Forrest Mcdonald the FAITHFUL and the CRISIS of FAITH
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NO Forrest McDonald THE FAITHFUL AND THE CRISIS OF FAITH By most objective criteria, the Americans of 1800 had abundant cause to be proud, confident, even smug .... And yet a sense of decadence had plagued the land for five years and more. From the pulpit rang c~ies of despair and doom; dishonesty as well as panic had invaded the marketplace; liars and libelers made a travesty of freedom of the press; violence, hysteria, and paranoia infested the public councils. Those Americans who called themselves Federalists felt betrayed by an ungrateful people for whom they had labored long and well, and feared that the horrors of Jacobinism and anarchy were hourly imminent. Those who called themselves Republicans felt betrayed by the twin evils of money and monarchy, and feared that/iberty was about to breathe its last. Many who embraced neither political sect, whether from apathy or disgust, nonetheless shared the general feeling that the nation was in an advanced state of moral rot. What the Federalists thought was actually of little consequence, for they were soon to expire, in what Thomas Jefferson called the Revolution of 1800. Almost miraculously, with their demise--though not because of it--despalr suddenly gave way to euphoria. The new optimism, like the pervasive gloom and the defeat of Federalism that preceded it, stemmed from an interplay of social, religious, ideological, and economic forces and institutions, and from certain ingrained American characteristics. If one would understand the Jeffersonian revolution--how it happened and how it affected the nation’s destiny--one must seek first to understand those forces, institutions, and characteristics. One of the tenets of Republicanism in America was that, contrary to the teachings of Montesqnieu and other theorists, republican government was best adapted to large territories, since in an area as vast as the United States the very diversity of the people would prevent an accumulation of power inimical to liberty. If the principle, was sound, the Americans were truly blessed, for their culture was nothing if not plural. At first blush that 1976). Copyright © 1976 by the University Press of Kansas. Reprinted by perraission, 172 NO Forrest McDonald ! 173 neralization might appear strong, or g~ous views, to the extent that they were indeed entirely unfounded. Overwhelm- fully known, were if anything a political : ingly, Americans were farmers or traders handicap. Rather, it was the compati- of British extraction and the Protestant bility of outlooks that made it possible faith; and’even in politics, as Jefferson for southern and western revivalists si- isaid in his inaugural address, "we are all multaneously to embrace evangelical republicans, we are all federalists." But Arminianism in religion and Republican the mother country itself was scarcely ideology in politics. homogeneous, despite the amalgamation that financial and governmental power Anglo-Americans, like the English them- had brought to Great Britain in the eigh- selves, were by and large nonideological teenth century; it comprised a host of people, but in 18~ the country was di- different Celtic peoples--the Irish, the vided into two fiercely antagonistic ideo- Welsh, the Cornish, and three distinct logical camps. In a loose, general sort of varieties of Scots--as well as Englishmen way and with allowance for a number of ~vho differed from one another from exceptions, it can t~ said that the revival north to south and east to west. Ameri- ideologies derived from contrasting views cans had proved slow to cast off the of the nature of man. The first view, that cultural baggage that they or their ances- associated with the Hamiltonian Federal- tors had brought with them; and a genera- ists, was premised upon the belief that tion of independence, though building man, while capable of noble and even some sense of nationhood, had erased altruistic behavior, could never entirely neither their original ethnic traits nor the escape the influence of his inborn baser intense localism that complemented and ~assions--especially ambition and ava- nourished those traits. As to differences rice, the love of power and the love of in political principles, Jefferson was right mone3a The second, that espoused by the in regarding them as largely superficial; Jeffersonian Republicans, held that man yet they were substantive enough to lead was born with a tabula rasa, with vir- many men to fight, and some to kill, one tually boundless capacity for becoming another .... good or evil, depending upon the whole- It should not be surprising that those someness of the environment in which who were saved through revivalism were he grew, From the premise of the first it also supporters of Jeffersonian Republi- followed that government should recog- canism, for the theology of the one was nize the evil drives of men as individuals, psychologically akin to the ideology of but check them and even harness