It’s a weird time to be teaching Reconstruction. As I prepared the last lecture for my US Survey course, the connections between the backlash to Reconstruction and the backlash to Obama’s presidency were certainly apparent. As I wrote last week, historians will have a lot to work with in the Age of Trump. But I was especially struck with the irony of assigning portions of Frederick Douglass’s classic (and overlooked) 1869 speech, “Composite Nation” at a moment when immigration is such a hot issue. (Make sure to listen to this new track from the Hamilton mixtape, if you haven’t already.) You can read the entire speech here, which I wholly recommend. It is a voice from the past that speaks directly to the issues of the present. It’s funny how history works like that.

Douglass delivered the address in Boston as the nation was discussing the possibility of extending citizenship to Chinese immigrants. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, passed just a few years previous, dismantled the entrenched American belief that citizenship was reserved for the white race. The Naturalization Act of 1790, one of the first bills passed after the Constitution’s ratification, limited citizenship to white men. Triumph over that racist political tradition, only made possible through war, was a fete that cannot be overstated. But it was still just a step. Would other races be included? Thousands of immigrants from China were flooding America’s western states, and a number of radical politicians proposed making them naturalized citizens. Confronting opposition to this idea, Frederick Douglass argued that the American nation could not only withstand interracial immigration, but that the nation’s ideals necessitated it.

A few excerpts that lay the foundation for his argument:

The real trouble with us was never our system or form of Government, or the principles underlying it; but the peculiar composition of our people, the relations existing between them and the compromising spirit which controlled the ruling power of the country. We have for along time hesitated to adopt and may yet refuse to adopt, and carry out, the only principle which can solve that difficulty and give peace, strength and security to the Republic, and that is the principle of absolute equality…

Heretofore the policy of our government has been governed by race pride, rather than by wisdom…[Now] a new race is making its appearance within our borders, and claiming attention. It is estimated that not less than one hundred thousand Chinamen, are now within the limits of the United States…

And then he addresses the issue of racial “self-preservation,” a concept that has unfortunately become prominent again today:

I have said that the Chinese will come, and have given some reasons why we may expect them in very large numbers in no very distant future. Do you ask, if I favor such immigration, I answer I would. Would you have them naturalized, and have them invested with all the rights of American citizenship? I would. Would you allow them to vote? I would. Would you allow them to hold office? I would. But are there not reasons against all this? Is there not such a law or principle as that of self-preservation? Does not every race owe something to itself? Should it not attend to the dictates of common sense? Should not a superior race protect itself from contact with inferior ones? Are not the white people the owners of this continent? Have they not the right to say, what kind of people shall be allowed to come here and settle? Is there not such a thing as being more generous than wise? In the effort to promote civilization may we not corrupt and destroy what we have? Is it best to take on board more passengers than the ship will carry?…

I submit that this question of Chinese immigration should be settled upon higher principles than those of a cold and selfish expediency. There are such things in the world as human rights. They rest upon no conventional foundation, but are external, universal, and indestructible. Among these, is the right of locomotion; the right of migration; the right which belongs to no particular race, but belongs alike to all and to all alike. It is the right you assert by staying here, and your fathers asserted by coming here. It is this great right that I assert for the Chinese and Japanese, and for all other varieties of men equally with yourselves, now and forever. I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity, and when there is a supposed conflict between human and national rights, it is safe to go to the side of humanity. I have great respect for the blue eyed and light haired races of America. They are a mighty people. In any struggle for the good things of this world they need have no fear. They have no need to doubt that they will get their full share.

But I reject the arrogant and scornful theory by which they would limit migratory rights, or any other essential human rights to themselves, and which would make them the owners of this great continent to the exclusion of all other races of men. I want a home here not only for the negro, the mulatto and the Latin races; but I want the Asiatic to find a home here in the United States, and feel at home here, both for his sake and for ours. Right wrongs no man…

And here I hold that a liberal and brotherly welcome to all who are likely to come to the United states, is the only wise policy which this nation can adopt.

Douglass’s argument failed to win over the nation, at least not for another half-century. The Naturalization Act of 1870 limited citizenship to whites and people of African descent. A decade later, the Chinese Exclusion Act severely curtailed immigration from the nation, and was not repealed until World War II. Chinese Americans could finally become citizens in 1943.

