I. Republicans, Federalists and High Federalists: Preservationist vs Futurist Whiggery in the First Party System:
De Re Publica, American Style:
Two facts of the Early Republic are remarkable:
How close the positions of the three great factions in federal politics seems to be.
The vehemence in which they fought each other and the danger which they seen in each other to the future of the United States.
Of course, both these facts are false products of our own present conditions.
Many of the issues which we view today as the watershed between the two major political parties of our own day and age were either non-controversial or considered too trivial and petty to serve as the focus of political struggle.
As for the methods of such a struggle, in Revolutionary France men were beheaded by their political rivals, tortured, exiled and have their property confiscated. Lyons have been burned to the ground.
A century before, the English Revolution had raised a similarly bloody trail even after the Parliamentarian victory was complete. It was less than a century since an Orangist mob in Amsterdam had torn the brothers De Witt to pieces. As far as republican politics went, slandering Adams' potbelly and revolutionary bona-fides, Hamilton's relationship with his clients' money (and their wives) or Jefferson's with his slaves was harmless fun.
Nevertheless, the disagreement seems to be around the application of a principle rather than its essence.
We have already seen how Adams, the most outspoken in favor of recognising some sort of natural elite in politics and its containment in the Senate, was an avowed democrat in his sentiment - that is, he wanted not only for the People to have a voice in government, he wished for that voice to be the dominant one.
Even Thomas Jefferson who is often counted as the most radical of the Founding Fathers in position of power in the Early Republic was clearly not a blood-crazed Jacobin.
The man was in no hurry to be rid of his large estates or even his slaves. He was clearly not for the abolition of private property - if anything, he was for the creation of a "Republic of Yeoman Farmers" - independent agrarians working the small parcels of land they themselves own, who, on occasion, meet to discuss politics in a sense of equality, brotherhood and philosophical enlightenment.
The prolific biographer Richard Brookhiser had summed up the politics of Thomas Jefferson (and to a degree, those of his quasi-mentor, Patrick Henry). The class which they belonged to, which dominated Virginian politics, was a branch of the English squires- wealthy landowners who had no special titles or legally sanctioned privileges to seperate them from the People, but which placed them always at the head of the People as their natural leaders. As the most influential, untitled freeholders in their neighborhood, they created the upper crust of the common People, suspicious of both the London government and the great noblemen, which, as we have already seen, were its product.
If you may recall, this is exactly the class which Adams wished to imprison in the Senate to utilize their their energies while preventing one of them from elevating himself to mastery of the State, leaving the work of representation to genuine members of the People- small time freeholders and the like.
The difference was in the conditions between Virginia (and the South in general) and New England. Up north, in New England and the Middle Colonies, there were very few equivalents to the class of Washington and Jefferson, but there was a large class of freeholders, working attorneys, doctors, divines, artisans and small time merchants, besides their very successful counterparts (New York and its upstate Patroons have been the exception, the legacy of the Dutch colony. However, New York City, with its teeming commerce and industry was always a considerable counterbalance). In Virginia, and more so in the deeper South, the Squires simply could, with their great possessions and networks of dependency, completely dominate the politics of their respective States, and that with the vociferous support of the local people- artisans, Charleston and Richmond merchants and so forth- who, unlike their counterparts in the North, had never managed to create an independent political-economic power from the produce of the great plantations.
In this light; Thomas Jefferson's vision of a Republic of Yeoman Farmers appears clearer. As a Squire, he believed himself to belong to the most excellent part of the People, he wished therefore for the entire People to be elevated to the level this class- either by breaking down the great plantations Gracchian-style, or by westward expansion that shall give virtually every man in America at least the opportunity to become a squire- or a yeoman farmer.
While Adams wished to lock the aristocratic energies in special institutions, and Jefferson to expand the aristocracy until it encompasses the whole People, Alexander Hamilton was worried by the conspicuous lack of aristocrats in America.
It has been the consensus amongst political philosophers since Plato that the common folk can never govern themselves well. How can people who never had the opportunity to be instructed in philosophy, and therefore learn of the true meaning of justice and the good and the beautiful conduct state-affairs, which inevitably deal with all three? While Plato was skeptical of the pretensions of hereditary aristocrats (the ευπατρίδης οf Athens and the όμοιοι of Sparta) to represent the true καλοκαγαθία desirable in the leadership of the State, the Nobility of Service that have evolved in Europe since the late Middle Ages believed it had proven itself. Haven't their families proven themselves the best and most useful citizens for centuries? Have they not risen to prominence specifically for the valuable services they have supplied the State in their slow, meticulous and steady rise, either through the service of the King or in Parliament, from the obscurity of shire-knights to the pinnacle of society? Let those commoners who desire advancement pursue the same course, why should their rise be faster than ours?
America was different. It had no inherited aristocracy - as a matter of fact, the colonies were expressly forbidden to create titles of nobility equivalent to those of the Mother Country. Even while John Locke was attempting to give The Province of Carolina an aristocratic constitution, he had to borrow German (Landgraves, Palatines) French (Signories) and even Native-Carib terms (Caziques). It is important to note that this grand scheme had failed to materialize.
We have seen how Adams' political thought was mostly concerned with the question who shall govern (the People through their representatives, together with the Natural Aristocracy, whose talents must be both used and contained in the Senate). Jefferson did not materially differ in his intellectual focus from his old congressional colleague. But Alexander Hamilton, as a true protege of the practical George Washington, was more concerned in how shall the government be executed.
We have mentioned before the lessons of the Revolution and those of the Colonial period; but the greatest American soldier of both periods had drawn his own conclusion:
In the course of two great wars, one on behalf of the British Empire and the other in the service of the Continental Congress, his men were never properly provisioned with supplies, uniforms, arms or pay by their governments, even in the considerably lax standards of the 18th Century.
