsior!
On other notes, several articles of mine were recently published; for philhellenes, you can read my explanation of the geopolitical nature of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War and a commentary on Plato's Crito (you can also read a commentary on Plato's Republic by me published back in 2018).
Excelsior!
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No worries. Real life takes precedence, as it should.
Also, congrats on the new publications
Also, congrats on the new publications
Congratulations on all your real-life endeavors. We'll be here if and when you have the time and energy to write us more tales.
CHAPTER XVIII: THE AGE OF BRYAN
Bryan and the Populist Legacy in Tatters
Bryan and the Populist Legacy in Tatters
The election of 1904 may have been the most contentious since the election cycles of 1856 and 1860 which tore the Union apart and descended the nation into a civil war. The Davis Presidency and the secession of the southern states, with a northern Democratic Party still idolizing Jackson with the southern states nominally idolizing Jefferson but having veered strongly in defense of the institution of slavery as protected by the original Constitutional compact—not to mention the ascendency of the Republican Party with Fremont and Lincoln—manifested old sectional and regional differences in American politics. Those sectional and regional differences still rung true in 1904 and tore one party asunder and threatened to tear apart the other.
We have already discussed the unique dynamics of populism, nationalism, and capitalism in the American cultural and political psyche and fabric. It suffices to remind the reader that nationalistic-capitalism was the domain of the New England elite and the suffocating ideology of the Lincolnian Republican Party which had inherited the industrialist and capitalist ideology of the Federalists and Whigs. Northern Democrats, by in large, still the heirs of the old national Democratic-Republican ideology along with a certain Jacksonian spirit of patronage and anti-Bank sentimentalism, was nonetheless fairly pro-business in outlook. These Democrats had swallowed their pride as the populist prairie preacher overwhelmed them with his personal antics and charisma, but now, with Bryan leaving office, they struck with a furious vengeance and pushed for the nomination of Grover Cleveland.
John T. Morgan, the fiery Alabaman and resigned Secretary of State (having opposed the Venezuelan intervention), was still a close personal friend of Bryan and the second well-known face of Democratic populism. Like Bryan, he was a free-silverite. Like Bryan, he was also a professed isolationist and despised American imperialism. While he had resigned after Bryan betrayed his trust over the crisis of Venezuela, Morgan commanded the loyalty of all former Confederates in the Democratic Party having been, himself, a veteran of the Confederate cause. Moreover, he also commanded the loyalty of the Bryanist partisans. Morgan, realizing that McKinley was to be nominated yet again by the Republicans, waged an all out war against the “Bourbon Democrats.”
The dynamics of the 1904 election also saw the upstart Midwestern Republicans, who were largely agrarian, populist, and isolationist in orientation, attempt to block McKinley from the nomination. After all, hadn’t he lost the 1900 election to Bryan? Didn’t the reelection of Bryan prove the importance of the free silver and isolationist ideology? Moreover, these Republicans were adamant that some of the betrayals of the Bryan administration would give them an ample opportunity to win the populist mantle away from the Democratic Party. They fought to have Senator Richard Pettigrew of South Dakota as the nominee. In fact, so effectively were the coalescing of the “Free Silver Republicans” that they kept McKinley from winning the outright nomination on the first and second ballots. But when the minor pro-Gold Standard Republicans stepped aside, McKinley was nominated with Pettigrew receiving 41% of the vote on the third ballot.[1]
A statue of Senator Richard Pettigrew of South Dakota. A leading member of the Free Silver Republican faction, Pettigrew exemplified a strand of anti-capitalist populist nationalism in the Republican Party. Most of the Free Silver Republicans hailed from the Midwest, stretching from Ohio to Idaho. Many of their heirs could be seen in the Old Republicans like William Edgar Borah, Robert Taft, and Gerald Nye.
While the Republicans managed to squash their free-silver and populist rebels, some of whom defected to the Democrats in protest, the Democratic Party was torn apart by the interior-coastal split. Cleveland had been the Governor of New York before his election to the Senate as a New Yorker.[2] Bryan, of course, was the prairie Presbyterian from the heartlands. Morgan was the populist southerner and opponent of the pro-Gold and high tariff ideology of Cleveland and the pro-Gold Democrats. With McKinley nominated, populist and free-silver Democrats saw the potential nomination of Cleveland as the culling blow to their movement. How could they survive if both major parties ran a candidate on roughly the same platform?
On the first ballot, the populists were so divided that Cleveland secured first place with 45% of the vote. After that, however, Morgan and the Bryan partisans make an accord with each other to see all other populist candidates withdraw and support Morgan with Bryan promising his endorsement of the Alabaman. Consequently, Morgan was nominated on the second ballot with 52% of the vote. After Morgan had won the nomination, the southern wing of the Democratic Party which had universally supported their favorite son broke out in joyous song and began singing “The Bonnie Blue Flag,” believing that they had saved the southern ideology of populism and anti-capitalism from enslavement to their hated northern imperialist foil.
Disgruntled at what they saw as the shameful return of the spoils system, Bourbon Democrats left the convention in a mass protest and, a week later, nominated Grover Cleveland on an anti-corruption, anti-Chinese, pro-Gold, pro-tariff policy. Using his connections and the network of sympathetic Democrats nationwide, Cleveland secured himself on most ballots across the Union with the exception of a few Deep South states which prevented his name from appearing.
A painting of John Tyler Morgan as Secretary of State. Morgan was a former Confederate general and staunch Jeffersonian and free-silver populist. A great statesman, Morgan was remembered for his staunch opposition to the growing pro-Gold ideology taking hold in the Democratic Party. About Grover Cleveland he said, “I hate the ground that man walks on.”