It should be sobering that we are still dealing with these xenophobic concerns at the highest levels of government. Our president-elect’s campaign was founded upon castigating one race of immigrants and amplified when he promised to bar immigration for another. The catapulting of a white nationalist sub-culture—normalized through the serpentine label “alt-right”—both encapsulates a long and unfortunate American tradition as well as demonstrates that tradition’s ability to adapt to new times. Frederick Douglass’s words are just as relevant today as they have ever been.

I predict there will be a lot of work in the next few years dissecting the nativist elements within America’s nationalist tradition. But it will also be important to identify and magnify voices from the past that counter that narrative. Recovering prophetic indictments from the past may help us confront the ugliness of the present.

Sometimes we are so inundated with information that the best work gets lost in the mix. (This is especially true now that we know many can’t tell the difference between real and fake news.) I wanted to make sure and highlight a few fantastic essays written this last week by top-notch historians that deserve more consideration than a fleeting glance. 

• Daniel T Rodgers, “What Next for Liberalism?” Democracy Journal. Rodgers, an emeritus professor at Princeton, wrote one of the best and most important intellectual histories of modern Americau. This is a very cogent, careful, and nuanced take on where the American Left can go from here. 
• Kelly J Baker, “White-Collar Supremacy,” Ney York Times. Baker is a well-known and established historian and critic, and this is a thoughtful take on the modern form of racist opposition in America. 
• Thomas J Sugrue, “Jeff Sessions Other Civil Rights Problem,” New York Times. Sugrue, who recently moved from UPenn to NYU and wrote one of the best books on Urban America, delves even deeper into Trump’s controversial (and depressing) pick for attorney general. 
• Robert G Parkinson, “Fake News? That’s a Very Old Story,” Washington Post. Parkinson wrote a phenomenal and exhaustive book on race and the Revolution earlier this year (check out Jonathan Wilson’s excellent reviewi), which in part focused on how newspaper accounts of (fake) conspiracies fueled the quest for independences. Some things never change. 
• Kathryn Lofton, “Understanding is Dangerous,” The Point Magazine. T be a religious studies scholar, Lofton says, is to study the incomprehensible. Perhaps we should use Jose tools to understand the Trump phenomenon. 
• Choose anything from the African American Intellectual History Blog. Literally, anything. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: if you haven’t bookmarked the site and aren’t reading it daily, fix that now. 

I’m always glad to see established academics lending their voice to current issues. It’s just too bad too many people can’t tell rigorous analysis from fringe gossip anymore. 

One of my favorite activities from my last few years has been serving as an associate editor with the Mormon Studies Review. The goal of the journal is to chart the development and progress of Mormon studies scholarship; we aim to translate the significance of these works to a broader audience. We also try to integrate scholars who are well-respected in their fields but are not known for work on Mormonism. Last week we published Volume 4, which is filled with tremendous content, if I do say so myself. You can see the whole table of contents here.

There are a number of phenomenal essays and reviews that I could highlight. I’m especially excited about the roundtable reviews of two important books in Mormon gender history: the LDS Church History Library’s The First Fifty Years of Relief Society: Key Documents in Latter-day Saint Women’s History and the edited collection Mormon Feminism: Essential Writings. The participants for the former forum are Catherine Brekus, Susanna Morrill, and Dave Hall, and for the latter are Anthea Butler, Martha Bradley-Evans, and Taylor Petrey. Getting such a wide diversity of reviewers allowed us to look at each volume from internal, external, and methodological perspectives.

We also have a slew of smart and provocative essays. Fanella Cannell‘s essay speaks to key anthropological issues through the lens of Mormonism, and Rosalynde Welch makes sense of new trends in LDS scriptural and theological studies. I particularly love Molly Worthen‘s review essay on contemporary Mormonism and American politics. And David Hollinger, one of the deans of the American historical community, assesses the new Oxford handbook on Mormonism.

And then of course we have our standard book reviews, which exhibit broad coverage both in content and background. Reviewers include Richard Bushman, Max Mueller, Michael Pasquier, Paul Harvey, and Amy Hoyt. Don’t miss Quincy Newell’s excellent comparative review of two documentary sourcebooks on Mormonism and race, which delves into the historian’s craft.

