By contrast, Jefferson and James Madison saw the United States as remaining a largely rural country, primarily devoted to agriculture. Jefferson famously held that “those who labour the earth are the chosen people of God” and were the most virtuous, the most wedded to liberty, and the one’s whose interests were most bound to that of their country. They were suspicious of merchants, who lacked loyalty and virtue, and wanted to avoid manufacturing, which gave rise to workers living in impoverished urban slums where republican virtues would fail to take hold.
