Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815

by Gordon S. Wood

  Most historians nowadays seek to write political history that views politics through the lenses of race, gender, and popular culture. Consequently, they are interested primarily in the symbols and theatrics of politics—the varied ways common people, including women and blacks, expressed themselves and participated in politics, whether in parades, dress, or drinking toasts. For examples, see Doron Ben-Atar and Barbara B. Oberg, eds., Federalists Reconsidered (1998); and Jeffrey L. Pasley, Andrew W. Robertson, and David Waldstreicher, eds., Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early Republic (2004). On popular politics in the 1790s, see Simon P. Newman, Parades and the Politics of the Street: Festive Culture in the Early American Republic (1997); and David Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776–1820 (1997).

  Over the past three decades many historians have also developed a new conception of the early Republic, bridging the professional chasm that earlier separated those who concentrated on the colonial and Revolutionary periods from those who focused on the early Republic. Historians now tend to conceive of the Revolution much more broadly than they did in the past and have extended its reach into the early decades of the nineteenth century. Historians now write books that run from 1750 or 1780 to 1820 or 1840. This new periodization makes the Revolution far more significant and consequential for the early nineteenth century than it had been earlier.

  As a result, there is a stronger sense of the changes that took place over this extended Revolutionary period, not just politically but socially and culturally. On this subject, see Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1992). Over the past generation increasing numbers of historians have turned to social and cultural subjects rather than just focusing on prominent individuals. They now write about extended social developments that cut through the Revolutionary era and transcended the traditional political dates—the role of women and families, the emerging professions, the decline of apprenticeship, the rise of counting, the transformation of artisans, the changing of urban mobs, the development of the postal system, and so on. On these subjects, see Donald M. Scott, From Office to Profession: The New England Ministry, 1750–1850 (1986); W. J. Rorabaugh, The Craft Apprentice: From Franklin to the Machine Age (1986); Patricia Cline Cohen, A Calculating People: The Spread of Numeracy in Early America (1982); W. J. Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (1979); Paul G. Faler, Mechanics and Manufactures in the Early Industrial Revolution: Lynn, Massachusetts, 1780–1860 (1981); Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788–1850 (1984); Paul A. Gilge, The Road to Mobocracy: Popular Disorder in New York City, 1763–1834 (1987); and Richard R. John, Spreading the News: the American Postal System from Franklin to Morse (1995).

  Even legal historians have become less interested in the decisions of Chief Justice Marshall and more interested in the relation between law and society. For examples, see William E. Nelson, Americanization of the Common Law: The Impact of Legal Change on Massachusetts Society, 1760–1830 (1975); and Morton J. Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860 (1977). Much of this new legal research was inspired by James Willard Hurst. See his “Old and New Dimensions of Research in United States Legal History,” American Journal of Legal History, 23 (1979), 1–20.

  One of the most important contributors to this new look at the relation of the Revolution to the first few decades of the early Republic is the extraordinarily ambitious and fruitful project Perspectives on the American Revolution, supported by the United States Capitol Historical Society and conceived and led by Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert. For nearly twenty years, from the early 1980s to the end of the twentieth century, Hoffman and Albert, supplemented by occasional guest editors, brought out almost a dozen and a half volumes on various important issues connected with the American Revolution and its aftermath—everything from women, slavery, and Indians to religion, social developments, and patterns of consumption.

  A host of issues has been enlivened by connecting the Revolution to the decades of the early Republic and emphasizing its cultural implications. The Enlightenment, for example, has been broadened to include politeness and civility and not just the growth of deism and reason. On this cultural conception of the Enlightenment, see Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (1992); David S. Shields, Civil Tongues and Polite Letters in British America (1997); and Lawrence E. Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England (1994). Henry F. May, The Enlightenment in America (1976), Robert A. Ferguson, The American Enlightenment, 1750–1820 (1997), Gary L. McDowell and Jonathan O’Neill, eds., America and Enlightenment Constitutionalism (2006), and Andrew Burstein, Sentimental Democracy: The Evolution of America’s Romantic Self-Image (1999) are important studies. On the influence of antiquity, see Carl J. Richard, The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment (1994); and Caroline Winterer, The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780–1910 (2002). On the origins of American exceptionalism, see Jack P. Greene, The Intellectual Construction of America: Exceptionalism and Identity from 1492 to 1800 (1993). The authoritative history of early American Freemasonry is Steven C. Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730–1840 (1996). The best historical study of citizenship is James H. Kettner, The Development of American Citizenship, 1608–1870 (1978).

