Greetings from #SHEAR2022. Welcome to my inevitably shambolic attempt to live tweet 3 rich papers from the panel “New Intellectual Histories of the Republic”!
First up, Hampton Smith, phd candidate at MIT, with “Weaving Black Mathematics.” Smith begins by discussing a powerful historiography demonstrating the multi-faceted deleterious role of quantification in Atlantic slavery — the dehumanizing effects of turning ppl into numbers.
Smith does not contest this historiography but is contributing to a newer stream of scholarship showing that the enslaved had their own forms of quantification/numeracy
Takes us to 18th century South Carolina, where, famously, rice cultivation drew upon earlier African techniques. Creation of coiled sweet grass baskets an important example of adaptation of African precedents to New World.
Complex mathematical calculations needed to construct baskets’ intricate designs. Somewhat analogous the ticks on a line graft or a ruler, or even certain uses of an excel spread sheet, the stitches on baskets measure quantities, allow for collation of data.
A living tradition of Black basket making — expert craftsmen continue to learn the craft and develop it further. Elements of abstract art form in addition to quantification.
Draws connections to the manner in which W.E.B. Du Bois used data visualizations in his work
Some fascinating complexity here. Baskets were at once tool of oppressive, slavery-based capital and mechanism for Black expression and analysis.
*The Early Republic, that is. I said it would be shambolic, guys
Do I understand all the math stuff going on here? Not quite! But what I do understand is intriguing!
Next up, John Ellis, a prof at Bemidji State up in northern Minnesota, with “The Methodist Movement, the Medical Profession, and the Human Body, 1770s-1810s”
Methodism offered liminal vision of human body that wedded Enlightenment rationalism with older supernaturalism/magic, appealing to people in a time of revolutionary upheaval.
Methodist “heart religion” blurred line between emotions and bodily phenomena, believing that God used both to communicate with an individual attuned to this messaging
One preacher, in response to criticisms of the flamboyance of role of bodily expression in Methodist faith and practice: “better wildfire than no fire”
Historiographically speaking Ellis draws upon Jon Butler’s account of role of supernatural/magical ideas in Methodism’s striking success in early US and a more recent literature emphasizing experiential, bodily phenomena
Critics accused Methodists of being “Brain-Sick Fanatics” (great name for a metal band!)
John Wesley, English founder of Methodism, argued that elite physicians abused their authority, using it to control their social inferiors. Paging Dr. Foucault!
Wesley didn’t say outright that people should *never* consult physicians but did advocate for specific folk/herbal remedies for ordinary symptoms/discomforts, tapping a powerful vein (so to speak) of anti-professionalism in the Atlantic World in this era
Physicians inevitably dismissed this as quackery but ironically their own methods (bloodletting, etc) in this period were often actively bad and herbal remedies tended to at least do no harm. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing!
Lorenzo Dow: “Why is got not able to raise me to health now as in these primitive days. He can. But why don’t he do it?” Lack of faith.
Methodist idea that faith can help us transcend bodily limitations helped make the movement a life-affirming, popular cultural current, drawing interest from marginalized populations like the enslaved, women, and children
Fascinatingly, they drew upon Lockean empiricism, saying the faithful should judge each other’s claims to conversion/personal relationship with God based on the visible fruits thereof
A different kind of link between faith & reason, Enlightenment and its enemies, than we are used to seeing.
Finally, @TheOtherRBG of American U and the Madeira School, with “Ideas about Sunday Mail from the ‘Era of Good Feelings’ Through the Jacksonian Era #SHEAR2022
While in theory both sides wielded 1st amendment, opponents of Sunday mail advanced a rather dangerous form of religious nationalism with serious consequences, including imperiling the rights of religious minorities
Recovering the intense debates over Sunday mail delivery is a great way of getting at the complex history of relations between religions and the state, and ideas about this, in the early US
A key figure in the anti-Sunday mail camp was the preacher Jasper Adams. 
For Jasper, a combo of majoritarianism and patriotism was a powerful justification of banning Sunday mail. Said that Sunday delivery violated free exercise clause by interfering with crucial religious practice
Congressman Richard Mentor Johnson, a Jacksonian who led a committee on the postal service, said that congressional intervention in debates over the Sabbath would be an unconscionable, unconstitutional intervention by the government in religious matters.
Cited as an example the different views of Jews about when and what the Sabbath was
The “Johnson Report” drew a lot of approval throughout the country. Some called its opponents “bigots”
But opponents like Lyman Beecher and Theodore Frelinghuysen cited the needs of the majority, said if 9 out of 10 Americans saw Sunday as Sabbath a republican government needed to honor that
On the issue of Sunday mail delivery itself Johnson’s camp won the day. The practice continued into the 20th century. But the debates contributed to ideological formation on both sides and remain a revealing window into political and religious fault lines in the early republic.
A great example of the benefits for historians of taking seriously past debates that might seem arcane from a 21st century POV but were anything but to contemporaries.
Additionally (a point Graham makes lightly and suggestively) there is relevance to ongoing debates over relationship between religion and state that are more heated and consequential than ever in our own time, including in relation to recent Supreme Court rulings
Comments from Prof Tamara Plakins Thornton of SUNY Buffalo are a model of the genre. She skillfully links the papers together while giving individual speakers a mix of thoughtful encouragement and useful methodological & conceptual suggestions
She points out just how far we are here from the characters and sources of traditional intellectual history, but also that this is still intellectual history @Ideas_History
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