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Capitalism and a New Social Order: The Republican Version of the 1790's
In 1800 the Jeffersonian Republicans, decisive victors over what they considered elitist Federalism, seized the potential for change in the new American nation. They infused in it their vision of a society of economically progressive, politically equal, and socially liberated individuals. This book examines the fusion of ideas and circumstances which made possible this triumph of America's first popular political movement.
When the Federalists convened in New York to form the "more perfect union" promised by the new United Sates Constitution, they expected to build a strong central government led by the revolutionary members of the old colonial elite. This expectation was dashed by the emergence of a vigorous opposition led by Thomas Jefferson but manned by a new generation of popular interlopers, émigrés, polemicists-what the Federalists called the "mushroom candidates." They turned the 1790s into an age of passion by raising basic questions about the characters of the American experiment in government.
When the Federalists defenders of traditional European notions of order and authority came under attack, they sought to discredit the radical beliefs of the Jeffersonians. Although the ideas that fueled the Jeffersonian opposition came from several strains of liberal and libertarian thought, it was the specific prospect of an expanding commercial agricutlure that gave substance to their conviction that Americans might divorce themselves from the precepts of the past.
Thus, capitalism figured prominently in the Jeffersonian social vision. Aroused by the Federalists' efforts to bind the nation's wealthy citizens to a strengthened central government, the Jeffersonians unified ordinary men in the southern and middle states, mobilizing on the national level the power of the popular vote. Their triumph in 1800 represented a new sectional alliance as well as a potent fusion of morality and materialism.
When the Federalists convened in New York to form the "more perfect union" promised by the new United Sates Constitution, they expected to build a strong central government led by the revolutionary members of the old colonial elite. This expectation was dashed by the emergence of a vigorous opposition led by Thomas Jefferson but manned by a new generation of popular interlopers, émigrés, polemicists-what the Federalists called the "mushroom candidates." They turned the 1790s into an age of passion by raising basic questions about the characters of the American experiment in government.
When the Federalists defenders of traditional European notions of order and authority came under attack, they sought to discredit the radical beliefs of the Jeffersonians. Although the ideas that fueled the Jeffersonian opposition came from several strains of liberal and libertarian thought, it was the specific prospect of an expanding commercial agricutlure that gave substance to their conviction that Americans might divorce themselves from the precepts of the past.
Thus, capitalism figured prominently in the Jeffersonian social vision. Aroused by the Federalists' efforts to bind the nation's wealthy citizens to a strengthened central government, the Jeffersonians unified ordinary men in the southern and middle states, mobilizing on the national level the power of the popular vote. Their triumph in 1800 represented a new sectional alliance as well as a potent fusion of morality and materialism.
132 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1984
101 people want to read
About the author
Joyce Appleby
115 books46 followersJoyce Oldham Appleby, Ph.D. (Claremont Graduate School, 1966; B.A., Stanford University, 1950), is professor of history at University of California, Los Angeles. She previously taught at San Diego State University, 1967–1981. She was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1993, and was president of the Organization of American Historians (1991) and the American Historical Association (1997).
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 5, 2009
A very useful, though flawed, challenge to the republican synthesis in early American history.
In Capitalism and a New Social Order, Appleby argues that Jeffersonian Republicans in the 1790s championed a liberal capitalist -- not agrarian republican -- vision for the United States. They advanced this position against the visions of the Federalists, who adhered to classical republican values that privileged the political activity of the traditional elite. The crushing political triumph of the Republicans in the early nineteenth century, therefore, was the triumph of capitalism and liberal democracy in the United States. However, the nineteenth century saw the rise of a form of industrial capitalism that the Republicans had not foreseen; they expected American capitalism to be based primarily on agriculture carried out by independent landholders, not by wage slaves in factories.
