days of the Revolution brought him into contact with theories which confirmed his own conclusions concerning the conditions which conduce to human welfare and happiness. Conclusions which Rousseau and his compeers arrived at by dint of abstract reasoning, Jefferson held as naturally as if he had breathed them in with the air of the Virginia piedmont. It was fitting that the man who formulated the philosophical justification of revolution which the western part of the British world hurled against the eastern in the Declaration of Independence, should later become the leader of the inland farming democracy in its contest with the American heirs of British tradition. Jefferson's political creed was, indeed the reflex of his philosophy of society. He believed that a simple agricultural economy afforded the best basis for a free state, since it fostered individualism and equality. Such a society America had done much to produce, and made possible in future, with its "immensity of land courting the industry of the husbandman." A complex industrialism with workshops and wage labor he wished to discourage, as tending to destroy self-reliance and equality of condition among men, and to introduce the class antagonisms which had led to the oppression and debasement of the people in the Old World. Commerce he admitted in his order as the means of exchanging the surplus of an agricultural country for the manufactures of the overcrowded countries of Europe, and hence as a means of keeping manufactures with their corrupting influences away from our shores. The ships of commerce, with their protect ing navies, he preferred to let the European nations supply. In such an Arcadian society the functions of government would be at a minimum, the need of taxation slight, and individual freedom and initiative at their best.104 The relation of this conception of society and government to Jefferson's early surroundings and to the life of the class whose 104 "Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever He had a chosen people, whose breasts He has made His peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth. Corruption of morals in the mass of cultivators is a phenomenon of which no age nor nation has furnished an example. It is the mark set on those, who, not looking up to heaven, to their own soil and industry, as does the husbandman, for their subsistence, depend for it on casualties and caprice of customers. Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition. This, the natural progress and consequence of the arts, has sometimes perhaps been retarded by accidental circumstances; but, generally speaking, the proportion which the aggregate of other classes of citizens bears in any State to that of its husbandmen, is the proportion of its unsound to its healthy parts, and is a good enough barometer whereby to measure its degree of corruption. While we have land to labor, then, let us never wish to see our citizens occupied spokesman he was, is obvious. Very appropriately he has been called a "backwoods statesman," for this set of theories, born of frontier conditions, affected his policies throughout his public career. While Jefferson thus identified the cause of good government with the dominance of the agricultural class, as opposed to the capitalistic interests which formed the nucleus of the Federalist party, his democracy was not without limitations. He declared in 1800 that he had always been in favor of a "general suffrage." 105 It does not appear that he was ready to insist upon manhood suffrage, however, for in the draft constitution prepared for the use of friends in the Virginia convention of 1776 he provided a small freehold qualification for the exercise of the franchise.106 If the whole of his plan be considered, however, this qualification becomes almost equivalent to manhood suffrage, for, in harmony with his faith in agriculture as the best foundation for a state, he would have had estates granted to all males, from the public lands.107 His theory of democracy did not embrace all orders of society, for he could not overcome his distrust of the working class of cities. His hope of an American order was bound up with the continued preponderance of agriculture, for he believed that "when we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become corrupt as in Europe, and go to eating one another as they do there." 108 Thus he appears not so much as the apostle of a complete democracy, as he does the champion of an Arcadian form of society as the one best calculated to promote the happiness of mankind. Hence in contrast with Hamilton his program was at a workbench, or twirling a distaff. Carpenters, masons, smiths, are wanting in husbandry; but, for the general operations of manufacture, let our workshops remain in Europe. It is better to carry provisions and materials to workmen there, than to bring them to the provisions and materials, and with them their manners and principles. The loss by the transportation of commodities across the Atlantic will be made up in happiness and permanence of government. The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body." "Notes on Virginia," written in the winter of 1781-1782. Ford, Writings of Jefferson, III, 208-269. To this description of the ideal economic basis for a free state may be added the statement of the ideal of government given in the inaugural address of 1801: "A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labour the bread it has earned." Ibid., VIII, 4. See Beard's summary of Jefferson's views, in Origins, Chap. 14. 105 Ibid., 461. 106 See above, 25, f. n. 59, and text of draft in Ford, Writings, II, 7. 107 See discussion in Beard, Economic Origins, 457-463, and Anderson, in Amer. Hist. Rev., XXI, 750-754. 