I’m biased, but I’d wager that Mormon Studies Review remains the most established vantage point from which to trace the Mormon studies field. You can get digital access to this journal, along with all the other Maxwell Institute periodicals, for a mere $10 here.

With Volume 4 going online, that means Volume 3 is now free for all interested readers. (See here.) It includes a fantastic roundtable on lived religion, a smart theoretical exploration of the First Vision by Ann Taves and Steve Harper, a brilliant engagement with whiteness literature by Sylvester Johnson, and reviews by leading scholars like Charles Cohen, Randall Stephens, and Adam Jortner, among other material.

There are a lot of new realities and circumstances that Americans will have to address over the next four years. Far from the most important, yet still something that folks will eventually have to grapple with, is how historians’ work will reflect this new environment. By this, I’m not referring to historians of contemporary America who will have to reconsider trajectories of the past few decades in order to account for Trump’s election. (Historians of Modern American politics, race, and gender, not to mention those who study the Religious Right, have their work cut out for them.) Nor am I specifically thinking about work that will immediate context for Trump’s tenure, like the fantastic compilation of the Trump syllabus (which everyone should bookmark), less formal ruminations like Kevin Kruse’s important twitter reflections on the power and limits of the presidency, imminent issues like the excellent work coming out on foreign policy, or even the much-needed background for things like the electoral college (the slave power strikes again!). Rather, what I am talking about is how historians will choose particular topics and frame their studies in ways to give long-form meaning to the anxieties and tensions we face today.

It is a common adage that history isn’t written in a vacuum. Not only do scholars wish to prove their relevance to modern readers, but our culture shapes the type of questions we ask and answers we provide. There are a number of themes that we can point to as hallmarks of scholarship in the Age of Obama. Earlier this year at The Junto I wrote about how Nathan Perl-Rosenthal’s excellent Citizen Sailors: Becoming America in an Age of Revolutions embodies our contemporary assumption of the federal body’s positive role. Steven Pincus’s recent and provocative book on how the idea of an “activist government” in the American Revolution, which I reviewed here, also fits into this trajectory. I’ve been meaning to discuss James Kloppenberg’s new (and wide-sweeping) history of democracy in America and Europe and how it is framed around the longue durée tradition of deliberate democracy—the very pragmatism that shapes Obama’s political philosophy. And of course, the mere presence of a black man in the White House provokes questions concerning multiculturalism and interracial allegiances. Indeed, there are a number of other works and themes that we could identify as representative of this particular historiographical moment.

So what will history look like in an Age of Trump? Well, I think there are current trends already en vogue that are well-equipped for the moment. Alan Taylor’s American Revolutions, which posits the nation’s founding as a period of elite triumph over those marginalized and disenfranchised, is a founding story both relevant and appropriate for our time. The same narrative holds for Michael Klarman’s new synthetic Framer’s Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution, which summarizes a generation’s scholarship on how political elites drew on fears of societal unrest in order to curtail the extent of democracy’s power. Historians already have many of the tools and stories with which to construct a message for our era.

I also expect to see more work on the intersections—and often clashes—between race, ethnicity, and class. Nancy Isenberg’s book on White Trash (reviewed here) points the way to explaining how those from the lower rungs of society can at times be mobilized, manipulated, and moved to action at important moments in our political tradition. If 2016 is indeed a manifestation resurgent global nativism, as the connection between Trump and Brexit imply, then we need more scholarship that explains the lasting significance and power of this ever-present anxiety. This will likely lead to more interest in the nature and trajectory of nationalism, though rather than positing it as a political ideal it is instead seen as an ethnic assurance. New works of nationalist imaginations will have to account for its nativist tendencies.

As a historian of democracy, I’ll be looking for works on the tragic limits of democratic governance, especially as it relates to race. Two books have remained on my mind over the last few days: first, David Chappell’s history of prophetic religion and the limits of liberal philosophy during the Civil Rights movement; and second, Sylvester Johnson’s overview of African American religions since 1500. Both focus on the paradoxes of democratic participation and exclusion. I assigned both books in my grad seminar this semester, and highlighted them here and here on the blog. Simple, complacent, and overly optimistic trajectories of democratic governance and the determined march toward modernity do not square with the persistent reality of the racist expusion of black bodies from the political community. Historians would do well to return to questions raised by W. E. B Du Bois in finding meaning in today’s world. (Relatedly: if you are not already daily checking the African American Intellectual History blog then you should rectify that now. They might be the most crucial scholarly online community in coming years.)

