¹ Caveat lector: the author has published a volume in one of these series. The author has also served as 1996–97 programme director for one of these seminars.

² Miller, Z., Boss Cox's Cincinnati (Chicago, 1968), xi.Google Scholar

³ Wood, G., The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York, 1991)Google Scholar, see esp. 104; Lasch, C., The True and Only Heaven (New York, 1991), esp. 172–6Google Scholar. See also Wood, G., The Creation of the American Republic (Chapel Hill, NC, 1969)Google Scholar, esp. ch. 2. For a contrary view that minimizes the role of the Revolution in the rise of American democracy, see Wiebe, R., Self-Rule (Chicago, 1995)Google Scholar. For a study that minimizes the role of the civic tradition in nineteenth-century American politics, see Diggins, J.P., The Lost Soul of American Politics (Chicago, 1984).Google Scholar

⁴ Wood, , Radicalism of the American RevolutionGoogle Scholar; Lasch, , True and Only HeavenGoogle Scholar; Wood, , Creation of the American Republic.Google Scholar

⁵ Wood, , Radicalism of the American RevolutionGoogle Scholar, esp. Part III; Lasch, C., ‘Liberalism and civic virtue’Google Scholar, Telos, 88 (Summer 1991), 57–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wilson quoted in ibid., 62.

⁶ ‘The Duty of Everyman To Be A Politician’, Working Man's Friend, 1 (16 07 1836), 27Google Scholar: copy in Cincinnati Historical Society; Narrative of the Late Riotous Proceedings Against the Liberty of the Press, in Cincinnati (Cincinnati, 1836)Google Scholar, Birney's pamphlet recording the details of the incident copy in Cincinnati Historical Society. See also Richards, L.L., ‘Gentlemen of Property and Standing’: Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America (New York, 1970).Google Scholar

⁷ I have organized this argument around these three because of their common focus on mid-nineteenth-century Cincinnati, their particular emphasis on citizenship, and their fairly recent publication or republication. This argument might well include discussions, or more extended discussions, of many more historians of Cincinnati including Wade, Ross, R. Fairbanks, H. Shapiro and others. Considerations of space as well as coverage in other reviews, either already published or in preparation, have caused me to exclude or limit discussion of these historians.

⁸ Like D. Aaron (who is discussed below), A. Schlesinger, Sr, R. Wade and other pioneers of urban history ‘tied economic and cultural progress inextricably to the civic and political realms’: Z. Miller, ‘The crisis of civic and political virtue: urban history, urban life and the new understanding of the city’, paper presented at Richard C. Wade Retirement Conference (copy in possession of author).

⁹ Gleason, P., ‘World War II and the development of American studies’, American Quarterly, 36 (1984), 344–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁰ See Abbott, C.'s ‘Foreword’ to Aaron, D., Cincinnati: Queen City of the West: 1819–1838 (Columbus, 1992)Google Scholar; Aaron, , Cincinnati, 318–20Google Scholar, quoted phrases on 318.

¹¹ The classic study of this antebellum interest in the national character is Taylor, W.'s Cavalier and Yankee (New York, 1961).Google Scholar

¹² Aaron, , Cincinnati, 319Google Scholar. On the celebratory writings of the 1930s, see Kazin, A., On Native Grounds (New York, 1942)Google Scholar, ch. 16; Lasch, C., ‘Foreword’ to Hofstadter, R., The American Political Tradition (New York, 1973)Google Scholar. For the frontier thesis see Turner, F.J., The Frontier in American History (New York, 1920)Google Scholar; Wade, R., The Urban Frontier (Columbus, 1996)Google Scholar. For a passage that anticipates Wade, see Aaron, , Cincinnati, 5.Google Scholar

¹³ Ibid., 82, 150–1.

¹⁴ Ware, C. (ed.), The Cultural Approach to History (New York, 1940)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See Abbott, , ‘Foreword’Google Scholar, for a fuller discussion of the intellectual underpinnings of Aaron's thesis. I am indebted to Abbott's analysis. The description of the cultural approach is from Lynd, R.S., Knowledge for What? (Princeton, NJ, 1967), 16, 19Google Scholar; quoted in W.I. Susman, ‘The culture of the thirties’, in idem, Culture as History (New York, 1984), 153.

¹⁵ Pierson, G., Tocqueville in America (New York, 1959), 363.Google Scholar

¹⁶ de Tocqueville, A., Democracy in America, ed. Heffner, R.D. (New York, 1984), 303.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Hall quoted in Aaron, , Cincinnati, 57Google Scholar; editorial quoted on 112–13. On ‘self-interest rightly understood’, see Grimsted, D., ‘Rioting in its Jacksonian setting’, American Historical Review, 77 (04 1972), 368.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁸ Aaron, , Cincinnati, 107–13Google Scholar, quoted passage on 108; Tocqueville, , Democracy in America, 195.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Aaron, , Cincinnati, 139–40.Google Scholar

²⁰ Ibid., on sociability and association, 111–12; ‘gregarious’, 124; Walker quoted on 67.

²¹ Abbott, C., Boosters and Businessmen (Westport, Conn., 1981), 5Google Scholar; Abbott, is quoting from the Cincinnati Commercial, 5 06 1855.Google Scholar

²² Abbott, , Boosters and Businessmen, 148–51Google Scholar; Abbott is quoting Mansfield, E., Memoirs of the Life and Services of Daniel Drake, M.D. (Cincinnati, 1855), 269.Google Scholar

²³ Abbott, , Boosters and Businessmen, 148–66.Google Scholar

²⁴ Ibid., 151–8.

