SOURCE: Schlesinger, Arthur M. “Republican Etiquette.” In Learning How to Behave: A Historical Study of American Etiquette Books, pp. 15-26. New York: Macmillan Company, 1946.

In the following essay, Schlesinger surveys American behavioral literature, maintaining that behavioral literature became very popular in America after the late 1820s because the rising classes wanted reference sources for joining polite society. Schlesinger notes that this literature either instructed manners as a set of defined rules, in the manner of Lord Chesterfield, or it more traditionally and conservatively suggested that one's manners demonstrate one's character.

A social code, like a garment on the human body, outlives its usefulness when it no longer fits the form for which it was designed. Its acceptability at any given time rests upon the willingness of the well-mannered to adhere to it and of most other people to look up to it. If class relations change, so also...