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Liberty, Virtue, and Republicanism: 1776–1787

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

John T. Agresto
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Extract

In recent years two ideas concerning America's republicanism have gained fairly general currency. First, there is now a growing recognition that a shift in understanding occurred in the decade after the revolution over the nature of republicanism and the political, social, and moral prerequisites necessary for establishing such a government. In particular, the notion of the absolute necessity of “virtue” or “public spiritedness” as the operative principle of republicanism became, for most American political thinkers, not only problematic but nearly indefensible. Second, there is a growing body of literature, journalistic and popular as well as scholarly, calling upon us to reopen the question of civic virtue and to reexamine anew its connection with republican health. After briefly reviewing the theoretical and practical connections made in the revolutionary era between virtue and self-government, this article will attempt to trace the causes for the early declension of the necessity of virtue in America's understanding of the foundations of republicanism. This accomplished, concerned citizens might then be able to evaluate more carefully the contemporary rediscovery of the links between moral character and modern republicanism by contemporary scholars and public men.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , October 1977 , pp. 473 - 504
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1977

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References

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22 The Pennsylvania Declaration of Rights, Article XIV, ibid., 5: 3083 and 3084, and section 45 of the “Frame of Government,” p. 3091. See also the Constitution of North Carolina, Article XXI, ibid., 5: 2793; the Constitution of Vermont, Article XVI and Section XLI, ibid., 6: 3741; the Constitut'on of New Hampshire, Article XXXVIII, ibid., 4: 2457; and the Constitution of Maryland, Article XXV, ibid., 3: 1695.

23 Ibid., 3: 1907–08. See also Article III, p. 1889; Article XVIII, p. 1892; and Chapter V, section II, p. 1907.

24 Ibid., pp. 1889–90. While it is unnecessary here to detail all the constitutional and legal ties between politics and religion in the period under consideration, it is appropriate to consider the argument being made by serious and intelligent men as to the intimate connection between religious cultivation and political well-being. Religion in general (and Christianity in particular) was more than the hope of men's souls, it could also be one of the most valuable supports of republics and republican character. Such religion, as Rush observed, “favors that equality among mankind, that respect for just laws, and all those sober and frugal virtues which constitute the soul of republicanism” (Rush, , Selected Writings, p. 130)Google Scholar. The Christian teaching “that no man ‘liveth to himself’” was at the very core of republican devotion to the commonwealth (ibid., p. 8 9). See also Wood, , Creation, p. 427Google Scholar.

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27 See Morgan, Edmund, The Birth of the Republic, 1763–89 (Chicago, 1956), p. 111Google Scholar.

See also Montesquieu, , Spirit, I, IV, iii, p. 37 and I, VIII, xvi, p. 120Google Scholar.

28 There remain important aspects of the situation which would be overlooked by attributing these legislative conditions simply to democracy. Why, for example, would disbarring men from holding political office consecutively, or forcing a rotation in office, or even a disability to serve after so many terms be considered essentially or naturally democratic? These questions are not raised in any attempt to deny that the states were democracies but to show that they were democracies of a particular sort, democracies with a certain view, now no longer common, of the prerequisites of republican regimes. The best comparison to the idea of forced rotation and annual elections is, clearly, the Federal Constitution of 1789.

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30 Yet, even annual elections, Adams would caution, are not “a sufficient Security to the People, unless they are themselves virtuous” (Adams, J. and Warren, , Warren-Adams Letters, 1: 196)Google Scholar.

31 Inspired by these principles, some states went further. The Constitution of Pennsylvania (1776) not only provided for rotation in office and annual elections, but stipulated that when certain offices were becoming objects of personal profit (“as to occasion many to apply for them”) the salaries of those offices would be reduced. Thorpe, , Constitutions, 5: 3090Google Scholar. See also the Constitution of Vermont, 6:3747.

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39 Again, the most comprehensive modern exposition of the American understanding of the relationship of virtue to republicanism in this period is to be found in Wood, , Creation, especially pp. 28–36, 46–75, and 91–124Google Scholar.

40 Warren, Mercy and Gerry, Elbridge, A Study in Dissent: The Warren-Gerry Correspondence, 1776–1792, ed. Gardner, C. Harvey (Carbondale and Edwardsville, 1968), p. 149. (James Warren to Elbridge Gerry, December 3, 1780.)Google Scholar

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42 See Bjork, Gordon C., “The Weaving of the American Economy,” Journal of Economic History, 24 (1964), 541–560, and the discussion which follows, pp. 561 – 566CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 Lee, R. H., Letters, 2: 211. (Lee to S. Adams, November 10, 1780.)Google Scholar

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49 Jefferson, , Papers, 11: 328–329. (Currie to Jefferson, May 2, 1787.)Google Scholar

50 Adams, J. and Warren, , Warren-Adams Letters, 1: 202Google Scholar. (Adams to Mercy-Warren, January 8, 1776.) Compare, however, Adams’ sometimes sanguine estimation of American virtue in section one.

