Name: What Hath God Wrought
ISBN: 9780195078947

Daniel Walker Howe

A panoramic history of the United States ranges from the 1815 Battle of New Orleans to the end of the Mexican-American War, interweaving political and military events with social, economic, and cultural history.

The Transformation of America, 1815-1848

What Hath God Wrought

Bryan Alexander

One of the pleasures of my life is reading history. I read widely these days (literature, philosophy, technology, Gothic), but history is one of the great delights. I can't get enough of diving into a period and place that I only know a little, or not at all. Revising my knowledge is grand, too, when I have a good understanding to begin with.

So I was eager to wade into What Hath God Wrought. Professionally I was trained as a British lit expert, and managed to completely avoid American history from undergrad through PhD. Recently I've been making up for lost opportunities, focusing in particular on the Progressive Era and on my state, Vermont. The subject of Walker's tome, America from 1815-1848, is one I only dimly recall from high school and some literature.

What Hath God Wrought delivered beautifully. It brought me back to the old themes: Jacksonian democracy, the Bank War, the Transcendentalists, the Mexican War, the American Renaissance, the Marshall Court, manifest destiny, immigration, and nullification. And it showed me subjects I knew nothing of: the Sabbatarians and Locofocos, Rhode Island's odd yet important Dorr War, the boom time in religious activity, the popularity of low-level criminal violence. The book gave me new insights into presidents, like Van Buren (whose presidency gets dubbed "Jackson's third term") and the seriously underrated (and somewhat terrifying) imperialist Polk.

Daniel Walker Howe reminds us throughout the book of many steps leading towards the Civil War, including deepening sectionalism (North vs South), stumbling compromises, and the growth of abolitionism.

Above all Howe's account has a fierce emphasis on racism. For example, in the last chapter he reflects:
The most bloody conflicts... derived from the domination and exploitation of the North American continent by the white people of the United States and their government. If a primary driving force can be identified in American history for this period, this was it. (852)
Again and again we see white supremacy organize itself for its survival. One of the harsh truths of this period is that slavery not only maintained itself, but flourished, extended its horror across North America. Native Americans (this is the Trail of Tears era), blacks, Latinos especially suffered.

Howe also emphasizes gender. On the one hand, he clearly identifies the ruling elite and its main beneficiaries as men. On the other, he explores how women not only suffered as (at best) second-class citizens, but started to organize for their own emancipation. The final chapter that points us forward in time isn't about the Civil War to come, but the burgeoning women's rights movement.

Alongside those two axes of social history What Hath God Wrought focuses on technological changes, specifically revolutions in transportation (canals, shipping, the railroad) and communication (literacy, the telegraph). Indeed, the title comes from the first public showing of the latter invention, the text sent by and copied back to Morse. Howe demonstrates a variety of impacts caused by these improvements in communication and transportation, from more efficient social and political organization to increase sectionalism and the ability to organize a continent-spanning nation.

As I said, I'm no expert in this stratum of American history, so I can't really assess how the book fits into historiographic debates. I can guess at several, based on the bibliographic essay and my knowledge of other histories. Howe views Jackson as something monstrous and clearly prefers the Whigs; this seems to go against a pretty widely held, and apparently liberal, view. He downplays class as a historical driver, spending fewer pages on workers than on women or blacks. Howe's strong claims about Polk as an enormously successful and influential president seem to break new ground, or at least articulate a rarely-voiced opinion. The author's ability to marshal evidence to support these claims, and to make extensive arguments around those materials, convinced me, or at least didn't dismay me into ceasing reading. (This New Yorker review nicely positions Howe in dialog with other historians)

Howe's style is magisterial. He offers long paragraphs crammed with details, yet each sentence powers us through gracefully. I admire Howe's ability to make clear very wonkish policy details (especially on banking, money, and tariffs), and to remind us of the significance of each event. His explicit and implicit judgement of character peoples the book appealingly. Jackson broods over the book as the closest thing it has to a villain, while post-presidency John Quincy Adams is its ethical heart.

Overall, What Hath God Wrought is a historical feast. Strongly recommended.

What Hath God Wrought The Transformation of America, 1815-1848

Reviews

Highlights