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The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846
The central theme of this study of American life in the early 19th century is the establishment of capitalism. The author argues that, following the Industrial Revolution, two distinct societies were created in the USA: rich and poor, proprietors and labourers, city dwellers and farmers.
512 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
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622 people want to read
About the author
Charles Grier Sellers
15 books5 followersA specialist in the history of antebellum America, Charles Sellers earned his B.A. from Harvard University in 1945 (graduation delayed by military service until 1947), and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1950.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
November 25, 2014
This is certainly an interesting book, if you can manage to make your way all the way through. His basic premise is that the United States possessed a pre-capitalist economy before the War of 1812 populated by tradition-bound yeoman who toiled on the land for subsistence living. After the conflict concluded with the Treaty of Ghent in 1815 and the Federalist Party disintegrated, the United States entered a period of profound economic transition from the pre-capitalist agricultural society toward a market based capitalist economy. He critiques the capitalist economy by presenting most ordinary Americans are resisting the market or being coerced into unskilled wage-labor when they could find no other options for work in a land-scare New England or specie-scarce South. By the end of the Civil War, Sellers suggests, the end of slavery and slaveocracy in the South made possible the market revolution's culmination in "unchallengeable bourgeois hegemony, moral and political" (p. 427).
Throughout the volume Sellers essentially details how the market economy (what he coined as the "market revolution") went from something unusual and unwanted toward a regular part of daily life most Americans took for granted. This is where other historians have heavily challenged his arguments about religion and culture, and his narrative sometimes borders on the bizarre. Let it suffice to say that he believes Antinomian and Arminian strands of religious thought (those that emphasized Justification by Faith or Justification by Works, respectively) culminated in the mythology of a self-made man who through his character and labor could achieve self-sufficiency in the capitalist economy. Unfortunately, most Americans could not achieve this "myth" and were beset with various anxieties and psychological maladies as they turned toward alcohol, suicide and other escapist fantasies. Sellers blames the market for causing this widespread discontent. Sellers (sometimes) persuasively demonstrates how middle-class pundits erected a broad edifice of science, medicine, pseudo-psychology, and religion that blamed individual failings and poverty not on structures of the market, but instead blamed the individual for not working hard enough, drinking too much, or being indolent. Those early nineteenth century ideas later found their corollary in the Republican Party's Free Labor ideology and Philosopher Herbert Spencer's social Darwinism, both elaborating these basic principles of hard work and moral character leading to success, and poverty being the result of moral failing, laziness, or innate inferiority.
Other chunks of the volume cover Andrew Jackson's presidency and quickly moves through the presidencies of Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, and Polk to conclude with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the beginnings of a sectional crisis between the North and South.
Sellers' volume was initially slated for the Oxford History of the United States. However, because he focused too explicitly on the Market Revolution and the structural-functionalist approach to understanding how religion, politics, medicine, and science made capitalism palatable for ordinary Americans the editors at Oxford University Press decided to publish his volume independent from the series. Daniel Walker Howe's What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (2007) later became the Oxford History of the United States' volume on Antebellum America. Howe contested Sellers on a point-by-point basis, and set his book up as the antithesis of Sellers' The Market Revolution by proposing instead a "Communications Revolution" and perceiving capitalism and technological innovation as inherently progressive. Because of this, Sellers' book changes pace and diction throughout. Most chapters are explicitly about economics and the social repercussions of capitalism—these are full of tedious explications of capitalism and philosophy that relies on some jargon often under explained. Other chapters take a broad historical narrative of the period, advancing generally moderate interpretations of politics and presidencies that other historians have expanded upon.
I wouldn't recommend this volume for anyone outside academic historians interested in this particular time period. Most interested readers could find a better, more accessible volume in Harry Watson's Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America or Daniel Walker Howe's What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848.
Throughout the volume Sellers essentially details how the market economy (what he coined as the "market revolution") went from something unusual and unwanted toward a regular part of daily life most Americans took for granted. This is where other historians have heavily challenged his arguments about religion and culture, and his narrative sometimes borders on the bizarre. Let it suffice to say that he believes Antinomian and Arminian strands of religious thought (those that emphasized Justification by Faith or Justification by Works, respectively) culminated in the mythology of a self-made man who through his character and labor could achieve self-sufficiency in the capitalist economy. Unfortunately, most Americans could not achieve this "myth" and were beset with various anxieties and psychological maladies as they turned toward alcohol, suicide and other escapist fantasies. Sellers blames the market for causing this widespread discontent. Sellers (sometimes) persuasively demonstrates how middle-class pundits erected a broad edifice of science, medicine, pseudo-psychology, and religion that blamed individual failings and poverty not on structures of the market, but instead blamed the individual for not working hard enough, drinking too much, or being indolent. Those early nineteenth century ideas later found their corollary in the Republican Party's Free Labor ideology and Philosopher Herbert Spencer's social Darwinism, both elaborating these basic principles of hard work and moral character leading to success, and poverty being the result of moral failing, laziness, or innate inferiority.