  On the creation of the new national government, see the surveys by Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788–1800 (1993); and John C. Miller, The Federalist Era, 1789–1801 (1960). On the creation of a federal bureaucracy, see the pathbreaking work by Leonard D. White, The Federalists: A Study in Administrative History (1948). For the English model of a “fiscal-military” state, see John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1788 (1989). Particularly important for understanding the Hamiltonian vision of this “fiscal-military” state is Max M. Edling, A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State (2003). For other accounts of state-building in the 1790s, see Carl Prince, The Federalists and the Origins of the U.S. Civil Service (1978); and especially Richard R. John, Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse (1995). Richard H. Kohn, Eagle and Sword: The Federalists and the Creation of the Military Establishment in America, 1783–1802 (1975) is important for understanding the Federalists’ goals. Samuel Flagg Bemis’s, Jay’s Treaty: A Study in Commerce and Diplomacy (1923) and Pinckney’s Treaty: A Study of America’s Advantage from Europe’s Distress, 1783–1800 (1926) are classics on foreign policy in the 1790s. Jerald A. Combs, The Jay Treaty: Political Battleground of the Founding Fathers (1970) is broader than its title would suggest.

  On the origins of the Bill of Rights, see Patrick T. Conley and John P. Kaminiski, eds., The Bill of Rights and the States: The Colonial and Revolutionary Origins of American Liberties (1991); Richard Labunski, James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights (2006); and Leonard W. Levy, Origins of the Bill of Rights (1999). For a modern analysis of the constitutional significance of the Bill of Rights, see Akhil Reed Amar, The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstitution (1998).

  On financial matters in the 1790s, see E. James Ferguson, The Power of the Purse: A History of Public Finance, 1776–1790 (1961); and Edwin J. Perkins, American Public Finance and Financial Services, 1700–1815 (1994).

  Leland D. Baldwin, Whiskey Rebels: The Story of a Frontier Uprising (1939) and William Hogeland, The Whiskey Rebellion: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and the Frontier Rebels Who Challenged America’s Newfound Sovereignty (2006) are narratives of the insurrection, while Thomas P. Slaughter, The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution (1986) is more analytical.

  Richard Hofs
tadter, The Idea of a Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780–1840 (1969) is a lucid account that does not quite break from the anachronistic secondary sources on which it is based. For the emergence of the Republican party, see Noble E. Cunningham Jr., The Jeffersonian Republicans: The Formation of Party Organization, 1789–1801 (1957). Lance Banning, The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology (1978) is crucial for understanding the intellectual fears that held the Republican party together; but Joyce Appleby, Capitalism and a New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790s (1984) better captures the optimistic market orientation of the Northern Republicans. For the classic account of the ideology that underlay the Revolution and the Republicans’ fear of state power, see Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967). On the extralegal associations that promoted the Republican party, see Eugene Perry Link, Democratic-Republican Societies, 1790–1800 (1942); and Albrecht Koschnik, “Let a Common Interest Bind Us Together”: Associations, Partisanship, and Culture in Philadelphia, 1775–1840 (2007).

  On the French Revolution in America, see Charles D. Hazen, Contemporary American Opinion of the French Revolution (1897). Jay Winik, The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788–1800 (2007) has brief but stirring accounts of the French Revolution and Catherine the Great’s Russia, along with a discussion of America in the 1790s. On French influence in American affairs, see Harry Ammon, The Genet Mission (1973).

