Columbia Rising: Civil Life on the Upper Hudson from the Revolution to the Age of Jackson by John L. Brooke (review)

In the simplest sense, Columbia Rising is a history of Columbia County, New York, from the Revolution to the 1830s. But there is nothing simple about this book. As John L. Brooke explains in the preface, it is not just about the history of a time and place but about the history of a theory. That theory, drawn from Richard Price's Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution, described how the American Revolution made political legitimacy dependent on the "informed consent and equal participation among the wide body of the citizenry" (2). To illustrate how this theory was implemented, Brooke focuses on the intense and often violent struggles in Columbia County over how that consent and that participation came about. He is interested not merely in citizenship, that precisely defined status that enabled participation in the "deliberative public sphere of life" but also, heavily influenced by Jürgen Habermas, in less formal levels of inclusion in what he calls an arena of implied consent that relied on a "persuasive culture of sensibility" (8). His aim is nothing less than to define "the shape of civil society and the public sphere in post-Revolutionary America" (11).

Given Brooke's belief that this story could be revealed only through a minutely detailed and penetrating look into the texture of a time and place, he had necessarily to focus his study on a small piece of America, like Columbia County. Yet this particular choice both hindered and aided his purposes. On the one hand, he wanted his story to illustrate broader themes in the history of the early republic. But Columbia's distinctive colonial legacy of great landlords and their tenants makes the reader question whether Columbia's story is really representative of the rest of America. On the other hand, Columbia's unique past makes it important because it was the home of Martin Van Buren, the principal architect of the American party system.

Brooke argues that Columbia's history ultimately has broad national significance for a study of political consent and participation because Van Buren's political thinking was critically shaped by the distinctive political culture of his home county. Brooke tells his story through a series of often overlapping chapters, each of which covers a brief period in which some critical event or development took place. When he focuses on the deliberative sphere that involved citizenship, voting, and legislation, neither the analysis nor the findings will seem unfamiliar to most historians, though his many detailed and palpable examples of the process in Columbia County will be illuminating. Tenancy, gender, and race all had the effect of casting one outside the boundaries of citizenship and thus outside the realm of the deliberative public sphere. Linguistic difficulties might also create a barrier to inclusion. The Dutch and the Germans, except in times of political crisis, were routinely neglected. The illiterate, regardless of race and ethnicity, could also have only a very weak connection with the deliberations and institutions of government. When Brooke turns to the persuasive public sphere, however, he provides a highly interesting and complex analysis that is both nuanced and new.

Outside of the deliberative sphere lay a newly emerging public sphere fashioned by post offices, newspapers, and civil associations. This was not a sphere of coercion, but a political culture of persuasion, empathy, and sympathy. Here those assumed dependent and therefore excluded from political decision-making might have a voice and wield influence. But in Columbia County, this was always a difficult challenge. Despite New York State's final abolition of slavery in 1827, Columbia County was never able to muster a majority for abolition. African Americans eventually developed a place in the domain of persuasion, but they swam against a strong tide in this mid-Hudson region. Women made striking...