Other chunks of the volume cover Andrew Jackson's presidency and quickly moves through the presidencies of Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, and Polk to conclude with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the beginnings of a sectional crisis between the North and South.
Sellers' volume was initially slated for the Oxford History of the United States. However, because he focused too explicitly on the Market Revolution and the structural-functionalist approach to understanding how religion, politics, medicine, and science made capitalism palatable for ordinary Americans the editors at Oxford University Press decided to publish his volume independent from the series. Daniel Walker Howe's What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (2007) later became the Oxford History of the United States' volume on Antebellum America. Howe contested Sellers on a point-by-point basis, and set his book up as the antithesis of Sellers' The Market Revolution by proposing instead a "Communications Revolution" and perceiving capitalism and technological innovation as inherently progressive. Because of this, Sellers' book changes pace and diction throughout. Most chapters are explicitly about economics and the social repercussions of capitalism—these are full of tedious explications of capitalism and philosophy that relies on some jargon often under explained. Other chapters take a broad historical narrative of the period, advancing generally moderate interpretations of politics and presidencies that other historians have expanded upon.
I wouldn't recommend this volume for anyone outside academic historians interested in this particular time period. Most interested readers could find a better, more accessible volume in Harry Watson's Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America or Daniel Walker Howe's What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848.
January 28, 2013
Sellers is a fine writer, but ultimately too confusing. His terms are not well defined. He greatly overestimates capitalism's reach in the early republic era. The trouble is he wishes to categorize everything. So Jackson and democracy is painted as an "anti-market" force, a point buried by scholarship both before and after this impressive, if uneven, tome.
January 30, 2015
Interesting argument and content, but difficult to get through and not very enjoyable to read.
Sellers examines the tensions between traditional substance culture and the market culture that emerged after the War of 1812. These tensions resulted in a profound transformation of American values, with market culture valuing individualism, money and commodities over traditional civic and community values. Sellers maintains that the arminianism (free will) and antinomian (unfixed moral law) religious movements undermined the traditional ideological and social hierarchy, opening the way for capitalism, democracy, and the two party political system, as well as the expansion of government through nationalistic and racist imperialism. Sellers demonstrates his deep knowledge of political, economic, and social history, but his writing lacks clarity which greatly detracts from the cohesiveness of his argument.
Sellers examines the tensions between traditional substance culture and the market culture that emerged after the War of 1812. These tensions resulted in a profound transformation of American values, with market culture valuing individualism, money and commodities over traditional civic and community values. Sellers maintains that the arminianism (free will) and antinomian (unfixed moral law) religious movements undermined the traditional ideological and social hierarchy, opening the way for capitalism, democracy, and the two party political system, as well as the expansion of government through nationalistic and racist imperialism. Sellers demonstrates his deep knowledge of political, economic, and social history, but his writing lacks clarity which greatly detracts from the cohesiveness of his argument.
July 19, 2011
Tough going...he may have been drunk for parts of it.
January 8, 2013
If you are looking for a good resource for the Jacksonian American period, you might want to check out Charles Sellers' book, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846.
I had to have this book for an online class and used it quite extensively. The material is full though not overwhelming. I found it gave me most of what I needed for the class though there were a few topics that seemed to be missing or not covered enough for my needs. In that aspect, the book is not all encompassing for the period, but it does give you a good look into it.
The organization of the book flowed well aside from the formatting of the sections. There was very little white paper scene. After awhile, my eyes would cross wondering when I'd find a break in the section.
This is a book that is used as a textbook meaning that it is a little dry. I was pleased to find it not as dry as many of the textbooks I have to read, but the formatting of it made it worse, I think.
It covers the political climate, the religious climate, the economic climate, and more. This is a must have for your American history book collection. It doesn't have everything, but it has enough to get you started and compliment any other book you have.
Note: This book was part of an online class with no expectation of a review of any kind.
March 20, 2013
Sellers’ "The Market Revolution" charts the triumph of bourgeoisie liberalism in the middle of the 19th century despite popular, Democratic resistance to capitalism. Employing a Marxist frame, Sellers text documents how the transition from subsistence, farming society to an industrial, market society influenced everything from religion to medicine, politics to literature, monetary policy and social reform, and racial ideology to military campaigns. This broad history of the first half of the 19th century emphasizes class above all other identities and views religious, political, and social actions in relationship to class identity. As a result, Sellers text is fairly silent on race and nearly avoids questions of gender (other than a brief discussion of gynecological surgery).
