Preserving the White Man's Republic: Jacksonian Democracy, Race, and the Transformation of American Conservatism by Joshua A. Lynn (review)

Once again the United States is floundering in its attempts to address the exasperated wrath that erupted in response to a state-sponsored lynching in Minneapolis. In a numbingly sad, familiar tale, a White policeman, whose actions were passively legitimized by the inaction of his uniformed posse, crushed George Floyd's neck, murdering him. Derek Chauvin used his knee rather than a rope, but he was emboldened by the same national ideology as in years past. In Preserving the White Man's Republic, Joshua Lynn explores how the Democratic Party of the 1840s and 1850s "reimagined democracy as a tool for conserving white men's individual rights and equality, reinventing American conservatism in the process" (3).

In doing so, Lynn presents a persuasive explanation of the origins of a system that ensures both racialized brutality and the reality that the United States remains unequipped to address the resulting anguish and injustice. Lynn argues that the antebellum Democratic Party developed a political ideology that eschewed progressivism in favor of maintaining what its leadership saw as enlightened political superiority over its Old World rivals. The resulting politics meant that at its core, the Democratic Party of the mid-nineteenth century was one that dogmatically and destructively championed a troika of individualism, majoritarian democracy, and White supremacy.

Lynn's chapters chart a chronological journey from the late 1840s to the eve of secession in 1860. The first focuses on northern Democrats who worked to define the United States in opposition to the "Boschian triptych of abolitionism, nativism, and temperance that flayed men of their autonomy, manhood, and whiteness" (16). The second reveals how party leaders downplayed regional differences by stressing common distaste for the fanaticism of antislavery activists, campaigners for gender equality, and the plight of immigrant minorities. This meant championing "discovery, industrial progress, geographical expansionism," and, crucially, a "limited state" (37, 67). In chapter three, Lynn reveals how Democrats evolved their approach to antagonistic causes and "turned to politics of slavery, race, and sexuality … to argue that only their party would preserve the purity of the white man's republic" during the realigning elections of 1854 and 1855 (70). The fourth chapter underlines the ways in which this renewed focus on supposed threats to democracy destroyed the rival Whig Party. Whig defectors to the Democrats then lent a measure of conservative "rhetorical heft" to disguise "distinctly unconservative" politics as a uniquely American brand of conservatism (118). Chapter five concentrates on James Buchanan's electoral victory of 1856, a contest that saw "the consolidation of Democrats' conservatism nationwide" (120). Buchanan's stumpers used the candidate's "manipulable domestic life" as a bachelor to enforce a gendered, masculine conservatism. Buchanan, though, became almost immediately emasculated in the eyes of northern Democrats due to his considerable and repeated acquiescence to southern demands (143). This emasculation typified Democratic fissures and is the focus of Lynn's final chapter. Despite the 1856 victory, the reliance on the "brittle tools" of individualism, majoritarian democracy, and White supremacy and the ideological obligation to limit centralized power meant that localized factionalism prospered (179). Without the ability to shed these tenets, Democratic leadership attempted to regain control in Charleston in 1860 by "basing policy on 'abstract rights' and 'theoretical views,' [and meant that] the Democratic Party spurned practical conservatism to resemble the impassioned fanatics they had previously lampooned" (173).

Lynn's research is comprehensive, and his prose is entertaining and boisterous. He presents a potentially dry political narrative as an intriguing tale that sheds much needed light on the unquestionably manmade reasons for the present-day national political emergency. As such, this is a text that should not be limited to an academic audience. Lynn's findings are too important and too well-presented not to find a wide and appreciative readership.