Appleby's argument, which loops a bit, proceeds the following way. In the early eighteenth century, she writes, the American colonies were both republican in outlook and class-stratified. Civic authority was in the hands of a supposedly virtuous elite. However, as the century progressed, America became more socially European; there was a general increase in prosperity and a concomitant increase in the numbers of the landless. When the Revolution took place, it was led by members of that traditional provincial elite, who initially were complacent about their continuing authority in the state. However, the Revolution was based on a brew of contradictory English traditions: classical republicanism (civic leadership by the virtuous few), constitutionalism (conservation of legal privileges), and Lockean liberalism (rational agreement among individuals in society). It was the French Revolution of 1789 that pushed Lockean liberalism into the forefront of American discourse. (More on that in the paragraph after next.)
In this political setting, Appleby argues, modern economic theory, with Adam Smith leading the way, offered the Republicans a new way of imagining the "natural" social order. Traditional English economic ideas were based on scarcity of resources and therefore prescribed austere distribution under a watchful public eye. The new economic ideas, in contrast, promised increasing and more evenly distributed prosperity thanks to individual initiative. In America, furthermore, the new ideas about commerce took on a distinctive aspect. America's place in the world market increasingly depended on the export of food and other staples, and Americans had ample access to land. Accordingly, the new economic ideas seemed compatible with the image of the virtuous yeoman farmer. (According to Appleby, the Republicans drew their voting strength from "cosmopolitan" trading areas of the country where many citizens were on the make. Federalists, on the other hand, saw wealth primarily in an older light, as a way to confirm traditional class distinctions.)
The French Revolution, especially in its radical phases, brought to light these basic differences between Federalist and Republican thinking. Americans took different sides on the question of the French Republic. The Federalists were alarmed by the French Revolution and by the French military struggle against the old European monarchies. As it turned out, the Federalists embraced a classical republican version of British elitism; they believed in a fixed social order based on hierarchy. The Jeffersonian Republicans, on the other hand, cheered on the French revolutionaries. They embraced French (even Jacobin) values of classlessness and equal participation in government.
The fact of the matter was that Republicans were optimistic about the future that America and France were entering. They saw in the free commercial economy an alternative to traditional forms of paternal authority, as well as an opportunity for the "widespread enjoyment of comforts" by all men. The "natural" economy, as defined by Adam Smith, promised to replace government and liberate the individual. That was the promise that the Republicans pursued in the 1790s, while Federalists tried vainly to shore up old privileges with paternal federal authority.
------
Because this book comprises a set of synthetic lectures, it is sometimes light on sources, and the sources used are mostly secondary sources, selectively applied. Unfortunately, I question the reliability of Appleby's information about Republican voting patterns; her sources are few, but she relies very heavily on them in making the claim that Republicans drew their electoral strength from rising commercial areas. However, Appleby does use primary sources to good effect, citing statements on political economy by the likes of Hamilton and Jefferson as well as influential treatises like Thomas Cooper's Political Arithmetic. Her interpretations of these sources are sensitive and subtle, and she manages to capture a lot of the overlap that existed in the classical republican, constitutionalist, and Lockean liberal traditions. It is on this question that her work is most valuable.
The most important conceptual weakness is a common one: Appleby conflates capitalism and commerce. Although it is true that Americans, like Adam Smith, frequently linked these ideas at the time, they are not synonyms. And "capitalism" itself is an ambivalent concept even today; sometimes, it refers to the production of physical goods, but sometimes it refers to development of abstract forms of wealth.
In other words, Appleby is conflating ideas that enjoyed a fruitfully ambiguous relationship in the 1790s, in the thought of Federalists and Republicans alike. In doing so, she leaves unexamined the contrasting Federalist and Republican ideas about credit and manufactures. Although Appleby does imply that a difference existed regarding manufactures -- she correctly notes that Republicans assumed that agriculture, not industry, would have pride of place in the "natural" economy -- she needs to do more with this fact in order to capture the truth about Federalist and Republican differences. She is wrong to imply that the development of nineteenth-century factories, with their vast disparities between employers and workers, took Republicans by surprise. Indeed, it would be more accurate to say that the Republicans anticipated precisely this development as a result of Federalist fiscal and financial policy. So to say that Republicans were sanguine about liberal capitalism is misleading, insofar as "liberal capitalism" usually refers (in our day) to an industrialized economy lubricated by banking. That is not the economy that the Republicans had in mind.
