45 pages • 1 hour read
Paul E. JohnsonSam Patch, the Famous Jumper
Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Changes in the American Landscape in the 19th Century
The landscape of the American Northeast changed dramatically in the 19th century as a result of both industrialization and cultural change. The development of mill factories and factory cities required deforestation and changes to the natural flow of rivers, a process Johnson describes as “the conquest of nature under the aegis of democratic capitalism” (2). Because he worked and lived in mill towns, Sam Patch had first-hand experience with this.
Landscape changes were generally celebrated as evidence of American capitalist dominance of the landscape. Examples included Paterson, which “owed its growth to the technological conquest” of the Passaic Falls (36). A visitor noted that “this rude spot […] [has] now become the brilliant scene of science” as a result of the town’s mills and bridges (43). Similarly, the construction of the Erie Canal was celebrated as “a magnificent icon of the triumph of American civilization over wilderness” (45), while Rochester was widely known as “the best place to view the rapid and ongoing domestication of the American wilderness” (131). The landscapes surrounding Paterson, Niagara, and Rochester all changed dramatically in the 19th century as a result of industrialization and expansion. For industrialists and upper-class visitors to the Northeast, landscape changes in the 19th century were celebrated as a reflection of American capitalist progress.
American landscapes also changed in the 19th century as a result of contemporary aesthetic and cultural changes. As a culture of respectability grew, developers sought to “reshape the forest in the name of material and moral progress” (43). Timothy Crane’s Forest Garden in Pawtucket, New Jersey was described as “an artful refinement of raw nature that transformed a forbidding wilderness into an opportunity for aesthetic contemplation” (43). Crane’s goal was to transform a wilderness into a space for controlled appreciation of beauty. At Niagara Falls, industrialization “transformed the rigors and dangers of Niagara into an ordered and comfortable succession of scenic views” (83). As a result, nature tourism became a popular industry in 19th-century America as wealthy Americans traveled to Niagara “to live for a few days or weeks in perfect beauty—an experience that gave them profound and authentic pleasure” (80). As the industry of nature tourism grew in the 19th century, landscapes across the Northeast were reshaped to reflect contemporary cultural and aesthetic interests.
Economic Change and Class Conflict in 19th-Century America
The early 19th century was a time of significant economic and cultural change in the United States. These changes drove conflict between the working and industrialist classes. Johnson uses Sam Patch’s family history to trace the transition of ordinary Americans “out of the family economy and into the labor market” (18). Sam Patch’s paternal grandfather was born into a world where yeoman farmers were able to support their families on the profits of the land they owned. As the country grew and the economy transitioned to industry, subsequent generations realized that they “would not inherit enough to enjoy the material standards established by their fathers” (6), and left their hometowns to find work elsewhere. The first chapter of the book describes Greenleaf Patch’s attempts to navigate property loss and family estrangement in “a world where property was inherited and where kinfolk were essential social and economic assets” (8). Johnson uses Greenleaf as an example of the type of economic changes that produced an exploitable working class.
As the American economy began to rely on industry, the laborers who powered the mills and factories began to demand more from their bosses. Johnson writes that spinners like Sam Patch “were fiercely independent—skilled, formidable artisans who had constructed a craftsman’s world within factory walls” (34). As a boss spinner, Patch was “master of a machine that his employers did not fully understand […] he demanded respect” (54). Some spinners considered themselves to be artists, a word that “affirmed the intelligence, learning, and dexterity that went into building a house, making a shoe, or raising a field of wheat” (53). Framing labor tasks like spinning as an art ennobled workers like Patch: “[I]t was the possession of an art that made a man independent and useful and therefore the sovereign equal of any other man” (54). Workers in the 19th century knew that their labor was valuable in an industrial economy and acted accordingly. Sam Patch’s jumps were often tied to labor movements at Paterson mills.
The industrial classes responded to labor movements by demonizing working-class labor. Johnson argues that working-class labor in the 19th century was “not diminished but devalued” (59). In a time when “capital and entrepreneurial imagination were assuming primacy over ancient knowledge” (59), mill labor was stigmatized as the work of unskilled and dangerous outsiders. The conflict between working-class laborers and industrialists dominated the 19th century.
The Uses and Ethical Problems of Celebrity Culture
Sam Patch was famous in the final years of his life and for decades after. Throughout the novel, Johnson explores the ethical problems of celebrity culture. He argues that celebrity has an important use in the creation of culture, as celebrities like Sam Patch “dramatized the possibilities of individual self-making in the nineteenth century” (164).
In the years after his death, writers from both ends of the 19th-century political spectrum adopted Patch’s celebrity for political uses. Whig writers like Colonel Stone were obsessed with Patch and associated him with Jacksonian democracy. In a piece about one of Patch’s early jumps, Stone encourages readers to “take it for granted he is a Jackson man” (92). For Stone, the association with Jackson is decidedly negative: He believed that the followers of Andrew Jackson “were upending the founders’ republic and replacing it with a noisy, plebian mass democracy” (92). After Patch’s leap at Hoboken, Stone “constructed a ‘regular-built Jackson article’ documenting a bargain between Henry Clay and Sam Patch” (92), a parody of contemporary political scandal.
Stone used Patch’s celebrity to criticize Jacksonian democracy. The Democrats, on the other hand, used Patch’s legend to unite a diverse and growing voters. Sam Patch was the subject of a popular stage play, and Johnson argues that Democratic writers used the character as “an early and successful attempt to merge regional types […] into a national democratic vernacular” (177). The Democrats and Whigs both used Patch’s memory and celebrity for political ends.
However, Sam Patch’s celebrity was criticized even in his lifetime. Some writers believed that reporting on Patch’s jumps “was dangerous” and that “it would set a bad example for the gullible and unrefined” (74). These critics believed that Patch was “unnecessarily sporting with human existence, and all such bravadoes should be discountenanced” by moral citizens (74). Johnson’s description of Patch’s final fatal jump suggests that celebrity can have a dark side: He writes that onlookers “curdled into horror and shame” when they realized he had died (160).
Patch’s celebrity had political uses, but contemporaries also acknowledged the ethical problems of idolizing a man known for dangerous jumps. Other critics dismissed Patch and other 19th-century celebrities as “unworthy persons anxious for immortality” (103). Patch’s story demonstrates the ethical issues of 19th-century America’s new celebrity culture.
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By Paul E. Johnson
