Review of Fighting for American Manhood by Kirstin L. Hoganson

In her landmark essay “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” Joan Wallach Scott encourages historians to explore gender as “a constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes” and as a “primary way of signifying relationships of power.”  Clearly, Kirstin L. Hoganson heeded the call from Scott when she produced Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars.  In this work, Hoganson explores the ways in which ideas of masculinity and manhood framed the political debates over America’s role in Cuba and the Philippines in the waning days of the nineteenth century.  With gendered language, American politicians and civic leaders on both sides of the debates over war and imperialism invoked a variety of ideas of manly citizenship, including themes of generational differences, emasculation, the veneration of the founding fathers, and even varying definitions of just what manliness entailed. 

The “crisis of masculinity” arising during the last few decades of the nineteenth century took on many forms, not all of them overtly political.  In Buffalo Bill’s America: William Cody and the Wild West Show, Louis S. Warren locates the widespread “cultural preoccupations with the decay of white manliness” in audience responses to Cody’s Wild West Show.  For Warren, the emphasis on the virtue of manliness was expressed best by a female witness to the Wild West Show who expressed her feelings by exclaiming that these were “the kind of men that excite my admiration….”

From the earliest days of the debate over possible American intervention in Cuba’s struggle for independence from Spain, the rhetoric in U.S. political circles took on a gendered tone.  Just what did it mean to be a man?  Various definitions of manhood arose during the debates over American participation in Cuba and then in the Philippines.  Men justifying intervention in Cuba appealed to the notion of chivalry as an example of manliness.  As Hoganson notes, the “chivalric paradigm,” the idea of American men intervening on behalf of a victimized, feminized Cuba, appealed to the jingoes (those seeking American intervention in Cuba) both because of its association with the manly art of rescuing the damsel in distress and also because it “dovetailed with their goal of revitalizing the manly ideal of politics” in the U.S. 

But the chivalric paradigm served as only one of the ways in which manhood was defined during the debates over international and military matters in the 1890s.  Both those in favor of American intervention in Spanish colonial matters and those opposed focused a part of their gendered language on generationally different definitions of manhood and masculinity.  Those seeking to expand U.S. imperialist claims to the Philippines, for example, presented themselves as “youthful, bold, and energetic,” a stark contrast to those who did not favor imperialism, for whom those “youthful” imperialists developed a portrait of as “’a lot of over-ripe and decayed citizens,’” akin to Rip Van Winkle.

The opponents of the “youthful” imperialists in the debate over U.S. expansionist dreams, the men that Hoganson terms “antis” (for anti-imperialist), fought back in gendered terms of their own.  Countering the claims of youth and energy, the antis “stressed moral maturity and self-control more than the physical power and belligerence” that characterized their political opponents.  In emphasizing experience, maturity, and a well-developed sense of self-restraint, these antis harkened back to the principles of manliness that had also played a part in the debates over the coming of the Civil War, when the restrained, moral resolve of Northern men contrasted sharply with the aggressive, free-wheeling combativeness of Southern fire-eaters.

Relating back in time to the veterans of the Civil War and even to the Revolutionary generation also played a large part in the development of gendered language in the debate over U.S. foreign policy.  As Hoganson explains, the “popular notion that the Civil War had developed the mettle of the men who fought it” contributed to the theory that American manhood could only truly be found in martial efforts.  Proponents of U.S. intervention in Cuba used their admiration for the Civil War generation to contrast the malaise and “over civilization” of their contemporaries and to demonstrate how military service, the most essential aspect of the “strenuous life,” cultivated the characteristics of the red-blooded American male.  

In the debate over U.S. colonizing efforts in the Philippines, both proponents and opponents used the memory of the Revolutionary generation to frame their argument.  Antis “invoked Washington and other Revolutionary leaders to show that imperial policies were inconsistent with the nation’s democratic traditions.” As Hoganson points out, pro-expansion political leaders countered this by their belief that “it was time to break away from the fathers and assert independence.” However, the pro-expansion men tried to have it both ways.  While decrying the emphasis placed on preceding generations as an ideal that might cause the United States to “’fall into China’s fatal error of paralysis through ancestor worship,’” pro-expansion men like Henry Cabot Lodge and Theodore Roosevelt professed gendered admiration for their political forebears, with Roosevelt noting that neither Washington or Lincoln had “’the least touch of flabbiness, or unhealthy softness….’”  

 

Another way in which the language of gender found political expression was through the processing of emasculation.  As Hoganson notes with several examples, debates often included references to opponents as, in some way, feminized.  During the debate over U.S. intervention in Cuba, President William McKinley, a Civil War veteran, was often portrayed as weak and effeminate for his hesitancy to take military action after the sinking of the Maine.  Even his Civil War record was attacked when it was noted that his serving consisted of “’making coffee while the fighting went on,’” clearly a womanly duty.  In the consideration of colonial expansion in the Philippines, imperialists accused their opponents of being “’doting mothers’” while they themselves were the young men seeking to “break from women’s confining grasp.”   Antis were “’old women with trousers on,’” “’squaw men,’” and ‘”nagging wife’” in this debate; imperialists were full of “’manliness, zeal, and courage.’”

