June 14, 2024: Ocean State Histories: The Gilded Age

[250 years ago this week, Rhode Island banned the slave trade. That significant moment was just one of many in this littlest state’s story, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Ocean State histories, leading up to a special post on works through which you can learn more about Rhode Island!]

On two ways to think about Rhode Island’s famous role in Gilded Age America.

Once again I’ll begin this post by asking you to peruse prior writing of mine, in this case my September 2013 blog series on Newport stories (inspired by my first visit to the historic home The Breakers). If five posts is too much of an ask, you ]can focus in particular on the Friday culmination, a post on the question of whether we should preserve such Gilded Age mansions.

Welcome back! In that Friday post I quoted the famous “white elephants” line from Henry James’ “The Sense of Newport” (1906), an essay that he originally published in Harper’s and then turned into a chapter in his interesting travel and autobiographical book The American Scene (1907). James uses that phrase as part of a concluding paragraph in which he absolutely lambasts both the mansions and the Gilded Age culture of embarrassing excess they reflect, building to his banger of a final sentence for the essay/chapter, “The answer to which, I think, can only be that there is absolutely nothing to be done; nothing but to let them stand there always, vast and blank, for reminder to those concerned of the prohibited degrees of witlessness, and of the peculiarly awkward vengeances of affronted proportion and discretion.” In our own moment of excess and McMansions and an even more flagrantly rich 1% and so on, we could stand to reread and learn from James on those Newport white elephants.

As much as the Newport mansions reflected specific Gilded Age contexts, however, it’s equally (if not indeed more) important to link them to the historical anniversary that is the reason for this week’s Rhode Island Studying series. For one thing, there’s no doubt that a good bit of the wealth of places like Newport was inherited and generational wealth tied to the fortunes built by and through the slave trade and slavery in the colony and state (which didn’t abolish slavery itself until its 1843 Constitution). And for another thing, while of course much of the wealth that build Newport’s Gilded Age mansions came from individuals and families who were not part of Rhode Island history, that only meant that they were even more consistently linked to national legacies of slavery—as exemplified by the Vanderbilts, the family behind The Breakers. So on both those levels, as an extension of Rhode Island history and a reflection of American history, Gilded Age Newport was not something new so much as an embarrassing reminder of the worst of our foundational stories.

Special post this weekend,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other Ocean State stories you’d highlight?