In Capitalism and a New Social Order, Appleby argues that Jeffersonian Republicans in the 1790s championed a liberal capitalist -- not agrarian republican -- vision for the United States. They advanced this position against the visions of the Federalists, who adhered to classical republican values that privileged the political activity of the traditional elite. The crushing political triumph of the Republicans in the early nineteenth century, therefore, was the triumph of capitalism and liberal democracy in the United States. However, the nineteenth century saw the rise of a form of industrial capitalism that the Republicans had not foreseen; they expected American capitalism to be based primarily on agriculture carried out by independent landholders, not by wage slaves in factories.
Appleby's argument, which loops a bit, proceeds the following way. In the early eighteenth century, she writes, the American colonies were both republican in outlook and class-stratified. Civic authority was in the hands of a supposedly virtuous elite. However, as the century progressed, America became more socially European; there was a general increase in prosperity and a concomitant increase in the numbers of the landless. When the Revolution took place, it was led by members of that traditional provincial elite, who initially were complacent about their continuing authority in the state. However, the Revolution was based on a brew of contradictory English traditions: classical republicanism (civic leadership by the virtuous few), constitutionalism (conservation of legal privileges), and Lockean liberalism (rational agreement among individuals in society). It was the French Revolution of 1789 that pushed Lockean liberalism into the forefront of American discourse. (More on that in the paragraph after next.)
In this political setting, Appleby argues, modern economic theory, with Adam Smith leading the way, offered the Republicans a new way of imagining the "natural" social order. Traditional English economic ideas were based on scarcity of resources and therefore prescribed austere distribution under a watchful public eye. The new economic ideas, in contrast, promised increasing and more evenly distributed prosperity thanks to individual initiative. In America, furthermore, the new ideas about commerce took on a distinctive aspect. America's place in the world market increasingly depended on the export of food and other staples, and Americans had ample access to land. Accordingly, the new economic ideas seemed compatible with the image of the virtuous yeoman farmer. (According to Appleby, the Republicans drew their voting strength from "cosmopolitan" trading areas of the country where many citizens were on the make. Federalists, on the other hand, saw wealth primarily in an older light, as a way to confirm traditional class distinctions.)
The French Revolution, especially in its radical phases, brought to light these basic differences between Federalist and Republican thinking. Americans took different sides on the question of the French Republic. The Federalists were alarmed by the French Revolution and by the French military struggle against the old European monarchies. As it turned out, the Federalists embraced a classical republican version of British elitism; they believed in a fixed social order based on hierarchy. The Jeffersonian Republicans, on the other hand, cheered on the French revolutionaries. They embraced French (even Jacobin) values of classlessness and equal participation in government.
The fact of the matter was that Republicans were optimistic about the future that America and France were entering. They saw in the free commercial economy an alternative to traditional forms of paternal authority, as well as an opportunity for the "widespread enjoyment of comforts" by all men. The "natural" economy, as defined by Adam Smith, promised to replace government and liberate the individual. That was the promise that the Republicans pursued in the 1790s, while Federalists tried vainly to shore up old privileges with paternal federal authority.
------
Because this book comprises a set of synthetic lectures, it is sometimes light on sources, and the sources used are mostly secondary sources, selectively applied. Unfortunately, I question the reliability of Appleby's information about Republican voting patterns; her sources are few, but she relies very heavily on them in making the claim that Republicans drew their electoral strength from rising commercial areas. However, Appleby does use primary sources to good effect, citing statements on political economy by the likes of Hamilton and Jefferson as well as influential treatises like Thomas Cooper's Political Arithmetic. Her interpretations of these sources are sensitive and subtle, and she manages to capture a lot of the overlap that existed in the classical republican, constitutionalist, and Lockean liberal traditions. It is on this question that her work is most valuable.
