Over the past 15 years, my scholarship has been devoted to understanding the patterns, the possibilities, and the impossibilities of politics and social policy in the United States. In this essay, therefore, I have decided to use historical evidence to address current public and scholarly debates about civic engagement in American democracy. As I hope to remind us all, social science historians can speak clearly to contemporary public concerns. We may be able to introduce some better evidence and more sophisticated explanations into ongoing debates.

Despite decades of research, demographic historians are still uncertain about mortality trends and determinants in early New England. Although researchers agree that New England mortality was low relative to other regions of early America in the seventeenth century, they disagree about the direction of mortality trends over the course of the eighteenth century. Community-based reconstitution studies conducted in the 1960s and 1970s at first seemed to provide strong evidence of a decline in adult life expectancy (Greven 1970; Norton 1971; Vinovskis 1972; D. S. Smith 1973). More recent studies, however, contradict the assessment of deteriorating health conditions in eighteenth-century New England. Family-based genealogical studies document a substantial long-term increase in adult male life expectancy over the course of the century, although the increase was followed by a slight decline in the early part of the nineteenth century (Fogel 1986; Kasakoff and Adams 1995).

The story usually goes something like this: Colonial Americans lived in a world very different from that of the generation that fought the Civil War. Locals wielded the tools of government most of the time; rarely did distant officials attempt control, and when they did they were usually roundly rebuffed. Politicians “stood” for positions of honor rather than “running” for lucrative posts. A man’s surname was a crucial determinant of his socioeconomic well-being. Artisans and yeomen deferred to gentlemen. Barter predominated as little “cash” circulated. Custom and family, not market forces, dictated the allocation of credit. Change of all types occurred slowly. By Martin Van Buren’s presidency some threescore years later, America was a very different place. Though still evolving, the United States exuded modernity, at least in its general outlines. Politicians and bureaucrats in state capitals, and even Washington, increasingly affected Americans’ everyday lives. Party politics and patronage took on increased importance as plutocrats plied for patronage posts. A man’s bank account meant more than his lineage. Gentlemen feared the artisans and yeomen they once easily ruled. Cash was abundant, and the market determined most access to credit. Societal conditions changed apace. Generally speaking, over these decades America is described as becoming less “aristocratic” and “mercantile,” or even “feudal,” and more “democratic” and “capitalist.”

On a late winter day in the early years of this century, Alice Solenberger met an unemployed male laborer on a Chicago street. Solenberger worked for the city’s Bureau of Charities, and she recognized the “Irishman” as one of the many seasonal workers who had applied there for work during the past winter. Although the man had worked steadily from April to October on railroads and in the harvest, Solenberger recounted, he was “unusually extravagant” this particular winter and found himself broke by December. Not the type to beg, the Irishman had applied for work at the Bureau of Charities and finally found employment in the ice harvest. Surprised to see him back in the city only a few weeks later, Solenberger asked why he was not working in the ice fields. When the man replied that he did not need to work there, Solenberger assumed that he had another job and inquired about that. To this question the laborer replied, “No, I mean I’ve got money. I don’t need to work any more” (here and two subsequent paragraphs—Solenberger 1911: 141–45).