The June 2013
issue of the
Journal of American History is out. Here's a preview of the content (full text is limited to subscribers):
The House on Bayou Road: Atlantic Creole Networks in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Faubourg Tremé in New Orleans has been described as the oldest black neighborhood in America. In his article, Pierre Force
uses as his starting point a dispute in 1813 over the payments for a
house between a white man and a free man of color that took place in
Tremé. Attempting to find out more about both parties to the case (won
by the free man of color), Force reconstructs each man's family history
and follows the archival track on a journey to Cuba, Haiti, France,
Spain, and Senegal. What might have seemed at first sight like a random
encounter between representatives of two different racial groups emerges
as a story of shared ancestries and cultural references, as well as
shifting allegiances and identities.
Status across Borders: Roger Taney, Black British Subjects, and a Diplomatic Antecedent to the Dred Scott Decision
Michael A. Schoeppner offers a fresh
interpretation of the origins of then–attorney general Roger B. Taney’s
1832 opinion on the Negro Seamen Acts. Historians and legal scholars,
many of them looking backward from the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott
decision, have cited that opinion as Taney's first official examination
of the racial limits of American citizenship. As a rule, however, they
have not examined the history of the opinion itself. Inspired by recent
work in transnational history, Schoeppner lays out that history and
suggests that Taney’s primary purpose in writing the opinion had very
little to do with African Americans. Rather, he argues, Taney was more
concerned with limiting the international legal force of British
imperial racial policies, and his use of history as a way of limiting
the meaning of citizenship and subjecthood was a tactical response to
British racial progressivism.
“Punishment of Mere Political Advocacy”: The FBI, Teamsters Local 544, and the Origins of the 1941 Smith Act Case
Donna T. Haverty-Stacke explores how the
Federal Bureau of Investigation’s fear of fifth column infiltration and
sabotage of the nation’s wartime preparedness program, along with the
efforts of a grassroots working-class anticommunist movement in
Minneapolis, led to the 1941 prosecution of twenty-nine Trotskyist
antiwar activists and union leaders for advocating the overthrow of the
U.S. government. Her article probes the World War II–era compromise
certain Americans were willing to make between First Amendment rights
and national security, and considers the consequences for organized
labor, political dissent, and free speech. In so doing, this study
provides a historical perspective on similar bargains struck today as
America finds itself in a state of perpetual war on terror.
This issue also includes a "State of the Field" forum on
American Environmental History:
Since the Journal of American History last published a round table on the subject in 1990, American environmental history has seen explosive growth. Paul S. Sutter
takes us on a selective tour of this expansive field, paying particular
attention to questions of environmental causation and the ways
environmental historians have replaced the once-firm categories of
nature and culture with various approaches to environmental hybridity.
That hybrid turn, Sutter suggests, has been analytically essential, yet
it has also left the field at a moral crossroads. Following Sutter’s
essay David Igler, Christof Mauch, Gregg Mitman, Linda Nash, Helen M. Rozwadowski, and Bron Taylor offer critical responses.
For more of the TOC, including exhibition and book reviews, follow the
link.