The most important conceptual weakness is a common one: Appleby conflates capitalism and commerce. Although it is true that Americans, like Adam Smith, frequently linked these ideas at the time, they are not synonyms. And "capitalism" itself is an ambivalent concept even today; sometimes, it refers to the production of physical goods, but sometimes it refers to development of abstract forms of wealth.
In other words, Appleby is conflating ideas that enjoyed a fruitfully ambiguous relationship in the 1790s, in the thought of Federalists and Republicans alike. In doing so, she leaves unexamined the contrasting Federalist and Republican ideas about credit and manufactures. Although Appleby does imply that a difference existed regarding manufactures -- she correctly notes that Republicans assumed that agriculture, not industry, would have pride of place in the "natural" economy -- she needs to do more with this fact in order to capture the truth about Federalist and Republican differences. She is wrong to imply that the development of nineteenth-century factories, with their vast disparities between employers and workers, took Republicans by surprise. Indeed, it would be more accurate to say that the Republicans anticipated precisely this development as a result of Federalist fiscal and financial policy. So to say that Republicans were sanguine about liberal capitalism is misleading, insofar as "liberal capitalism" usually refers (in our day) to an industrialized economy lubricated by banking. That is not the economy that the Republicans had in mind.
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March 17, 2025Trash book #7. Definitely the most scholarly book from the dumpster so far, and I think (and hope) the most academic & dense in the whole pile. Interesting, but I would like a professor to walk me through it and provide some more context for better understanding.
February 24, 2021
I read this many years ago in graduate school, and returned to it this week to follow up on a thread in my own research. I don't remember getting anything out of it back then, probably because I was skimming around a thousand pages a week to prepare for comprehensive exams (what a stupid way to prepare future faculty these exams are), but having taught American history for about three times as long as I was a grad student, the insight and power of Appleby's analysis forcefully struck me on this rereading. There's a reason why this is required for every Americanist.
November 11, 2019
Joyce Appleby belonged to a small but influential group of historians who argued, contra Bernard Bailyn, Gordon Wood, and other adherents of the “republican school,” that the American Revolution was not a conservative, fearful, restorationist event, but a progressive and “liberal” one. The present volume provides both a short intellectual history of eighteenth-century liberalism and an important interpretive argument: that American Revolutionary liberalism fully flowered during the 1790s. It was a controversial argument for those familiar with Lance Banning's observation that American politics in that decade owed much to the English “Country” ideology and its fear of centralized power, but now that the republicanist school has faded I suspect Appleby's interpretation has gained increased weight and influence.
The eighteenth century, Prof. Appleby argues, saw two important developments in England and its colonies: an agricultural and commercial revolution, which changed the way thinkers perceived economic man, and an intellectual shift in the use of terms like “virtue” and “liberty.” Writers like John Locke and Adam Smith now saw individuals as rational, free markets as socially beneficial, and profit-seeking as progressive. These ideas quickly took hold in the American colonies because land was cheap and overseas markets abundant, and because farmers could easily become capitalists. By the outbreak of the American Revolution most politically active colonists supported the idea of “a society of economically progressive, socially equal, and politically competent citizens” (50).
There were still classically-trained elitists in post-Revolutionary era, and Appleby identifies them as Federalists, who spent the 1790s trying to create a powerful government separate from and superior to the people – a failed effort, as it turned out. Energized by the French Revolution, the Whiskey Rebellion, and popular opposition to Jay's Treaty, the Jeffersonian Republican party organized political clubs and partisan newspapers, held public rallies, and offered ordinary Americans a future of opportunity and equality. By 1800 they had defeated the Federalists and stopped their last-ditch effort to create an American “aristocracy” (51-78). Thereafter, the Republicans created a new political and economic order dedicated to a rising standard of living and an instrumental vision of government, which regarded the state as a mechanism for promoting economic growth rather than a device for keeping the rank-scented multitude in line.