He did his best to turn the volunteers he plucked from the sundry state militias to professional soldiers (the famed Baron von Steuben was immensely helpful), to scrounge, loan and commandeer sufficient resources to keep the army in existence and lead it to victory over a foe which enjoyed better supplies despite being an ocean away from their home. Neither Congress (who couldn't levy taxes, but merely ask the States for contributions) nor the States (who were disinclined to contribute, preferring to keep their resources for their own home defense) had managed to deliver. This, as Washington laments in every page of his revolutionary dispatches to Congress, was a colossal political failure.
The conclusion that must have been drawn, therefore, was that no matter if in the service of a mighty and prestigious Empire or a lofty and popular idea, moral factors such as loyalty and dedication cannot alone sustain a great military enterprise. What was needed, and which America lacked, was a national government, of the kind the Mother-Country enjoyed.
Alexander Hamilton was adamant that such failures must be purged from any future American system of government.
Therefore, while Hamilton was, like all the Founding Fathers, a firm believer in the sovereignty of the People, to him a Republican form of Government was not necessarily one in which the People themselves exercise power, but rather one where power "originates with the People". Therefore, he argued, a government by a Governor and a Senate serving within good behavior (that is, for life, unless impeached), with (the lower house of) Congress limited in its role to legislature, would have been ideal. The business of government is complicated and requires a steady hand, went his argument in the Constitutional Convention. An elected monarch would be able to exercise sufficient influence (of the kind we have seen George III employ in the House of Commons) upon the Senate and the House to make government regular and policy consistent.
As Hamilton told the New York Ratifying Convention on June 21st, 1788:
I agree that there should be a broad democratic branch in the national legislature. But this matter, Sir, depends on circumstances; it is impossible, in the first instance, to be precise and exact with regard to the number..
In my reasoning on the subject of government, I rely more on the interests and the opinions of men, than on any speculative parchment provisions whatever. Constitutions are more or less excellent, as they are more or less agreeable to the natural operation of things..
It was remarked yesterday, that a numerous representation was necessary to obtain the confidence of the people. This is not generally true. The confidence of the people will easily be gained by a good administration.
(Alexander Hamilton, Speech on Representation, in: Alexander Hamilton, Writings, Selected by Freeman, Joanne B.; The Library of America, NY 2001, PP. 487, 490)
Hamilton emphatically denied that an aristocracy exists in America or that the new constitution creates one by the virtue of investing legislators, executives and judges with their own power rather than one borrowed from their respective States (Ibid, PP 492).
Hamilton saw representation not as bringing in the opinions or sentiments of the voting public into public life, but as a way to bring the widest possible range of what he called intelligence - that is, skills, knowledge and education necessary for the work of government. In royal governments, argued Hamilton, this admirable task was achieved by the civil service and royal secretariats, and therefore the House of Commons could have satisfied itself as representative or delegates of the popular will supervising and checking the government, which was at heart a royal enterprise carried out by specialized administrators.
In a republican government, however, were the People to be truly sovereign, they must be self-governing, which means that policy must be framed in Congress, while the Executive and his administrative workers merely bringing that policy into fruition. Therefore it is vital that the House and the Senate should be constructed in a manner that is conducive for carrying out business - which means that it should be the talent and virtue of the People represented in Congress, rather than their passions and desires. For that same reason Hamilton opposed a larger Congress than set up by the Constitution, with greater number of smaller districts. Large districts have better immunity from cabals and corruption, he argued, by their sheer largeness. This means that the best known, respected and most capable persons in any given district, rather than the richer and most well connected, had a better chance to win the local seat.
The Non-Revolutionary Politics of Conservatism
All these three views correspond to variation on Whiggery, none of which can be described as Tory. Thus, inasmuch as the English political heritage had survived the Revolution, it was only those of the Whigs.
Nevertheless, as is shown here, American politics had not become a dull, unthinking and uncritical uniform mass by that process. The vastness of the land, the variety of human, economic, political and material conditions and the lack of a national capital who could monopolize national politics and make them monolithic, all, by necessity, have created a hotbed, from which sprung forth a plethora of descendant ideologies over the course of the 19th century.
The closest of all three factions to the Toryism of the mother Country were the Hamiltonian High Federalists, but even they, with all their adamant insistent on constructing a truly capable and energetic administrative state under the Federal Executive, manned by an emergent aristocracy of service, held on to the idea of Popular and Representative government.
To truly understand the politics of the original party system, we must remember that both parties were coalitions conceived in compromise between factions which we may term preservationists and futurists. we have already seen how Low-Federalists such as John Adams had to live in peace with High-Federalists of the Hamiltonian model, but Jefferson and Madison's party, the Republican-Democrats, as the hyphen in their chosen name may suggest, were also such a coalition.
But let us first clarify our terms:
The very name conservatism for a political movement, a name it must share with a specific personal disposition of human temper and strategy in all forms of enterprise is, just like the labels of the liberal, progressive and even communist movements, confusing.
Nevertheless, if we take either Molesworth' definition of Whiggery or Johnson's definition of Toryism and displace the names of these two movements with the term conservative, I would venture the result would be less jarring than if we attempt the same with any of the other aforementioned political ideologies:
Molesworth:
Conservative: One who is for keeping up to the strictness of the old Gothic constitution, under three estates of King (or Queen), Lords and Commons, the legislature being seated in all three together, the executive entrusted with the first, but accountable to the whole body of the people in case of maladministration.
Johnson:
Conservative: One who adheres to the ancient constitution of the state, and the apostolical hierarchy of the church of England.
If we trim away the specifics of what Molesworth and Johnson believe to be the essential characteristics of the English constitution to arrive at a more universal definition of Conservatism, we can say that a Conservative is a citizen who is for keeping up to / adhering to the strictness of the old Gothic constitution / the ancient constitution of the state.