them the other. In part, to be sure, religious in such a way that they would work for dissenters supported Jefferson because the general good of society as a whole. of his well-known championship of the From the premise of the second it fol- cause of religious liberty. New England lowed that government should work to Baptists, for instance, having fought long rid society of as many evils as possible-- and vainly for disestablishment, virtually including, to a very large extent, the idolized Jefferson. South and west of worst of evils, government itself. The one New England, however, establishment was positive, the other negative; the one had long shnce ceased to be a llve issue, sought to do go~od, the other to eradicate and in much of that area Jefferson’s reli- evil. 174 ! 8. DID PRESIDENT ]~FFERSON OUTFEDERALIZE THE FEDERALISTS? But the ideological division was moreas to dictate another policy. In domestic specifically focused than that. The High affairs, a wide range of implications of FederaliSts believed iv[ and had fash- his system was equally inescapable. ioned a governmental system modeled The Jeffersonian Republicans regarded upon the one that began to emerge in this scheme of things as utterly wicked, England after the Glorious Revolution of even as the English opposition had re- 1688 and was brought to maturity under garded Walpole’s system. Indeed, though the leadership of Sir Robert Walpole dur- the Jeffersonians borrowed some of their ing the 1720s and 1730s. In part the sys- ideas from James Harrington and other tem worked on the basis of what has seventeenth-century writers and some often, simple-wdndedly, been regarded from John Locke, their ideology was bor- as the essence of Hamiltonianism: tying rowed in toto from such Oppositionists the interests of the wealthy to those of as Charles Davenant, John Tr~nchard, the national government, or more accu- Thomas Gordon, James Burgh, ~nd most ratel~ inducing people of all ranks to act espedally Henry St. John, First Viscount in the general interest by making it prof- Bolingbroke. As a well-rounded system, itable for them to do so. But the genius of it is all to be found in the pages of the Hamilton’s system ran much deeper. He Craftsman, an Oppositionist journal that erected a complex set of interrelated in- Bolingbroke published from 1726 to 1737. stitutions, based upon the monetization The Republicans adjusted the ideology of the public debt, which made it vir- to fit the circumstances, to fit the United tually impossible for anyone to pursue States Constitution and the "ministry" power and wealth successfully except of Alexander Hamilton rather than the through the framework of those institu- British constitution and the ministry of tions, and which simultaneously de- Robert Walpole; but that was all, and limited and dictated the possible courses astonishingly little adjustment was nec- of government activity, so that govern- essary: ment had no choice but to function in the The Bolingbroke-Oppositionist cum public interest as Hamilton saw it. For Jeffersonian Republican ideology ran as instance, servicing the public debt, on follows. Corruption was everywhere, it which the whole superstructure rested, was true; but given a proper environ- required a regular source of revenue that ment, that need not be the way of things. was necessarily derived largely from du- Mankind could be rejuvenated through ties on imports from Great Britain. For education and self-discipline, but that that reason the United States could not was possible only in the context of a life go to war with Britain except at the risk style that exalted living on, owning, and of national bankruptc3~ but could figh~ working the land. Only the land could Revolutionary France or France’s ally give people the independence and un- Spain, which were owners of territories hurried existence that were prerequisite that the United States avidly desired. to self-improvement. ’ Hamilton regarded this as the proper In some Edenic past, "the people"-- American foreign polic3~ at least for a which both Bolingbroke dnd Jefferson time; and should circumstances change, understood to mean the gentry and the he was perfectly capable of redefining solid yeomanry, and not to include aris- the rules and rerigging the institutions so tocrats, money jobbers, priests, or the NO Forrest McDonald I 175 scum in the cities--had enjoyed the for gambling, stock-jobbing, and paper proper atmosphere, and therefore had shuffling permeated the highest councils been happy. Relationships were based of state and spread among the people upon agriculture and its "handmaiden" themselves. Maniy virtue gave way to commerce/ upon ownership of land, effeminacy and vice; public spirit suc- honest labor in the earth, craftsmanship cumbed to extravagance, venality and in the cities, and free trade between indi- corruption. viduals. All men revered God, respected Jefferson never tired of telling a story their fellows, deferred to their betters, which, to him, epitomized what had gone and knew their place.