Appleby's long essay (which is what this book is) has a lot of internal intellectual integrity, and she is right to emphasize the mass mobilization that energized the Jeffersonian party in the 1790s. Subsequent scholarship has, however, challenged two vital components of her argument. First, many professional historians now accept Christopher Clark's (1990) and Richard Bushman's (1998) observation that early American farmers were tentative capitalists at best, and that they engaged in market production less to grow rich than to reproduce the self-sufficient family farm. Competency, not capitalism, was their goal. Second, political historians like John Hammond now regard the Jeffersonian Republicans less as an egalitarian liberal party than an uneasy partnership between Northern businessmen on the make, who saw no future for themselves in the Federalists' elitist economic future, and Virginia planters who wanted to replicate and spread their commonwealth's social hierarchy. This partnership sustained itself largely on fear of the Federalists and their supposed British “allies,” but after the War of 1812 and the Federalists' self-destruction the two factions broke apart. Appleby's book remains useful, but mainly as a historiographical counterpoint to Lance Banning's JEFFERSONIAN PERSUASION (1978), which readers should consult first.
The eighteenth century, Prof. Appleby argues, saw two important developments in England and its colonies: an agricultural and commercial revolution, which changed the way thinkers perceived economic man, and an intellectual shift in the use of terms like “virtue” and “liberty.” Writers like John Locke and Adam Smith now saw individuals as rational, free markets as socially beneficial, and profit-seeking as progressive. These ideas quickly took hold in the American colonies because land was cheap and overseas markets abundant, and because farmers could easily become capitalists. By the outbreak of the American Revolution most politically active colonists supported the idea of “a society of economically progressive, socially equal, and politically competent citizens” (50).
There were still classically-trained elitists in post-Revolutionary era, and Appleby identifies them as Federalists, who spent the 1790s trying to create a powerful government separate from and superior to the people – a failed effort, as it turned out. Energized by the French Revolution, the Whiskey Rebellion, and popular opposition to Jay's Treaty, the Jeffersonian Republican party organized political clubs and partisan newspapers, held public rallies, and offered ordinary Americans a future of opportunity and equality. By 1800 they had defeated the Federalists and stopped their last-ditch effort to create an American “aristocracy” (51-78). Thereafter, the Republicans created a new political and economic order dedicated to a rising standard of living and an instrumental vision of government, which regarded the state as a mechanism for promoting economic growth rather than a device for keeping the rank-scented multitude in line.
Appleby's long essay (which is what this book is) has a lot of internal intellectual integrity, and she is right to emphasize the mass mobilization that energized the Jeffersonian party in the 1790s. Subsequent scholarship has, however, challenged two vital components of her argument. First, many professional historians now accept Christopher Clark's (1990) and Richard Bushman's (1998) observation that early American farmers were tentative capitalists at best, and that they engaged in market production less to grow rich than to reproduce the self-sufficient family farm. Competency, not capitalism, was their goal. Second, political historians like John Hammond now regard the Jeffersonian Republicans less as an egalitarian liberal party than an uneasy partnership between Northern businessmen on the make, who saw no future for themselves in the Federalists' elitist economic future, and Virginia planters who wanted to replicate and spread their commonwealth's social hierarchy. This partnership sustained itself largely on fear of the Federalists and their supposed British “allies,” but after the War of 1812 and the Federalists' self-destruction the two factions broke apart. Appleby's book remains useful, but mainly as a historiographical counterpoint to Lance Banning's JEFFERSONIAN PERSUASION (1978), which readers should consult first.
May 29, 2012
Except that Appleby is in love with Thomas Jefferson, the book was very professionally written and almost a bit over my head. I appreciated the wealth of information about the philosophies that influenced colonial thought, especially the regarding the shift to individualism.
October 9, 2011
I'm not sure Jefferson would approve, although I think his supporters might.
