Overview

"Should the majority always rule? If not, how should the rights of minorities be protected? In Moral Minorities and the Making of American Democracy, Kyle G. Volk unearths the origins of modern ideas and practices of minority-rights politics. Focusing on controversies spurred by the explosion of grassroots moral reform in the early nineteenth century, he shows how a motley but powerful array of self-understood minorities reshaped American democracy as they battled laws regulating Sabbath observance, alcohol, and interracial contact. Proponents justified these measures with the ""democratic"" axiom of majority rule. In response, immigrants, black northerners, abolitionists, liquor dealers, Catholics, Jews, Seventh-day Baptists, and others articulated a different vision of democracy requiring the protection of minority rights. These moral minorities prompted a generation of Americans to reassess whether ""majority rule"" was truly the essence of democracy, and they ensured that majority tyranny would no longer be just the fear of elites and slaveholders. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth-century, minority rights became the concern of a wide range of Americans attempting to live in an increasingly diverse nation.Volk reveals that driving this vast ideological reckoning was the emergence of America's tradition of popular minority-rights politics. To challenge hostile laws and policies, moral minorities worked outside of political parties and at the grassroots. They mobilized elite and ordinary people to form networks of dissent and some of America's first associations dedicated to the protection of minority rights. They lobbied officials and used constitutions and the common law to initiate ""test cases"" before local and appellate courts. Indeed, the moral minorities of the mid-nineteenth century pioneered fundamental methods of political participation and legal advocacy that subsequent generations of civil-rights and civil-liberties activists would adopt and that are widely used today."

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9780199371914

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Moral Minorities and the Making of American Democracy helps us better understand the emergence of countermajoritarian visions of democratic politics so crucial to contemporary political liberalism. Jason Frank, Cornell University, The American Historical Review In this boldly argued and engagingly written book, Kyle Volk brilliantly recasts the political history of nineteenth-century America. Volk's narrative brings to life the political ideas and tactics of a motley crew of individuals and groups - from German immigrants and African Americans to Seventh Day Baptists and liquor dealers - who struggled mightily against their era's proliferating array of morals regulations and racial codes. Taking their causes to the courts, the statehouses, and the streets, these unlikely champions of minority rights forged a pluralistic conception of democracy that shaped the public culture of their era and left behind an enduring legacy of dissent for later generations. Michael Willrich, author of Pox: An American History In Moral Minorities, Kyle Volk examines why, in an era of mass democracy, ordinary Americans organized to protect their civil liberties. Minority rights, it turns out, did not emerge just from elites and courts, but from the grassroots efforts of citizens determined to protect their liberties from overzealous majorities. A must-read for anyone interested in the tension between majority rule and minority rights in a diverse society. Johann Neem, author of Creating a Nation of Joiners: Democracy and Civil Society in Early National Massachusetts Moral Minorities is a stunning intervention in the history of grass-roots politics and American democratic thought, as well as in the emerging fields of popular constitutionalism and everyday political practice. Kyle Volk shows us the history of minority rights movements in an entirely new light. He dramatically revises our understanding of the origins of such movements, their constitutional underpinnings, and their surprising political trajectories. Reeve Huston, author of Land and Freedom: Rural Society, Popular Protest, and Party Politics in Antebellum New York

In this boldly argued and engagingly written book, Kyle Volk brilliantly recasts the political history of nineteenth-century America. Volk's narrative brings to life the political ideas and tactics of a motley crew of individuals and groups - from German immigrants and African Americans to Seventh Day Baptists and liquor dealers - who struggled mightily against their era's proliferating array of morals regulations and racial codes. Taking their causes to the courts, the statehouses, and the streets, these unlikely champions of minority rights forged a pluralistic conception of democracy that shaped the public culture of their era and left behind an enduring legacy of dissent for later generations. --Michael Willrich, author of Pox: An American History In Moral Minorities, Kyle Volk examines why, in an era of mass democracy, ordinary Americans organized to protect their civil liberties. Minority rights, it turns out, did not emerge just from elites and courts, but from the grassroots efforts of citizens determined to protect their liberties from overzealous majorities. A must-read for anyone interested in the tension between majority rule and minority rights in a diverse society. --Johann Neem, author of Creating a Nation of Joiners: Democracy and Civil Society in Early National Massachusetts Moral Minorities is a stunning intervention in the history of grass-roots politics and American democratic thought, as well as in the emerging fields of popular constitutionalism and everyday political practice. Kyle Volk shows us the history of minority rights movements in an entirely new light. He dramatically revises our understanding of the origins of such movements, theirconstitutional underpinnings, and their surprising political trajectories. --Reeve Huston, author of Land and Freedom: Rural Society, Popular Protest, and Party Politics in Antebellum New York

.. .[W]onderful, lively... --Journal of American History In this boldly argued and engagingly written book, Kyle Volk brilliantly recasts the political history of nineteenth-century America. Volk's narrative brings to life the political ideas and tactics of a motley crew of individuals and groups - from German immigrants and African Americans to Seventh Day Baptists and liquor dealers - who struggled mightily against their era's proliferating array of morals regulations and racial codes. Taking their causes to the courts, the statehouses, and the streets, these unlikely champions of minority rights forged a pluralistic conception of democracy that shaped the public culture of their era and left behind an enduring legacy of dissent for later generations. --Michael Willrich, author of Pox: An American History In Moral Minorities, Kyle Volk examines why, in an era of mass democracy, ordinary Americans organized to protect their civil liberties. Minority rights, it turns out, did not emerge just from elites and courts, but from the grassroots efforts of citizens determined to protect their liberties from overzealous majorities. A must-read for anyone interested in the tension between majority rule and minority rights in a diverse society. --Johann Neem, author of Creating a Nation of Joiners: Democracy and Civil Society in Early National Massachusetts Moral Minorities is a stunning intervention in the history of grass-roots politics and American democratic thought, as well as in the emerging fields of popular constitutionalism and everyday political practice. Kyle Volk shows us the history of minority rights movements in an entirely new light. He dramatically revises our understanding of the origins of such movements, their constitutional underpinnings, and their surprising political trajectories. --Reeve Huston, author of Land and Freedom: Rural Society, Popular Protest, and Party Politics in Antebellum New York

Author Information

Kyle G. Volk is a history professor at the University of Montana.

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