It's not an easy read and, in many ways, is a product of Sellers' political roots in the 1960s. That said, it's a detailed account of class relationships in the first half of the 19th century.
It's not an easy read and, in many ways, is a product of Sellers' political roots in the 1960s. That said, it's a detailed account of class relationships in the first half of the 19th century.
September 7, 2012
My first foray into serious history by someone with a Marxist bent. Mostly clear, and the author is extremely intelligent and informed. But I'm not sure everything that happens is attributable to evil market forces. Sometimes history just happens.
September 28, 2007
Perhaps one of the greatest histories of the Jacksonian era. Arguing that the Market revolution and the switch from an agrarian economy to a market based on was the catalyst for democratic change in the US, Sellers recounts the early 19th century, descrbing the changes in social, economic, and political behavior. A great book for historians and laypeople alike.
January 16, 2009
A rich and thought-provoking synthesis of the Jacksonian era; Sellers argues that democracy was the unintended consequence of capitalist transformation, one that briefly challenged the market revolution before being tamed by it. This class analysis is most persuasive in the political realm, but veers into argument by adjective in the cultural sphere.
May 31, 2016
A comprehensive study of the titular years, the book is a slow read. It IS well written, however, it is loaded with details, which often require the reader to catch up on certain concepts, previous historical events, or just lay the book down to ponder the implications of what Sellers writes. Worthwhile and packed with information, although don't expect it to be a swift read.
Want to read
January 23, 2012To read in concert with "What Hath God Wrought" by Daniel Walker Howe. (See article "Vast Designs" by Jill Lepore in The New Yorker.)
April 29, 2012
Full of lots and lots of history, but can be tough reading at times. this is not a book you can skim through.
June 14, 2012
This book probably did more to shape my thinking about Jacksonian America than any other. Sadly, it doesn't quite cohere as well as it might.
Read
September 29, 2015Classic study of early industrialization and the Market Revolution in the United States.
August 20, 2022
Reading this book is like when your map app gives you one of those alternate routes that takes you hundreds of miles out of your way, along a highway with some unparalleled vistas, but too many windy, or pebbly, or ominous-road-to-nowhere looking stretches. Thankfully this is a book and not a road as I gave up almost at the end, and if it had been an actual road I would have just abandoned myself to the forest or –even worse– the desert and died of exposure. Instead I cried uncle on page 335 and am thus writing this review fully hydrated at a healthy body weight, unmolested by ticks, mosquitos, or other toothier predators.
It provides some interesting –and not entirely flattering– information about the beginnings of the legal profession as well as Justices Marshall and Storey.
As the uninitiated, it certainly acquainted me much better with Calhoun, Clay, a bit on Webster, and a lot on developmentalism/the bankrolling of infrastructure.
I had no idea that during the 1800s there were still many currencies being used in the country because state banks each printed their own nominally backed notes.
Yes, it was fun to find out that the graham cracker was invented by Sylvester Graham, who believed that sex and masturbation were bad, that good food reminded people to think about sex and masturbation, and that his crackers were designed to be anti-aphrodisiacs. Graham would definitely not be pleased with their wanton sandwiching of the s'more. More seriously, Graham's oddities were contextualized in Seller's more consequential interpretation of how market forces impacted romantic relationships and sexual mores.
For family fun, I turned his ridiculously overwrought sentences –which catwalk across the page like a model in an outfit so absurdly ornate as to preclude sitting– into a parlor game whereby I ordered my kids to form their own ridiculous sentence based on his grammar (only one child complied; I guess I know who will be there when I'm old). Here's an example of a sentence we used for this parlor game, which is about Thomas Hart Benton, who was kicked out of college for stealing:
"Haunted by a senator for the next thirty years by the youthful disgrace that cost him a genteel education, Benton bristled at slights, buried bursts of florid eloquence in tiresome parades of autodidact learning, and abjured presidential prospects lest his past be dragged up."
Now this is pure poetry and quite clever compared with what happens later. Probably the Oxford company did not want the liability of forcing any more flunky editors into the madhouse in the face of the impossible task of cleaning this book up. Feeding this book to an artificial intelligence editor might actually paralyze its algorithms and send AI back some decades. It just devolves towards the end into paragraphs filled with short quotes from various sources.
He's a bright guy. I could not write a book as good as this as I am not a writer, but, more importantly, I couldn't read it any longer, and I am a reader. I tried to research what I didn't understand along the way (and did learn a lot doing so), but in the end I cannot play Dorothea/reader to your Professor Casaubon, Dr. Sellers. But I really tried. And I wish I could have loved it. Absolute A for effort and commitment to the cause. We should all try so hard.