March 27, 2021
"There is nothing so hard to discover in the past as that which has subsequently become familiar," Appleby writes in the first chapter. And yet the familiar nevertheless exerts itself on our interrogations of the past. In this case, it's the preeminence of a "liberal conception of liberty" in the decade after the 1787 founding. Best understood as the intellectual foundation of a rugged, individualist ideology privileging negative political and economic liberty. As someone more sympathetic to the primacy of (small-r) republicanism operating in early national public affairs, there is a place as well for liberal thought's influence as a social force sweeping away Federalist aristocracy in favor of a liberal-democratic, agrarian society. Appleby focuses much attention on the Democratic-Republican societies which spontaneously burst onto the scene in a show of republican solidarity with the revolutionaries of France in 1793. This is the strongest part of her argument as it points to a groundswell of "leveling" spirit bubbling up from below. But some of what's said can sometimes seem a non-sequitur in light of the incomplete context given. For example, she claims that a new form of democratic representation "investing self-interest with moral value" would eventually come to supplant the “disinterested” civic virtue of latter-day classical republicanism (p. 97). It’s a bold claim, especially in light of the prevalence of republican language in elite correspondences throughout the period. And again, the familiar rears its head when considering what "interest" evoked to many at the time. It wasn't always so lauded, as Appleby seems to imply. Even Federalist Ten, which she cites oddly enough in support of this more benevolent view of interest, remains a screed against the dangers of "faction" in society and government. These concerns were not assuaged so readily nor was the republican ideal put aside for something all too foreign as a veneration of the individual over upholding the virtues of “res publica.” Appleby also doesn't adequately explain the liberal connection to the Republicans' preferred policy agenda (debt retirement, no national bank, no army, free trade, etc.) and their rocky experience realizing these in practice once in power, in my opinion. Some of these policies are, again, familiar conventional (classical) liberal positions, but they also represent ideas (and fears) whose origins are not wholly "liberal" in nature, but rather republican. Then again, the solution to the greatest threat to liberty at the time (ie. the state/empire) was seen by many to be in part an expansion and preservation of civil society (see Paine's Common Sense). Most of the arguments she makes could as easily be made in favor of republicanism's staying power throughout the period. In fact, the historical record (ie. textual evidence) arguably better supports this claim. Appleby, by mostly relying on secondary sources, argues that we need to look at what's behind the language itself, at the natural rights philosophers who "placed the personal ahead of the public," and inspired the Republican charge. But I'm not convinced that notions of public virtue were wholesale replaced by a private virtue of "the independent and free man" in the liberal sense; did not classical republicans like Harrington, Sidney, Gordon/Trenchard, etc. believe that one could not be truly republican unless they also be independent (economically and politically)? Could not the objective of Republicans have been to "republicanize" society? They did not so much extol the agrarian ideal as fear the cycles of social corruption afflicting past republican societies. There's also the problematic conflation of capitalism with commerce (mentioned by other reviewers) that boils down to a narrow definition based on "free enterprise" alone. Nonetheless, I sometimes think the distinctions made in the debate over the primacy of liberal vs republican thought during this time can be overblown. And Appleby presents a solid argument for the former's importance to opposition thinking in the early days of the republic. It is, however, not the final word on the matter. My rating is actually closer to 3.5.
October 11, 2018
This book can be both flippant and profound. It can offer a vision of capitalism aborning and get lost in Republican societies' pamphlet wars. On the whole, however, it offers much food for thought and original interpretation.
Like other writers, Joyce Appleby notes that for most American revolutionaries, "liberty" meant the liberty of a community to determine its own path, not the liberty of the individual to do what they would. She argues, however, that it was capitalism that helped shape a new definition of liberty, right as the U.S. Constitution seemed to enshrine the old one. When farmers saw individual market participants, unorganized and unled, create a spontaneous market order and at the same time bolster the public good, they began to attack the hierarchical modes on which old liberties had been erected. The simultaneous emergence of a French Republic, which seemed to offer an escape from the past, and the growth of the grain trade in Mid-Atlantic states, which boomed with the French Republic's wars, gave these individuals moral and monetary support for a radical new interpretation of freedom.
