Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic

Dr. Joanne B. Freeman has provided a thought-provoking history of the U.S. Founders. Extensively researched and documented, her findings and theories are solidly supported. Dr. Freeman avoids the unfortunately common temptation to simply "write off" what may seem to modern eyes and ears as irrational behavior. Rather, she develops a solid theory that convincingly and rationally explains what other historians have regarded as possible madness. Her description of the "Rules of Honor" is sufficiently detailed to give the uninitiated a real understanding of how concern for reputation and personal honor played such a heavy role during the period in question. I was personally pleased to see Dr. Freeman also resist the very common temptation to regard behavior dictated by rules of honor as childish. While she cites individuals and their reasoning behind resisting dueling or considering it paradoxically cowardly, for example, she never resorts to chiding the individuals involved. This book is a major contribution to understanding of the period. I would recommend A Proper Sense of Honor by Caroline Cox as additional reading.

Disclaimer: I am not an historian of the early Republic but rather a professor of American Studies and modern visual culture. So why did I assign this book to my intro class in AMST? Obviously, it covers a period about which I can teach little--but more importantly, it is a model of historiographic excellence that demonstrates by example what students should learn. From its astonishing array of sources,primary, secondary, and tertiary, to its discursive footnotes to its clear organization, the book is a model for students of history. It is also significant for distilling an enormous body of information into readable, lucid, and graceful prose. Freeman's seemingly unorthodox approach, of using the lens of honor culture to understand the politics of the early Republic, focuses on how individual personalities shaped policy. I admire Freemans's correct insistence that we suspend modern cultural beliefs and see through the eyes of those often anxious, striving, fretful, and honorable men (no error of pronoun: her topic is, as she puts it, "white men behaving badly"). By using a technique associated with anthropology, Freeman opens up the period to allow us to understand a culture more popularly described in hagiographic terms or deconstructed as a corrupt and self-interested group of graspers. She is willing, indeed insists, on seeing in terms of gray rather than black and white, in helping us to understand the period's paradoxes. She also communicates something I hope my students will feel: Freeman clearly loves history and her affection for her subjects shines through.

Ask a politician about what is important to him, and my guess is that he will reply something about service to the people, and perhaps he will feel he is being sincere. If you had asked an American politician in the post-Revolutionary period, it seems he might have replied, "My honor." After all, this is the bunch that pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to the new endeavor of a republic, and honor was sacred to them in a way that we do not regard it now. That is not to say that we (and our politicians) are less honorable these days, but rather that honor had a special culture and meaning in the new nation that it no longer has. This is the main theme of _Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic_ (Yale University Press) by Joanne B. Freeman, a surprising look at the codes of honor of that time and how they changed history. The main players are familiar to us all (Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Burr), and Freeman has drawn on the diaries and notebooks of many who had supporting roles. Politics was at least partially a means to improve the reputations of the participants and to demonstrate their honor. An attack on the reputation of a political opponent and his rebuttal were the ways the game was played. The use of the written word had such power that that politicians were careful about what medium to use. They might use personal letters among small circles of friends to give the lie to an accuser. They might use pamphlets, or anonymous broadsides. Dishonor in print was not only seen as a present infliction of insult, but a damnation of a reputation in history, and fear of history's judgement led Adams, Jefferson, and others to bring an outpouring of autobiographical apologias toward the ends of their lives. The use of such measures in print and eventual duels were, according to the code, by gentlemen against gentlemen; it was dishonorable to use them against a social inferior. Against, say, a newspaper editor, a gentleman used a cane or a tweak of the nose. It is significant that no one paid more punctilious attention to the demands of honor than Aaron Burr. Freeman suggests even that in the disputed election of 1800 he was more honorable than Jefferson, who may have engaged in a ploy to mislead a critical congressman to break a deadlock. After Burr had lost the election to Jefferson, he was particularly alert to attacks on his character. When offended, a final time, by Hamilton, Burr would have seen himself as having no option but one. His second in the famous duel wrote that if Burr had dropped the affair, his friends "must have considered him as a man, not possessing sufficient firmness to defend his own character, and consequently unworthy of their support." Freeman demonstrates that understanding honor is essential to understanding Burr and all the men around him. She also explains that institutionalized parties altered for good the political dynamic of individual honor. The per

Regrettably, it appears that the reviewer from Paterson, NJ, either hasn't bothered to read the book or has not read it with care. Professor Freeman proves beyond dispute that previous historians have not understood the central importance of honor culture in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Professor Freeman also proves beyond dispute that it is impossible to understand substantive political issues without careful attention to their cultural context.One important point: Joseph E. Ellis and Jack N. Rakove are pretty dang good political historians who have paid close attention to substantive political issues in this period. And they both praise this book highly for its vital contribution not only to our understanding of politics in the early American republic but also to our understanding of how to do political history.

This is that rarest of books -- a work of pathbreaking scholarship that's a joy to read. Joanne B. Freeman, assistant professor of history at Yale University, combines the analytical talents of a subtle historian, the story-telling ability of a first-rate journalist, and the gift of empathy with historical figures. Her remarkable book examines the ways that the leading figures of the first decades of the American republic practiced politics. In her pages, such leading spirits as George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton are not serene philosopher statesmen but self-conscious, harried, angry, fearful, insistent, sometimes even fanatical -- as they were in real life.Freeman examines a series of episodes -- which previous historians have either overlooked altogether or have dismissed as idiosyncratic or crazy -- and explains them by setting them into the context of a key value that pervaded the political life and assumptions of the period: honor. With skill and grace, she shows that a political leader's honor and reputation were essential components of his case for his own right to be seen as a political leader. Indeed, many of the most bitter and previously inexplicable conflicts of the early Republic can be explained by reference to politicians' battles to shore up their own honor and reputation and to undermine that of their opponents.Freeman's book begins with an incisive prologue recapturing the sense of uncertainty and anxiety that accompanied the launch of the American constitutional experiment in 1789.Chapter 1 examines "the politics of self-presentation" through a close, attentive interpretation of one of the minor classics of American political writing, Senator William Maclay's diary of his service in the First Congress (1789-1791). In these pages she brings out just how self-conscious these politicians were about the ways they dressed, traveled, spoke, and otherwise held the political stage.Chapter 2, "Slander, Poison, Whispers, and Fame," analyzes the art of political gossip, focusing on Thomas Jefferson's skilled collection and use of gossip about friends and foes. Freeman demonstrates that, far from being the disinterested philosopher he liked to portray himself as being, Jefferson was a shrewd and ruthless politician thoroughly engaged in the political cut-and-thrust of his time.Chapter 3, "The Art of Paper War," shifts focus to the various forms of practicing politics in print; it is built around the lengthy series of newspaper essays with which former President John Adams sought in 1809 to defend his historical reputation against an 1800 pamphlet penned by Alexander Hamilton. Freeman ably anatomizes the various forms of political writing -- letters, pamphlets, newspaper essays, broadsides, and so forth -- by reference to their purposes and their intended audiences.Chapter 4, "Dueling as Politics," Freeman examines a perennial favorite among episodes from this period -- the fatal duel in 1804 between Ale