Democratic Manhood

Between 1815 and the 1840s, a concept of democratic manhood emerged in the United States, marking a conscious rejection of European (especially British) notions of ascribed social status. Strongly associated with Democratic president Andrew Jackson, democratic manhood was defined as political equality and broadened political participation among white men—and by the exclusion of women and nonwhites from the privileges of citizenship. It emphasized physical prowess and boisterous patriotism, expressed by the popularity of such frontiersmen as Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett. Furthermore, the concept informed a developing urban counterculture that resisted the aristocratic pretensions and bourgeois morality of an emerging middle class.

Several developments of the early to mid–nineteenth century contributed to the emergence of democratic manhood. First, urbanization and industrialization drew increasing numbers of transient young men into the nation's expanding cities, eroding communal restraints on behavior and limiting the control that patriarchal families could exercise over their sons. Second, early industrialization challenged the manly ideal of the “heroic artisan,” which was grounded in ideas about independence and producer values, by making it increasingly difficult for apprentices and journeymen to advance to the position of master craftsman and forcing them into wage labor. These men had to articulate a new concept of manhood, suitable to their social reality. Third, by 1824 all states except Virginia, Florida, and Louisiana enacted universal adult, white-male suffrage, eliminating previous tax- and property-based restrictions on voting rights and grounding citizenship in gender and racial identity.

The 1820s saw the emergence of a flourishing urban subculture of “dandies,” or “sporting men,” many of whom were apprentices, journeymen, or clerks, who embraced an antipatriarchal, antiaristocratic ideal of democratic manhood. Freed from the familial control and social constraints of small communities, the growing urban male population challenged paternalistic authority, looked to boardinghouses and male peers for their frame of reference, and abandoned values such as virtue and self-restraint in favor of qualities such as hedonism. The masculine libido, not yet appropriated by capitalist production, market mechanisms, and the political party system, gained free reign in these urban subcultures. Sporting men, flamboyant in dress and conduct, yet egalitarian and antiaristocratic in their values, sought to demonstrate their manliness in the urban marketplace of labor, in volunteer militia and fire companies, in street gangs such as New York's [Page 129]infamous Bowery B'hoys, and in a culture of erotic entertainments and burlesque shows. Surging immigration to the nation's cities in the 1830s and 1840s further abetted the development of this urban subculture.

This 1840 woodcut features presidential candidate William Henry Harrison welcoming a wounded soldier to his log cabin and offering him hard cider. With the enactment of universal white-male suffrage, political candidates increasingly conveyed an image of democratic manhood emphasizing heroic patriotism, humble origins, and frontier folksiness. (From the collections of the Library of Congress)

The participants in this urban male subculture proved and defended their manhood through the ritualized violence of boxing and blood sports. The boxing ring was in many ways ideally suited for acting out democratic manhood, for it was an egalitarian space that defied notions of ascribed status. In this arena, victory or defeat depended solely on the masculine prowess and fighting skills of the combatants. Even though it generated social hierarchies based on merit and achievement, status in these hierarchies remained open and fluid: Since fighters and their supporters could meet for rematches, one's manhood could continually be proved.

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