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Journal of Interdisciplinary History 31.4 (2001) 655-656



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Book Review

Inheriting the Revolution:
The First Generation of Americans


Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans. By Joyce Appleby (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 2000) 322 pp. $26.00

Using a fascinating perspective, the author asks what happened to the first age cohort in the world to grow up under a democracy with free elections and without royalty, nobility, or a strong (northern) plutocracy. Only slavery marred the experiment (its dominating incongruity may leave some readers wondering whether the South should have become separate when the first cohort reached age twenty or thirty). Indeed, the cultural and intellectual disparities between the North and South provide the dominant theme throughout the book, which ends with a discussion of national identity.

Appleby kept records for every individual name that she encountered in her readings, supplemented strongly by studying more than 200 autobiographies written by persons born between 1776 and 1800. In this rich background, she found cultural manifestations that sometimes resulted in serious consequences. We can make tests of her hypothesis by examining previous and subsequent cohorts (in matters, say, of dueling or lynching), or by judging cohorts in other quasidemocratic countries, such as the Netherlands or the future Canada or Australia. [End Page 655]

American political activity is described as being in ferment since wider voting opportunities for individuals arose. Property qualifications were weakened. Federalists lost to Jeffersonians. Middling Americans entered the political arena on an independent basis, casting off a national elite. Appleby describes this new freedom by detailing disputes in three places--the U.S. Military Academy, the New York Episcopal Church, and the Cincinnati medical community.

The activity is broadened by painting the details of the new cohort's economic participation. The commerce and careers of persons in both the rural and non-farm areas are depicted as engendering hope, buoyancy, optimism, and initiative--the spirit of capitalism.

Six technical changes are briefly analyzed: the rapid integration of farm surpluses at the frontier, the advent of steam power, the use of corporations, the proliferation of banks, the expansion of retailing, and the perfection of machine tools. Others may see the early decades as proceeding slowly, especially after 1815, a period when the chosen cohort was in young adulthood.

Appleby is at her best in the description of activities at the personal level. Who else might generalize about the position of stepmothers and servants, the assertiveness of hired help, and the rise in the esteem of children?

The dominant theme of the book seems to be that the vaunted birth of a new spirit of equality, liberty, and freedom was indeed real. Appleby's stress on equality in the sense of classlessness--and her disinclination to distinguish poor and rich--is something of an enigma. Does Appleby mean that the number of log cabins was fast disappearing after 1800 or 1830? Were the shares of the top 20 percent of wealth holders or income recipients decreasing? The statistical evidence probably contradicts this hypothesis of well-being. The author stresses rates of ownership, but it is highly doubtful that those rates increased as the non-farm sector rose.

The central thesis is that a new democratic cohort was divorced from the past inheritance processes (certainly from primogeniture). Yet, this was not a new nation with equal distribution of past inheritances, nor a society free of the cultural rigidity of the past.

The author presents no statistical table, no depiction of economic classes, and no evidence of the real cyclical hardships experienced by her cohort. However, there probably should be none since this book narrates the constructive and creative activity of middling white individuals--those with hope and spirit in the world's first democratic cohort.

Lee Soltow
Ohio University

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