Consistent Democracy

Leslie Butler

Tuesday March 5, 2024, at 7:00 pm ET

Approximately 60 minutes. This hybrid program will be held in person at Antiquarian Hall and livestreamed to a virtual audience on YouTube. Advance registration is required for both. Doors open at 6:30pm.

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What did it mean that in the world's first mass democracy only a minority ruled and that women—free and enslaved, white and Black, single and married—formed the largest group of people barred from full self-government in nineteenth-century America?

Leslie Butler will discuss how a range of observers and activists, thinkers and reformers responded to these seeming anomalies. Drawing on her new book, she will show how, as these figures queried, critiqued, and sought to make sense of democracy’s exclusions, they compelled Americans to confront their aspirations and anxieties about popular government.

Leslie Butler is an associate professor at Dartmouth College, where she has taught since 2003. Her research, which focuses on nineteenth-century American thought and culture, has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Huntington Library, as well as the American Antiquarian Society.