²⁵ Ibid., 158–66, quoted passage on 160.

²⁶ Ibid., 166–7.

²⁷ This is one of the arguments in Putnam, R.D., Making Democracy Work Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, 1994)Google Scholar. See Gray, J.'s front page review in The New York Times Book Review, 22 01 1995.Google Scholar

²⁸ Abbott, , Boosters and Businessmen, 151–2.Google Scholar

²⁹ Ross, S.J., Workers on the Edge (New York, 1985)Google Scholar, esp. chs 2–3.

³⁰ Aaron, , Cincinnati, 50–4, 286.Google Scholar

³¹ Flint and the Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Gazette (a local newspaper) quoted in Aaron, , Cincinnati, 96–7.Google Scholar

³² Ibid., 102–3.

³³ Ibid., 164–5.

³⁴ Mrs Trollope's story may have been apocryphal, but it reflected real concerns: Aaron, , Cincinnati, 159.Google Scholar

³⁵ Ibid., 125.

³⁶ Ibid., 125–7, 131–7.

³⁷ Ibid., on the pulpit, 198–201; on public education, 211–13, 219–24.

³⁸ Ibid., 84–92.

³⁹ Ross, , Workers on the Edge, 58–63Google Scholar; the Elevator, 13 11 1841Google Scholar, quoted on 60.

⁴⁰ Marcus, A.I., Plague of Strangers: Social Groups and the Origins of City Services in Cincinnati, 1819–1870 (Columbus, 1991)Google Scholar, passim, esp. chs 2–3; quoted passages on 56.

⁴¹ Ibid., 10–14, 85–9.

⁴² Ibid., 23–35, chs 4, 6.

⁴³ Ibid., 86–8. Marcus does not explicitly make this argument.

⁴⁴ See Abbott, , ‘Foreword’, viii.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Lampard, E., ‘American historians and urbanization’, American Historical Review, 67 (10 1961), 49–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁶ Miller's study appeared the same year as the federally-sponsored Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (New York, 1968)Google Scholar. T. Wicker's introduction to the volume notes that two of the commissioners were spat upon in a basement in Cincinnati while investigating the disorders.

⁴⁷ Abbott, , ‘Foreword’, xii–xiii.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ I limit my discussion of Miller's work here because I have examined the achievement and continuing relevance of Boss Cox's Cincinnati (as well as several other of Miller's important articles) in Fairfield, John D., ‘Cincinnati's search for order’, Queen City Heritage, 48 (Summer 1990), 15–26Google Scholar. This article also contains an extended discussion of Ross, 's Workers on the Edge.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Miller, Z.L., ‘Cincinnati: a bicentennial assessment’, Cincinnati Historical Society Bulletin, 34 (Winter 1976), 231–7.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Ibid., 737–40.

⁵¹ Ibid., 243–5.

⁵² Ibid., 245–7.

⁵³ Marcus, , Plague of Strangers, 36–42Google Scholar; on the new perception of long-existing social conditions see 80–6.

⁵⁴ Ibid., 36–42.

⁵⁵ Marcus, A.I., ‘Back to the present: historians' treatment of the city as a social system during the reign of the idea of community’, in Miller, Z.L. and Gillette, H. Jr, (eds), American Urbanism (New York, 1987), 7–10.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ See especially Shapiro, H.D., Appalachia on My Mind (Chapel Hill, 1978).Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Compare to R. Westbrook's discussion of J. Dewey's pragmatic theory of truth: Westbrook, R., John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca, 1991), 130–7.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ This paragraph is based on a series of conversations and exchanges of letters with Miller. See also Shapiro, , Appalachia on My Mind.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Marcus, , ‘Back to the present’, 10–11.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Canton's P. Kaufmann was the fourth of the Ohio Hegelians.

⁶¹ Easton, L.D., Hegel's First American Followers: The Ohio Hegelians (Athens, Ohio, 1966), 32–43Google Scholar, quoted passage on 33.

⁶² Ibid., passim.

⁶³ Ibid., 180–91, quoted passages on 185 and 187.

⁶⁴ ‘A broad-base agreement about basics during a certain period is necessary for discussion and debate; a shared vision of the nature of reality allows contemporaries to engage in conversations and arguments’: Marcus, , ‘Back to the present’, 10.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Lasch, C., ‘The lost art of public argument’, Harpers, 281 (09 1990), 17–22.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Moloney, S., ‘Lack of vision holds city back, historian says’, Cincinnati Enquirer, 3 12 1990.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ In the 1834 Lane Seminary debates the passionate arguments of James Bradley, a former slave, helped win over many of his listeners to abolitionism; yet his victory led the Lane trustees to expel the evangelized students from the school. Two years later a motley crowd led by local ‘gentlemen of property and standing’ absolutely refused to allow James Birney to conduct a debate on abolitionism, destroying his printing press in the process. Although this case had its other side too; one angry public meeting did allow Birney to speak and was won over by his courage and conviction to a respect of the man, if not his principles.

⁶⁸ Tocqueville, , Democracy in America, 303.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Clubbe, J., Cincinnati Observed (Columbus, 1992).Google Scholar