This week your assignment is to be reading John Stauffer’s book, The Black Hearts of Men, one of our required texts. As you read, consider the following questions and choose one for your required blog comment, due by noon on Thursday.

• Like Oakes and Harrold, Stauffer presents an example of what he calls a “biracial quartet” or interracial community. Does he mean the same things by these terms as the previous historians we’ve read? Was the quartet of Brown-Smith-Douglass-and-McCune-Smith more of an interracial community than the relationship between Douglass and Lincoln or the Washington subversives? Use specific evidence to support your answer.
• How does Stauffer use visual images like photographs as historical sources? What methods does he use to interpret pictures, and is their application persuasive?
• Did these radical reformers influence the wider culture in which they lived? If so, how? If not, then how should we measure their significance to historians instead?

Remember that comments must be posted by noon on Thursday. See you in class!

On Thursday we will be discussing Stanley Harrold’s Subversives, one of your required texts, in class. In preparation, please think about the following questions and choose one of them to respond to in the comments. You should also be receiving an email from me about your performance so far on the blog comments.

1. Oakes used the word “radical” in his book to refer to Douglass and agitators like them. When Harrold uses the word “radical” to describe the antislavery community in Washington, does he mean the same thing by the “term”? Does he consider the “subversives” even more radical than Douglass?
2. Harrold refers to the abolitionists in Washington, D.C., as an “interracial” or “biracial community.” What does Harrold mean by “community,” and based on specific evidence from the book, is this the term you would use to describe the cooperation between abolitionists in the city? Why or why not?
3. What specific original contributions is Harrold making to the historiography on abolitionism? Does he disagree with other historians on some questions, and if so, where are some specific examples in the book where he discusses historiographical debates?

Please comment on one of these questions by noon on Thursday, February 9.

As you finish the Oakes book this week, remember that the author will be visiting our class later in the semester, so make note of anything you would like to ask him about when he is here. This Thursday, we will devote our class period to discussing the book, so also jot down anything that confuses or interests you about his argument.

Also, consider these questions as you read, and choose ONE of them to respond to in your required blog comment for this week.

• This course and Oakes’s book share a word–“radical.” What is Oakes’s definition of a “radical,” and why does he believe a “radical” like Douglass is worth studying?
• Using specific references to the book, how would you characterize the relationship between Lincoln and Douglass in particular, or between white abolitionists and black abolitionists generally? Friends? Allies? Opponents? Or something else?
• Again using specific examples from the book, how much influence do you think abolitionists had over the Republican Party and Lincoln? Is the extent of their influence the measure of their importance, in Oakes’s view?

You can post your required comment by clicking on “Leave a Reply” or “Replies” below. If you use the same name and email address you’ve used previously, you shouldn’t have to wait for me to “moderate” your comment before it appears.

Before coming to class on Thursday, you need to complete the two articles listed on the schedule, by Ronald G. Walters and Carol Lasser. You should also leave a required comment on this post after completing the following tasks.

Task 1: Experiment with the American Periodical Series Online

In her article on “voyeuristic abolitionism,” Carol Lasser uses “distant reading” methods like the ones we discussed in class today to chart changes in the American abolitionist movement. She does so with several kinds of searches in the American Periodical Series Online, a database that is available to us here at Rice. After you have read Lasser’s article, check out the American Periodical Series online and the online help sections on searching and see if you can do either of the following things. Allot yourself thirty to forty minutes total of focused work on these tasks before giving up, and see how far you can get in that time.

• See if you can reproduce any of Lasser’s findings about the frequency of “sexualized” words appearing in antislavery newspapers between 1800 and 1862.
• See if you can find at least one article that meets the criteria Lasser used to find articles (she describes her search terms in footnote 15 and the appendix) for her textual analysis and see if your “close reading” of the article fits with the conclusions Lasser drew in her “distant reading.”

Task 2: Read Geoffrey Rockwell’s page, “What is Text Analysis?”

After completing these tasks, leave a comment on this post that does two things: (a) describes your experience using the American Periodical Series Online, including whatever difficulties or successes you had with it; (b) discusses the relative value of “close” and “distant” readings of primary sources, using specific examples from the readings. That is, what are the comparative advantages of the different methods that Walters and Lasser each use to talk about a similar subject?

These posts are due by noon on Thursday. See you in class!