The Sartorial Revolution: Masculinity and Civility in the American Republic

Abstract

At the time of the American Revolution, men’s clothing was colorful and showy, and styles changed frequently. By the eve of the Civil War, it was plain, dark, and uniform. In my dissertation, I show how the historical origins of American masculinity can be discovered in these changes in men’s dress in early nineteenth-century America. Men’s suits constructed masculine normativity by costuming them in a materially constrained uniform; the hegemony of the suit worked in part because its design encouraged it to be unnoticed. The phenomenon of men dressing alike reflected shifting ideas of progress in the Early Republic, from technical innovations to national ideology. Black suits became a symbol of respectability, rational enlightenment, and republican values. The uniformity of menswear evoked themes of liberty and brotherhood, but in reality, it did so by obscuring racial, gendered, and economic hierarchies behind a veil of American egalitarianism. The suit permanently marked white masculinity as a condition for equality and political selfhood. To understand how intersections between social dynamics and identity politics function in America today, we must look to the origins of this visual language of normative masculine power.