It provides some interesting –and not entirely flattering– information about the beginnings of the legal profession as well as Justices Marshall and Storey.
As the uninitiated, it certainly acquainted me much better with Calhoun, Clay, a bit on Webster, and a lot on developmentalism/the bankrolling of infrastructure.
I had no idea that during the 1800s there were still many currencies being used in the country because state banks each printed their own nominally backed notes.
Yes, it was fun to find out that the graham cracker was invented by Sylvester Graham, who believed that sex and masturbation were bad, that good food reminded people to think about sex and masturbation, and that his crackers were designed to be anti-aphrodisiacs. Graham would definitely not be pleased with their wanton sandwiching of the s'more. More seriously, Graham's oddities were contextualized in Seller's more consequential interpretation of how market forces impacted romantic relationships and sexual mores.
For family fun, I turned his ridiculously overwrought sentences –which catwalk across the page like a model in an outfit so absurdly ornate as to preclude sitting– into a parlor game whereby I ordered my kids to form their own ridiculous sentence based on his grammar (only one child complied; I guess I know who will be there when I'm old). Here's an example of a sentence we used for this parlor game, which is about Thomas Hart Benton, who was kicked out of college for stealing:
"Haunted by a senator for the next thirty years by the youthful disgrace that cost him a genteel education, Benton bristled at slights, buried bursts of florid eloquence in tiresome parades of autodidact learning, and abjured presidential prospects lest his past be dragged up."
Now this is pure poetry and quite clever compared with what happens later. Probably the Oxford company did not want the liability of forcing any more flunky editors into the madhouse in the face of the impossible task of cleaning this book up. Feeding this book to an artificial intelligence editor might actually paralyze its algorithms and send AI back some decades. It just devolves towards the end into paragraphs filled with short quotes from various sources.
He's a bright guy. I could not write a book as good as this as I am not a writer, but, more importantly, I couldn't read it any longer, and I am a reader. I tried to research what I didn't understand along the way (and did learn a lot doing so), but in the end I cannot play Dorothea/reader to your Professor Casaubon, Dr. Sellers. But I really tried. And I wish I could have loved it. Absolute A for effort and commitment to the cause. We should all try so hard.
May 12, 2024
It's probably one of the most insightful books I've read on US history and society so far. It tells the story of the industrial revolution, its consequences for the people of the United States, and the rise and fall of one of the first movements of workers and farmers that tried to confront it head on.
The book is extremely rich with context, and he spends the first two thirds just setting the foundations, talking about English common law, the history of finance and monetary policy, gender and families, and probably most compellingly but also probably most difficult to get through was a chapter all about different trends in protestantism. He clearly maps out two trends in protestantism, which stand in for the young bourgeois and professionals who are harbingers of the market (Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Unitarians), and for the subsistence farmers whose lives were disrupted by industrialization (Baptists, Methodists, Mormons).
Eventually he does get to the core historical aspects which are the political battles of the Jackson administration which was a site of major class conflict, especially the Bank War which unleashed a serious labor uprising in the mid to late 1830s. This all comes to a tragic end with the panic of 1837 and the election of 1840, which seals the workers' fate as playing second fiddle to the planter and capitalist classes whims through to today.
The truly great thing about this book is how it shows a fundamental dynamic in the US regarding the two party system, the antagonism between the progressive urban upper class, the inheritors of capitalist destiny, who stand in for feminism, abolitionism, and more, and the farmer-labor movement which has a utopian and egalitarian aim but is trapped by internal division, fantastical solutions, pragmatic electoral alliances, and ultimately a failure to establish independent political activity. The election of 1840 condemns the worker based Locofoco movement to the American Dream of complete submission to capitalist exploitation.
I can't help but compare the situation of the book to the place I find myself today (May 2024). The major struggle of right now is the struggle to end US support for the imperialist project of Israel while it is leading an all-out genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip. Middle class college students have been arrested by the thousands for daring to step out of line from the capitalists' agenda. While the college educated are extremely zealous, my own union local as well as my Central Labor Council have had far less positive to say on the movement. Even the protestant angle works where the mainline protestants have adopted BDS as a platform, while the more evangelical are some of the staunchest supporters of Israel in the country. The author of the Market Revolution, who was a participant in the social movements of his time as a Freedom Rider in the Civil Rights Movement, surely saw the same contradiction. Ultimately, if you are a serious communist, the question of how we get the working class back on track has to be the question of our time and I think a part of that means getting these radical college students to reject the Whig impulses towards academia, think tanks, and electoralism, and directing them into the heart of the working class.
