A Love Bizarre

I edited my post and it was then moved to the top of the blog. I originally posted it on time. :-)

I’m a Prince fan.  I dream in paisley and purple.  And the story reminded me of this old gem by Sheile E. and Prince: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56gpwl6cohc

Preface: Jack Lechelt of Leesburg disapproves of the behavior of John Randolph of Roanoke.

Official Post: With an awesome array of questions to choose from, I’ll go with the first prompt: “What makes this a good example of a microhistory? How does this narrative represent social, economic, and political issues and changes which are prevalent at this point in American History beyond Bizarre? What is the “great historical question” that Kierner may be trying to answer and what historiographical techniques or methodologies does Kierner use successfully to tell the narrative?”

To be honest, so far as I know, this is my first foray into microhistory, so perhaps I’m not the best judge of the goodness of it, but I very much enjoyed the book and it gave me a very positive impression of this approach to history.  In fact, more than any of the other genres we have read, this one has allowed me to see a future in history research that I couldn’t previously imagine.  I think this is an approach that is ripe for future work on so many different topics.  To put it crudely, one can claim that an animal is an elephant and can talk or write about it from afar.  That’s pretty valuable an exercise, but we can also learn about an elephant by focusing entirely on its trunk, or its ivory tusks, or its legs.  All of those focused approaches, taken together, will eventually offer us an in-depth analysis of an elephant that a grander, more distant approach cannot provide.  

Kierner, through the use of micro-history, focuses on a “specific and seemingly small episode” involving members of the Randolph family that provides a “glimpse into the [larger] world” that the Randolphs inhabited.  Beyond that, Kierner is providing a “close examination of how contemporaries interpreted the episode and its significance, [which] illuminates an array of wider concerns and issues and, more important still, helps us to distinguish between cultural prescription - what law, religion, more treatises, and social conventions deemed proper behavior - and social reality” (p. 7).  More simply put, we are granted “a revealing window onto the values and culture of Jefferson’s America” (p. 165).

Overall, late-1700s and early 1800s America has often been described as a time of fast-moving democratization, but what did that really mean?  How did it play out?  With Kierner’s take, and due to her deep-dive into the papers of the major characters, we learn a few things about the era.  First, the upper-echelon, particularly in the rural south, took a real hit with democratization, as evidenced by Randolph and the charge of murder he had to answer for.  (Gentry status is still meaningful as he gets great lawyers - Marshall and Henry! - and is set free.)  Also, the newspapers started running wild with partisan perspectives.  Clearly, all of this troubled the old-school gentry.  Beyond that, though, democratization is slow to be realized by those with less power, like blacks and women.  Still, there were areas of self-empowerment, even for the powerless.  Slaves kept the story of Glentivar in the public sphere through gossip, and Nancy Morris was able to fight against decades-old charges of indecency, even in the absence of male protection, because she “willingly claimed independence and power” (p. 172).