It is obvious that those labels would not fit any other movement. Liberals (that is, those of them who are not also Conservatives), are indifferent to the nature of their country's old constitution, as their priority is that of free trade, free speech and generally speaking, respect for human rights and freedoms. If the old constitution of the state is agreeable to such things, all is well. If it is not, or if the liberal believe he can devise one which would be better suited to serve those ends, out with the old, in with the new. Modern progressives, Marxians and other radicals, the old constitutions is suspect by the very fact of its oldness.
Conservatism does not imply meek acceptance of every injustice and perversion of the Constitution that have become entrenched. It does not demand a calcification and preservation in amber of institutions that have long stopped fulfilling their original or any beneficial function. Rather, as Molesworth and Johnson had stated it, the goal of Conservative is the preservation if the State's - and of Society's - essential character.
A true conservative would wish his society no to be hobbled from making progress but understanding that all true progress must be done on Society's own terms and grow out of the living organs of the Body Politic. A Revolution on the French model (rather than the American one), horrified even those Americans like Thomas Jefferson who supported it at the beginning, since what had started as a mild attempt to reform the French State and roll back the worse abuses of the system established by Louis XIV had turned soon into a decapitation of French Society, a collective suicide, which had not ceased until the fall of Robespierre, and from which the French nation had never fully recovered its position as the first nation of Europe.
Preservationism and Futurism: the Short Term and the Long:
Thomas Jefferson's letter to Madison from Paris, dated September 6th, 1789, is often quoted to prove that Jefferson has been a radical. One should take note, however, that Jefferson does not call for redrafting of a new constitution in his generational revision scheme. Rather, he is calling for adjustments and re-adoption of the original Constitution adopted in 1789. Seeing that the Constitution was a new governing document and itself contained a mechanism for amendment, and that Jefferson viewed negatively broad interpretation of it (the two mechanism of generational revision that actually came to be used), his generational revision convention should not be considered as a radical idea.
Even his famous remarks about the land being created for the usurfunct of the living should not be misunderstood. This principle is concocted specifically to conserve the society of land owning squires from being turned out of their possessions by the bankers holding vast, intergenerational debts over their heads. Jefferson, like most of his class, inherited, together with his plantation massive debt, from under which he never managed to climb (his spendthrift habits did not improve his situation).
As we have already established, Jefferson's political project was to preserve the Squire Politics and expand them to the rest of the American people. His generational elimination of debt would have taken out the greatest practical weakness in the system.
Thus, we should see Jefferson as representing the futurist, Democratic side of the Republican-Democratic hyphen. He was a democrat since he believed that for all that is worthwhile in American society (namely people like him) to survive, it must be expanded to include the entire People. The exact scheme of the Federal Government was less important than its ability to secure the means by which such a vision can be achieved- the continuous peaceful possession and administration of the East Coast and expansion westward out of the Appalachian wall to give every yeoman-citizen his own little Monticello, with the refinement of intellect and manners that would make him a worthy and virtuous participant in the democratic republic.
Hamilton should be similarly seen as a visionary for the future, working out of the framework of the existing society.
The idea that the entire People could belong to the same class was ludicrous and undesirable to Hamilton. Rather, he saw class-divided England as a healthy and successful society and, in practical terms, who can fault him? England could manage wars on three continents and the high seas. America barely managed to organize and supply a force for self defense. England had not been invaded in 7 centuries. America spent the entire war having great deal of its territory and commercial centers occupied by the enemy. Clearly the Nobility of Service was an essential component of the State.
The fault he had found in the British social hierarchy was that it allowed itself to be calcified, that it closed its gates to outside talent, even inside talent born under less than favorable circumstances (such as himself).
Hamilton also understood, as we have mentioned above, that career civil servants would not do in a Republic. Instead, America shall create and recruit a class of practical men of business, who shall represent her intelligence, knowledge and experience in Congress and as Executive secretaries. His vision, in other words, could not be more different than Jefferson's.
Against these two rival futurists we have the two great preservationists of their respective parties- Adams and Madison.
We have already reviewed Adams' social view. In short, he does not pass judgement on any class of society, he merely wishes to contain all classes in their appropriate place of the State so none may overcome the State.
Madison expresses a similar view, but his balancing act is concerned not with class divisions but with various states and institutions. His great concern is that the new Federal institutions shall not become themselves a great singular constituency, capable of overthrowing the Liberty of the People.
The factor that Madison fears most, and sees as the most plausible, is not a class or a region coming to dominate American politics but a faction, a group dedicated to the advancements and interests of its members at the expense of the public weal and the common good.
This faction need not be tied by class or regional connections. Madison, a student of the late Roman Republic, knew full well that factions contain rich members and poor ones, provincial and metropolitans, military men and civilians of all walks of life. In a way, his Roman scholarship corresponds to Adams analysis of the medieval Florentine Republic and Hamilton and Jefferson's respective understanding of classical Greece.
III: "Orders of Offices, not Men": Slavery and Race in 19th Century America:
The introduction of Slavery to the New World, as well as the Indian conflicts, had required no racial justification.
The Native were foreign members of foreign nations, as far as the Anglo-American settlers were concerns, and ones unbound by the Laws of Nature and of Nations at that. As far as Slavery went, they, who came from a continent with clear and distinctive class structure, did not see why a slave class would not be just as legitimate as a noble class. Especially as in England nobility, now acquired by service, was to be had by Letters Patent of the Crown, just as serfdom was abolished by acts of Parliament. Therefore, reasoned the settlers, why should not the Crown have also the authority to sanction the reduction of men to slavery?
It was only while the Americans were making the case for Natural Rights of Man anchored not on precedence as the previously championed Rights of Freeborn Englishmen but on Natural Law derived from Human Nature and Nature's Creator that the question of Slavery became problematic. Thomas Jefferson in his Notes on the State of Virginia very tentatively suggests "with great caution" that the enslaved blacks are a different genus of the same species - a proposition which even slave masters such as James Madison declined as arbitrary and unserious- they needed no justification for the system which raised their wealth and standing for more than a century.