51 Ibid., p. 86. (Adams to James Warren, July 23, 1775.) This was a constant topic of consideration between Adams and the Warrens both before and after the revolutionary war. Note also, in this regard, two other letters to James Warren written in 1775 (October 19 and 20), ibid., pp. 146–147, 155–156. To Mercy Warren, Adams had predicted that “altho We are engaged in the best Cause that ever employed the Human Heart yet the prospect of success is doubtful not for want of Power or of Wisdom but of Virtue” (p. 222).

52 Ibid., p. 177. (James Warren to Adams, November 5, 1775.)

53 “The Avarice and disaffection of the people here [in Yorktown] is so great that they refuse any price that we can give for the Necessary provisions for the Army.…” Jefferson, , Papers, 2: 125. (John Harvie to Jefferson, December, 1777.)Google Scholar

54 These mutinies are the subject of some letters between Madison and Jefferson. See, especially, Madison to Jefferson, June 2, 1780 and January 9, 1781, in Madison, James, The Papers of James Madison, eds., Hutchinson, William T. and Rachal, William, 7 vols. (Chicago, 1962–1971), 2: 38 and 279–280Google Scholar.

55 See Hamilton's indictment of Samuel Chase, a member of Congress, who, knowing of Congress's secret plan of buying flour to supply the French fleet, was accused of planning to corner the market on flour and raise its price. Hamilton, , Papers, 1: 562–563. (“Publius Letter I,” October 16, 1778.)Google Scholar

56 Jay, , Correspondence and Papers, 1: 139.Google Scholar (William Duer to Jay, May 28, 1771.) This growth of self-interest in the midst of war tended to confound all partisans of republicanism. Richard Henry Lee wrote to George Mason that “The demon of avarice, extortion, and fortune making” had seized all types of men, and that citizens were seeking office more for the money it entailed than for public service. “I know well that much of this will in all countries take place in time of war, but in America, unfortunately at this time, nothing else is attended to” (June 19, 1779, Lee, R. H., Letters, 2: 65)Google Scholar.

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59 Jay, , Correspondence and Papers, 3: 297. (“An Address to the People of New York.”)Google Scholar

60 Jefferson, , Papers, 11: 129Google Scholar. (Jay to Jefferson, February 9, 1787.) The waning of republican virtue was a frequent theme in Jay's letters to Jefferson. On October 27, 1786, Jay noted, speaking of Massachusetts in particular, that a “Spirit of Licentiousness has infected Massachusetts, which appears more formidable than some at first apprehended…” (10:488). By April of 1787 he had already begun talking about establishing government on something other than the good sense and virtue of citizens—governments “adapted to the actual State of Human Nature” (11:313).

61 Ibid., 5:153. (Isaac Avery to Jefferson, March 1781.)

62 The Committee of Congress to Jefferson, ibid., 3:555. See, also, Hamilton, , Papers, 2: 660–665Google Scholar, “The Continentalist No. III.”

63 Jefferson, , Papers, 9: 445Google Scholar. (Jefferson to John Page, May 4, 1786.) So distressed was Jefferson that he even avowed that were a missionary to appear who made frugality the basis of his religion, he would join immediately (9: 446). See, also, his letters to Alexander Donald, July 28, 1787, ibid., 11:632–633, and his letter to Henry Skipwith, ibid., 11:635–637, for further reflections on the decline of American public virtue.

64 The fact that it was the supposedly most virtuous agrarians who now seemed to prefer their own self-interest over the well-being of Massachusetts was the cause of some embarrassment, especially to Jefferson, who had previously never doubted their civic virtue. See Malone, Dumas, Jefferson and the Rights of Man (Boston, 1951), p. 156Google Scholar.

