Accommodating the Republic - by Kirsten E Wood (Paperback)

About the Book

"People have gathered in public drinking places to drink, relax, socialize, and do business for hundreds of years. For just as long, critics have described taverns and similar drinking establishments as sources of individual ruin and public disorder. Examining these dynamics as Americans surged westward in the early nineteenth century, Kirsten E. Wood argues that entrepreneurial, improvement-minded men integrated many village and town taverns into the nation's rapidly developing transportation network and used tavern spaces and networks to raise capital, promote innovative businesses, practice genteel sociability, and rally support for favored causes-often while drinking the staggering amounts of alcohol for which the period is justly famous. White men's unrivaled freedom to use taverns for their own pursuits of happiness gave everyday significance to citizenship in the early republic. Yet white men did not have taverns to themselves. Sharing tavern spaces with other Americans intensified white men's struggles to define what, and for whom, taverns should be. At the same time, temperance and other reform movements increasingly divided white men along lines of party, conscience, and class. In both conflicts, some improvement-minded white men found common cause with middle-class white women and Black activists, who had their own stake in rethinking taverns and citizenship"--

Book Synopsis

People have gathered in public drinking places to drink, relax, socialize, and do business for hundreds of years. For just as long, critics have described taverns and similar drinking establishments as sources of individual ruin and public disorder. Examining these dynamics as Americans surged westward in the early nineteenth century, Kirsten E. Wood argues that entrepreneurial, improvement-minded men integrated many village and town taverns into the nation's rapidly developing transportation network and used tavern spaces and networks to raise capital, promote innovative businesses, practice genteel sociability, and rally support for favored causes--often while drinking the staggering amounts of alcohol for which the period is justly famous. White men's unrivaled freedom to use taverns for their own pursuits of happiness gave everyday significance to citizenship in the early republic. Yet white men did not have taverns to themselves.

Sharing tavern spaces with other Americans intensified white men's struggles to define what, and for whom, taverns should be. At the same time, temperance and other reform movements increasingly divided white men along lines of party, conscience, and class. In both conflicts, some improvement-minded white men found common cause with middle-class white women and Black activists, who had their own stake in rethinking taverns and citizenship.

Review Quotes

"Accommodating the Republic provides a fresh look at the political, economic, and social dimensions of taverns in the early United States. Wood's research well supports her claims about the imbrication of taverns with developing notions of white male citizenship. . . . It deserves a wide readership among early American and early national historians."--American Historical Review

"A valuable work of social and cultural history. . . . [T]his book remains an admirable work that will be of interest to students of the early United States, the public square, and tavern culture generally."--Journal of Southern History

"Broad in scope and meticulous in detail, Accommodating the Republic reminds us that the United States' tumultuous past--never mind present--remains firmly wedded to our social institutions, perhaps none of which surpassed the tavern in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries."--William & Mary Quarterly

"Wood has painstakingly excavated references to taverns to reveal the multiplicity of experiences within as well as boisterous debates about these spaces in the nation's economy, its simultaneously democratic and hierarchical social order, and its contentious culture. Pour a glass of your favorite beverage and enjoy this book's enlightening and persuasive reframing of the history of the Early Republic."--Register of the Kentucky Historical Society

About the Author

Kirsten E. Wood is associate professor of history at Florida International University and the author of Masterful Women: Slaveholding Widows from the American Revolution through the Civil War.