This is not to say that prejudice was only the product of the system of Slavery rather than its originator. Slavery in America had originated in the decision of the Virginian legislature in the 17th century to create a distinction between Christian (by birth) indentured servants, especially of British descent, and non-Christians. Even if later converted by their masters, their servile state was not altered by it alone. The logic, which was lifted from the Spanish colonial system of slavery, was that the master should not lose by conferring upon them the great benefit of baptism.
It can be argued that Slavery have been the most noticeable remnant of the Colonial system. It served at the time to strengthen the hold of the imperial power on the colonies not only by retarding their economic development and create path dependency towards cash-crops and a constant need for credit from the Home Islands, it also made the colonies depend on the English conception of granted and precedented rights rather than natural rights, and guaranteed to the English the moral high ground in any future demand to address grievances.
The development of racism as an ideology was therefore an attempt to integrate Slavery into the system of the Revolution. It had failed. Not only did it lead to the rupture of the Union in the Civil War, the vice president of the Confederacy, Alexander H. Stephens, one of the men most responsible for the destruction and death that followed, had declared in 1861:
The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically.
It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away.
This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day.
Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago.
By the hand of providence, this evil was not aloud to live. The Old Constitution, had proven to be finally capable to destroy the treacherous, unfree, malicious Confederacy and consign this unnatural and monstrous creation to the Tartarus of history. Racism did not die that day, but we must regard it then and forever to be not a facet of the American system but its enemy. Those who adhere to it, whatever they call themselves, do not wish to preserve the Republic and its society or to improve it, but to destroy and twist it to end foreign to itself.
IV: Political Economy in 19th Century America:
Introduction: The Emergence of Political Economy, 1660-1770
"for though the gentlemen of ancient families and estates in that county (of Somerset) were for the most part affected to the king, and easily discerned by what faction the Parliament was governed, there were also people of an inferior degree who, by good husbandry, clothing and other thriving arts, had got very great fortunes. These, getting themselves by degree to the gentlemen's estate, were angry that they found themselves not held in the same esteem and reputation as those whose estate they had assumed, and therefore, with more industry than the others, they studied all the ways to make themselves considerable.
Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon. History of the Great Rebellion, chapter 1. PP. 30. Oxford University Press for The Folio Society 1967.
A remarkable facts about the pre-19th Century Whig-Tory divide is that there was virtually no economic side to these competing ideology.
These two factions completely agnostic regarding government measures such as tax rates or free trade. As we said before, as far as an average Whig was concerned, taxes which Parliament levied and which enhance Parliamentarian power were good, customs and duties imposed by King-in-Council were bad.
Furthermore, there was no policy difference regarding the desired economic activity of the realm. In his early career, Cromwell opposed the fencing (i.e. privatizing) the common land not due to some latent socialism, but because it was an illegal act of plunder, done by order of the King to enrich his followers.
He himself would pursue a similar policy in Ireland when time comes. The Civil Wars, of course, predate the emergence of either Tory and Whig ideologies, but this example supplies us with a good benchmark of the peripheral role economic questions occupied as such in political debated.
This is not to say that the idea of economic factors standing behind political events was not present. No lesser personage than the Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, father in law to James II, grandfather to both queens Anne and Mary, lord chancellor of England (and lord proprietor of North Carolina) had written the above quoted lines, which lays the blame for Charles I loss of Somerset to the rise of a new class of squires of common birth and mercantile background.
Nevertheless, Hyde's ire is not arrayed against a particular profession; some of the persons he lambasts engage in the same business as gentlemen of ancient families and estates (such as husbandry) and others in profession more widely associated with burghers and artisans.
However, they all end up becoming Somerset landowners. The reason for their persistent differences with their neighbors of a more esteemed background is not economic, but political. They support Parliament due since they desire honors and social standing that are denied them. Their neighbors support the King since they wish to preserve their distinction. Hyde does not raise economics to the decider of human events. He laments it as a destructive force that disturbs the first concern of all statesmen - peace.
The great wars fought between England, France and the United Provinces of the Netherlands had altered the trade and settlement of the World a great deal, but they were not fought over trade and settlement.
King Charles II had a good understanding of the use of money and how it (or the absence thereof) can influence politics. Nevertheless, the wars with the Dutch and France, despite being waged on the High Seas and distant continents besides the European fields of battle, were never understood as wars for money or control of markets. Rather, those were wars of personal glory, of court politics, of national honor and religious zeal. It was not for the sake of its trade that the Duke of York had ceased New Amsterdam in 1664 but to weaken the Dutch in Europe and to win the second war wages against them in 50 years by the English State - not for their trade but because some mysterious secret the Dutchmen had found allowed them to build a great army and fleet, which have threatened the Crowns of both England and France.
It was only as a result of these two great naval conflicts and the subsequent wars which England fought against France - embracing the Dutch, their secrets and even some of their institutions - that a thought had crept into the minds of the royal adjutants and ministers of Louis XIV: What if the role trade had played in the great events of the Sun-King's lifetime, which have brought is not an aberration, but permanent and natural? what if this great force, which have brought the greatest monarchy in Europe to ruin and disgrace when harnessed by a humble folk of fisherman and swamp-drainers, could be utilized by the Great King? and, most importantly, what needs to be done domestically to achieve that happy end?
We must remember that France did not have proper politics since the demise of the Fronde.
Louis ruled with an iron fist ensconced in fine silk gloves. The idea of a legislature dominated polity heeding local grievances, interests and concerns and therefore being better able to secure and facilitate the industry and trade of the nation was foreign, unwanted and unwelcome. The answer was management - trade must be managed for the good and glory of the Crown - namely it must be aimed at procuring money (-that is hard cash, precious metals-) by which the Crown can furnish soldiers' wages and their supplies. That must be done by exporting all the things which the country produces which are not of use for the State in war or peace - luxurious cloth, delicacies, perfumes, exotic spices and chinaware. The ideal economy, reasoned these sages, was one which was capable to produce all that it required at home while attracting all the precious metal from abroad by either trading out its surplus or - even better - other countries' surplus.