Appleby contains fascinating quotes here from the Republican societies that had formed after the Citizen Genet's march across America. These societies bristled at President Washington's, and other Federalists', statements that in a virtuous republic there was no need of independent "societies," which seemed borderline treasonous to the elites who controlled the "real" society. The Republicans, by contrast, argued not only that all men were born equal, but that nothing on Earth gave one man domination over another, that there was no such thing as high and low classes, and that every form of power was tyranny. As Appleby points out, this was not a revolution about the distribution of material goods, but of the distribution of "respect," which the Republicans believed should not be divided between classes. As she says, by the 1800s, and the fall of the Federalists, no American party would ever again run on an ideology that argued for the rule of a "natural aristocracy."
Sometimes Appleby seems to confuse whether this revolutionary language came first from Hobbes and Locke, or from Jefferson and Madison during the debates about the American Revolution and Constitution, or from these 1790s republican spokespeople. She in fact elides the Southern side of the Republican-Democratic party in this era, and even of Jefferson himself, and focuses on the Mid-Atlantic farmers and their ideology. She does show that these Republican ideologues were not anti-capitalist, even if they were pro-agricultural. They tended to dislike manufacturers not because they were modern, but because in that era they were "forced trade," trade reliant mainly on purchases of the wealthy and aristocrats. These Republicans aimed not to create a hard-working but simple yeoman class, but to spread a universal opulence and "comfort," as they often repeated. Appleby shows that we should pay more attention to these voices, and their Revolution (Election) of 1800, than previous historians have acknowledged. It's an insightful look at a crucial debate in American history, one of the few that was permanently resolved for one side.
Like other writers, Joyce Appleby notes that for most American revolutionaries, "liberty" meant the liberty of a community to determine its own path, not the liberty of the individual to do what they would. She argues, however, that it was capitalism that helped shape a new definition of liberty, right as the U.S. Constitution seemed to enshrine the old one. When farmers saw individual market participants, unorganized and unled, create a spontaneous market order and at the same time bolster the public good, they began to attack the hierarchical modes on which old liberties had been erected. The simultaneous emergence of a French Republic, which seemed to offer an escape from the past, and the growth of the grain trade in Mid-Atlantic states, which boomed with the French Republic's wars, gave these individuals moral and monetary support for a radical new interpretation of freedom.
Appleby contains fascinating quotes here from the Republican societies that had formed after the Citizen Genet's march across America. These societies bristled at President Washington's, and other Federalists', statements that in a virtuous republic there was no need of independent "societies," which seemed borderline treasonous to the elites who controlled the "real" society. The Republicans, by contrast, argued not only that all men were born equal, but that nothing on Earth gave one man domination over another, that there was no such thing as high and low classes, and that every form of power was tyranny. As Appleby points out, this was not a revolution about the distribution of material goods, but of the distribution of "respect," which the Republicans believed should not be divided between classes. As she says, by the 1800s, and the fall of the Federalists, no American party would ever again run on an ideology that argued for the rule of a "natural aristocracy."
Sometimes Appleby seems to confuse whether this revolutionary language came first from Hobbes and Locke, or from Jefferson and Madison during the debates about the American Revolution and Constitution, or from these 1790s republican spokespeople. She in fact elides the Southern side of the Republican-Democratic party in this era, and even of Jefferson himself, and focuses on the Mid-Atlantic farmers and their ideology. She does show that these Republican ideologues were not anti-capitalist, even if they were pro-agricultural. They tended to dislike manufacturers not because they were modern, but because in that era they were "forced trade," trade reliant mainly on purchases of the wealthy and aristocrats. These Republicans aimed not to create a hard-working but simple yeoman class, but to spread a universal opulence and "comfort," as they often repeated. Appleby shows that we should pay more attention to these voices, and their Revolution (Election) of 1800, than previous historians have acknowledged. It's an insightful look at a crucial debate in American history, one of the few that was permanently resolved for one side.
July 27, 2011
An important book, but hardly the easiest read.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews