Brief Summary Of The Excerpts Freeman's 'Affairs Of Honor'

Joanne Freeman is a history professor at Yale University, who specializes in politics and political culture of early American History. Often times, the founders of our nation are exempt from scrutiny because their ideas of a new government have stood the test of time. In Affairs of Honor, published in 2002, Freeman humanizes these men in showing political culture as it developed through the words of figures who lived during the time period. Freeman expertly uses the diary of William Maclay, Thomas Jefferson’s Anas, as well as letters and other print material of John Adams and Alexander Hamilton to provide a firsthand depiction of political culture in the years immediately after the passing of the Constitution. The excerpts Freeman uses craft

Without a party system to depend on, like politicians now, individual members of Congress depended on their own reputations for political leverage. William Maclay wrote his diary as a “deliberately crafted political tool” (18). Relatively unknown outside of Pennsylvania, Maclay was a nobody on the national stage and knew it. Maclay understood how important his personal reputation was and purposefully wrote for self preservation. The strongest example Freeman chose to portray the importance of reputation was her selection of Maclay’s description of speeches in Congress. Freemen asserts that “congressional oratory was key” in a political culture where personal reputation was most important (27). Maclay stated that he was determined to say something everyday. Speeches in congress held particular power because, through them, lesser known members could rise to the top or fall from grace. Speeches left the members vulnerable to personal attacks which were devastating in the time period. Through the use of Maclay’s diary, Freeman introduces the “culture of honor” idea of the importance of personal

Although relevant in the purpose of portraying the culmination of all the practices and attitudes in the previous chapters, the chapter did not have the same feel as the rest of the work. Freeman goes from examining Maclay’s agony when Washington offers him a seat in the first section to giving a description of an election in the last. If Freeman wanted to show the manifestation of all of the previous parts, she would have been better off doing so in a conclusion, rather than another chapter. As a reader, the flow from chapter to chapter felt disrupted from the culture of dueling to an election. In addition to the broader content, the chapter also occurs four years before the duel that was described in the previous chapter. Alexander Hamilton dies, but then comes back to life in the next chapter as an influencer in the election. Despite the perceived disjointedness of the final chapter, Freeman justifies her description of the election of 1800 because it “…reveals the link between early national politics and the ‘party systems’ of later years”