Moral minorities and the making of American democracy / Kyle G. Volk.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Volk, Kyle G., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Minorities--Civil rights--United States--History--19th century.

Minorities.

Minorities--Political activity--United States--History--19th century.

Ethnic relations.

History.

Moral conditions.

Dissenters.

Political participation.

Democracy.

Minorities--Political activity.

Minorities--Civil rights.

United States--Politics and government--1845-1861.

United States.

Politics and government.

Democracy--United States--History--19th century.

Political participation--United States--History--19th century.

Dissenters--United States--History--19th century.

United States--Moral conditions--History--19th century.

United States--Social conditions--19th century.

Social conditions.

United States--Ethnic relations--History--19th century.

Political science.

Social history.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xi, 291 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2014.

Summary:

"Should the majority always rule? If not, how should the rights of minorities be protected? In Moral Minorities and the Making of American Democracy, historian Kyle G. Volk unearths the origins of modern ideas and practices of minority-rights politics. Focusing on controversies spurred by the explosion of grassroots moral reform in the early nineteenth century, he shows how a motley but powerful array of self-understood minorities reshaped American democracy as they battled laws regulating Sabbath observance, alcohol, and interracial contact. Proponents justified these measures with the 'democratic' axiom of majority rule. In response, immigrants, Black northerners, abolitionists, liquor dealers, Catholics, Jews, Seventh-day Baptists, and others articulated a different vision of democracy requiring the protection of minority rights. These moral minorities prompted a generation of Americans to reassess whether 'majority rule' was truly the essence of democracy, and they ensured that majority tyranny would no longer be just the fear of elites and slaveholders. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth-century, minority rights became the concern of a wide range of Americans attempting to live in an increasingly diverse nation. Volk reveals that driving this vast ideological reckoning was the emergence of America's tradition of popular minority-rights politics. To challenge hostile laws and policies, moral minorities worked outside of political parties and at the grassroots. They mobilized elite and ordinary people to form networks of dissent and some of America's first associations dedicated to the protection of minority rights. They lobbied officials and used constitutions and the common law to initiate 'test cases' before local and appellate courts. Indeed, the moral minorities of the mid-nineteenth century pioneered fundamental methods of political participation and legal advocacy that subsequent generations of civil-rights and civil-liberties activists would adopt and that are widely used today"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Making America's First Moral Majority

Sunday Laws and the Problem of the Christian Republic

The License Question and the Perils of "Pure Democracy"

Mixed Marriages, Motley Schools, and the Struggle for Racial Equality

"Jim Crow Conveyances" and the Politics of Integrating the Public

America's First Wet Crusade and the Sunday Question Redux

Epilogue: Making Democracy Safe for Minorities.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780199371914

0199371911

OCLC:

870986742