Rockman, Seth
Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore
Johns Hopkins (Baltimore)
2009
OUR SYNOPSIS: Seth Rockman explores the stories of Baltimoreans who performed forms of labor not highly valued by society in the early United States. He argues, “The liberal promises of the American Revolution stood beyond the reach of these workers, for whom economic failure was far more common than the upward mobility so widely associated with the era of the early republic.” (2) Furthermore, the prosperity of economically successful Americans required the subjugation of this laboring class. He emphasizes that “There is no better place than Baltimore to see the new promises, possibilities, and perils of the early American republic. Baltimore was an early republic boomtown, gaining municipal independence in 1797, just as it surpassed Boston to become the third largest city in the nation. With virtually no colonial-era past to set the tone of its early republic development, Baltimore embodied the ambitions and limitations of the new United States.” (3) Rockman focuses on how these stories fit into histories of American racial capitalism.
BIG QUESTIONS:
How did Baltimore's geographical location impact its early economic development?
In what ways did class and race intersect in Early Republic Baltimore?
How did working class Baltimoreans resist their social and economic oppression in early Baltimore?
FEATURE QUOTES:
“At a moment of great entrepreneurial energy and social mobility, prosperity came to Americans who could best assemble, deploy, and exploit the physical labor of others. The early republic’s economy opened new possibilities for some Americans precisely because it closed down opportunities for others. This book, then, tells the story of the chronically impoverished, often unfree, and generally unequal Americans whose work made the United States arguably the most wealthy, free, and egalitarian society in the Western world.” (2-3)
“If anything, the challenges of scraping by became greater as Baltimore became more committed to slavery and more committed to free labor over the course of the early republic.” (233)
PRIMARY SOURCES:
BALTIMORE CONNECTIONS:
The entire book.