This use of feminization to denigrate a political opponent speaks to a larger overall process of identifying manliness in contrast to womanliness.  The men of the last decade of the nineteenth century had much to worry about—urbanization, industrialization, immigration—and one more important fear: the rise of the New Woman.  The assertion by women that they could claim a voice in the political arena contributed to anxieties over manhood.  Hoganson illustrates these anxieties through several different political debates, including the ratification of the arbitration treaty, the intervention in Cuba, and expansionist goals in the Philippines.  In addition to seeking a voice in politics, activist women “were critiquing the assumptions about male honor and valor that had played such a prominent role” in the post-bellum political world.  As men struggled with the changing face of modern life, the critiques of activist women only added fuel to the fire, and men accepted the perceived challenge to their masculinity by pushing forward with “manly” endeavors such as military intervention and a “splendid little war.”

To conduct her research, Kristin Hoganson consulted an impressive array of sources, supporting her contentions with what E. Anthony Rotundo of Phillips Academy calls a “dense, complex web of evidence from numerous interlocking texts.”  While Emily S. Roseberg of Macalester College criticizes Hoganson’s work with the notation that her “argument is repetitious,” this criticism may  be grounded in Hoganson’s multitude of sources. To provide fewer examples than she does would lead readers to possibly rebuke Hoganson for expounding a theory that purports a widespread use of gendered language with insufficient evidence.  By stating her position in many ways, some with such subtle nuance that a less-than-careful reader may find them repetitious, Hoganson ensures that her audience will appreciate both the significance and the commonplaceness of gendered language in the political debates of the late 1890s.

Kristin L. Hoganson’s Fighting for American Manhood does just what Joan Scott called for.  It uses gender as a category of historical analysis, in this case “to illuminate a traditional security issue, war.” Hoganson demonstrates conclusively that concerns over gender roles in the late nineteenth century “significantly affected militant U.S. policies.”  Hoganson does not pretend that gender was the only factor at work in American military decisions with regard to Cuba and the Philippines, but she does highlight the significance of gender which, when combined with the other historically specific factors present at the time, sent the U.S. military first into Cuba and then into the Philippines.

Hoganson, Kristin L.  Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.

Rosenberg, Emily S.  Review of Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars by Kristin L. Hoganson.  The Hispanic American Historical Review 79, No. 4 (November 1999), pp. 793-794.

Rotundo, E. Anthony.  Review of Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars by Kristin L. Hoganson.  The Journal of American History 86, No. 4 (March 2000), pp. 1817-1818.

Scott, Joan W.  “Gender: A useful Category of Historical Analysis” in The American Historical Review 91, No. 5 (Dec., 1986), pp. 1053-1075.

Warren, Louis S.  Buffalo Bill’s America: William Cody and the Wild West Show.  New York: Vintage Books, 2005.

Review of Beyond the Lines: Pictorial Reporting, Everyday Life, and the Crisis of Gilded Age America by Joshua Brown

If a picture is worth a thousand words, than Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (Frank Leslie’s) told millions of stories in the latter half of the nineteenth century.  In Beyond the Lines: Pictorial Reporting, Everyday Life, and the Crisis of Gilded Age America, Joshua Brown explores the images produced by Frank Leslie’s and the manner in which they were constituted “by a complicated social negotiation among artists, editors, engravers, and readers.”  Brown’s careful analysis of these images, set in the context of the times in which they were produced, provides a glimpse into the changing face of America from the founding of Frank Leslie’s in 1855 to its eventual sale by the Leslie family in 1889.

Frank Leslie’s began publication in the turbulent years leading up to the American Civil War.  In exploring the first decade of the newspaper’s existence, Brown focuses on both the technology involved in the publication as well as on the stories covered by Frank Leslie’s.  From the entry of Frank Leslie’s onto the publishing scene, technological advancements paved the way for the newspaper’s success.  The transition from rag to wood pulp paper and the invention of the steam printing press lowered costs, making newspapers more affordable for a general public that was simultaneously becoming more literate.  At the same time, advances in communication, such as the spread of the telegraph and the completion of the transatlantic cable, provided quicker access to news from around the nation and the wider world.   With this new technology, Frank Leslie’s published its illustrations and accompanying narrative at a time when the United States was enduring the political turmoil that would see the nation first ripped apart and then awkwardly reconciled.  In these initial years of publication, Brown demonstrates that Frank Leslie’s walked a fine line amongst its readers, striving to meet the needs of both its Northern and Southern audiences.  In addition to its coverage of national politics, the newspaper stepped cautiously into reform movements, achieving its greatest success in its coverage of the “swill milk” campaign of 1858-1859.

