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Paul B. Moyer, Adam Jortner. Blood from the Sky: Miracles and Politics in the Early American Republic., The American Historical Review, Volume 123, Issue 1, February 2018, Pages 218–219, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/123.1.218
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In Blood from the Sky, Adam Jortner presents a valuable exploration of the supernatural during the United States’ opening decades. In the words of its author, the volume concerns “miracles, wonders, and other supernatural events in the early republic: what people believed, how they discussed, debated, and shared those beliefs, and most importantly, what they did about them as a result” (2). More precisely, the book examines how belief (and disbelief) in the occult intersected with epistemology, religion, and politics.
Jortner argues that belief in the supernatural was alive and well in post-independence America. He contends that the intellectual and political atmosphere of the early United States provided fertile ground for supernaturalism. Moreover, the author asserts that debates over the supernatural “helped create the political, ideological, and religious world of the Age of Jefferson” (1).
The book is both an intellectual and cultural history strongly anchored in the historiography of politics and religion in the early republic. In keeping with its scope, the study draws upon a broad range of contemporary sources, including philosophical treatises, private correspondence, published works, novels, and plays. Following Stuart Clark, Jortner takes an “antirealist approach” (3) to his subject. He eschews the notion that supernatural beliefs are a mere adjunct to rational social, economic, and political forces and that it is the scholar’s job to simply cut away the distracting tangle of the occult in order to get at the real dynamics of change. Rather, the author sidesteps the issue of whether or not beliefs are true or false and embraces the idea that drawing meaning from the supernatural involves analyzing it on its own terms to see what it can tell us about the outlook of those who believed (and disbelieved) in the miraculous. Jortner’s analysis has its limits, and the author clearly indicates that he does not explore every sort of phenomenon that fits under the rubric of the supernatural, but only those that he describes as the “physical supernatural” (xi): miraculous events that were observable in and had an impact on the real world.
