Moral Problems in American Life

by Halttunen, Karen; Perry, Lewis

• ISBN13: 9780801483509
• ISBN10: 0801483506
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-01-01
• Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr

Summary

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 institutions such as marriage, public schools, labor unions, and penitentiaries; and enduring moral forces from the Bible to the U.S. Constitution. Together their essays give historical context to a wide variety of American practices and beliefs and, in doing so, provide a new framework for understanding cultural life.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. i
Original Themes of Voluntary Moralism: The Anglo-American Reformation of Manners	p. 14
Gothic Mystery and the Birth of the Asylum: The Cultural Construction of Deviance in Early-Nineteenth-Century America	p. 41
The World's """"Dirty Work"""" and the Wages That """"Sweeten"""" It: Labors """"Extrinsic Rewards"""" in Antebellum Society	p. 59
Deviance, Dominance, and the Construction of Handedness in Turn-Of-The-Century Anglo-America	p. 81
Race and the Problem of Slavery	p. 100
Black Abolitionists and the Origins of Civil Disobedience	p. 102
The Right to Possess All the Faculties That God Has Given: Possessive Individualism, Slave Women, and Abolitionist Thought	p. 123
Worrying about the Civil War	p. 145
Caste, Class, and Equal Citizenship	p. 167
Religion and Moral Community	p. 198
Jewish Prayers for the U.S. Government: a Study in the Liturgy of Politics and the Politics of Liturgy	p. 200
Interfaith Families in Victorian America	p. 223
Prophetic Ministry and the Military Chaplaincy during the Vietnam Era	p. 245
Redrawing Moral Boundaries in Modern America	p. 258
Listen, My Children: Modes and Functions of Poetry Reading in American Schools, 1880-1950	p. 260
Talking about Sex: Early-Twentieth-Century Radicals and Moral Confessions	p. 283
What If History Was a Gambler?	p. 309
Afterword David Brion Davis: a Biographical Appreciation	p. 330
Contributors	p. 341
Index	p. 345
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.