This, in the other hand, was the birth of Mercantilism.
The Seven Years War and the Death of Old Mercantilism:
The Seven Years War had dealt a death blow to the old Mercantilism. France, which had given itself over completely to the system, not only suffered a grievous and humiliating defeat, it had found itself stretched to its financial limits. England, the victor, did not fare much better - its national debt ballooned from £74.6 million pound to over £132.6 million.
But while British trade, both within its colonial system and outside of it, was healthy, for the most part, before the war, continued throughout the conflict and resumed its full vim and vigor after its conclusion, French maritime trade was troubled by the excessive regulation, tariffs and controls imposed by the royal adjutants to begin with, was dependent on the now lost colonial possessions, and was ill-defended by the beaten navy.
The Physicians:
As the failures of Mercantilism had started to impress themselves on the French in the course of the successive wars with Great Britain, there started to grow various rival schools of political economy.
A school which soon attracted much intellectual attention was the physiocratic school. The Mercantilists who had a profound disinterest in the origin of value, the just economic system and the welfare of the common man. The Physiocrats, on the other hand, had based their entire philosophy on the quest to find the true source of value, which, they believe, shall determine the most just and beneficial policy for the whole society.
Taking their names from what they perceived to be their mission- to cure the ill condition of France- they concluded that value is ultimately derived from the Earth, since all things of value are either, in their raw form, grown upon its surface or dug from its bowels. When labor is being applied to the land it bears fruit, and as labor is applied to those fruit, they increase in value.
Naturally, therefore, that they have disregarded the contribution of merchants who merely transfer the fruits of the land and of Man's labor between locations and owners. Therefore, they reasoned, it matters not if a nation's merchants enjoy favorable or disfavorable conditions abroad if they make profit in hard cash which they bring home or not. Let the producers of the land - its owners and laborers - sell their produce on a free international market for the best price, without protection which would force them to sell at a lower price to domestic merchants to turn the profit to that unproductive class.
Not only did this line of thinking find purchase in the South- dominated by large landowners producing cash-crops - one of its great proponents, Samuel DuPont De Nemour was to become a member of the French national assembly, who engaged Jefferson informally throughout his career under the various French governments throughout the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, negotiate the Louisiana purchase, and finally settle on the United States as a citizen. His son Éleuthère became the founder of one of the greatest industrial enterprises in America.
North and South - The Two American Economies:
The Revolution had left the various states indebted to numerous foreign powers, but the new Union was, presumably, free of all the revolutionary debts.
Chronic indebtedness and credit management was not a new experience to most Americans of means.
Jefferson, Washington and Madison, as Virginia planters, operated their estates the way they have always being maintained - buried under a mountain of British credit, used to buy useful improvements and tools as well as luxury goods that the young industry of the colonies could not supply. Their lands, houses and slaves were the collateral - but as long as they made their payment on the interest in a timely manner out of the seasonal sale of tobacco, the London counting houses were content to have the easy and profitable business of receiving hard cash from the London purchasers of the Virginians' bounty in exchange for keeping open tabs for them at the taylors, ironworks and carriage wrights of the City. It was, after all, an easier business than sending agents overseas to start the great and unpleasant work of liquidating a plantation.
In New England, the relationship between American suppliers and British capital was subtler and more nuanced.
For a start, there was a large class of prosperous New Englanders who did not engage in direct international trade and therefore were not affected by the liquidity problems endemic to Anglo-America. Lawyers, doctors, farmers, local merchants and manufacturers - all had sufficient capital to their needs within New England. They had no need for dependency on London money-lenders. In regards to the great Boston Merchants, upon whose success this class depended:
By the late seventeen century, however, New Englanders had discovered that a comparative advantage might be found in trade.
The colonists willingly entered the market as producers to secure the consumer items they needed and wanted. They shipped, processed, and manufactured the staples of their fellow North-American and Caribbean colonists, supplied them with provisions and participated in a complex transatlantic exchange network, becoming simultaneously both key costumers and competitors of English merchants.
From Dependency to Independence: Economic Revolution in Colonial New England Margaret Ellen Newell
In other words, New England merchants and Southern planters both stood at the pinnacle of their respective economic systems which generated a tremendous revenues and supported lifestyles akin to those of English gentry in the mother country. But while New England merchants created a healthy, capitalist economy in which a large and cohesive middle class of professionals, producers and small entrepreneurs shared in their prosperity, in the South such development was retarded. A prosperous southern colony of Maryland has been described thus:
Annapolis had then been the Capital of Maryland over fifty years, the government having been removed from St. Mary's, the place of the original settlement, in 1694, thus supplanting that ancient city in the honors and emoluments of official patronage and with the government transferring the commerce of the colony.
Annapolis was now the rallying point of the cleverness and culture of such small population as then existed in separate colonies or provinces. Opulent men built costly, elegant houses as their city dwellings, if, as was commonly the case, they had large plantations or manors, where they dwelt at other seasons, superintending Maryland's grand staple of that time — Tobacco.
Tobacco from America became smoke in the old world, but brought back very solid revenue, together with all the luxuries of life.
Troops of slaves, docile as in the Orient, supplied service. Lumbering equipages, or very rickety stage-coaches, but generally superb horses, bore the colonists about the country. In town they visited in sedan-chairs borne by lacquers in livery. They sat on carved chairs, at quaint tables, amid piles of ancestral silverware, and drank puncli out of vast, costly bowls from Japan, or sipped Madeira, half a century old.
