A Riotous Affair, Arena

nderstanding how modern historians assume (with qualifications) the rational direction of political rhetoric and rituals in Early America will create the contrast needed for analyzing the passion and violence of the Baltimore Riot. Saul Cornell's work, The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism and the Dissenting Tradition in America, 1788-1828, relies upon the public sphere to situate his diverse Anti-Federalists. Though existing on different class levels, anti-Federalists joined voices, print, and rituals within the public sphere in an effort to challenge Federalists “control” of the political sphere. Cornell focuses on various “texts” utilized by the anti-federalists in an effort to voice their ideas in the developing political sphere. These texts range from being part of the belles-lettre culture among the elite even to a riot of the plebian class. For Cornell, the outcome of the anti—Federalist challenges within the public sphere is the slow emergence of the rational idea of legitimate dissent within government. The public sphere of the Early Republic, served as a realm where ideas could be debated and differences resolved or at least respected.

Rituals and the Public Sphere
A more ritual-centered discourse between the public and the politic emerges in David Waldstreicher's In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of Nationalism, 1776-1820 and Joanne Freeman's Affairs of Honor. Introducing the aims of his study, Waldstreicher argues that the nationalistic rituals, which grew up in the Early Republic were part of a larger cultural dialogue within the public sphere. Of further importance to his study is the realm of print, from which “celebrants of the nation took their cues.”1 Arguing for the “mutual dependence of rationality and ritual,” the public sphere emerges as that dominant institution influencing and slowly expanding political definitions.2 While expanding Habermas's strict definition of rational discourse to allow for rowdy celebrations and contentious barbecues, his thesis rests upon a public sphere where nationalism was purposefully and rationally forged.

While Freeman's focus on duels may appear to contradict this idea of the emergence of a rational discourse, she shows that the dueling culture was far from irrational. Surrounded by a strict code, dueling affairs were public acts that sent very specific messages. Deep into the nineteenth century, dueling was an established means of dealing with affronts whether they came from those involved in politics or those involved in society—such as printers. Supported by the attitude that preserving one's reputation kept government pure from those with baser desires, dueling brought the private and the public together to resolve disagreements in a “rational” manner—as the public sphere was intended to do. Whether in rituals or rhetoric, America' s public sphere represented a rational arena where public opinion and influence was forged.

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Printers and the Public Sphere
More directly related to the issues of the Baltimore Riot of 1812 is Jeffrey Pasley's Tyranny of Printers. Here newspapers—specifically Democratic-Republican papers intent upon defeating Federalism—create a rational discourse that forged public opinion and changed political influences. Central to Pasley's argument is an army of middling printers who established countless presses across America. Willing to put their financial and personal future on the line, these men printed their way to a huge transfer in power from Federalist to Democratic-Republican. And so a theme emerges describing the Revolution and Early Republic as periods centered around and relying upon rational discourse.

The Public Sphere as Rational?
Though this discourse involved rituals and protests, riots and polemicists, it nevertheless is envisioned as rational. Habermas's public sphere framework as utilized in American historiography broadly summarizes the American tradition as “rational freedom from illegitimate coercion.”3 While this framework may well describe certain situations, it also leaves a host out. Hanson' s paper and the Baltimore Riot, reveal the existence of paranoia and passion, hysteria and irrationality within the public sphere. Rather than seeing this as isolated event—a hiccup within an otherwise orderly society—the Baltimore Riot bleeds into other upheavals, events, which worked against rational discourse and demanded consensus through illegitimate coercion.

By understanding this strain of paranoia and irrationality in the Early Republic, the irrationality of actions during the Antebellum period such as Elijah Lovejoy' s death,4 the Charleston Mail crisis,5 and race riots that rocked Northern and Southern cities becomes much more understandable. Though an isolated event the summer of 1812, the Baltimore Riot helps explain future Antebellum violence and irrational crowd action. It also reveals the real limitations of understanding the Early Republic as a society dominated by a public sphere of rational discourse.

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1 David Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776-1820 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1997), 11.

2 Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes, 219.

3 John Brooke, “Reason and Passion in the Public Sphere: Habermas and the Cultural Historian,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XXIX:I (Summer, 1998), 65.

4 Elijah Lovejoy was an abolitionist printer who was murdered on November 7, 1837 in Alton, Illinois by an angry pro-slavery mob.

5 The Charleston mail crisis occurred in August 1835 when an angry mob of pro-slavery rioters confiscated abolitionist mail and burned it. From this period till the Civil War there was covert agreement from the United States Postmaster that abolitionist literature should be kept out of the mail.

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