Parades and the Politics of the Street: Festive Culture in the Early American Republic

5. Songs, Signs, and Symbols: The Everyday Discourse of Popular Politics

Songs, Signs, and Symbols: The Everyday Discourse of Popular Politics FOR MANY EARLY NATIONAL AMERICANS the periodic battles between and within various rites, festivals, and parades were enhanced by a diverse and colorful array of emblems, songs, and symbols. Not only did they give life and color to organized celebrations, they allowed ordinary Americans to participate in the politics of the street on a day-to-day basis. The French Revolution played a vital role in this process, magnifyingthe power and the popularity of this kind of everyday politics by furnishing new songs and symbols, and by investing more familiar ones with new significance. The tri-colored cockade a woman wore pinned to her hat, the "Marseillaise" sung by laborers and seafarers in a dockside tavern, and the powerful and assertive Marianne-like figure of liberty that graced American coins were all a common or garden part of everydaylife throughout the 17905, providing further evidence of the ways politics permeated the lives of all manner of Americans. When people expressed opposition to the personnel arid the policies of the duly constituted federal government, the songs they sang, and the badges and colored ribbons they wore on their hats and coats became a cause of real concern to the Federalists.As a result the Federalists and their supporters became quite adept at fostering their own songs, signs, and symbols, and popular politicsin the 17908 was in large part a battle between these rival expressions of partisan allegiance. It was impossible, however, completely to eliminate popular agency in the use and interpretation of these base elements of partisan popular politics, and neither party was able to prevent the appropriation and interpretation of these signs and symbols by ordinary Americans. Throughout the 17908, this particularpolitical discourse belonged to and in the streets, 5 Songs, Signs, and Symbols 153 where rural and urban Americans of different classes, sexes, and races were able to express a variety of opinions by employing badges, songs, and symbols in different ways and to different effects. Inevitably the songs, signs, and symbols of the 17905 retained some of the power and meanings ordinary Americans had invested in them: it would be a reductio ad absurdum to label as a Democratic Republican or a Federalist the freed slave who wore a badge depicting a liberty cap, or the white woman who read Mary Wollstonecraft and wore a tri-colored cockade, or the rural laborer or seafarer who sang the "Marseillaise" in a tavern named The Liberty Tree. The partisan battle for control over the use and meaning of simple songs, signs, and symbols underscores the vitality of the popular political culture that comprised such a vital part of the politics of the street. Over the course of the 17905 the white male partisans of the Democratic Republican party worked hard to gain control of the symbolic language of the American and French Revolutions, and to ensure that their versions triumphed over those of the Federalists. They assumed the tri-colored cockade as a party emblem and the "Marseillaise" as a party anthem, and gave the liberty cap and libertypole a new prominence in the party's ritual culture. In the process, however, the Democratic Republicans sanitized and de-radicali/ed many of the most popular rites and symbols, rejecting some and turning others into an everyday part of the political activity and identity of white male American citizens, shorn of much of their revolutionary significance. But it was not until the end of the century that the Democratic Republicans were able to take control of the songs, badges, and symbols of the streets, and throughout the 17908 their meaning within early national political culture had been deeply contested by all manner of Americans. These ordinary folk played a vital role in the development of a symbolic language of popular political culture, a language of songs, signs, and symbols that was crucial to the creation of a national popular political culture. Men, women, and children colored the streets of the early republic with the cockades and ribbons that they wore; from theaters, taverns, private homes, and the streets came the sound of Americans singing the songs of the French Revolution; in urban and rural communities alike, new and refurbished liberty poles and trees occupied central places; and images and representations ofliberty abounded on coins, on large illuminated transparencies , on newspaper mastheads, and on tavern signs. All around Americans were...