At Annapolis they laid out the best race course in the Colonies and built certainly the first theatre. Here the best law-learning of America was gathered — the Jennings, Chalmers, Rogers, Stones, Pacas, Johnons, Dulanys. Dulany's opinions were sent for even from London. They built a superb ball room which a British traveller called 'elegant'
Elihu S. Riley, The ancient city" : a history of Annapolis, in Maryland, 1649-1887, (Published by the Annapolis Record Print Office, 1887) PP. 127
In so many words, the scene described is that of an extractive economy based on the production and export of a raw material in which the owners of the resource enjoy great prosperity - but the economic role left for everyone else is minimal - beyond that of livered lackeyes.
The problem of Mercantile Dependency:
These two parallel economies were both dependent on the British system for their existence.
While merchants of New England and the Middle Colonies of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York had more leeway in their relationship with concrete counterparts in the home islands than the credit-hungry South, their dependency on the British polity.
Since the first crossing of the Atlantic ocean and the beginning of the transatlantic exchange by Spain, and since the Portuguese opened the trade of the East to Europe, there was nothing resembling a direct global market. Instead, what existed at any given point (prior to the victory of the Allies in the Napoleonic wars) was at least 5 globe-spanning network of European commerce: The British had their own, and so did the French, the Spaniards, the Portuguese and the Dutch.
Less fortunate nations bought and sold through the mediation of these imperial powers or at the sufferance of their vessels in their networks, which could cease at any moment as the European alliance system of the 16th-18th century shifted. The alternative, for landlocked empires or those too proud or too cautious to tie themselves to one of the Atlantic empires, was to develop their market within their own borders, which necessitated conquest of territories containing the resources they needed.
The Vasa kings attempted to turn the Baltic into a Swedish lake. The Russian spent the entire period between the Battle of Poltava and the October Revolution of 1917 creating an internal Eurasian market zone (only to become utterly dependent on the West afterwards, first for their pointless attempt at industrialization and than for food imports, made necessary by the destruction of their agricultural output by the said attempt).
These networks were kept separate by various methods, for which mercantilism was merely the rationalization - namely, by protecting only ships of the home country, its colonial possessions and its allies along certain routes, laying exorbitant taxes, limitations and outright bans on trade ties between any part of the network and those of parallel networks and encouraging or even sponsoring attacks on foreign merchants.
Many of the early leaders of the Revolution such as John Hancock were merchants infuriated not by the limitation imposed on all participants in the British system but of those which singled out American merchantmen as limited their actions within the system - London wanted to treat Americans as semi-foreigners to prevent their competition with British ships, but also to claim them as integral part of the Realm in regard to the jurisdiction of Parliament.
But as the dust settled, these very merchants understood the precarious nature of their situation - by their own volition, they have exited the greatest and most profitable trade network in the world - and the one within which they and their forbearers have spent their entire career cultivating all their business connections.
At the end of the Revolutionary War, the problem was solved for a time by the Treaty of Paris (1783), in which Prime Minister Shelbourne, who, under the influence of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nation (published 1776) was well disposed towards the idea of free trade, had agreed to give American merchantmen virtually full access and protection to the British trade network.
However, the conditions of that treaty were quietly renegotiated during the Confederation period by Britain absconding her obligations, laying tariffs on American cargoes, barring American vessels and scoffing how can a nation be independent without being foreign? and as France's political, military and economic fortune sank, as Boston merchants recovered their old ties to their partners and associates in London, Jamaica, St . Kitts and Halifax, becoming increasingly dependent once more on the British network and the Royal Navy protecting it, British statemen grew bolder and bolder.
Towards an American System:
As the Constitution of 1789 had put the American political house in order, the new Federal government had sought to sort out its financial problems as well, which brought into open conflict the two great secretaries of the Washington administration - Alexander Hamilton, as Secretary of the Treasury and Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State (John Adams, the vice president, was not afforded much say in the matter, establishing the diminished authority the office came to assume ever since).
We have already mentioned the difference in political philosophy between these two deep and heady thinkers, but here came out not only differences in their opinions of political economy, but the budding shoots of inter-departmental rivalry.
Alexander Hamilton demanded that the new Federal Government assume the debt incurred by the various states during the Revolution. This would not only be a boon to the states, he reasoned, alleviating their burden and allowing them to divert their attention and resources to more useful avenue, it would also draw a direct line of continuity between the Revolution and the new government, and portray the latter as truly the National Government, the embodiment of the Sovereign People, in whose name the Revolution was fought and won. It would have also increase the power and function of his department.
Thomas Jefferson, on the other hand, was dead-set against this measure.
Not only would this go against his idea of the narrow construction of the Constitution, but he justifiably believed that this will diminish the prestige and autonomy of the States. Besides, a Federal government saddled with such a debt (rather than one starting from a financial clean slate) would be less able to flex its muscles against Britain, and therefore would have, for its own safety, side with it against the power less capable of threatening her- namely France. In other words, by assuming the States' debt, the Federal Government was constraining his department and subordinating it to the considerations of that of Hamilton's.
To service this new great debt, the tax revenue of the new government (relying mostly on tariffs and excises, which suffered from the British limitations on trade). Hamilton knew what the classic solution was - the creation of a National Bank. Such a bank helped Britain finance the Seven Years War, the American Revolution, and now the new war against Revolutionary France without risking her economy. There was no reason, in his mind, why such a bank would be less successful in America, where it would have the added benefit of shifting the credit business of American consumers from British counting houses to itself and its branches.
To Jefferson, this was a great cause for alarm.
Such a bank would be a greater boon to Federal power than the assumption of the states' debts. It would inevitably create a class of bankers within the borders of the Republic upon which the Southern Planter (or squire) class would depend. Since most of the capital was bound to come from the commercial North, reasoned Jefferson, it would amount to shackling the South as an inferior partner in the Union, and the dominant class of the latter as the poor relations of that of the former.
Nothing could be further from Hamilton's mind.
He was a native of a small Caribbean island and his adoptive state, with which he identified strongly, was New York, which was the one Northern state closest in conditions, business ties and political affiliations to the South.
