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[[File:Chants_Democratic.jpg|thumbnail|left|300px|<i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195174496/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0195174496&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=f809975aa203472868c679af1f406c16 Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class: 1788-1850]</i> by Sean Wilentz]]
''This article was originally published on [http://videri.org/index.php?title=Chants_Democratic| Videri.org] and is republished here with their permission.''
Published in 1984, Amy Bridges’ ''[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521070880/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0521070880&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=9ad9599723862a49560cb9e39db18b33 A City in the Republic]'' and Sean Wilentz’s ''[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195174496/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0195174496&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=f809975aa203472868c679af1f406c16 Chants Democratic]'' each explore the creation of working-class consciousness in the political life of antebellum New York. However, though the works overlap and draw similar conclusions regarding several aspects of eighteenth-century New York, they do so from different vantage points.
<i>Chants Democratic</i> asserts that beginning with the market and transportation revolutions of the 1800s (notably the completion of the Erie Canal which helped to cement New York’s position as one of the premier manufacturing centers in the world) altered the relationships between journeymen and master artisans. New York’s unique blend of small scale but intensive and proliferating industry, employed people in a wide variety of crafts, each with their own interests.
Rather the growth of the land reform, notably through the NRA (some label it a form of petit bourgeoisie radicalism but also helped labor activism) which kept alive a network of radical trade unionists. Though women often emerge as secondary figures in Chants Democratic, Wilentz does note that the trade unions ignored women labor or decried it as demeaning. Still, militant female labor activists did surface in the same period as well. Ultimately, Wilentz argues that by 1850 the city’s population was riven by class, a divide that continued well after the Civil War.
[[File:A_City_in_the_Republic.jpg|left|250px|thumbnail|<i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521070880/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0521070880&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=9ad9599723862a49560cb9e39db18b33 A City in the Republic:Antebellum New York and the origins of machine politics]</i> by Amy Bridges]]
Bridges' book was focused on how New York City was reordered during the antebellum era. During this period, New York saw the rise of machine politics as a way to run America's biggest city. Amy Bridges begins her seminal work <i>A City in the Republic: Antebellum New York and the Origins of Machine Politics </i>with this intent in mind. For Bridges, changes in municipal government were not isolated from the national scene but rather reflected similar developments [Einhorn makes a similar argument when discussing Chicago’s segmented system of the 1800s. i.e., It reflected the “strict constructionism” of the day]