  On John Adams and the crisis of the late 1790s, see Alexander DeConde, The Quasi-War: Politics and Diplomacy in the Undeclared War with France, 1797–1801 (1966); Stephen G. Kurtz, The Presidency of John Adams: The Collapse of Federalism, 1795–1800 (1957); and John Patrick Diggins, John Adams (2003). Manning J. Dauer, The Adams Federalists (1953) captures some of the desperation of the High Federalists in 1798. On Adams’s public life, in addition to John Ferling, John Adams: A Life (1992), see James Grant, John Adams: A Party of One (2005). David McCullough, John Adams (2001) is more a sensitive account of Adams’s marriage to Abigail than an analysis of his public career. Other perceptive studies of Adams’s character include Joseph J. Ellis, Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams (1993); and Peter Shaw, The Character of John Adams (1976). For Adams’s political theory, see John R. Howe Jr., The Changing Political Thought of John Adams (1964); and C. Bradley Thompson, John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty (1998).

  On the press in the 1790s, see Jeffrey L. Pasley, “The Tyranny of the Printers”: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic (2001); and Marcus Daniel, Scandal and Civility: Journalism and the Origins of American Politics (2009). On immigration in the 1790s, see Marilyn C. Baseler, “Asylum for Mankind”: America, 1607–1800 (1998); and Michael Durey, Transatlantic Radicals and the Early American Republic (1997). The Alien and Sedition Acts are best covered in James Morton Smith, Freedom’s Fetters: The Alien and Sedition Laws and American Civil Liberties (1956). But for understanding the peculiar eighteenth-century context in which freedom of the press has to be viewed, see Leonard W. Levy, Emergence of a Free Press (rev. ed., 1985). For the Republicans’ response to the Alien and Sedition Acts, see William J. Watkins, Reclaiming the American Revolution: The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions and Their Legacy (2004).

  The watershed election of 1800 has attracted much recent historical attention. See James Horn, Jan Ellen Lewis, and Peter S. Onuf, eds., The Revolution of 1800: Democracy, Race, and the New Republic (2002); Susan Dunn, Jefferson’s Second Revolution: The Electoral Crisis of 1800 and the Triumph of Republicanism (2004); John Ferling, Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800 (2004); Bruce Ackerman, The Failure of the Founding Fathers: Jefferson, Marshall, and the Rise of Presidential Democracy (2005); and Edward J. Larson, A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America’s First Presidential Campaign (2007). An earlier work, Daniel Sisson, The American Revolution of 1800 (1974), tries to capture the radical meaning of Jefferson’s election, but it does not succeed as well as James S. Young, The Washington Community, 1800–1828 (1966), which, despite an unhistorical focus, rightly stresses the Republicans’ fear of power.

  For the Jeffersonians in power, see Marshall Smelser, The Democratic Republic, 1801–1815 (1968); Nobel E. Cunningham Jr., The Jeffersonian Republicans in Power: Party Operations, 1801–1809 (1963); and Forrest McDonald, The Presidency of Thomas Jefferson (1976).

  On banking in Jeffersonian America, see Bray Hammond, Banks and Politics from the Revolution to the Civil War (1957); Howard Bodenhorn, State Banking in Early America: A New Economic History (2003); and J. Van Fenstermaker, The Development of American Commercial Banking: 1782–1837 (1965). For Jefferson’s problems with debt, both public and private, see the illuminating study by Herbert E. Sloan, Principle and Interest: Thomas Jefferson and the Problem of Debt (1995). On urban development, see David T. Gilchrist, ed., The Growth of the Seaport Cities, 1790–1825 (1967).

  On Gallatin, see Henry Adams, The Life of Albert Gallatin (1879); and Raymond Walters Jr., Albert Gallatin: Jeffersonian Financier and Diplomat (1957). Theodore J. Crackel, Mr. Jefferson’s Army: Political and Social Reform of the Military Establishment, 1801–1809 (1987) and Robert M. S. McDonald, Thomas Jefferson’s Military Academy: The Founding of West Point (2004) explain the paradox of the warhating, anti-military Jefferson founding West Point.