The Constitution, it was clear, was a national writ meant to create a national government capable of prosecuting war and executing policy for the benefit of the whole. The said government can be serious about this task, argued Hamilton, or they must abandon, admit to their failure and find a better settlement. If they would not take the steps that would fortify the National Government, the steps which the most successful national government in Europe had tested and proven, they demonstrate their unseriousness. Nay, they demonstrate their intent to destroy the Constitutional order from within, a most treacherous, insidious and ungentlemanly policy.
Such an accusation is implicit even in Hamilton's opening salvo:
In entering upon the argument, it ought to be premised that the objections of the Secretary of State and Attorney General are founded on a general denial of the authority of the United States to erect corporations. The latter, indeed, expressly admits, that if there be anything in the bill which is not warranted by the Constitution, it is the clause of incorporation.
Now it appears to the Secretary of the Treasury that this general principle is inherent in the very definition of government, and essential to every step of progress to be made by that of the United States, namely: That every power vested in a government is in its nature sovereign, and includes, by force of the term, a right to employ all the means requisite and fairly applicable to the attainment of the ends of such power, and which are not precluded by restrictions and exceptions specified in the Constitution, or not immoral, or not contrary to the essential ends of political society.
This principle, in its application to government in general, would be admitted as an axiom; and it will be incumbent upon those who may incline to deny it, to prove a distinction, and to show that a rule which, in the general system of things, is essential to the preservation of the social order, is inapplicable to the United States.
The circumstance that the powers of sovereignty are in this country divided between the National and State governments, does not afford the distinction required.
It does not follow from this, that each of the portion of powers delegated to the one or to the other, is not sovereign with regard to its proper objects. It will only follow from it, that each has sovereign power as to certain things, and not as to other things.
To deny that the government of the United States has sovereign power, as to its declared purposes and trusts, because its power does not extend to all cases would be equally to deny that the State governments have sovereign power in any case, because their power does not extend to every case.
The tenth section of the first article of the Constitution exhibits a long list of very important things which they may not do. And thus the United States would furnish the singular spectacle of a political society without sovereignty, or of a people governed, without government.
This accusation, that Hamilton would later throw openly in Jefferson's face through pamphlets, newspapers and public speakers attached to his High Federalist party, was insulting and unfair to the Virginian.
As far as he was concerned, the Constitutional case against the bank was clear. The Constitution was a limited instrument placing limited boundaries to the powers of the States while investing the new Federal government with limited powers for limited ends. To destroy any of these limitations would mean to reduce the entire documents to an empowerment of Congress to:
...do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and, as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please.
The debate had deteriorated from this point, Hamilton becoming convinced, in degrees, that Jefferson was a Jacobin and Jefferson persuading himself the Federalists wish to establish a British style aristocracy and restore British rule.
The acrimony that would result from the Bank Debate would lead to the rise of Jefferson's Republican-Democrat party and the departure of the Federalists from the moderate course of Washington and Adams to that of Hamilton's High Federalists (which would fail to win a single presidential contest). But the Constitutional argument merely covers the fundamental disagreement: Hamilton believed the bank was necessary, not merely desirable, and therefore constitutional. Jefferson believed the Bank to be neither necessary nor desirable, and therefore concluded it was unconstitutional.
The Competing American Systems - the Physiocrat and the Mercantilist
The debate between the competing social visions of Hamilton and Jefferson over the comparative virtues of agrarianism on one hand and commercial industrialism on the other, is made obstruct by the fact that there were not one, but two farming sectors: the Northern one, centered around small to medium sized farms, tilled mostly or entirely by free labor - usually the owner's own family and hired hands - functioning not unlike English farms, producing foodstuff. The produce of these establishments was usually diversified and, in places where the land was fertile enough to allow for surplus to be brought to market, could be the basis of a moderate fortune.
These lands were acquired by settlement, and required on;y that capital necessary for improvements, rather than purchase of new land. In other words, hard work, preservation of resources and good fortune could bring a bountiful harvest, that would be transformed to capital need to improve the same fields that generated it, and bring forth greater income next season. A prosperous farm was a testament to intergenerational commitment and hard work, as well as to the long settlement of the farmer's family on the land. Thus, the New England values of prudence, parsimony, and steadiness were inculcated into the community further by the nature of their occupation. The desire of new comers or members of poor farming families was either to go to town and find some livelihood over there - or to settle on some new land in the western frontier, which was still very close by, and start the long, slow road to prosperity.
In the South, however, where land was cultivated for cash crops by slave labor, the social and moral signals were all different.
The crops which the wealthy planters cultivated in the colonial era - especially tobacco, but rice and others as well - were labor intensive and exhausted nutrients from the soil. Thus, southern planters were always hungry to invest his capital - or rather capital lended to him - on the acquisition and cultivation of new land, instead of improvement of his existing land which could have not been done with slave labor due to the attention and diligence required.
We have elsewhere discussed the conditions of the American Frontier as they actually came to be. Here we would like to note is that initially, land speculation and expansion have been in the South a pursuit of the rich. But soon, as cotton replaces tobacco, Southern settlement came to agree to agree to the Northern pattern, whereby landless men who wished to become masters of their own estates pushed westward.
The relevant factor to our current discussion is that each of these two agricultural sectors had their own needs, production methods, markets and divergent interests.
The South sold raw commodities for the international consumer market - and specialized in the British network. The North sold grains and other agricultural capital goods to naval and industrial enterprises at home and abroad. The South therefore believed itself to be more flexible in its choice of customers, while the North was more bound to trade within the British network, since the British were still the greatest maritime power in the Western hemisphere and the most developed industrial economy.
However, the emergence of manufacture in the North led to a convergence of interests between the two sections of the country.
Britain did not require American manufactured goods. As a matter of fact, it long supplied America with such goods of superior quality and lower prices than any other country could provide. That meant that not only was the British market essentially blocked to America's budding industries, but British goods competed with them at their home market. Whither this was a boon or a blight upon American consumers did not make much of a difference to the manufacturers - here was a constituency for whom British commerce was odious and a positive bad and who would have loved nothing better than to see America decoupling from it.