I'd have a hard time recommending this book to most people casually outside of US history enthusiasts, but I think ideally, it would feature as a core book in an advanced curriculum of Marxist takes on US history.
The book is extremely rich with context, and he spends the first two thirds just setting the foundations, talking about English common law, the history of finance and monetary policy, gender and families, and probably most compellingly but also probably most difficult to get through was a chapter all about different trends in protestantism. He clearly maps out two trends in protestantism, which stand in for the young bourgeois and professionals who are harbingers of the market (Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Unitarians), and for the subsistence farmers whose lives were disrupted by industrialization (Baptists, Methodists, Mormons).
Eventually he does get to the core historical aspects which are the political battles of the Jackson administration which was a site of major class conflict, especially the Bank War which unleashed a serious labor uprising in the mid to late 1830s. This all comes to a tragic end with the panic of 1837 and the election of 1840, which seals the workers' fate as playing second fiddle to the planter and capitalist classes whims through to today.
The truly great thing about this book is how it shows a fundamental dynamic in the US regarding the two party system, the antagonism between the progressive urban upper class, the inheritors of capitalist destiny, who stand in for feminism, abolitionism, and more, and the farmer-labor movement which has a utopian and egalitarian aim but is trapped by internal division, fantastical solutions, pragmatic electoral alliances, and ultimately a failure to establish independent political activity. The election of 1840 condemns the worker based Locofoco movement to the American Dream of complete submission to capitalist exploitation.
I can't help but compare the situation of the book to the place I find myself today (May 2024). The major struggle of right now is the struggle to end US support for the imperialist project of Israel while it is leading an all-out genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip. Middle class college students have been arrested by the thousands for daring to step out of line from the capitalists' agenda. While the college educated are extremely zealous, my own union local as well as my Central Labor Council have had far less positive to say on the movement. Even the protestant angle works where the mainline protestants have adopted BDS as a platform, while the more evangelical are some of the staunchest supporters of Israel in the country. The author of the Market Revolution, who was a participant in the social movements of his time as a Freedom Rider in the Civil Rights Movement, surely saw the same contradiction. Ultimately, if you are a serious communist, the question of how we get the working class back on track has to be the question of our time and I think a part of that means getting these radical college students to reject the Whig impulses towards academia, think tanks, and electoralism, and directing them into the heart of the working class.
I'd have a hard time recommending this book to most people casually outside of US history enthusiasts, but I think ideally, it would feature as a core book in an advanced curriculum of Marxist takes on US history.
November 4, 2020
I've read about a dozen biographies or political histories covering this era of American history and subconsciously realized that their America was not exactly the same as my America. For one thing, keeping track of the Locofocos, Hunkers, AntiMasons, Bucktails, Regency and Tammany in New York state alone was quite difficult. Also, the religious upheavals were never adequately covered. And what was all that fuss about freemasonry?
Sellers' focus on the social and class changes in America between the second war against Britain and the Mexican War fills in many of the voids in my knowledge and is not contradicted by what I already knew. Thus, it gets 5 stars.
However, I suspect that anyone who hasn't already read extensively on this era is going to struggle to keep up.
Sellers' focus on the social and class changes in America between the second war against Britain and the Mexican War fills in many of the voids in my knowledge and is not contradicted by what I already knew. Thus, it gets 5 stars.
However, I suspect that anyone who hasn't already read extensively on this era is going to struggle to keep up.
March 24, 2020
It was a fine book. I wouldn't really reccomend it if you're looking for an economic history. It was a cross between a political and social history. I enjoyed his chapter on the bourgeois cultural hegemony. But, all the chapters on the politics were confusing and unenjoyable. It's my own fault really, I should have read the synopsis before buying the book.
Read
April 2, 2024ALL rec. This felt a bit disjointed but parts on transport and the market were good. Gienapp's book review of this is maybe better than the book (while also a bit reductive in the same way it critiques the book for being). However, Charles was a skier, so I'll give him that.
Read
January 5, 2021In light of current event reading about the Jacksonian era and the whole common man ethos this was a very interesting read.
April 29, 2017
There are problems with this book. Two of its Chapters are among the most tedious I've read. The stuff on religion, and sexuality is pretty much unforgivable. It imposes its framework of "The Market Revolution" over nearly every event, which I'm guessing offers little in the way of historical accuracy.
Still, some really great thoughts in here. Its slashing attack on the development of middle class political culture is worth the effort.
Still, some really great thoughts in here. Its slashing attack on the development of middle class political culture is worth the effort.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews