Moral Problems in American Life

American history is filled with moments of grave moral doubt and institutional crisis, with conflicts over fundamental values, with ethical dilemmas and paradoxes. This volume surveys the moral landscape of the American past from slavery to the Vietnam War. Bringing together fourteen of the most original historians practicing today, the book illuminates a critical dimension of American history, even as it shows how historical study contributes to present-day debates about values and the moral life.

These essays examine a wide range of questions that have engaged past generations of Americans and persist into the present -- questions about the composition of a moral community and the case for civil disobedience, about the appropriate responses to injustices and inequalities, and about the ethical implications of artistic expression, school curricula, sexual behaviors, and popular media. Focusing on the impact of moral problems on everyday experience, the authors consider these questions in light of reform movements and religious practices; changing social inst

Illustrations

ix

Introduction

1

(14)

KAREN HALTTUNEN

LEWIS PERRY

PROBLEMS OF MORAL COMMUNITY

15

(88)

1. Original Themes of Voluntary Moralism: The Anglo-American Reformation of Manners

15

(26)

JOEL BERNARD

2. Gothic Mystery and the Birth of the Asylum: The Cultural Construction of Deviance in Early-Nineteenth-Century America

41

(18)

KAREN HALTTUNEN

3. The World's "Dirty Work" and the Wages That "Sweeten" It: Labor's "Extrinsic Rewards" in Antebellum Society

59

(22)

JONATHAN A. GLICKSTEIN

4. Deviance, Dominance, and the Construction of Handedness in Turn-of-the-Century Anglo-America

81

(22)

TAMARA PLAKINS THORNTON

RACE AND THE PROBLEM OF SLAVERY

103

(98)

5. Black Abolitionists and the Origins of Civil Disobedience

103

(20)

LEWIS PERRY

6. "The Right to Possess All the Faculties That God Has Given": Possessive Individualism, Slave Women, and Abolitionist Thought

123

(22)

AMY DRU STANLEY

7. Worrying about the Civil War

145

(22)

EDWARD L. AYERS

8. Caste, Class, and Equal Citizenship

167

(34)

WILLIAM E. FORBATH

RELIGION AND MORAL COMMUNITY

201

(60)

9. Jewish Prayers for the U.S. Government: A Study in the Liturgy of Politics and the Politics of Liturgy

201

(22)

JONATHAN D. SARNA

10. Interfaith Families in Victorian America

223

(22)

ANNE C. ROSE

11. Prophetic Ministry and the Military Chaplaincy during the Vietnam Era

245

(16)

ANNE C. LOVELAND

REDRAWING MORAL BOUNDARIES IN MODERN AMERICA

261

(70)

12. Listen, My Children: Modes and Functions of Poetry Reading in American Schools, 1880-1950

261

(22)

JOAN SHELLEY RUBIN

13. Talking about Sex: Early-Twentieth-Century Radicals and Moral Confessions

283

(26)

CHRISTINE STANSELL

14. "What If History Was a Gambler?"

309

(22)

T.J. JACKSON LEARS

Afterword David Brion Davis: A Biographical Appreciation

331

(10)

RICHARD WIGHTMAN FOX

Contributors

341

(4)

Index

345

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Moral Problems in American Life

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