Obituaries in American Culture

The Egalitarian Life

THE EGALITARIAN LIFE Died In Onondaga, New-York, on the 3d instant, General ASADANFORTH, aged 72. He wasone of our revolutionary patriots, who drewhis sword in defense of liberty when success was doubtful and sufferings certain; when his reward was distant, and the pledge insecure; when fame or infamy, independence or slavery, life or death depended on the contingencies of a day. The glorious result left General Danforth an honorable commission, and his country has not been altogether ungrateful for his services. He has filled several stations of trust and honor, with integrity and usefulness, with ability and applause.—[Bee.] National Intelligencer, 29 September 1818 A ndrew Jackson's 1828 election to the presidency represented a jLJLpolitical and cultural turning point in American history.1 Though social trends associated with the Jacksonian era, especially Americans' concern with equality and reform, grew from changes in both industry and government, they were personified in the new president. Jackson scholar Robert Remini writes, "All of it—the excitement , the ferment, the rapid institutional changes—seemed to come together in the person of General Andrew Jackson, the Hero 27 The Egalitarian Life of the Battle of New Orleans. He symbolized this age, both its positive and negative aspects, its democratic spirit and its driving and greedy ambition."2 The new nation experienced vast changes. Industrialism transformed the economy; territorial expansion spurred rapid, even chaotic, growth in the West; the birthrate dropped; and the standard of living rose. But the most striking trend was the strengthening of egalitarianism, the notion that America should be a nation ofequality . And though large groups of Americans—women, African Americans, and certain immigrant groups such as Irish and German Americans—still lived in a society that was largely unequal, egalitarian rhetoric was so strong that contemporary Europeans "clearly took egalitarianism to be the hallmark of American society."3 The political process became more inclusive, with increased suffrage for white men, including the elimination of many voting restrictions, and the emergence of campaign techniques designed to win the support of new voters.4 Jackson's election also brought more popular participation in the inauguration process.5 And Harry L. Watson argues that the Jacksonians, while supporting only the inclusion of white men in the democratic process, "laid the rhetorical groundwork for a much broader conception of 'the people' in the future, against the resistance of a much more exclusive opposition."6 American ideas about who should be worthy of full citizenship experienced a true metamorphosis. And this new sense of the worth of an individual citizen permeated into other aspects of American lives. Newspaperobituaries, as both record and commemoration, reflect individual attributes in this pivotal era and provide a window to explore some of the intricacies of the new, more egalitarian nation. The characteristics of Americans published and legitimized in obituaries provide evidence that cultural values changed and, indeed, became more inclusive in nature, but because of social resistance to total equality, those characteristics were also influenced by race, class, and gender.7 28 The Egalitarian Life THE NATIONAL NEWSPAPERS Because inclusion does not change overnight, this chapter examines characteristics of Americans in 658 obituaries in 1818 and 1838, ten years before and after Jackson's election to the presidency, a pivotal historical event. The obituaries appeared in Niks' Weekly Register in 1818, Niks' National Register in 1838, the National Intelligencer in 1818, and the Daily National Intelligencer in 1838, publications that were national in scope and were among the most prominent and influential mass publications of the era. Niks' Weekly Register (later Niks' National Register), a forerunner of the modern news magazine, was published from September 1811 through September 1849 as a nonpartisan political weekly. Media scholar Frank Luther Mott heraids it as the "chief reliance of the historiographer for the first halfof the nineteenth century."8 The publication's founder, Hezekiah Niles, included obituaries but warned readers in 1821 that he would make available little space for notices of the passing of private individuals .9 Public figures, he believed, were more worthy of commemoration . Mott calls the National Intelligencer, which published from 1800 to 1865, the "first of the important papers in the new capital, and in some respects greatest of the long line of national papers."10 In his history of the newspaper, William E. Ames credited the long life of the National Intelligencer (later called the Daily National Intelligencer) to its "high journalistic standards...