108 Letter to Madison, Dec. 20, 1787. Ford, Writings of Jefferson, IV, 479. largely negative, or laissez faire, and he appears in national politics as the opponent of changes conceived in the interest of the capitalist class; the preserver of the social and political status quo, rather than as the leader of further democratic advance.109 While it is true that the Federalist and Republican parties separated in the main along the old lines of cleavage, one notable exception must be mentioned. As a class the planters had constituted one of the groups of the dominant order which had joined in the movement for the formation of a stronger government. Within a few years, however, most of them had accepted the leadership of Jefferson. The causes of this defection lie partly in specific issues. Many planters, especially in Virginia, stood in somewhat the same relation to their British creditors that the interior farmers did to the merchants of the coast region. Desire) to escape from their obligations has been charged as one cause of their Whiggism during the Revolution, and fear that the claims would be enforced by the federal courts may have been a factor in the opposition which some of them showed to the new constitution.110 Jay's treaty, with its provision for a joint commission to adjudicate the debts due British merchants, was a further cause of alienation.111 Hamilton's assumption scheme laid a burden upon Virginia, which had paid its debt, for the benefit chiefly of northern security holders;112 and in most of the planting states lack of fluid capital deprived even the wealthy of opportunity of profit 100 This is true during the Federalist regime. His program of social reform fell within his conception of the sphere of state rather than federal action. His program of federal action became more positive when he reached the presidency. Cf. Madison's reasons for joining the opposition to Hamilton which developed into the Republican party: "I deserted Colonel Hamilton, or, rather, he deserted me; in a word, the divergence between us took place from his wishing to adminster the government into what he thought it ought to be; while on my part, I endeavored to make it conform to the constitution as understood by the convention that produced and recommended it, and particularly by the state conventions that adopted it." Rives, Life of Madison, III, 177, quoted by Gordy, J. P., Political History of the United States, I, 140. In this desire of Madison, shared by Jefferson, to hold the constitution to their conception of its original meaning we have the origin of the Republican doctrine of strict construction. 110 Oliver Wolcott, quoted by Beard, Economic Origins, 297. .... 112 The Republican view of the tendencies of Hamilton's measures can be summed up by quoting a single sentence: "In an agricultural country like this to erect, and concentrate and perpetuate a large monied interest, is a measure which your memorialists apprehend must in the course of human events produce one or other of two evils, the prostration of agriculture at the feet of commerce, or a change in the present form of federal government, fatal to the existence of American liberty." Resolutions of the General Assembly of Virginia on the Assumption Act of 1790, reprinted in Ames, H. V., State Documents on Federal Relations, 5. Cf. discussion of Hamilton's fiscal system in Beard, Economic Origins, Chaps. 5, 6. through subscribing for stock of the United States Bank.113 For reasons of this nature, although many planters remained true to the Federalist party as late as the election of 1800, there was a pretty steady drift to the ranks of the opposition.114 Through community of opposition to measures which advanced the interest of a class of fluid capital owners, located chiefly in the northern states, the two classes of agriculturists which had been so long in conflict in the southern states, came together in the national party known as Jeffersonian Republicanism. It must be recognized, too, that the aristocratic faction, through the privileged position which it enjoyed in the states, was able to dominate this alliance, so that southern republicanism became a party consisting largely of small farmers led and represented by planters. This union was brought about the more readily because of the absence of a positive democratic propagandism on Jefferson's part, which might have alienated the planters. 113 Ibid., 153. 114 Phillips, "The South Carolina Federalists," in Amer. Hist. Rev., XIV, 529-543; 731-743, gives some insight into the motives of the planters who adhered to the Federalist party during the nineties, as well as the motives of those who espoused Republicanism. CHAPTER II THE TRIUMPH OF THE PRINCIPLE OF WESTERN EQUALITY In the foregoing chapter an attempt has been made to show that the first parties in our national history grew out of antagonisms in the region between the Alleghany Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean, and that these antagonisms were to a considerable degree geographical, the more aristocratic group occupying the coast regions and the more democratic the interior. It has also been shown that in the conflict of the two the coastal order held its ground well. Indeed, it may be questioned whether, on the original arena, the popular cause would ever have triumphed. The population of the hinterland could hardly have gained sufficient weight to break down the strongly entrenched peripheral social order. In the southern states, in fact, throughout the slavery era, the plantation system displayed the power to advance steadily at the expense of the area of small farms.1 The back settlements could not have saved their social order by seceding and establishing independent communities, for want of an outlet save through the Atlantic ports. If there had been no other way of escape, it seems that nothing short of revolution could have prevented the independent farmers from sinking in time to the level of European peasants. The acquiescence in aristocratic leadership of the Republican party was ominous. The division of national parties would probably have been sharper along lines of latitude and less marked along those of longitude. Such was the tendency shown when planters and small farmers united in the Republican party. The fate of the northern masses is not so easily conjectured. They showed less tendency to accept the leadership of their former antagonists, and might have maintained themselves as an important political group or party. But the fate of the farming democracy was not to be determined east of the Alleghanies. The geographical basis of parties 1 Cf. advance of plantation system to piedmont in Virginia and Carolinas: Ambler, Sectionalism, 113; Schaper, "Sectionalism," 389 et seq. See also Phillips, in Amer. Hist. Rev., XI, 798-816, and Smedes, Memorials of a Southern Planter, extracts in Callender, Selections from the Economic History of the United States, 641 et seq. 41 |