Further, we might see more analysis demonstrates how the democratic penchant for societal oppression has always been a feature, not a bug, in our political history. Moving beyond the simplistic models of political competition between the “good” democracy and the “evil” non-democratic institutions, we must grapple with the foundational pitfalls of democratic theories in their own right. More works that incorporate sophisticated theories of democratic limitations, like recent books by Caleb McDaniel and John Burt, should cut into our rosy picture of political modernity. I could see a much more bleak interpretation of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and the threats of a tyrannical majority, for instance. My current project, on the Mormon city of Nauvoo as a clash of democratic priorities, seems to adopt a new hue in Trump’s America.

These next four years will be unpredictable and disruptive, not to mention scary for large segments of the nation as new policies are enacted and other initiatives curtailed. Historians will have significant civic and educative responsibilities beyond their traditional pedagogical roles. And the resulting body of scholarship will be its own manifestation of the age.

[The image comes from BBC.]

[Today is the anniversary of the LDS Church implementing a new policy regarding same-sex marriage. You can read about the policy here, and hear about it here and here. I hope readers will forgive me if I leave the academic tone of this blog aside for a moment and offer this personal essay.]

I was ironically in Utah when it happened.

I had flown out for, of all things, a panel on Mormon apologetics. Though I only lived in Utah for three years as an undergraduate at BYU, and then for two short summers when I later returned to teach as an adjunct, the state takes up a disproportionate space within my mental geography. For starters, I met my wife in Salt Lake City and my daughter was born in Provo. Every time I’m in a plane that crests the Rocky Mountains to see the Salt Lake Valley below, I feel at home. This time was no different. Once landed, the familiar routine of seeing old friends and eating at favorite restaurants commenced. It was another reunion. 

But the mood changed rather quickly. I remember glancing at my phone around 4pm, seeing a number of friends share a link to some new policy, and assuming it was the development we all expected. I was in a meeting and couldn’t really examine the release for another hour, but I thought I could assume what the new policy entailed. Same-sex marriage had been declared legal in the United States the previous summer, and many in the Church assumed we would at some point receive an official position from leadership reacting to the new legal reality. We expected such a policy would confirm that individuals in married homosexual unions would be treated the same as individuals in unmarried homosexual relationships. Tough, but consistent. But this was something more. This was something that exceeded what anyone expected.

It wasn’t until I was at dinner with my brother later that night that the new policy’s impact dawned on me. It was an odd feeling to be in one of my favorite places with one of my favorite people while simultaneously experiencing the weight of unprecedented disappointment. In some ways, spending that day and the next with some of my faith community’s best and brightest helped alleviate the shock and pain; their mere presence reminded me of what Mormonism had to offer. But in other ways, being surrounded by these great people only highlighted the problem at hand: all of us—no matter our talents, our service, our dedication—were powerless in the face of the policy’s onslaught. I had never felt so impotent. I didn’t sleep much that night, or many to follow.

The policy shook the very foundations of my understanding of the LDS Church. As a historian, I did not foresee Mormonism’s trajectory moving so far in that particular direction. As a believer, I could not conceive of leadership implementing such an odious policy so clearly antithetical to our core principles. As a congregant, I would have never assumed that my fellow members would accept, let alone defend, a practice so fundamentally counter to the ideals that I believed bound us together. All my previous conceptions of and justifications for the Church seemed inadequate. I no longer felt like I knew the gospel that I believed, the church that I supported, and the community that I loved. I was unmoored.

A year later, I still feel at sea, unable to find dry land. The first few Sundays after November 5 were taken on a week-by-week basis. We continued, and continue, to attend Church. We still hold callings. I honestly can’t give a persuasive reason why, other than I don’t feel driven to do anything else. Yet. Still. I can’t explain our decision to stay, especially in the wake of so many others who didn’t. Especially when confronted with policies I can’t comprehend, let alone defend. I just continue to prepare my Sunday School lessons, put on a suit, tie my shoes, and attend meetings on sabbath morning.

A few weeks ago I flew to Salt Lake City for another conference. When the plane passed into the city, the mountains seemed so impenetrable and the valley so barren. I didn’t feel the same sense of belonging as I used to. I honestly don’t know if I ever will again.