65 Ames, Fisher, Works of Fisher Ames, ed. Ames, Seth, 2 vols. (Boston, 1854), 2: 107. (“Camillus, No. III.”)Google Scholar

66 Quoted in Faulkner, Robert K., The Jurisprudence of John Marshall (Princeton, 1968), p. 86. (John Marshall to James Wilkinson, January 5, 1787.)Google Scholar

67 Quoted in Ernst, Robert, Rufus King, American Federalist (Chapel Hill, 1968), p. 86. (King to Theodore Sedgwick, October 22, 1786.)Google Scholar

68 On this point see Adams, J., Works, 2: 250, 4:193Google Scholar; Warren-Adams Letters, 1: 202Google Scholar. Adams, S., Writings, 3:286Google Scholar. Rush, , Selected Writings, p. 209Google Scholar.

69 Lee, R. H., Letters, 2: 62–63. (Letter of July 6, 1779.)Google Scholar

70 Hamilton, , Papers, 3: 103Google Scholar. An identical observation, in almost the exact same words, was put forward at the Constitutional Convention by Charles Pinckney, who also questioned both the feasibility and desirability of republics based on virtue. Not only, he observed, are the people of America “very different from the inhabitants of any State we are acquainted with in the modern world,” but “their situation is distinct from either the people of Greece or Rome, or any State we are acquainted with among the ancients.— Can the orders introduced by Solon, can they be found in the United States? Can the military habits & manners of Sparta be resembled to our habits & manners?” (Madison's Notes of Monday, June 25, in Farrand, Max, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention, rev. ed. in 4 vols. [New Haven, 1966], 1: 401)Google Scholar.

71 Adams, J., Works, 6: 79 and 209Google Scholar.

72 Ibid., 6:209.

73 Ibid., 6:207.

74 Ibid.

75 Ibid., 6:210. What Adams failed to comment on, however, is that both he and Montesquieu are in ultimate agreement: both finally praise not republican Rome but England, and both on the same grounds—the mixed republic of England uses commerce and the competition of self-interest as a basis upon which to build a peaceful, prosperous and free republic.

76 Ibid., 6:211. Adams's most extreme statements concerning the futility of republican virtue can probably be found in his marginal notes to Mably's De la Legislation, which is reprinted in Haraszti, Zoltan, John Adams & the Prophets of Progress (Cambridge, Mass., 1952). In it, for example (p. 121)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, he compares those who live lives of poverty, temperance, frugality and courage not to the great citizens of antiquity but to the “savages of North America,” who knew no better.

77 Adams, J., Works, 6: 208Google Scholar.

78 It is in this sense that Paine's remark—that the Defenseof the American state constitutions was, in reality, a great attack on them—should be understood. For, in ever so many ways, the republicanism in the states wasfounded on the “delusive imaginations” of certain political thinkers and noton any consistently followed plan of balanced or mixed government. If Adams praises the tripartite division of political powers which the states inherited from their association with England it is more with an eye to giving that shell some substance rather than to praise what was then existing. See Paine, Thomas, The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. Foner, Philip S., 2 vols. (New York, 1945)Google Scholar.

79 Later, in his Discourses on Davila, Adams carried the idea of republics based on the natural passions rather than on virtue even further. Republics could be founded on t he “desire for distinction,” one of the “keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.” Ambition is merely the desire for distinction directed towards power, and as such may often be praiseworthy. Benevolence becomes useful to society because of its connection to love of reputation; and even avarice, when based on the desire to be esteemed, can aid the prosperity of all society. Patriotism should be seen as nothing but the desire to win laurels, and thus can be fostered more through self-interest than through exhortations to duty. Because of all this, republics should not try to repress the self-seeking passions, rather they should attempt to foster them for certain socially beneficial ends. This should be connected to the Federalist's solution, especially to their reflections on the “love of fame.” (See, for example, Hamilton, et al. , The Federalist Papers [New York, 1961], p. 437CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Federalist, No. 72.) For Discourses see Adams, J., Works, 6: 232 to 243 especiallyGoogle Scholar.

80 Ames, F., Works, 2: 108. (”Camillus No. III.”)Google Scholar

81 Jefferson, , Papers, 8: 53. (Richard Price to Jefferson, March 21, 1785.)Google Scholar

82 This is not to say that historians or political scientists always show the fundamental relationship between Jefferson's anticommercialism and an understanding of what was thought to be the necessary foundations of self-government. All too often biographers and commentators will merely be content with saying that, to Jefferson, farmers were the best citizens and the happiest men, without giving any basis for such a seemingly arbitrary statement.

83 Jefferson, , Papers, 10: 16Google Scholar. (“Answer to Demeurrier's First Queries.”) It was for this reason, Jefferson noted, that Rhode Island was the most tumultuous and tyrannical republic—“there is not a single man in Rhode Island who is not a merchant of some sort” (ibid.).

