American Creed: Philanthropy and the Rise of Civil Society, 1700-1865.

American Creed: Philanthropy and the Rise of Civil Society, 1700-1865. By Kathleen D. McCarthy. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, c. 2003. Pp. xii, 319. $35.00, ISBN 0-226-56198-4.)

American Creed strikes me as a history growing out of the preoccupations of our time. In a dangerous world, we worry about whether democracy may be learned abroad and how it can be preserved at home. The phrase "civil society" of Kathleen D. McCarthy's title connotes not simply the public sphere but civility, the nearly magical blend of self-expression and restraint permitting orderly freedom. McCarthy finds the roots of this national temperament in philanthropy, "broadly defined to include giving and voluntarism" (p. 2). Chronicling a nearly bewildering range of organizations, from ethnic burial societies to abolitionist groups, her book celebrates early Americans' capacity to generate the trust that serves as "social capital" (p. 18). Nor was the gain strictly moral. Minorities such as women, free blacks, Catholics, and Jews benefited economically and politically from communal associations. McCarthy presents southern patriarchy, in contrast, as a prime enemy of domestic peace. Because the South's white male elite restrained voluntarism, the nation experienced rising "tension between the Southern slavocracy and Northern philanthropy" (p. 142). The Civil War does not quite appear here as a simple contest between reaction and progress, but the implication is that the South's defeat ensured the triumph of altruistic activity as the "American creed."

The book's bold title seems to ask us to read it as cultural criticism that offers answers along with analysis. But does this approach make for good history? McCarthy's values lead her to slight at least one element of a compelling story: consideration of motives. The real threat to philanthropy, in her interpretation, seems less traditionalism than solipsism. Citing Robert D. Putnam's recent warning that Americans court atomism by "bowling alone," McCarthy recruits evidence of cooperation to refute "some well-worn analytical chestnuts, particularly the notion of American individualism" (pp. 4, 157). Ralph Waldo Emerson, by reputation the arch-individualist, similarly recognized his compatriots' clannishness, though in a less happy mood than McCarthy. "All men plume themselves on the improvement of society," he wrote in "Self-Reliance," originally published in 1841, "and no man improves" (Emerson, Essays [London, 1883], 68). McCarthy's detailed reports of organizations muffle the meaning of these projects for individuals. To be sure, her emphasis on actions and outcomes may gain authority by its resemblance to another uniquely American product, philosophical pragmatism. Tabulating busyness, however, McCarthy links strange bedfellows, among them Benjamin Franklin's Junto, Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton's Sisters of Charity, and the American Colonization Society. Voluntary groups that do not meet her standard of collegiality, such as the Masons and the Order of the Star-Spangled Banner, she omits. "[L]et us not rove," Emerson instructed his audience; "let us sit at home with the cause" (Emerson, Essays, 57). As a reader, I wished to pause and learn why McCarthy's subjects acted, not just what they gained, and, through an appreciation of their goals, to understand the variable nature of philanthropic activity. Here, the virtue of making connections is assumed.

McCarthy adds interesting information on minority philanthropies to existing surveys of early American reform. It was hard for me, however, to separate her scholarship and her preaching, particularly because her historical image of well-intended frenzy seems a problematic mirror of modern America more than a convincing cultural solution.

Penn State University

ANNE C. ROSE