CONFIDENCE MAN
The confidence man-a man who takes advantage of people by gaining their confidence, convincing them to trust him with their possessions, and then stealing those possessions was a male archetype of Victorian middle-class culture. He symbolized middle-class Americans' anxieties about the potential for predatory male behavior in the increasingly anonymous, impersonal, and competitive social world being created by urbanization and the market revolution.
The term confidence man first appeared in 1 849 in a New York Herald story about the arrest of Samuel ( William) Thompson, who had robbed about one hundred people. Approaching strangers in th
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streets like an old acquaintance, Thompson asked his unsuspecting victims, after a short con versation, "have you confidence in me to trust me with your watch until to-morrow?" The Herald's term would quickly achieve wide currency.The figure of the confidence man acquired literary fame in Herman Melville's n ovel The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade ( 1 857). Set on a steamboat, the story revolves around a group of passengers whose refined appearances and conduct conceal their corruption and greed. Neither the real-life confidence man Thompson nor Melville's charac ters were isolated phenomena. An 1 860 survey of New York police officers estimated that one out of ten criminals in New York was a confidence man.
The confidence man was a product of growing urbaniza tion in antebellum America. In 1 830, 9 percent of Americans lived in cities with twenty-five hundred or more inhabitants a figure that rose to 20 percent by 1 860. Antebellum cities were characterized by high mobility and population turnover rates, a lack of pronounced spatial boundaries between residential and commercial areas, and only limited residential segregation along lines of class, ethnicity, or race. The resulting social flu idity and anonymity enabled the confidence man to thrive.
The confidence man also served as a threat in his ability to corrupt transient young men. In his guises as seducer and gam bler, the confidence man was ready to entice young men into an emerging urban subculture of theaters, brothels, and gambling dens. Another type of confidence man, generated by the emer gence of modern political parties and campaigns, was the party man, a demagogue who sought personal power by using the rhetoric of republican civic-mindedness to solicit political sup port. American society had just begun to accept political par ties and partisan politics, and the party man was often seen as a socially divisive force and a source of moral corruption. At a time when such traditional small-town mechanisms of moral
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order as family and the church were losing force, suspicion of the confidence man reflected republican fears of corruption, conspiracy, and social and political instability.
The confi dence man was implicated in the changing ideals of middle-class manhood in antebellum America. The market revolution generated the ideal of the self-made man, who, unfettered by communal bonds, was enterprising, thrifty, and ready to take advantage of opportunities. Another model of manhood that emerged at this time was the Yankee, who became a national symbol by 1 850, around the time the confi dence man first appeared. A man of great ingenuity, the Yankee was hardworking and willing to take advantage of others for his own gain. The confidence man was also a man-on-the make who acted on the opportunities offered by an expanding market economy, but his behavior highlighted the potential social and ethical dangers of an amoral public world.
The confidence man embodied an identity problem among middle-class men in antebellum America. The prob lem was how to pursue self- interest and success in an anonymous market-driven society without resorting to manipulation of appearance or dishonest conduct. The confidence man represented a violation of the morally sta ble and sincere character that Americans thought was essential to true manhood and necessary to maintain per sonal trustworthiness amid the increasing impersonality of market relations and urban life. The confidence man, able to instill confidence in others while remaining unrestrained by the requirements of character, represented a profound threat to the social and moral order.
By the 1 870s, the skills of the confidence man were being transformed into a more benign model for men who wished to get ahead in an emerging urban consumer society. Advice books and success manuals of the time encouraged men to gain the confidence of others by cultivating the ability to impress them. This new success ideology peaked with books such as Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People ( 1936). The development of modern American business cul ture in the twentieth century put a premium on the skills of the confidence man, making them mainstream masculine ideals. B I B LIOGRAPHY
Bergmann, Johannes Dietrich. "The Original Confidence-Man." American Quarterly 2 1 ( i 969) : 560-577.
Haltunen, Karen. Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1 830-1870. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1 982.