84 Ibid., 9:218. (Jefferson to Archibald Stuart, January 25, 1786.)

85 Ibid., 10:262. (Jefferson to Brissot de Warville, August 16, 1786.)

86 Adams, J., Works, 8: 357Google Scholar. (Official letter of John Adams to Secretary Jay, December 6, 1785.) This was, of course, written before Adams set down his reflections questioning the very relationship between virtue and republicanism, noted in the previous section.

87 Jefferson, , Papers, 7: 26Google Scholar. (Jefferson to George Washington, March 15, 1784.) To which Washington replied: “I will not enter upon the subject of Commerce. It has its advantages and disadvantages, but which of them predominate is not the question. From Trade our Citizens will not be restrained, and therefore it behoves us to place it in the most convenient channels, under proper regulation, freed, as much as possible, from those vices which luxury, the consequences of wealth and power, naturally introduce” (Letter of March 29, 1784. Ibid., 7:51). Note that Washington is unclear on one thing—how best to regulate this commerce. On two other points, however, he is perfectly clear; first, that luxury, the most obvious sign of the declension of a republic, is the natural and usual consequence of trade; second, that it is a proper function of statesmanship to use and channel the natural and strongest human desires and not foolishly attempt to repress them. Jefferson was forced to come to the same conclusion. While still understanding the threat that commerce posed to republics, he always found himself having to agree that a retreat from the commercial society was quickly becoming more and more impossible in America. See, for example, his letter to John Jay, August 28, 1785, and to G. K. van Hogendorp, October 13, 1785, ibid., 8:423 and 633.

88 In some ways, as B. S. Morgan has observed with reference to the Puritans, the dilemma would have developed even without America's eager love of trade. Unlike life amid the hills of Rome or the rocks of San Marino, in America all efforts aimed at avoiding the vices of sloth and idleness, and all industry in the service of society, would ultimately lead to greater prosperity even if—as both the Puritans and the classical republicans understood— prosperity was to be consciously avoided. In America, frugality led naturally to wealth, and industry directly to prosperity. For example, even the nonimportation acts, which many welcomed as a great contribution to republican frugality, merely led (as Hamilton noted) to the discovery of the world's conveniences in “our own fertile and propitious soil” “The Puritan Ethic and the American Revolution,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser. 24, no. 1 [01, 1967]: 3–43)Google Scholar. See also Hamilton, , Papers, 1: 53 and 152Google Scholar.

89 Hamilton, , Papers, 2: 617–618. (Hamilton to Robert Morris, April, 1781.)Google Scholar

90 See, for example, the “Instructions of the Town of Boston to Its Representatives,” May 1764, in Adams, S., Writings, 1: 3Google Scholar and also 4:149 (Adams to Samuel Cooper, April 29, 1776). See also Tom Paine's admission that trade tempered the human mind. Paine, , Complete Writings, 2: 241Google Scholar.

91 Warren, Mercy, History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Republic, 3 vols. (Boston, 1805), 3:435Google Scholar.

92 See, for example, Rush, , Selected Writings, p. 94Google Scholar, “On the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic.” See also Rush's attack on the unbending partisans of republican virtue in “On the Different Species of Mania” (date unknown), ibid., pp. 213–214, and his defense of luxury itself in “Lectures on Animal Life,” Lecture I (1799), ibid., p. 134. Even Jefferson approved of altering the Articles in order better to reap the material advantages of trade. See his letter to Edward Carrington, August 4, 1787 in Jefferson, , Papers, 11: 678Google Scholar. As is not unusual, this tension in the American mind is best underscored in the thinking of John Adams. “The happiness of man,” Adams could write in his “Thoughts on Government,” “consists in virtue.” Yet in the preceding paragraph he could say, “ease, comfort, security [are] in one word, happiness.…” But virtue hardly equals ease, comfort and security, nor can the sentences each be taken as a partial truth complementing each other. Adams, J., Works, 4: 193Google Scholar.