  On Jefferson’s dismantling of the Federalist bureaucracy, see Leonard D. White, The Jeffersonians: A Study in Administrative History, 1801–1829 (1951). See also Noble E. Cunningham Jr., The Process of Government Under Jefferson (1979); and Robert M. Johnstone Jr., Jefferson and the Presidency (1979). Of course, as in all periods of Jefferson’s life, the appropriate volumes of Dumas Malone’s biography are helpful.

  David Hackett Fischer, The Revolution of American Conservatism: The Federalist Party in the Era of Jeffersonian Democracy (1965), looks at party competition in the early nineteenth century with fresh eyes. Indispensable for understanding politics in the early Republic is Philip Lampi’s monumental Collection of American Election Data, 1787–1825. The collection of data for presidential, congressional, gubernatorial, and state legislative elections is available online via the American Antiquarian Society’s Web page: “A New Nation Votes: American Election Returns, 1787–1825.” On the right to vote, see Chilton Williamson, American Suffrage: From Property to Democracy, 1760–1860 (1960); and Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (2000).

  On the Federalists’ cultural reaction to the Jeffersonian victory, see Linda K. Kerber, Federalists in Dissent (1970); and William C. Dowling, Literary Federalism in the Age of Jefferson: Joseph Dennie and the Port Folio, 1801–1811 (1999). See also James H. Broussard, The Southern Federalists, 1800–1816 (1978). For John Randolph and the spirit of ‘98, see Norman K. Risjord, The Old Republicans: Southern Conservatism in the Age of Jefferson (1965). Fine studies of politics in two states are Donald J. Ratcliffe, Party Spirit in a Frontier Republic: Democratic Politics in Ohio, 1793–1821 (1998) and Andrew Shankman, Crucible of American Democracy: The Struggle to Fuse Egalitarianism and Capitalism in Jeffersonian Pennsylvania (2004).

  On the society of the early Republic, see Christopher Clark, Social Change in America: From the Revolution Through the Civil War (2006); Alice Felt Tyler, Freedom’s Ferment: Phrases of American Social History from the Colonial Period to the Outbreak of the Civil War (1962); and especially Joyce Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans (2000). J. M. Opal, Beyond the Farm: National Ambitions in Rural New England (2008) is a sensitive and subtle study of ambition in the early Republic. On the excessive drinking in the early Republic, see W. J. Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (1979). On rioting in the colleges, see Steven J. Novak, The Rights of Youth: American Colleges and Student Revolt, 1798–1815 (1977). Paul A. Gilje, Rioting in America (1996), is the best survey of the general subject of rioting.

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sp; On the development of the West, see Malcolm J. Rohrbough, Trans-Appalachian Frontier: People, Societies, and Institutions, 1775–1850 (3rd ed., 2008); and Reginald Horsman, The Frontier in the Formative Years, 1783–1815 (1970). On the new cities of the West, see Richard C. Wade, The Urban Frontier: Pioneer Life in Early Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Lexington, and St. Louis (1964). Andrew R. L. Cayton has become the premier modern historian of the early Midwest. See his The Frontier Republic: Ideology and Politics in the Ohio Country, 1780–1825 (1986); Frontier Indiana (1996); and a series of jointly edited volumes: Cayton and Peter S. Onuf, eds., The Mid-West and the Nation: Rethinking the History of an American Region (1990); Cayton and Fredrika J. Teute, eds., Contact Points: American Frontiers from the Mohawk Valley to the Mississippi, 1750–1830 (1998); Cayton and Susan E. Gray, eds., The American Midwest: Essays on Regional History (2001); and Cayton and Stuart D. Hobbs, eds., The Center of a Great Empire: The Ohio Country in the Early American Republic (2005).