Citizen Bachelors: Manhood and the Creation of the United States

New
Hardcover
2009
$76.22

In 1755 Benjamin Franklin observed a man without a wife is but half a man and since then historians have taken Franklin at his word. In Citizen Bachelors, John Gilbert McCurdy demonstrates that Franklin's comment was only one side of a much larger conversation. Early Americans vigorously debated the status of unmarried men and this debate was instrumental in the creation of American citizenship.

In a sweeping examination of the bachelor in early America, McCurdy fleshes out a largely unexamined aspect of the history of gender. Single men were instrumental to the settlement of the United States and for most of the seventeenth century their presence was not particularly problematic. However, as the colonies matured, Americans began to worry about those who stood outside the family. Lawmakers began to limit the freedoms of single men with laws requiring bachelors to pay higher taxes and face harsher penalties for crimes than married men, while moralists began to decry the sexual immorality of unmarried men. But many resisted these new tactics, including single men who reveled in their hedonistic reputations by delighting in sexual horseplay without marital consequences.
At the time of the Revolution, these conflicting views were confronted head-on. As the incipient American state needed men to stand at the forefront of the fight for independence, the bachelor came to be seen as possessing just the sort of political, social, and economic agency associated with citizenship in a democratic society. When the war was won, these men demanded an end to their unequal treatment, sometimes grudgingly, and the citizen bachelor was welcomed into American society.
Drawing on sources as varied as laws, diaries, political manifestos, and newspapers, McCurdy shows that in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the bachelor was a simultaneously suspicious and desirable figure: suspicious because he was not tethered to family and household obligations yet desirable because he was free to study, devote himself to political office, and fight and die in battle. He suggests that this dichotomy remains with us to this day and thus it is in early America that we find the origins of the modern-day identity of the bachelor as a symbol of masculine independence. McCurdy also observes that by extending citizenship to bachelors, the founders affirmed their commitment to individual freedom, a commitment that has subsequently come to define the very essence of American citizenship.

Synopsis

In 1755 Benjamin Franklin observed a man without a wife is but half a man and since then historians have taken Franklin at his word. In Citizen Bachelors, John Gilbert McCurdy demonstrates that Franklin's comment was only one side of a much larger conversation. Early Americans vigorously debated the status of unmarried men and this debate was instrumental in the creation of American citizenship.

In a sweeping examination of the bachelor in early America, McCurdy fleshes out a largely unexamined aspect of the history of gender. Single men were instrumental to the settlement of the United States and for most of the seventeenth century their presence was not particularly problematic. However, as the colonies matured, Americans began to worry about those who stood outside the family. Lawmakers began to limit the freedoms of single men with laws requiring bachelors to pay higher taxes and face harsher penalties for crimes than married men, while moralists began to decry the sexual immorality of unmarried men. But many resisted these new tactics, including single men who reveled in their hedonistic reputations by delighting in sexual horseplay without marital consequences.

At the time of the Revolution, these conflicting views were confronted head-on. As the incipient American state needed men to stand at the forefront of the fight for independence, the bachelor came to be seen as possessing just the sort of political, social, and economic agency associated with citizenship in a democratic society. When the war was won, these men demanded an end to their unequal treatment, sometimes grudgingly, and the citizen bachelor was welcomed into American society.

Drawing on sources as varied as laws, diaries, political manifestos, and newspapers, McCurdy shows that in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the bachelor was a simultaneously suspicious and desirable figure: suspicious because he was not tethered to family and household obligations yet desirable because he was free to study, devote himself to political office, and fight and die in battle. He suggests that this dichotomy remains with us to this day and thus it is in early America that we find the origins of the modern-day identity of the bachelor as a symbol of masculine independence. McCurdy also observes that by extending citizenship to bachelors, the founders affirmed their commitment to individual freedom, a commitment that has subsequently come to define the very essence of American citizenship.

$76.22

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 284
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: Jun 2009
ISBN 10: 0801447887
ISBN 13: 9780801447884

Media Reviews

Many single men in eighteenth-century England and America faced heavy, discriminatory taxation, but rather than obliterating 'the solitary state,' such policies served instead to politicize bachelors and to draw them fully to the brink of citizenship. In Citizen Bachelors, John Gilbert McCurdy writes the history of this remarkable development. His narrative is convincing, elegant, and often astonishing. He explores both the lived experiences of single men and the social construction of bachelorhood as a gendered identity. . . . McCurdy's narrative . . . makes a vital contribution to the study of early American manhood and masculinity. . . . Written in clear, uncluttered prose and offering rich rewards for scholars of gender, sexuality, the family, and the law, Citizen Bachelors should be singled out for careful reading. -Benjamin Irvin, H-SHEAR, H-Net Reviews, January 2010

MCurdy has produced a valuable volume in this careful and highly readable inventory of early American bachelors and their cultural representations. When combined with the many related works on sexuality in this period, the book helps us understand a world long neglected and misrepresented. It is vital that we appreciate how different colonial society's cultural and sexual norms were from our own; the bachelor we recognize today was not known in early colonial North America. With this useful study, however, we can begin to see how this familiar figure first came into existence. -David D. Doyle, New England Quarterly, Spring 2009

McCurdy succeeds brilliantly in showing how the legal standing of 'bachelors' changed over the course of the colonial and revolutionary eras. . . . Drawing enlightening comparisons between New England, the Chesapeake, and Pennsylvania, he is able to show how laws across the colonies were moving in a similar direction . . . [as they] collectively began to carve a space for adult single men in society. McCurdy also unearths some fascinating snapshots of the subjective experience of bachelorhood. -Rodney Hessinger, Men and Masculinities (December 2011)

Although this book is about men, like the best new works on masculinity Citizen Bachelors repeatedly brings its subject into conversation with women's history. -William and Mary Quarterly

John Gilbert McCurdy considers the political history of bachelors in all the colonies and over the course of the entire colonial period through the Revolutionary era. He makes use of all sorts of evidence, including statutes, popular literature, demographic data, and tax records. He describes a clear trajectory of the rise and fall of unequal treatment of bachelors in eighteenth-century America and persuasively suggests that this history is an important piece of the larger story of gender and democratic revolution. All scholars of early American manhood as well as of gender and citizenship should read this engaging book. -C. Dallett Hemphill, Ursinus College, author of Bowing to Necessities: A History of Manners in America

Citizen Bachelors is a good read: lucid, concise and compelling. John Gilbert McCurdy's insightful study of unmarried young men and never-married men is an important and original contribution to our knowledge of personal identity, family, and legal status in early America. -Susan E. Klepp, Temple University, coeditor of Infortunate: The Voyage and Adventures of William Moraley, An Indentured Servant