Innovation was not a new thing for Americans, nor did shipbuilding, a craft that Jefferson boasts Americans excel at more than any other nation.
Americans were also starting along the new age of machinery. automatic mills, looms and other useful tools to augment or replace labor where developed in the workshops of Philadelphia, New York and Charleston. America had much to offer, if only her industry could find the proper economic avenue to develop.
Hamilton's solution was therefore simple: If Americans and their products are essentially barred from the World trade due to the interplay of the competing imperial network, America must construct her own network. Northern manufacture must be encouraged by bounties - that is, subsidies - and protected by tariffs on British imports. The increase of manufacture would draw more hands away from farming to that flourishing sector, especially those of skilled immigrants (who would naturally disembark at industrial harbors rather than at the countryside) - which would give the farming sectors a hungry market for foodstuffs and other agricultural product and would encourage a more intelligent, intense and improved use of the land under cultivation - rather than a shallow exploitation of barely-populated Western land.
This would guarantee that westward expansion - which Hamilton saw as inevitable - would take deep roots in the soil rather than transient hordes of laborers, free and otherwise, working one tract to exhaustion and moving to the next. Instead, prosperous towns - populated by mechanics, shopkeepers and retail financiers - would spring in every new district.
These shall first service the farming community of prudent, professional men of substance who know the soil intimately and how to cultivate and improve it to the maximum of her potential value in the most intelligent and scientific way. Eventually, these shall grow into prosperous metropolitan centers in their own right to equal any city in the East.
Thomas Jefferson's mind on the matter is less clear and more fluid than that of Hamilton.
Contrary to popular opinion, Thomas Jefferson had no hostility to trade and manufacture. As a physiocrat, he held that value originates in agriculture, by combining the powers of nature with human labor, and that manufacture offered a mere regular profit, by applying parsimony to raw matter, rather than a true increase to the revenue of society. Or in other words, manufacturing is merely the efficient use of existing resources rather than the generation of new goods from the soil and therefore should not count towards the gross domestic product of the country. This view was refuted by both Adam Smith and Alexander Hamilton (the latter quotes the former, in paraphrase of verbatim, extensively in his 1791 Report on Manufactures). Nevertheless, this view is hostile to neither manufacture nor trade. It merely posits that the fortunes and prosperity of the farming sector must take priority. Therefore free trade (or as free as possible) must take place to maximize the profits of the farmer who shall be able to sell to a wider market at a higher price. Manufacture should likewise be used to serve and augment this revenue, but can never supplant it as the main activity of a society. If by exportation of foodstuff food shall become more scarce for home consumption there is no damage in it, as it would encourage people to settle and farm more land, which would result in a society of landowning, prosperous free farmers.
V: Some Conclusion -the Convergence of the Framers and Synthesis of the 19th Century.
How can we ascribe to these four individuals and four very different point of view a single monicker of Conservatism, especially with the clear radical shift from traditional thought that is evident in Hamilton and Jefferson?
The first answer must be their overarching goal and the development that proceeded from the conclusion of their respective public careers.
A fact that we have hitherto underplayed was that all four of them were close associates of George Washington throughout the period between the Revolution (by the end of which he had close friendship and mutual high regard with all of them) and the end of his life. They were all laboring and fighting for the preservation, protection, and greater perfection of a distinct and unique society - of which George Washington, so they (rightly) believed - was the most perfect example and product.
A man of impeccable integrity, courage and generosity of mind, body and possessions, a true lover of his country yet not blind to her fault. He knew America of his times intimately, and was familiar with all her weaknesses. He loved his country and countrymen for their own sake, not for their budding power or that which they gave him.
This was a man of deep and abiding convictions who could yet be convince of the errors of his ways - and devise comprehensive and thorough plans to alter his course and to right his own wrongs. An immensely wealthy man of the highest social stratum in his own country, who yet refused to fortify his class's perch at the political expense of the common people, who he always saw as his exacting and demanding masters rather than his servants.
This society is what the Framers had sought to preserve and see grow- each in his own way. They serve with Washington not as a resentful accident of political fate but as an honor and a privilege. Even as bitter departure from each other and the administration came to pass, they maintained their regard to their old commander in chief and the ideals - and the country- he represented - ideals which were Virginian, but also American.
And as they departed from public life, they have one by one found, together with the country, their common purpose again. Jefferson attempted to mend his old friendship with Adams almost immediately after the vicious election of 1800 - an attempt that had become successful only after the death of Abigail Adams - and declared upon assuming the presidency:
But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.
...
Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government.
During his presidency, and that of James Madison, the government had pursued policies of trade resembling more and more those of Hamilton. The Hamiltonian vision for the West was taking shape together with the Jeffersonian one. Government was becoming more and more that of compromise between two stable parties who had learned to accept each other's existence.
The Era of Good Feelings resulted from the new Federalist party having the appearance of abandoning this common project of the preservation and cultivation of the Nation. Therefore, the Nation, in turn, had abandoned the Federalist party. the rejuvenated Republicans contained in their midsts Hamiltonians, Adamsians, Jeffersonians and Madisonians alike, as well as men who were all in equal measures. Some, like Henry Clay, started their political life as Jeffersonian partisans but ended up supporting Hamiltonian policies. Others, such as Andrew Jackson, saw themselves as developing Jeffersonian ideals.
And another point of agreement was developing between them: that there was a new and great danger to the Union, to that beloved Washingtonian country and ideal - that was Slavery, raised from an evil difficult to dismantle to a fanatic principle - would tear the country apart one day, and that brother will fight brother - unless they find a way out of this trap of fundamental sin.
After all, Samuel Johnson's question could not have been escaped - how could the loudest yelps- or most majestic roars- for Liberty can be heard over the groans of the enslaved?