The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology

by Lance Banning

Book Overview

This revisionary study offers a convincing new interpretation of Jeffersonian Republican thought in the 1790s. Based on extensive research in the newspapers and political pamphlets of the decade as well as the public and private writings of party leaders, it traces the development of party ideology and examines the relationship of ideology to party growth and actions.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801492009
• ISBN13: 9780801492006
• Release Date: August 1980
• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Length: 312 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.6" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Republican dependency on 18th century British opposition

This book is a fairly detailed look at the roots of Jefferson's Republican Party as it evolved through the 1790s and on into the 1800s. In terms of pre-Revolution ideological origins, it is a mere snapshot of what Bailyn covers in immense detail in his Ideological Origins. In addition, the author borrows much from Gordon Wood's The Creation of the American Republic. By far the most significant element of the Jeffersonian persuasion is the continuation of the English opposition of the 18th century to the British monarchy led by Lord Bolingbroke and the authors of Cato's Letters, among others. Their main theme was the corruption of the British government by a coterie of ministers with the power to influence members of Parliament through financial dispensations and grants of offices. It was the opposition of "Country" Whigs versus the "Court" Whigs, associated with the monarchy. Interestingly, the author claims that opposition resonated far more in the colonies. The taxation of the colonies undertaken by Parliament after the French and Indian War was a sure sign of British corruption creeping into the colonies. Those concerns, that is, the possibilities of the simple, agrarian, virtuous republican colonial society being corrupted, are not to be dismissed as a significant cause of the Revolution. The author notes that anti-Federalism and the Republican Party were distinct movements, though perhaps two sides of the same coin. Anti-Federalism, as a key force in politics, essentially died with the ratification of the US Constitution. Republicans were not anti Constitution - only its distortion by unprincipled men. Madison was a nationalist and a Federalist, but not for long. A focused opposition began to take shape with the formation of the first federal government in 1789. By far the biggest concern was the ambitious financial program that Alexander Hamilton, the Treasury secretary, put together over the first few years. As he moved from funding of the national debt, to assumption of state debts, to founding a national bank, and to support of manufacturing, those who wanted the Constitution to be strictly followed and agrarianism preserved saw the predictions of the inevitable decay of balanced governments well underway. To them, Hamilton's measures were producing a moneyed aristocracy, or "paper" men. Many of those speculators, bond holders, stock holders, and brokers were in Congress and could not help but be influenced by a "minister" overstepping his Constitutional role - a repeat of the British situation. In addition, internal taxes, like excise taxes on the production of whiskey by farmers, were imposed on the general citizenry to pay these elites. The Hamilton program rippled into foreign affairs. The free flow of commerce with Britain was essential to the Hamilton program, which introduced a highly distasteful dependency on good relations with Britain. But the decade-long hostilities between England and France forced sides to be chosen. Was

How the Real Whigs came to influence the Jeffersonians

Robert Shalhope in his John Taylor of Caroline:Pastoral Republican talks about the tendency of historians to assert a "single and substantial 'reality' in the period they are studying and then judging individuals...by this standard" (Shalhope, p.8) He might well have added that as readers we tend to do the same thing. Mr. Murphy's review below is a good example of this. For some reason, many people want to beatify certain individuals and trends in our early history and then judge histories of that period by how well they cleave to that reader's historical construction. The best example of this is the way that readers or historians react to Alexander Hamilton. The problem with this tendency is that it distorts our reading of the history of that period. Here is a thought. I suggest that few people would be arrogant enough to claim that they had a standard by which the present could be judged. There are more things on heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophies and so on. Well here is the Taylor axiom: "If it doesn't work for the present, it doesn't work for the past". This is only to claim that we need to start seeing our past as not one reality but many different realities that were experienced by many different types of people. People who were liberal, radical, conservative, Whigs, rational and religious all at the same time. Otherwise, we cheapen them in the name of our pet ideas. A case in point. Banning's book while strongly influenced by Pocock's work can be equally said to be as strongly influenced by Bailyn, Wood, Maier,Cunningham, Peterson, Foner and Ketcham. To claim that Banning is just channeling Pocock is to not see Banning through your ideological forest. Furthermore to claim, that anyone who "really" knows his Jefferson will see through Banning's argument is a subtle ad hominem. I would appreciate actual quotes or some sort of evidence to back up such a claim. In any case, I am evidently not as knowledgeable as Mr. Murphy in that I am impressed by what Prof. Banning has to offer us. Banning's thesis is that the Real Whig (or the "country" ideology) was initially useful to the Revolutionary situation because it helped them to conceptualize and justify their opposition to British policy as a unwilling protest against the corruption of the British regime. But later these same arguments became useful to the rising opposition to the Hamiltonian economic program. The arguments proved even more useful in delineating different apporachs to foreigh affairs and central to the fight against the Alien and Sedition Acts. Part of the reason the Country ideology fit the Jeffersonian's purposes so well is that their political situation was analogous to that of the Country party. Like Bolinbroke in his struggle with Walpole, John Taylor read the rising opposition not as the beginnings of a "party" (a dirty work for at least another 30 years) but as the reaction of "patriots" who were fighting against degeneracy and ministerial influence