Week Three reading response

David Waldstreicher’s article seeks a new way to personify runaway slaves: as confidence men, on the lam. In order to escape their masters, runaway slaves used the same strategies, says Waldstreicher, as did 18th century con men—disguising themselves, using linguistic skills, manipulating goods and people, capitalizing on the grey area between black and white that allowed for passing, and “changed their identities [to] gain at least a measure of freedom.” Waldstreicher identifies the genre of newspaper advertisements for runaway slaves as an important way to analyze the role newspaper publishers had in reinforcing the institution of slavery (and vice versa: runaway slaves created a market for newspaper writers). He also calls these advertisements the “first slave narratives,” as they are some of the first written stories about slaves.
Waldstreicher sites one particular example of an advert from the Pennsylvania Gazette (from an edition between 1728-90) to demonstrate the con men tactics of a runaway slave: this man, Tom, intended to disguise his true identity by cutting his hair, making stockings, and using a blanket to complete his look as an Indian—an identity he would try to assume. Waldstreicher asks to what extent slaves were capable of fashioning their own identities. Without the newspaper advert, we would most likely know nothing about Tom (but with it, he may have been caught).
The topics of identity, role-playing (and role-breaking), storytelling, and the commoditization of persons are the themes that Waldstreicher examines through the lens of newspaper advertisements for confidence men-like runaways. He heavily cites and annotates the work of other authors who have studied runaways, passing, identity-morphing, and newspaper advertisements of this era. His main primary source, of course, is the newspaper adverts themselves and numerical data on ad sales.
What most interested me in terms of Waldstreicher’s research material was how he used the data he found – the advertisements – to create his thesis, not the other way around. He did not draft a thesis and then use primary sources to support it, but rather needed the evidence to make the argument.

Halttunen's article asks why nineteenth-century Americans so feared the 'hypocricy' of confidence men and painted women? She seeks to examine the "crisis of social identity" in a fluid America: as people moved from place to place, as America changed in the 19th century, how did their identities change? Why did this transience inspire such fear?
Confidence men and painted women were seen as trying falsely 'pass', according to Halttunen. She explores the "era of the confidence man" and the problems of hypocrisy that he personified as well as how both the confidence man and the painted lady fit into the the idea of sentimental culture in America. Confidence men and painted women were an easy and tangible target to foist the fears of (American's own person) hypocrisy upon.
Halttunen describes changes in America in the nineteenth century -- the rise of 'peer pressure', changes in the workplace and at home, transience, the Panic of 1837, etc. -- in order to trace this rising hypocrisy and rising fears. Hers is really a study of middle-class culture (as she says in her title) rather than one very specific aspect of American culture (as in Waldstriecher's piece). Her footnotes are not included in the piece as Waldstreicher's are, and she seems to refer more to past historians' work rather than primary documents such as runaway slaves newspaper advertisements. She does, however, examine many writings-of-the-time (such as Calvin Colton's in 1844).

George Chauncey traces the development of a male gay community in New York city between the end of the 1800's and the beginning of World War II. Chauncey argues that this world has been largely forgotten and ignored by historians -- this is a result of the myths of isolation, invisibility and isolation born from anti-gay hostility.
Chauncey examines the gay subculture in New York by comparing the lives of drag queens and "fairies" to gay men who hid themselves and their true identities. Why did some men flaunt their sexuality while others internalized it (myth of isolation)? He explores this world through the metaphor of "the closet". This suggests isolation, solitude--but who made up this metaphor? The straight population or the gay? Gay men in the 1930s used a more encompassing metaphor: the gay world rather than gay closet.
The main argument that Chauncey promotes is that despite the Whiggish notion supported by historians D'Emilio, Berube and Faderman, he believes that there was not progressive change that moved toward freedom for the gay community. Chauncey argues that life become more difficult , more closeted, more segregated and less tolerated. He believes that there was more tolerance pre-war, and seeks to explain why (the straight world did not seem to notice this gay subculture as much).
In constructing this argument, Chauncey draws on sources such as city maps and photographs to create a topography of the gay world in New York before the Second World War. Two particularly interesting uses of primary sources were a cartoon published in a New York tabloid that illustrated gay men as fairies (Swish!) as well as a "certificate" of "pansiness" from the 1930's. Chauncey used these to explore gay stereotyping in this period. He also examines letters written between men to give light to the situtation of the times.

All three authors use an admiral mix of evidence to bolster (and in Waldstreicher's case, to fully make) their arguments. Chauncey and Waldstreicher seek to uncover the unknown and analyze primary sources to tell their stories, while Halttunen gives more of an overview of a time period, tracing themes throughout. The excitement of new evidence is what made Chauncey and Waldstreicher's articles most compelling for me.