The splitting of the Democratic Party was mended somewhat by refugee free silver Republicans running into their ranks but the damage was done. Without an unified Democratic Party in the north, the Democrats surrendered all northern states to the Republicans. McKinley won in an electoral landslide. Winning all states except the former Confederate ones, McKinley’s resounding victory—in part, due to Democratic Party fracturing—frantically sent him and Theodore Roosevelt (a hero of the Cuban War and Venezuelan crisis) to the White House. It also secured a Republican majority in the House and Senate for the first time since the Bryan Presidency. It seemed the fracturing of the populist orientation of the Democratic Party had violently caused a return of the Republican Ascendency which had controlled American politics since the death of Abraham Lincoln. Democrats hung their head in shame and humiliation—at least the populist ones anyway. Their program of free-silver, anti-immigration, and isolationism seemed all but dead. As Morgan tearfully said to his fellow Democrats in a closed door meeting, the election of McKinley meant the imposition of the Gold Standard, an increased federal budget for the American navy, and African expansionism.
The election of William McKinley was a watershed moment in American history. It signaled the end of the meteoric rise of populism, the suppressing of the populist sentiments in both the Democratic and Republican Parties (with dire long term consequences as a result), the birth of progressivism, and the emergence of a new quasi-internationalist and capitalist era never before seen in American history.
[1] Historically, the Free Silver Republicans existed from 1896-1900. Many members supported Bryan’s historical presidential campaigns. After 1900, some even became Democrats after the election of William McKinley. The spirit of the Free Silver Republicans continued through the Second World War. Gerald Nye was probably the most important spiritual successor of the Free Silver Republicans. A Republican Senator from North Dakota, the North Dakotan Republican blamed Wall Street bankers from America’s entry into the First World War (the Nye Commission) and was a prominent member of the America First Committee opposing American entry into the Second World War until the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
[2] This is for our timeline only.
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A timely look at the machinations of the Democratic apparatus during a watershed election.
To be perfectly, if TR ascends to the Oval Office ITTL, he’d use these types as the insular foils to his progressive and internationalist policies. Hell, ITTL Hollywood might be primed to use the Southern populist as a stock villain for movies about Washington politics.
One party split, the other party shaken. Sounds like the United States is on the cusp of a transition between party systems here.
I don't think it would be quite so clear-cut in Hollywood, honestly. Let's not forget we're approaching the era that gave us Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind, and the Lost Cause movement hasn't yet reached its proverbial high water mark.
I don't think it would be quite so clear-cut in Hollywood, honestly. Let's not forget we're approaching the era that gave us Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind, and the Lost Cause movement hasn't yet reached its proverbial high water mark.
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Maybe... but if the forces that started the two World Wars and the Civil Rights Movement are still in place, ITTL New Hollywood would be more than happy to use the Southern politician as an avatar for the worst Washington politics has to offer. It can have nothing to do with party affiliations and everything to do with examining a culture of corruption and stupidity.
it's difficult to see where real life ends and where AAR begins immersive atmosphere!
immersive atmosphere!
It is important to recall, as implied by Specialist, that until the 1960s and 1970s, America's cultural, literary, and intellectual class was actually predominately Southern. Think of most of the great American writers of the post-Civil War period, with the exception of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway, the luminaries of the the American revivalist period were southerners like John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind!, perhaps my favorite film and one of my favorite books), William Faulkner, etc. Plus the Civil War compact was still in force, that unspoken alliance which acknowledged the Union was in the right but the Confederate cause was heroic and noble.
Now if we're envisioning a modern Hollywood, undeniably so. Just like in our timeline. The Golden Age of Hollywood, which was itself romanticist, naturally romanticized the Civil War and Confederates in particular (do we recall that Rooster Cogburn was a Confederate!). The end of the Golden Age brought with it a new zeitgeist influenced by civil rights, immigration, and progressivism, which naturally led to a rejection of the romanticist strand of Civil War memory and construction.
This is actually a rather fascinating topic for American cultural studies. The American Renaissance (1830s-1860ish) is dominated by Northerners, especially children of the Puritan heritage or old Dutch Calvinists, from Hawthorne to Melville to the Transcendentalists (Emerson, Thoreau, etc.). The Jazz Age was mostly Midwesterners allured by the illusions of hedonistic progressivism, and then the Revival period of the 30s-50s was predominately southern in character and disposition. And after that nothing important has come out of America!
Well, we will get to something of a world war eventually. Though the alliances in that war will be a sight to behold!
Good to see you back
It's good to back, sort of! xD
it's difficult to see where real life ends and where AAR begins
As a published and cited American historian and essayist, and as the introduction so long ago promised, part of the purpose of this AAR was to show why our modern political struggles are, through the inspection of American history, not so surprising after all. While it seems silly to think about it now, an essay I wrote back in in the summer of 2016 said that we shouldn't be surprised by Trump's nomination. Trump fit the old model of Republican isolationism and populism that so dominated the party (especially in the West and Midwest) until it was forced underground in the Cold War. It was even included in the weekly Round up 10 by the History News Network for the week when it was published (plus, it inflates the ego to be listed alongside Ken Burns, Joseph J. Ellis, and Rick Perlstein). Alas, now I do more writing about American history in Paradox than in real life since I mostly concentrate on literature and classics now. Funny how things turn out.
I think part of the excitement of studying American cultural history is to see how the old culture is still very much with us despite the pretensions of progress. So while the publishing in the field has slowed, the bookshelf remains stacked.