Chapter VII: Part II: Political Democracy Gets under Way--1787-1800

I. The Impact of the French Revolution--Stirred party passions
afresh. Popularized democracy in America and provided a body of
philosophy: doctrines of the majority will, expediency, local
self-government. Later party divisions. Democratic clubs. The
_odium theologicum_. Paine’s _Rights of Man_ and J. Q. Adams’s
_Publicola_. The shift of positions 321

II. Political Thinkers--The French Group

I. Tom Paine--Republican Pamphleteer: An internationalist. Odium
attaching to his name. A social inefficient. _Common Sense_--appeal
to expediency; attack on monarchy and the British Constitution.
Political philosophy: doctrine of continuous compact, of the _res
publica_. _The Rights of Man_--a reply to Burke’s theory of civil
contract and the expediency of aristocratic rule. The business
of the revolution. _Agrarian Justice_: civilization and poverty;
relation to Babeuf; theory of unearned increment; a tax proposal.
_Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance_--an attack on
funding. A pacifist. Sources of his philosophy. His position in
contemporary American opinion 327

II. Thomas Jefferson--Agrarian Democrat: Position. His
inconsistencies due to a slowly clarifying philosophy. An
intellectual, holding to American experience. Chief doctrines:
the social compact, the _res publica_, the diminished state--a
philosophy of decentralization. Belief in the excellence of an
agrarian economy--a Physiocrat; fear of cities and industrialism.
Suspicious of appeal to past experience: the evils of the past
due to leviathan state; consolidation would repeat those evils
in America. Excellence of home rule; the majority will. Fear of
judicial encroachment, the Common Law. Class rule serves class
interests. Faith in the common people. The industrial revolution
and a new centralization 342

III. The War of Belles Lettres

I. The Federalist Group 357

1. The Hartford Wits: Arch conservatives. Sources of Connecticut
Federalism--Calvinism and business. The Connecticut fear of
democracy. Members of the group. Theodore Dwight. Timothy
Dwight--his contemporary reputation, likeness to Increase Mather,
a clerical Federalist. His literary work 357

2. _The Anarchiad_: Political writings of the Wits. Character of
Lemuel Hopkins. The theme of the work--an attack on populism and
democracy 363

II. The French Group 367

1. Philip Freneau--Poet of Two Revolutions: A revolutionary
volunteer--effect on his reputation. A radical advocate of all
liberal movements. Effect on his poetic career. Spirit of his
satire--attack on England. His desire to strip colonial loyalties
from the American. Influence on Freneau of the French Revolution.
_The National Gazette_--a leader of anti-Federalism. The
consequences. His growing reputation 368

2. Joel Barlow--Jacobin: Early career: his experience abroad and
his adoption of Jacobin views. Cost to his reputation. _Advice
to the Privileged Orders_: the doctrine of _res publica_; social
responsibility for the individual. _Letter to the National
Convention of France_, and the machinery of a democratic state.
_The Columbiad_--a republican poem 382

3. Hugh Henry Brackenridge--Free-Lance Democrat: An independent
critic of the shortcomings of democracy. _Modern Chivalry_--a
frontier book, a satire of current manners. Democracy must not be
sacrificed to selfish individualism--the folly of the political
climber and of the electorate. A notable book 390

Conclusion 397

Bibliography 399

Index 405

Book One • Liberalism and Puritanism

Common report has long made out Puritan New England to have been the native seat and germinal source of such ideals and institutions as have come to be regarded as traditionally American. Any critical study of the American mind, therefore, may conveniently seek its beginnings in the colonies clustered about Massachusetts Bay, and will inquire into the causes of the pronounced singularity of temper and purpose that marked off the New England settlements from those to the south, creating a distinctive New England character, and disciplining it for later conquests that were to set a stamp on American life. The course of its somewhat singular development would seem from the first to have been determined by an interweaving of idealism and economics--by the substantial body of thought and customs and institutions brought from the old home, slowly modified by new ways of life developing under the silent pressure of a freer environment. Of these new ways, the first in creative influence was probably the freehold tenure of landholdings, put in effect at the beginning and retained unmodified for generations; and the second was the development of a mercantile spirit that resulted from the sterility of the Massachusetts soil, which encouraged the ambitious to seek wealth in more profitable ways than tilling barren acres. From these sources emerged the two chief classes of New England: the yeomanry, a body of democratic freeholders who constituted the rank and file of the people, and the gentry, a group of capable merchants who dominated the commonwealth from early days to the rise of industrialism. And it was the interweaving of the aims and purposes of these acquisitive yeomen and gentry--harmonious for the most part on the surface, yet driving in different directions--with the ideal of a theocracy and the inhibitions of Puritan dogma, that constitutes the pattern of life to be dealt with here. The Puritan and the Yankee were the two halves of the New England whole, and to overlook or underestimate the contributions of either to the common life is grossly to misinterpret the spirit and character of primitive New England. The Puritan was a contribution of the old world, created by the rugged idealism of the English Reformation; the Yankee was a product of native conditions, created by a practical economics.

Part One: The Puritan Heritage • 1620-1660