Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850

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Oxford University Press, USA, Oct 7, 2004 - History - 446 pages
Since its publication in 1984, Chants Democratic has endured as a classic narrative on labor and the rise of American democracy. In it, Sean Wilentz explores the dramatic social and intellectual changes that accompanied early industrialization in New York. He provides a panoramic chronicle of New York City's labor strife, social movements, and political turmoil in the eras of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. Twenty years after its initial publication, Wilentz has added a new preface that takes stock of his own thinking, then and now, about New York City and the rise of the American working class.
 

Contents

Stollenwercks Panorama 1815
3
By Hammer and Hand Art1sans In the Mercantile City
23
The Crafts in Flux
24
Entrepreneurs
35
Small Masters
42
Journeymen
48
A Restive Peace
60
Artisan Republicanism
61
Union Men
220
Union Democracy
227
Strikes and Politics
230
Class Consciousness and the Republic of Labor
237
Radicalism and the Union
254
Oppositions To the Crisis of 1836
255
The Republic of the Bowery
257
Toward an Ideology of Free Labor
271

Redeeming the Revolution
63
Republican Religion
77
Articels Emblemattical of Our Trade
87
Republicanism and Conflict
97
Artisan Republicanism and the Limits of Bourgeois Individualism
101
Metropolitan Industrialization
107
Metropolitan Manufacturing and the Bastardization of Craft
108
Clothing Shoes and Furniture
119
Printing
129
Subcontracting and the Building Trades
132
Shipbuilding and Food Preparation
134
Craft Workers in the Industrializing Metropolis
140
Entrepreneurs and Radicals
145
Impious Artisans and the Uses of Morality
153
Property Producers Rights and the Assault on Competition
157
The Outcasts Organize
168
Background to Crisis
171
The Rise and Fall of the Working Men
172
Dramatis Personae
176
The Radical Movement
190
The Coup
201
The End
208
Artisan Radicalism and the Paradoxes of Politics
211
A Phalanx of Honest Worth The General Trades Union of the City of New York
219
The Crisis of 1836
286
The Legacy of Union
294
Panic and Prejudice
299
Free Labor and the Republic of Capital
302
Washingtonian Temperance
306
Nativism Mutuality and Liberty
315
Reformation
324
Subterranean Radicals
326
Land Reform
335
The American Laboring Confederacy and the Mechanics Mutual
343
Trade Societies Immigrants and Labor Radicalism
349
Radicalism and SelfRespect
356
The Labor Cr1s1s of 1850
363
Movements and Men
364
To City Hall
372
The Tailors Strike
377
Party Politics Dissolution and the Aftermath
383
The Most Radical City in America
386
Ep1logue Hudson Street 1865
391
Appendix
397
Bibliographical Essay
423
Index
433
Copyright

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About the author (2004)

Robert sean Wilentz was born in 1951 in New York City. He earned his first B.A. from Colunbia University in 1972 and his second from Oxford University in 1974 on a Kellett Fellowship. He continued his education at Yale University where he earned his M.A. degree in 1975 and his PhD. in 1980. His writings are focused on the importance of class and race in the early national period. He has also co-authored books on nineteenth-century religion and working class life. His book The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln, won the Bancroft Prize. He has also written about modern U.S. history in his book, The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008. He has been the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor of History at Princeton University since 1979. Robert Wilentz is also a contributing editor at The New Republic. He writes on music, the arts, history and politics. He received a Grammy nomination and a 2005 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for musical commentary on the musician Bob Dylan.

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