Kasson, John F. Rudeness & Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America. New York: Hill and Wang, 1 990.
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Meyer, Donald. The Positive Thinkers: Religion as Pop Psychology, from Mary Baker Eddy to Oral Roberts. New York: Pantheon, 1 980. Robertson-Lorant, Laurie. Melville: A Biography. Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press, 1 998. FURTHER READING
Harvey, David. Consciousness and the Urban Experience. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1 985.
Hilkey, Judy. Character Is Capital: Success Manuals And Manhood In Gilded Age America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
Lasch, Christopher. The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. New York: Norton, 1 99 1 .
Melville, Herman. The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade. 1 857.
Reprint, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1 999.
Rogin, Michael Paul. Subversive Genealogy: The Politics and Art of Herman Melville. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1 985.
Rose, Anne C. Voices of the Marketplace: American Thought and Culture, 1 830- 1860. New York: Twayne, 1 995.
Wadlington, Warwick. The Confidence Game in American Literature. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1 975.
RELATED ENTRIES
Advice Literature; Capitalism; Character; Democratic Manhood; Market Revolution; Middle-Class Manhood; Republicanism; Self Made Man; Sentimentalism; Success Manuals; Urbanization; Victorian Era
-Thomas Winter
CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION
Male identity and war making are often related in American life, but American culture has also encouraged conscientious objection-a refusal to participate in warfare on religious or political grounds-as a masculine standard. Because individ ual and societal determinations about manliness help dictate how power is distributed, consideration of how men have resisted and avoided conscription reveals important ties between gender norms and cultural values. Physical courage has historically been a key element of Western masculinity, and many Americans connect violence and aggression to their ideas of manliness. Furthermore, American male patriotism often equates commitment to country with a willingness to sacrifice one's life in war. These models of manliness dictate military service as a masculine duty and imply that refusal is unmanly. But at the same time, the individualism and freedom
often associated with masculinity in America has justified resistance to military service.
The earliest conscientious objectors came from pacifist Christian sects, whose male adherents looked for their model of manliness to their interpretation of Jesus as an advocate of nonviolence, peace, and love. Their notion of masculinity was viewed with ambivalence by most colonists, whose defi nitions of manhood involved defense of community as well as adherence to Christian precepts. But whereas pacifist Christians prioritized religious doctrine, most colonists emphasized pragmatic need. Thus Maryland and North Carolina fined Quakers for refusing to fight against Native Americans, while several other colonies recognized conscien tious objection as a right and excused from service those who paid a special tax.
During the era of the American Revolution, the tenets of republicanism and republican manhood-which focused on the belief that individual rights and religious freedom should be protected from perceived government tyranny-helped to build respect for conscientious obj ection into American political culture. George Washington exempted from his Revolutionary War draft order those with "conscientious scru ples against war;' and the framers of the u.s. Constitution con sidered including a military exemption for conscientious objectors in the Second Amendment.
Still, conscientious objection continued to arouse ambivalent responses through much of the nineteenth cen tury. The Mexican War of 1 846-47 provoked transcenden talist writer Henry David Thoreau to refuse to pay taxes, suffer imprisonment, and codify a philosophy of civil dis obedience, though his was a minority position. During the Civil War, Amish and Mennonite conscientious objectors challenged conscription with varying success, in some cases purchasing an exemption, hiring a substitute, or caring for soldiers wounded in battle. The nation's growth into a global military power during the twentieth century intensified Americans' tendency to identify masculinity and patriotism with militarism-and the view of conscientious objectors as unmanly also intensified. During World War II, thousands of Jehovah's Witnesses were sentenced to federal prison for refusing military service.
D isagreement over the meaning of masculinity i n wartime has been dramatically visible in the treatment o f conscientious objectors. The belief that refusing military service violates normative manhood has led government authorities to impose severe penalties, while conscientious objectors, motivated by religious or moral principle, have often viewed these punishments as a form of martyrdom or
