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Blackmer, Peter Dutton

History

2012

MA

With this historical research the author argues that during the first half of the nineteenth century a new paradigm of masculinity emerged as a response to the politics of the American Revolution and to the economic turmoil of the "market revolution." Mechanic Manhood is a type of American masculinity within a larger gendered taxonomy that is contingent on race, age, skilled labor, temperance, business acument, and morality. Through voluntary organizations called Farmer's and Mechanic's Associations in Windsor, Burlington, and St. Albans, laboring men sought a redefinition of skilled laborers as "mechanics." Relying on the organizational documents of Burlington and Windsor associations, United States federal census data, and on Mid-Atlantic and New England cultural artifacts of printed materials, the author posits that mechanic manhood was a transient coalition of previous gendered skilled labor categories of craftsman and journeyman.