93 Farrand, , Records, 2:35Google Scholar. Debate of Tuesday, July 17. As noted before, the theory of the separation of powers, although widely proclaimed, seems to have been poorly understood and even less practiced. State courts were given rather narrow and restricted jurisdictions, under the control of the legislatures, and the executive branch generally lacked a veto over legislation. Within the legislatures, the upper house (when not altogether abolished) was subordinate to the more popular house, for how would it serve the necessary unity of republican societies to have the people artificially divided, with one part checking the other? If the citizen body is virtuous and their rulers protected from the allurements of self-interest, what purpose would a real separation or check on the popular will serve? To be sure, an executive branch is needed to carry out the legislature's acts, a judiciary is needed to adjudicate cases, and an upper house can be very helpful in giving sober second thoughts on legislation, but without destroying the popular will. It is true that in Britain a separation and mutual check is necessary to protect the various social divisions and classes from designs against their particular interests. But in America, which had neither kings nor peers, any real system of separation of powers with checks and balances seemed to suggest or promote not common action for the common good but a concern for separate interests and a division of that social unity which true republics demanded. Yet in this very observation lay the crux of the problem.

94 Religion in America was a cause of dispute rather than of republican cohesiveness for the simple reason that Christianity, taken seriously, is not one religion but many. And the more seriously it was taken the more divisive it was. Together with economics and politics, religion was a contributor to factionalism. It was, Madison commented to Jefferson, “much oftener a motive to oppression than a restraint from it.” Jefferson, , Papers, 12: 278. (Letter of October 24, 1787.)Google Scholar

95 Ames, F., Works, 2: 102 and 103Google Scholar.

96 Adams, J., Works, 6: 61 and 62–63Google Scholar. Note Hamilton's remark to Jay at the start of the era of constitution writing: “It is not safe to trust the virtue of any people. Such proceedings will serve to produce and encourage a spirit of encroachment and arrogance in them” (Hamilton, , Papers, 1: 177)Google Scholar. See, also, Jay's letter to Washington some years later in Jay, , Correspondence and Papers, 3: 204Google Scholar.

97 Wood, , Creation, pp. 402–403Google Scholar. For further indications of the American reaction to this growing failure of self-government and the growth of popular tyranny, see pp. 396–413.

98 Farrand, , Records, 1: 252Google Scholar. Debates of June 16 (Madison's notes).

99 Ibid., 1:135–136.

100 Ibid., 1:134. See also Federalist, Nos. 47 and 48, and Madison's letter to Jefferson of October 24, 1787, in Jefferson, , Papers, 12: 276Google Scholar. There Madison stated that the mutability of state laws “contributed more to that uneasiness which produced the Convention, and prepared the public mind for a general reform, than those which accrued to our national character and interest from the inadequacy of the Confederation to its immediate objects.”

101 Carpenter, William S., “The Separation of Powers in the Eighteenth Century,” American Political Science Review, 22, no. 1 (02, 1928), 32–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

102 Adams, J., Works, 5: 37Google Scholar.

103 For example, they were free, as a body politic, from foreign dominion and free from the rule of men above the law.

104 Rush, , Selected Writings, pp. 90 and 31Google Scholar.

105 This final phrase is Cropsey's, Joseph from his Polity and Economy (The Hague, 1957), p. 70CrossRefGoogle Scholar, upon whose insights much of this analysis rests.

106 Jefferson, , Papers, 6: 185–186Google Scholar. (Letter of May 20, 1782.) Compare Jefferson's answer to this problem with Montesquieu's. To the same question, “whether the laws ought to oblige a subject to accept public employment,” Montesquieu's answer for republics is affirmative: “public employments are the attestations of virtue, depositions with which a citizen is intrusted by his country, for whose sake alone he ought to live, to act, and to think; consequently he cannot refuse them” (Montesquieu, , Spirit, I, v, 19, p. 67)Google Scholar.

107 Adams, J., Works, 6:95 and 97Google Scholar.

108 Thorpe, , Constitutions, 3: 1889–1890Google Scholar, the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, Articles II and III. Consider, in this respect, Abraham Williams's election sermon preached before the Massachusetts Assembly in 1762: “The Rights of Conscience, are unalienable; inseparable from our Nature;—they ought not— they cannot possibly be given up to Society.… Yet civil Societies have a Right, it is their Duty, to encourage and maintain social public Worship of the Deity, and Instructions in Righteousness; for without social Vertues, Societies can't subsist; and these Vertues can't be expected, or depended on, without a belief in, and regard to, the supreme Being, and a future World: Consequently, a religious Fear and Regard to God, ought to be encouraged in every Society, and with this View, public social Worship and Instructions in social Vertues, maintained” (reprinted in Morgan, Puritan Political Ideas, pp. 331–352 at 338). The best-known resolution of this impossible combination of goals is Madison's and Jefferson's efforts to disestablish the Episcopal church in Virginia; and probably the best way to understand the complexity and seriousness of that whole problem would be to study both the conventional understanding of the preconditions of popular government as well as the claims of liberty.