The work of this first decade set the tone for the post-bellum publication of Frank Leslie’s, even as it meant that much of the content of the newspaper and its illustrations would necessarily change.  Technological advancements in engraving and continued improvements in both the publishing and communication industries kept Frank Leslie’s affordable and available to its audiences.  But, just as Frank Leslie’s had walked the line between Northern and Southern sentiment before the War, it once again found itself struggling to meet the needs of its diverse readers in the post-bellum nation.  As Brown so ably illustrates, the face of America after the Civil War was changing—and Frank Leslie’s changed with it.  New faces appeared on its pages, the faces of labor, of immigration, of newly freed blacks, and of women.  To keep a readership large enough to sustain production and provide a profit, Frank Leslie’s had to portray these faces in a myriad of ways that would not alienate any large block of its readers.

To accomplish this goal, the engravers and editors at Frank Leslie’s engaged in a system of “social typing,” demonstrating with illustration both the characteristics of certain groups of people and the situations and locales in which these people may be found.  And here, as Brown demonstrates time and again, Frank Leslie’s shifted from view to view, from perspective to perspective, all in a manner designed to maintain its readership.  One example of this can be found in Frank Leslie’s treatment of freed blacks in the South.  Certainly, as Brown notes, Frank Leslie’s showed African Americans through a “limited range of types whose energy or indolence was founded on their putative innate, childlike qualities.”  At the same time, however, the portrayals of Exodusters migrating to Kansas were characterized by “ambition and dignity.”   Through its coverage, Frank Leslie’s provided images of blacks as both victims and perpetrators of violence, as both the unwitting dupes of the Republican Party and as an engaged and enthusiastic polity, as lazy and indolent and as hardworking and ambitious.  This same complexity and ongoing change in imagery can be found in Frank Leslie’s portrayals of women, of immigrants (particularly the Irish, who went from “thugs” to the face of the yeomanry), and those involved in the labor movement.  Throughout Beyond the Lines, Brown shows time and again that what one may call inconsistency in Frank Leslie’s images and editorial stand was actually a continuing process of renegotiation and reinvention of social types, as the newspaper sought to maintain its hold on its readers.

Most reviewers seem to agree with Bruce R. Kahler of Bethany College in Kansas, who found that “Brown is at his best when he closely examines the evolving visual strategies employed by Frank Leslies.”   While Kahler finds fault with Brown’s work overall, noting that it “adds little to our understanding of nineteenth-century American society,” other reviewers, like Helen Damon-Moore of Cornell, praise Brown’s work as, in Damon-Moore’s words, “an intelligent, engaging and significant contribution…to the social history of the Gilded Age.”  Of course, reviewers were nearly unanimous in their approval of the lavish use of images in Beyond the Lines, not surprising in a book about the illustrated press.

What perhaps could have enhanced Brown’s analysis of the social history of the Gilded Age would have been a closer look at the intersection between fact and fiction that seems inherent in the engraved illustrations as used by Frank Leslie’s.  Louie S. Warren explores this topic at length in his Buffalo Bill’s America: William Cody and The Wild West Show.  Warren demonstrates that his subject rose to national prominence as the result of a powerful combination of fact and fiction, of Cody’s “method of promoting his real achievements” by mingling them “with colorful fictions,” all with an eye toward producing a likeness and story that would enchant audiences and gain their willingness to purchase the product.  A similar case can be made for the illustrations in Frank Leslie’s.  These images, as noted by Brown, arose from a combination of the biases, viewpoints, prejudices, and concerns of artists, reporters, and editors, all seeking to craft the images in such a way as to maintain readership for the newspaper.  While Brown may argue for the greater authenticity contained within an engraved illustration by noting that “wood engravings presented readers with pictorial narratives of events” that served as “dramatic and detailed diagrams” of the events of the day, this is not enough.  For Buffalo Bill as for the images in Frank Leslie’s, the needs and desires of the audience determined in large measure the way the illusion of truth and accuracy were crafted.

  In Beyond the Lines, Joshua Brown has penned an insightful and penetrating glimpse into the importance of the illustrated press in capturing the places and faces of Gilded Age America.  Brown does leave his audience wanting more—a comparison with the imagery used in dime novels, perhaps, or an explanation of why the Chinese received such favorable treatment in the pages of Frank Leslie’s—but this merely serves to whet the appetite.  The mixture of social and cultural history by Brown is a heady one, not unlike the mixture of fact and fiction at the heart of the Gilded Age.  Readers will want more of the same.

Brown, Joshua.  Beyond the Lines: Pictorial Reporting, Everyday Life, and the Crisis of Gilded Age America.  Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

Damon-Moore, Helen.  Review of Beyond the Lines: Pictorial Reporting, Everyday Life, and the Crisis of Gilded Age America by Joshua Brown.  The American Historical Review 108, No. 3 (June 2003), pp. 846-847.

Kahler, Bruce R.  Review of Beyond the Lines: Pictorial Reporting, Everyday Life, and the Crisis of Gilded Age America by Joshua Brown.  American Studies, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Fall 2003), pp. 161-162.

Warren, Louis S.  Buffalo Bill’s America: William Cody and the Wild West Show.  New York: Vintage Books, 2005.